Ninovan (Hypernaturals 10)

Long and Winding Road

We all piled out of the truck and stood around the mailbox. It is a standard arched metal box, large, oxidized silver color. They have made these since forever. On the side of the metal box, near the flip-down door, is the symbol we have been searching for.

"Wow. Excellent eyes, Vera! I want to kiss you!" Angel said, after studying the fallen box.

"That's new." Jessica teased.

"You can kiss me if you want..." Vera said.

While they snogged, I studied. The mailbox lay not quite all the way on the ground. The 4x4 post it is mounted on still in the dirt, the concrete around its base partially popped out. It looked decrepit as all hell.

It bothered me. The whole scenario.

I looked around trying to figure out what is off.

Morgan seemed bothered too. I stood next to her. "You feel it too? Something wrong?"

"Yes. Back of my mind, subconscious tickle. I have not figured it out yet." Morgan looked slowly around her, scanning.

I spun my entire self around slowly. I inhaled deeply. Things in my subconscious started to add up Apparently Morgan and my subconscious are on the same wavelength.

I looked at the tree line and the fence. It is a standard issue southern fence. Round poles dipped in creosote. Barbed wire at three levels tying them together. Poles leaning towards the street and intertwined in the barbed wire is overgrown foliage. It looks the same as all the other poles and all the other dense foliage.

Morgan studied the ground and began pacing around, looking closely at it from different points of view. She walked over to the mailbox again, slowly.

Since Morgan is doing that area, I went over to the fence and studied it. As I looked I figured out one element of what had been bothering me. The two closest poles to the mailbox lean out toward the street at exactly the same angle. That is bugging me because the others I can see are all angled this way and that at random. The right-hand pole, as I faced the two oddly aligned fence posts, more or less lined directly up with the mailbox.

I shifted my sensorium. In IR, I can see a line from the right-hand pole to the mailbox.

"Morgan. You looking in IR at this?" I pointed along the line.

"Yes. Why I came over here. There seems to be a large box of some sort underground. Under the cement."

"A mechanism?" I asked.

"Give me a sec. Shifting around the bands. Ahh. Yes. I see a lever right there." Morgan pointed. "And a cam against it." More gestures. " I think this mailbox is a glorified switch. This cam rolls against this lever, all in a box connected to the bottom of the mailbox."

Morgan bent and lifted the mailbox at an angle. I suddenly needed to dance backward to avoid being slashed by barbed wire. "Hey!" I called out.

The two poles and their intervening barbed wires and foliage hummed smoothly to the ground. I did not notice the ground being slightly depressed between them because of the grass, but everything lay flat now. With the foliage out of the way, there is a path, barely wider than the truck, and two faint lines ran along the ground. It curved to my right almost immediately. A highly unused road.

I looked closely at the barbed wire: All of it pointed its sharp ends at the ground.

"Oops. Sorry." Morgan apologized, noting my dance.

"Holy Batcave!" I exclaimed.

We all walked up the road and around the bend. Once out of sight of the road we found a box mounted on a 4x4 post, with nothing unmaintained-looking about it. I flipped up a weatherproof cover there were two big industrial looking and weatherproof buttons, marked 'Up' and 'Down'.