Days 179 and 180

Writing Exercise – Change the plot using these words: dormant, stoop, and maelstrom

…

Secrets, by their very nature, are pieces of information that are destined to come out, eventually.

I was told right from day one that no one, no matter who they were, or how many Bibles they swore an oath on, would always give that secret up. And when they least likely expected it.

Mt family dealt in secrets. Our own. Secrets were sworn from the day we were able to understand what giving your word meant, that we would never tell anyone ever what we knew.

Secrets that were passed down from generation to generation, since time immemorial. And those secrets could only change hands if there was no successor to the family.

There were four such families, in different parts of the world, who only knew their quarter of the puzzle. None was known to the other, and wouldn’t unless a certain event happened.

Until then, it lay dormant within the minds of the keepers. All they knew when the time came, they would receive instructions.

…

The day I turned thirty, I began having dreams.

Well, dreams might not be the right word, but over time, a little more would be revealed.

I was in a schoolroom, or what looked like a schoolroom, with a dozen other boys of the same age, and for some weird reason. looked like me. Every day, we had to write down a sentence. Some were long, some were short, none made any sense. They were in a language that I didn’t understand.

The day I turned forty, the dreams stopped, and I went about my life as if nothing had happened.

The thing is, I had other secrets I was supposed to keep, secrets that went with my job, national secrets that other people, if they knew I held them, would try to extract them. It was coincidental that I finished up in a position that required such knowledge.

And the part of the whole situation which was ironic, if it could be said it was anything. Someone else had a secret that pointed to me holding a secret, which wasn’t the secret that mattered. Except if it fell into the hands of the wrong people.

Confused?

Not for long. Like I said, secrets by their very nature are pieces of information that are destined to come out, eventually. It just took the right person to unlock it.

Jack Moreno was a tough kid, and then an even tougher grown-up. All he ever wanted to be was an agent who had some small part in saving the world. I had known Jack from grade school, and we came from the same neighbourhood. We both did Military training at school, a stint in the National Guard, a few tours in the Army with foreign deployment, and when we returned, he stayed on, and I went into the intelligence branch and drove a desk.

I’d seen enough death and mayhem as a soldier; I didn’t want to see more as an agent of some ultra-secret squad who undertook black ops wherever and whenever it was required. We crossed paths from time to time, when he was on deployment, and I was on holiday, but the last time had been three years, and I had heard he’d died, but it was never confirmed, and I’d thought no more of it.

Then, while I was having a coffee and watching the Trevi fountain, or more to the point, the bustling crowds trying to catch a glimpse of it, I thought I saw him, or someone who looked like him. I shrugged, maybe not, and went back to watching people casting a coin and making a wish. I made a wish earlier, one I knew would never come true.

That’s when the brash American and what looked like his girlfriend strolled past, he happened to look in my direction, and he seemed to recognise me. Not that recognising me made any difference, it was just that I preferred anonymity.

But, in the seconds that followed, something else happened. The girl he was with looked at me and our eyes met, and in that moment, I had a vision of her and me very close together, under a stoop, watching the total and instant destruction of everything in front of us.

And then it was gone.

“As I live and breathe, Rex Barnard. Amy, this is Rex, my oldest friend.”

I shook my head and opened my eyes. Jack Moreno. The man who was supposed to be dead.

“You seem well for…”

“… a man going through a new lease of life, of course. I call it the Amy effect.”

Clearly, he didn’t want any mention of the fact that he was supposed to be dead, which I gathered equally as quickly as he was on a black op. Good thing, then, I didn’t use his name.

She smiled. “You give me credit where none is due Rich.” The look she gave me was one of momentary surprise, then it just disappeared.

I wondered briefly if she knew who I was, and then dismissed the thought.

“Care for a coffee?”

“We would, but we have to be somewhere, you know, the life of a celebrity is never his own. We’ll catch up, you’ve got my number?”

“Of course. Great to see you, Rich.”

“You too.” He waved, and they disappeared into the crowd.

He could have just wandered past and ignored me, but he didn’t. That charade was for a reason. Long enough head start, I got out of the chair and went in the same direction.

…

The day was hot, the typical midsummer day in Rome, where the temperature was high and the breeze non-existent. I had toured the ruins near the Colosseum the day before, and I had nearly melted. How the Romans, thousands of years ago, handled the heat was anyone’s guess, but then there were buildings, not ruins, and they were probably cool. I know I sought relief inside the Colosseum, where it was shady.

I’d almost made it to the Spanish Steps before I saw them again. Anyone would have mistaken them for a couple on their honeymoon. Until one minute they were together, and the next, both had disappeared. It was not possible because I was staring straight at them.

I moved forward slowly, trying to reacquire the targets, without success.

Suddenly, I felt a shiver go through me, then a voice in my ear, speaking in a language I had only heard in my dreams, “You are one, are you not?”

The girl was behind me, leaning against the wall. Rex was nowhere to be seen.

“He is not here. He does not know.”

She was not speaking; she was communicating without talking.

“I understand the language, if that means anything.”

“You were called here.”

That might have been true. I woke up three days ago, and Rome was in my mind, and the idea of going there was so strong that I went to the airport and got on a plane. “Yes.”

“Then it is going to happen. The other two will be here, somewhere.”

“The other two?”

“We are four. Direct descendants of the Roman Gods. Why, I don’t know, but I think we’ll find out soon enough.”

It didn’t surprise me that there were more. Nor did it surprise me that I knew my way around the Roman ruins, or that I’d been drawn to them.

“An attack, from the sky.”

“You saw it too?”

“Did you recognise where?”

“I think it was the ruins near the Colosseum. I was there two days ago and had some very vivid images in my head.”

“Then that’s where we need to be.”

…

Perhaps one of my foibles that others didn’t understand was my obsession with flying saucers, in fact, the whole concept of there being aliens in outer space. It was not as if it was something i picked up reading comic books, or watched all the documentaries that purported to say there was evidence of visits over the centuries.

After all, we had to come from somewhere, and I wasn’t buying the idea we came from the apes. Or that the evolution of man back when the unexplainable buildings and technology were built, and we still couldn’t replicate it.

The only answer I could attribute it to was the fact that aliens from outer space, people who had evolved much further than we had, even now, had come and left behind the beginnings of humankind, only to be struck down by weather events and asteroids, causing life extinction, and the remains of wonderous ruins hinting at how more clever they were than us.

Or other aliens came and killed off those on the planet, and seeded it with their version of humans. It was not a theory I told anyone else, nor of my obsession, I tried that once and nearly got locked up in an asylum.

It took time to get to the Colosseum, time to have a conversation, which was odd since we were not communicating in the normal manner, all while having short spasms of shivering, which i think we finally agreed was a warning.

For what?

From a day that started without a cloud in the sky, by the time we arrived at the Colosseum, there was no blue sky to be seen, but it was no cooler; if anything, it was hotter.

Then, suddenly, the clouds started swirling, and a very strange sound came from the sky.

Two more voices were in my head, and I looked sideways to see another man and a girl. Four of us. There were no introductions; we just joined hands.

“What now?” we all said in unison.

“Each of you has an incantation. Say it now.” It was another voice, not one of us.

As we did, out of the maelstrom above us were the first signs of a very large spacecraft, slowly hovering. It was slowly moving over us as we spoke the lines we had taken ten years to learn, and when we’d finished, all at the same time, a huge bolt of something emanated from the ground near us and went straight up to the craft and sent crazy lightning strikes through it.

This lasted for a few minutes, and suddenly, as quickly as the craft came, it left, taking the clouds with it.

After that, I remembered nothing until I woke, sitting in the chair back at the Trevi fountain, everything as it had been before I had seen Rex and Amy.

In fact, I was not sure what had happened, only that I had got up to follow them, and it was obvious I hadn’t. Perhaps it was just my imagination.

I heard the scraping of a chair and looked sideways. A woman my age, obviously American sat down. “This chair is free, isn’t it?”

“It is.”

“Thanks. I need it. Just tossed a coin in and made a wish. It came true, I was wishing for a free seat to rest my weary bones. Janice Walker, weary visitor.” She held out her hand.

I shook it, and got a tingle, along with an image. Amy. Then it was gone.

“I think we are going to be very good friends,” she said. “One of those feelings. You have those, too?”

“I think I do. Now.”

“Good. Now, what’s the coffee like here?”

…

© Charles Heath  2025