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The story continues …..
One by one they stepped through the wavering doorway from the flooding cave. Once in, they found themselves in complete darkness.
“Where are we?” Bett’s voice echoed strangely, as if in an enclosed space.
“Everyone okay?” Ali asked, her voice similarly distorted.
Five voices confirmed they were fine, if disoriented. Muffin barked once, his tail thumping against Ali’s leg reassuringly.
Their phone flashlights clicked on, beams cutting through the darkness to reveal what appeared to be a large underground chamber.
“I recognize this place,” Bett said suddenly. “We’re under the theater.”
The others turned to her in surprise.
“The old theater has a basement, but this is…” she swept her flashlight across the vast chamber, “much bigger than it should be.”
Cooper approached one of the walls, running his hand over a smooth metallic panel. “These are frequency modulators,” he said with growing excitement. “Advanced ones. Nothing like I’ve ever seen before.”
Ali held up the two disks they’d collected so far. Both pulsed with the same blue light, but now they seemed to be vibrating in unison, as if responding to something in this space.
“They’ve brought us here for a reason,” she said. “There must be another key somewhere.”
Muffin suddenly perked up, his ears twitching. He let out a soft whine and began sniffing along the floor with purpose.
“I think he’s sensing something,” Jan said, watching the golden retriever’s behavior with professional interest. “Animals have always been more sensitive to subtle frequencies than humans.”
Their collective flashlight beams slowly revealed the chamber’s details. It wasn’t just an underground room—it was a sophisticated monitoring station. Curved screens lined the walls, covered in dust but clearly technological in nature. Strange chairs faced these screens, each with what looked like a headrest designed for something not quite human.
Muffin trotted determinedly toward the far wall, where Jasper stood examining something.
“Look at this,” Jasper called to the others. He was standing before a wall covered in drawings—intricate, detailed sketches that resembled elaborate masquerade masks.
The group gathered around, studying the images. Each mask was unique, with flowing curves and strange protrusions, yet all contained similar elements: eye coverings that extended to the temples and decorative elements that seemed to serve a functional purpose.
“These aren’t just masks,” Cooper said, studying the technical aspects of the drawings. “There are circuits, connectors… these are some kind of device.”
Bett reached out, touching one of the sketches. “I’ve seen something like these in the theater archives. Old costume designs for a masquerade performance from the 1920s. I always thought they were unusually detailed.”
All the while, Muffin continued sniffing urgently at the base of the wall, pawing occasionally at a specific spot.
“He’s found something,” Ali said, kneeling beside her dog. “Good boy, Muffin.”
She directed her flashlight where the dog was indicating. At first, it appeared to be just another section of the wall, but as she examined it more closely, she noticed a slight difference in texture—a small panel, almost invisible unless you knew to look for it.
“Cooper, can you check for frequencies here?” she asked.
He quickly adjusted one of his devices and held it near where Muffin was pawing. “There’s definitely something. A subtle vibration pattern, just at the edge of detection.”
Ali placed the two disks they’d already found against the wall. Immediately, the panel Muffin had located began to glow with the same blue light. With a soft click, it slid open to reveal a small compartment containing their prize: a third disk, identical to the others but with unique patterns etched across its surface.
“That’s three,” Ali said triumphantly, lifting it out. The moment she held all three disks together, the entire chamber hummed to life. Lights flickered on along the ceiling, and the dormant screens around the room began to glow faintly.
“What’s happening?” Jan asked, looking around nervously.
“I think we just activated something,” Cooper replied, his equipment suddenly beeping frantically. “The disks are transmitting at a much higher frequency now.”
The screens around the room flickered fully to life, displaying what appeared to be recordings—strange, dreamlike sequences that seemed to flow from one to another. People flying. Buildings shifting impossibly. Loved ones long gone returning.
“These look like… dreams,” Jasper observed, watching the screens with fascination.
“That’s exactly what they are,” Cooper said, examining the control panels that had also come to life. “These systems are calibrated to record and transmit delta and theta brain waves—the patterns produced during dreaming.”
As everyone tried to process this revelation, one of the screens shifted to show a particular recording: a young man standing at the lighthouse, looking out over the water. The date showed it was from twenty years ago.
“That’s my dad,” Ali whispered. “Benjamin.”
The image shifted to show a figure watching him from the shadows—a woman with features just slightly too perfect to be human, her eyes reflecting light in a way that wasn’t quite natural.
“And that…” Ali couldn’t finish the sentence.
“Could be your mother,” Bett supplied gently.
The images continued, showing brief glimpses of them meeting, talking, falling in love. Then a final scene: the woman holding a baby, tears streaming down her face as she handed the child to Benjamin. The timestamp showed exactly eighteen years ago.
Muffin had moved to a display case that had previously been hidden in shadow. Inside was one of the masks they’d seen in the drawings—an actual physical version, beautifully crafted with swirling patterns that matched those on the disks.
“They were watchers,” Jasper said suddenly, his voice distant. Everyone turned to him. He stood with his eyes unfocused, as if seeing something beyond the room. “In my dreams. I always felt something watching.”
“The resonant frequencies Cooper detected,” Bett theorized, “they weren’t just communication signals—they were monitoring brain waves.”
Ali approached the display case containing the mask. Unlike the dusty equipment around it, the mask seemed untouched by time, its surface gleaming in the blue light from the disks.
“The aliens weren’t just observing us,” Cooper said, studying the technical systems with growing understanding. “Based on these readings, they were… experiencing our dreams. These masks weren’t just for monitoring—they were for immersion.”
“Think about it,” Archer added. “If their biology is different from ours, they might not dream the way humans do. Our dream patterns could be completely novel to them.”
Bett, who had moved to examine another part of the wall, called out, “Ali, you need to see this.”
On a small plaque, etched in the same swirling alphabet they’d seen in Ms. Greco’s book, was a word that had been partially translated into English beneath it: ALITOUS.
“It looks like…” Bett began.
“Ali,” Jasper finished. “Similar to your name.”
“Alitous,” Ali repeated, the word feeling strangely familiar in her mouth.
Next to the plaque was what appeared to be a star map, with one particular star circled and connected by a line to the word “Alitous.”
“I think it’s showing where they’re from,” Archer said, studying the map. “Alitous must be the name of their world or their star system.”
With a gentle hiss, the display case opened. Ali carefully lifted out the mask, feeling its strange lightness—not quite metal, not quite fabric, but something in between.
Something compelled her to lift it toward her face.
“Ali, wait,” Jan cautioned. “We don’t know what it might do.”
But Ali felt certain. “I think this is why we’re here. Why the disks led us to this place.”
Before anyone could stop her, she placed the mask over her eyes. For a moment, nothing happened. Then the mask adhered gently to her skin, and the world around her dissolved.
She found herself floating in darkness. No distinct figures appeared, but there was a presence—a consciousness reaching out to hers. Not words exactly, but impressions, emotions, and fragments of memories flooded into her mind.
Dream-walking… studying human dreams… fascination with human creativity…
She sensed rather than saw images of her mother—a woman torn between two worlds, falling in love with a human man who somehow sensed her presence during the dream monitoring.
The impressions continued—danger, a decision to leave Earth, and her mother’s heartbreaking choice to return to Alitous, leaving her child behind with the human father.
Alitous… the word from the plaque pulsed in her consciousness. Home. Origin. The world her mother returned to, the source of her own name.
Then came an urgent feeling—her father Benjamin had found something, had tried to make contact, and was now trapped somewhere between worlds. The five keys were needed to create a stable portal. And Ali—someone of both worlds—was essential to guide him home.
The remaining keys… animals sensitive to frequencies… trust their guidance…
The impressions faded, the presence withdrawing gently from her mind. The mask released its hold, and Ali found herself back in the underground chamber, her friends staring at her with concern.
“Ali? What happened?” Jan asked, supporting her as she swayed slightly.
“I… I don’t think I saw anyone directly,” she said, struggling to organize the flood of impressions. “But I received information—like a download straight into my brain.”
She explained what she’d learned: that the aliens had been dream-walkers studying human consciousness, how her mother had fallen in love with her father during these observations, and how Benjamin was now trapped between worlds after trying to make contact.
“Your name and this word Alitous are so similar,” Bett said. “That can’t be a coincidence.”
“In the impressions I received through the mask, I felt that connection,” Ali said thoughtfully. “I think my mother must have named me after her homeworld.”
“It’s interesting,” Archer added. “The Latin word ‘alienus’ means ‘belonging to another.’ If their contact with Earth goes back centuries, there might even be a connection between ‘Alitous’ and our word ‘alien.'”
Muffin nudged Ali’s hand, his warm presence grounding her after the strange experience. She scratched behind his ears gratefully. “You were right to bring us here, boy. You knew what we needed to find.”
“The animals,” Ali continued, remembering her uncle’s final words. “He said the animals will lead us to the next key.”
Jan’s eyes widened. “The strange animal behavior I’ve been noticing at the clinic—they’ve been sensing something all along.”
Cooper carefully examined the mask Ali had removed. “This technology is incredible. They were using dreams as a resource—collecting, experiencing, perhaps even needing them for something vital.”
“We can figure out the details later,” Ali said, tucking the mask into her backpack alongside the three disks they now possessed. “Right now, we need to find the fourth key, and I think Muffin and the other animals are going to help us find it.”
As they prepared to leave the underground chamber, Ali cast one last look at the images of her parents on the screens—a human man who had somehow sensed the presence of a dream-walker, and an alien woman who had loved him enough to leave her child behind.
“I’m going to find you, Dad,” she whispered. “And maybe, just maybe, I’ll finally meet my mom too.”
“Shadows of the Keeper” is written by Julie D’Aloiso in collaboration with Anthropic’s Claude AI. Each chapter is crafted through creative partnership, combining human storytelling with AI assistance.
© 2025 Julie D’Aloiso All rights reserved.
