- Working at KSC
- NASA Old Headquarters building on KSC destroyed.
- Flintknapping points
- Vampires of Kennedy Space Center and the O&C
- Demons of Kennedy Space Center
- Demons of Kennedy Space Center, corpus callosotomy
- Ghosts of Kennedy Space Center, End of Spiders
- Dreams of Kennedy Space Center, lovers and pyramids.
- Witches of Kennedy Space Center
- Cave Bears of Kennedy Space Center
- Aliens of Kennedy Space Center, uninvited guests
- Remembering Kennedy Space Center
- Lake 33 Killing Relic
Weldon Spring Dome
Horror of the missing students
Four Francis Howell High School students missing. Last seen entering the old DOT plant on Highway 94.
(Newspaper clipping at the Weldon Spring Museum)
The Horror
The Last Shower at Weldon Spring
1978
The EMF meter's erratic beeping echoed through the derelict hallway as Joyce, Buck, and April crept toward the infamous shower room. Their flashlight beams danced across crumbling walls stained with decades of uranium residue, casting sickly yellow shadows that seemed to writhe in their peripheral vision.
"Fran and Brad's last message came from here," April whispered, her voice trembling as she held up her walkie-talkie.
Their final words "The shower's running. But there's no water. Just darkness. Oh god, the tiles are breathing."
Buck's EMF meter suddenly shrieked, its display maxing out. "These readings are impossible," he muttered, tapping the device. "It's like the laws of physics just... stop working here."
As they approached the shower room, Joyce noticed the temperature plummet. Their breaths materialized in thick, oily clouds that hung unnaturally in the air. The metal door stood ajar, its surface rippling like mercury despite being solid steel.
"Listen," April breathed.
A sound emanated from within – not water drops, but something resembling wet footsteps in reverse, as if something was walking backward through time.
The shower room had changed since the factory's abandonment. The tiles pulsed with bioluminescent patterns that formed impossible geometric shapes, shapes that hurt to look at directly. In the center, the shower heads hung at angles that defied geometry, pointing simultaneously up, down, and sideways.
"Oh Christ," Buck gagged, "look at the drain."
The drain wasn't draining – it was breathing. Black ichor bubbled up from its depths, forming symbols that crawled across the floor like living calligraphy. The symbols spelled words in languages that predated humanity.
Joyce's flashlight beam caught something in the corner – Fran's bracelet, the one she never took off. But it was partially embedded in the wall, as if the tile had grown around it. Next to it was Brad's watch, its screen displaying the same time continuously: 3:33 AM.
The shower heads began turning again. Instead of water, they released a thick, dark mist that smelled of ancient ocean depths and cosmic decay. Within the mist, shapes moved – things with too many angles and eyes that didn't reflect light but absorbed it.
"We have to go," Joyce screamed, but April stood transfixed, pointing at the back wall. The tiles had parted like a curtain, revealing a vast space that shouldn't exist within the confines of the building. Beyond lay a landscape of twisted spires and impossible architecture, where multiple suns of unnatural colors painted everything in perpetual twilight.
A voice that wasn't a voice echoed from the void: "They're here. They've always been here." It was Fran's voice, but wrong – as if something else was wearing her vocal cords like a borrowed suit.
The Weldon Spring factory above them groaned, its massive weight straining against forces it was designed to contain. Not radiation, they realized with horror, but something far older and more malevolent.
Buck grabbed April's arm, but she had already begun to change. Her skin rippled with the same patterns as the tiles, her eyes reflecting geometries that existed in no earthly dimension. "I can see them," she whispered in a thousand voices at once. "I can see the gate they want to hide."
Joyce backed away as both April and Buck were pulled toward the shower heads, their bodies elongating and twisting like reflections in a carnival mirror. Their screams folded in on themselves, becoming sounds that human vocal cords were never meant to produce.
The last thing Joyce saw as she fled was the shower room collapsing in on itself like a dying star, pulling reality with it. She ran until she reached the sunlight, her mind fracturing around the edges of what she'd witnessed.
The containment dome stands above the old shower now, its rock mass serving as a lid on a jar of cosmic horrors.
However, students at Francis Howell High School swear they can hear the sound of running water in the dome, even though the plumbing was removed decades ago.
And sometimes, if you listen closely, you can hear voices calling from inside the walls – voices that sound like your friends, beckoning you to join them in dimensions where the angles are wrong and time flows backward through the drain of that terrible, eternal shower.
They say the government built the dome to contain radiation. But Joyce knows better. She knows what really lurks beneath those tons of stone and clay – and why some portals should remain forever sealed.
This might be a work of fiction......
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My newest book, available on Amazon
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For pet lovers around the globe, "It's a Matter of Luck" is a collection of heart warming stories of horse rescues from the slaughterhouse.
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Warning: This book may cause your eyes to water in a good way. (speaking from experience after reading it)
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Author Bruce Ryba at Kennedy Space Center Launch Pad 39B & Artemis 1. "We are going to the Moon!"
Author's discussion (that's me) on You Tube of a book review on Amazon
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Struggle for the northern frontier and other lost tales of old Florida.
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Desperate times call for bold action.
In a desperate move to retain Florida and protect the treasure-laden galleons on their dangerous return journey to Europe, the King of Spain issues a royal decree offering refuge to all English slaves who escape Florida and pick up a musket to defend the coquina walls of Saint Augustine.
In another bold gamble, the King offers refuge to the dissatisfied Indian nations of the southeast who will take up arms against the English.
Clans, traumatized by war and disease, cross the Spanish Frontier to settle the cattle-rich land and burned missions of Florida.
Follow the descendants of the conquistador Louis Castillo in remote Spanish Florida, a wild and swept by diseases, hurricanes, and northern invasions.
Book Two: Available on Amazon!