Clay Waking Up To A Nightmare In Time
Waking to a light mist brushing against my face and a bed of grass beneath me was not what I expected. When I went to sleep it was in my bed. I had spent that evening in my apartment, and I know that I never left.
My present reality was very different from what I remembered. The light was very dim as I began to see what would soon be a sunrise. Normally terror comes in the darkness of night, for me it was in this moment seeing the first light of day.
In the early morning I could see a lush grassland. Trees were few but all seemed to be quite young as if planted at near the same time. I could see a river to the west. To my east and west were rolling hills with mountain ranges in the distance.
I was not accustomed to such an open environment. I grew up in the mountains of Tennessee. I know what new growth looks like. This landscape appeared to be brand new.
Northwest of where I stood was a high mountain in my distant view. Clearly, I was in a wide and long valley of some kind. No where was there a building or any kind of structure which would appear man made.
There were some animals I could see in the distance. It looked like deer, a few horses, and some odd looking beasts I could not make out. Bees were everywhere, as well as flowers. I am not sure what happened here but there certainly was an over abundance of insects of all kinds.
A cool breeze was blowing to the south, and a warm sun which was rising. My mind was frozen. My emotions were screaming in terror and fear. It was as if my entire being had become frozen in time. A thousand questions screamed to be answered in my mind at the same time.
Where was I? I do not belong here. I needed to do something. I needed to go somewhere. It was in this moment I realized I was fully clothed with shoes on my feet. I went to bed in a t-shirt and shorts.
How did this happen? Mindlessly I walked to the river and began to follow it north. Water was flowing south out of the upper hills. I do not know why I chose to go upstream, but it seemed the right direction. Perhaps it was because I could see mountains in the distance and that felt like home.
If there were people nearby, they would be near a water source. Rural regions relied upon nearby water. Civilizations throughout history were built around it. People had to be nearby.
Some hours passed in my walking. Occasionally I would pause to drink from the river. The water was fast flowing and clear but also quite cold. As the sun reached into the sky the land itself warmed.
While contemplating all of this I felt something which I had never felt before. It was not an earthquake, but rather it was as if the earth itself moved. A slight vibration, not violent shaking, or maybe a shift of some kind. Then a loud thunderous crack.
That sound filled the sky. Its wave you could feel go through the body. The earth for a moment slightly vibrated to its resonance like a tuning fork. Something was terribly wrong. Everything was too real for this to be a dream.
Terror once again filled me. I had no idea what could cause all of this to happen to me. I needed to keep walking. Hours more passed and the sun had begun to lower in the western sky, and then I saw it.
First Encounters
In the distance it appeared to be a farm of some kind. Stone structures, and animals which were obviously there to serve the farm. What appeared to be a vineyard was on the north side and crops to the east. For the first time since I woke this morning, I felt hope.
The walk to this farm would still take some time. I needed to reach it before nightfall. The last thing I wanted to do was to arrive after dark and be mistaken for something other than being lost. I needed help rather than appearing as someone who was there to cause trouble.
Walking faster despite being so tired I began to come closer to the farm. It was then I saw a man walking towards me. A moment later it was two, then three men which were coming. Again, that rise of fear began to take hold inside of me, yet I had nowhere else to go.
I began to get that feeling when you are caught in the middle of a no win situation. I was in the middle of needing help from someone, but not knowing if these people would help or hurt me. There was only one way to find out.
As the distance closed between us something odd became apparent. These men were not like other men. These guys were tall. When they became close enough for me to accurately gauge their height I was in shock. They were between ten to twelve feet tall.
At about fifty feet from me they stopped walking, and so did I. The looks on their faces were as if they had seen an alien fall from the sky. I knew that I was not supposed to be here. Still, it was as if they were looking at someone who was not human.
They did not appear to be of any specific ethnicity. I was the typical white guy but a country boy. The closest way to describe their appearance would be as if one mixed all the races of the world together.
While I was much smaller and obviously whiter than they were, my appearance should not have caused this kind of reaction. If anything, it was their appearance looking like giants that confused me. Aside from their unusual height, these three men were built from long hard days of work.
If they wanted to hurt me, all it would take would be for one of them to grab me and I could be broken in half with his bare hands. I needed friends in this moment. I needed to gain their trust.
What came next, I never would have imagined in a million years.
“Where did you come from?” The man on the left asked. I had no real way to answer that other than knowing where I was supposed to be.
I replied, “I am from Tennessee”.
“How did you survive?” The man on the right asked. Survive? What happened last night? I wasn’t drinking and I wasn’t high. Nothing made sense.
“Survive what? All I know is that last night I went to sleep and this morning I woke up in a field of grass. I have no idea where I am, or how I got here. It took all day walking to find your farm and I was hoping you could help me get home.”
At least I hoped that they would help get me home.
Maybe it was the size of these guys that caused me to miss something important. Perhaps it was how tired I was from walking, or being terrified, or any of these other hysterical emotions I was feeling. In that moment I finally realized that these men were dressed rather unusually.
Their clothing was unlike anything I have seen. The material might have passed for cotton, yet the design of the clothing was very old. The shoes were more like a cross between sandals and crocs, yet they were of an odd material I did not recognize.
It was after this that the question of how I survived became specific. When I heard “How did you survive the flood?”, I had no idea what he meant.
“What flood are you talking about? It didn’t flood anywhere that I know of.” I replied.
My mind racked itself trying to figure this out. He then stated “The flood covered the entire earth, no one else was supposed to survive. So how did you survive?”
The look on his face seemed sincere, if not outright concerned. I did not think they would harm me, yet at the same time it was as if they did not know what to make of me. My presence did more than confuse them, it became apparent I literally was never supposed to be here.
I had to be dreaming. Maybe I did get high and just don’t remember it. I genuinely had no answer to his question and did not know what to say.
“Come with us and we can help you.” The man in the center of the three said.
I certainly wasn’t going to argue. One walked in front of me while another was on my left, and one on my right.
I did not recognize where I was, so where was I? Could I trust these guys? How is it that they are so freakishly huge? My senses were overloaded on every side. What I saw, heard, and felt was in complete conflict with what I knew and where I should be.
The one question that nagged me the most was when he asked about the flood. What flood are they talking about? He said it covered the entire earth and no one was supposed to survive it. This must be a prank.
There is only one possible flood that matches his description, Noah’s flood. I remember that from Sunday school as a child. There is no way possible he is talking about this.
If this is not a prank maybe something happened here locally, and these guys are exaggerating. After all the whole Noah thing is just a Bible story for children and a fairy tale. It was a small regional flood that was made into a bigger moral story for kids.
The Farm
We came to the edge of the farm where there was an outbuilding made for storage and repairing equipment. I was asked to wait by the building and two of the men stayed with me. The third man said he would be back soon. Never did he say where he was going, but I knew it was to get someone else of authority.
Sitting in silence one man watched me while the other continued with work. The tools he was using were similar to hand tools one would find in the 1700’s and 1800’s. Similar but much larger. I recognized the wood plane in his hands.
Hanging on the inside wall of this building I could see a sickle used for harvesting. Other similar farm tools lay around. There was a back room where I could see a cot for sleeping, a table and a chair. It made for very simple living but it all looked hand made.
In the distance I could hear faint singing. It was a woman’s voice, but I couldn’t make out the words. The tune seemed a bit melancholic, almost as if one had suffered some kind of loss.
The size of the buildings were of course tailored to their size. The tools, their clothing, how this structure was made with interlocking stone, is all familiar but still different to my memory of different cultures. Very little wood was used, in fact near every tree I encountered seemed young.
In the distance I could make out something which shocked me the moment I saw it. The size of the structure was immense.
From the river was a stone aqueduct that had a wooden water wheel at the river’s edge. The waterwheel fed the water to the aqueduct, and then the water would flow into the fields along its designed channels.
I have seen water wheels used to power grinding stones in historic locations. This one appeared to serve multiple purposes and could be turned on by allowing water flow or shut off as needed.
I saw no power poles, no power lines, no generator, everything was quite organic and pre-electric in technology. No tracks in the earth from vehicles, tractors, or other machinery. Speaking of which I had not heard nor seen a single airplane all day.
The sun was now beginning to set. The sky was turning its colors, and this sight was the only familiar thing to me. I sat in silence as the two men did not want to talk and I was not willing to tempt discussion either.
First Introductions
I continued to wait until just after dark. I could see the flicker of a lamp approaching. It was much like the one which lit the space of the building’s doorway I was sitting in. As the lamp came closer, I could see two men approaching.
Both were about the same height. I assumed one was the man who left earlier, and the one with him was the authority figure. It did not take long to see the face of this new guy.
He appeared to be older, maybe in his 40’s to 50’s. He was just as big as the other three but he carried more scars. His eyes cut through me like he could read my mind.
For a change someone said something that made sense and seemed a part of a normal conversation. It is odd how his first question seemed to put me at some kind of normal ease.
“What is your name?” He asked.
“Clayton Webb” I replied.
“Nice to meet you, I am Noah.”
So much for a normal conversation and anything making sense.
“These are my sons, Shem, Ham, and Japeth.”
I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry, scream, or run. This must be some kind of sick joke. This is not real. If it wasn’t for me being too afraid to not say “Nice to meet you” in reply to his introduction, I would have demanded to end this prank. I was getting angry.
He then sat next to me, looked me in the eye and said, “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me how you came to be here?”
I decided to entertain this more to save my neck, but my story was simple. The previous night I had gotten into a fight with my soon to be ex-wife. I left the house which she was definitely going to get in the divorce along with the kids and went back to my apartment.
When I got home, I ate the McDonalds I had picked up along the way, tried to watch some tv but couldn’t pay attention to the show. My mind was pretty disturbed from the fight. It was not an easy evening.
At about 2am I finally went to bed. Before falling asleep I did one thing which I normally do not do. I prayed, but not a good prayer. After all prayers are something people do in desperation to help them feel better, and I needed to feel better.
My prayer was simple though. I blamed God for everything wrong in my life and demanded to know why He was taking away everything from me.
After I did that, I then said that He couldn’t be real. It didn’t end there. I said if He was real, He should rewind the world back to its beginning to fix all the stuff He messed up along the way.
Okay, so I was angry and sarcastic. I know there must be a God of some kind but seriously this must be a joke on me. Who is doing this? As this Noah guy listened to my previous day, and then how I woke up in a field, found his boys, he just shook his head.
When I was done Noah simply stated “So, you are not really from around here are you?”.
Then it hit me, he is right I am not from here and I speak English and so do they. “Well apparently the joke is on you guys because all of you speak English. So please tell me where I am and what is really going on?”
I was about to lose it. Finally, this little outburst to bring this to an end overcame my fear of their Hulk size intimidation. I just could not take it any longer.
Noah smiled at me and laughed briefly before saying “I do not know what English is, yet we understand you speak the same words we do. Hebrew is our language. Other tongues from before were used in blasphemous ways.”
The one he called Shem then spoke up “There has only been one true language from the beginning.”
Noah raised his hand to Shem then looked back at me with his last question for the night. “From when are you?”
A deep terror suddenly sank into me. It was like having a shovel dig into the soul to turn over everything inside you becoming upside down.
At this point I felt like Marty stepping out of the Delorian. It simply could not be real. “I’m from 2065 A.D.” Noah smiled once again before commenting for the final time that night.
“I know you are not from before, and you are not from the now. I do not know why you are here, but you are here. You can sleep in this building. I have brought food and water, both for cleaning yourself and drinking. Rest and we will talk again in the morning.”