Shadows Out of Time

White female identified as Jen Bigelow, age 33, arrived by ambulance at 10:39 p.m. Close-range GSW to the right chest, exit wound right dorsal. Collapsed lung. B.P. 104/69, rate erratic. Immediate surgery D. Kress.

Addendum by Detective David Colby: Patient survived three-hour surgery. Initially found unresponsive near the corner of Gale and Sebring Furnace Extension, Beechview. 911 call by DeMarius Bryan of Beechview.

Partial transcript of SESSION 3, subject Jen Bigelow, placed under hypnosis by Jeremy Tuttle, August 28, 2022:

JT: You are completely comfortable. Everything around you is peaceful and quiet. There is nothing to worry about. You are in your bed, warm — just warm enough. Safe. It’s earlier this month, not long ago. You are beginning to dream. Images in your mind. No worries…just pictures in your head. Can you see them?

JB: [Murmurs indistinctly.]

JT: What was that? Do you see something? JB: [Lengthy pause.] Yes.

JT: What do you see?

JB: There’s a…there’s a bird.

JT: What kind of bird? Is it flying?

JB: On a branch. Trees…lots of trees. It’s dark.

JT: Is it a forest?

JB: Yes.

JT: Tell me about the bird. What is it doing?

JB: There’s…light. Light — like morning. But it’s night. Behind the bird. Voices. A voice.

JT: Is someone behind the bird? Someone speaking?

JB: It’s speaking. It’s…[JB becoming agitated].

JT: The bird is speaking?

JB: [Breathing heavily] It’s saying name…names.

Ben…Benton. Nine…nine nine.

JT: Nein nein? Is it speaking German? German or English?

JB: Number nine. Month…day. Nine-nine. Wants me to come there. It says stairs. I have to go there. [Increasingly agitated.] When it says, I have to. I have to go.

JT: The bird is asking you to go somewhere?

JB: [Sobbing violently, thrashing. Screams the next words.] It’s not a bird.

From the personal journal of Jeremy Tuttle, entry dated August 12, 2022:

Fascinating conversation with Kafti at Mike’s tonight. Others were there; the two of us withdrew to the room off the kitchen so he could talk while I took notes. Several blunts: grain of salt, of course, BUT. Wild stuff. Kafti in fine form — had only met him twice before tonight. Mike met him in Frick Park, like homeless or something, but he’s not.

Kafti calls himself a prophet. He has dreams. Swears that his dreams have accurately foretold the future on many occasions. Would love to hypnotize him. Maybe when I know him better, or if he asks. I sense it could get frightening and/or out of hand. Not sure. He seems to be an old soul — maybe an ancient soul.

Anyway, I was asking about a manuscript he’d given me. I returned it to him with some notes. Not sure if he intended it as a story or as his prophetic vision. Hard to tell with Kafti.

Story says that in the year 3011, the Glorious Next arise— successors of humankind, gigantic, luminous beings. They come from deep beneath the sea, where they have been sleeping. Subjugate humankind. Not subjugate, exactly. Kafti says it’s a relationship we slide into naturally with them, since they are greater and we are like lower order beasts to them. Human race performs menial tasks, manual labor for the Glorious Next, inheritors of the planet.

Sounds a lot like Lovecraft so far, but I pressed Kafti along those lines, and he never mentioned Cthulhu et al., and those names didn’t seem to mean anything to him. Zilch.

Kafti went into a sort of trance-like state, and I thought he might be done for the night, but then he sat straight up and said more. He was talking now — this wasn’t in the manuscript. In 4064, a meteorite brings a virus to Earth that wipes out the human race. The Glorious Next are desperate, because they’ve become dependent on us in so many ways that their survival is now threatened.

The key to solving their problem lies in a possibility for time travel they’ve discovered. It’s very limited, a natural phenomenon over which they have no control, though they can make use of it. Because of alignments of stars and responsive energies within the Earth, “windows” open briefly and in different places, through which matter can pass from the present to a specific different time and back again, so long as the “window” stays open. It only opens for nineteen minutes, Kafti says, and only one such “window” will do the Glorious Next any good.

As Kafti tells it, they have wiped the virus away; the Earth is safe for humankind again, but the Next need unspoiled, uninfected human tissue in order to regenerate our species. They can get it from the past — all they need is one of us, one specimen. All they need to do is snatch one of us through the nineteenminute “window” and drag that one back — forward, that is, through time — to the year 4064, after the virus is gone, but before the demise of their own species.