Nephilim: The Truth Is Here (Nephilim) [Paperback]

Journalist Art Mackenzie follows a lead and discovers a supernatural plot that sheds the light of Scripture on the mystery of extraterrestrial life and UFOs.

Two years ago, Art "Mac" Mackenzie was a respected newspaper journalist with a wonderful family and a great future. Now he lives by himself, eking out an existence as a freelance writer. His faith in God, humanity, and virtually everything else is gone. What’s left is a pile of bills and the ache of his eldest son’s death. Enter a woman in a psychiatric ward, with an off-the-wall story of how aliens abducted her, created a baby within her, and later stole it. From her seemingly twisted account springs the potential media story of the century . . . and more trouble than Mac has ever imagined. In this engrossing page-turner, Mac follows his story to Israel, where he comes across the remains of one of the nephilim: an ancient biblical giant, sired by demons and born of human women. Mac’s encounter is just the tip of a terrifying supernatural iceberg — for the nephilim are back on earth. And Mac has stumbled onto their secret. Nephilim winds from the Holy Land to the Nevada desert, through mind-numbing dangers and choices that will affect the future of the human race. Just one hope stands between Mac and destruction: the power of the risen Messiah. But can it save Mac and his children from the evil spiritual forces that spawned the nephilim? Or fulfill his agonizing quest for meaning and purpose in life?

Lynn Marzulli is the author of "Nephilim" and possesses an in-depth knowledge on the topic of UFO cults. He is a musician and composer who has recorded a number of albums.

Chapter 1
Alone in the dark, Art MacKenzie slouched on a torn sofa in his disheveled studio apartment. His bare feet rested on the single piece of furniture from his marriage he still possessed: a coffee table with one leg missing. He sipped slowly from a dirty glass and felt the Grand Marnier warm its way down his throat, adding to the fire that already burned in his belly.

He took another sip, this time a longer one, closed his eyes, and relived it all one more time.

***
He runs frantically down a hospital corridor and slams into the door of the emergency room. It bursts open, crashing against the wall, the noise reverberating, startling doctors, patients, and nurses who look up at him, wide-eyed.

He steps into the room and stops. His eyes dart wildly from person to person, one hand pushing his hair off his forehead as he tries to catch his breath. His chest heaves - to get here, he has run faster and harder than he has ever run in his life.

He knows he must appear crazy, but he doesn't care.

He draws a deep breath, so deep it hurts, and bellows: "Maggie!"

No one answers.

His heart hammers in his chest, feeling as if it will burst through the bone and muscle as it pounds.

"Mr. MacKenzie?" someone asks.

His muscles tense. "I'm MacKenzie," he blurts out.

A nurse rises from her chair behind the nurses' station and scurries to him. She grabs his hand and rushes him down a hallway.

And there is Maggie, his wife. She doesn't see him at first. Her hands and tear-stained face are pressed against the observation window, as if she were trying to melt through the glass.

Mac touches her shoulder; she jumps, and then they look at each other for an agonizing second, neither saying a word.

Mac takes her hand, and together they watch a team of doctors and nurses working desperately on a young boy.

Their son, Art junior.

The sheets that cover him are soaked with his blood. His short brownish hair is matted and wet with blood and perspiration. His hand hangs limply over the side of the table.

He is fragile, helpless, alone, and defenseless against what has happened and is happening to him, and Mac wants only to rush in and hold him, to wash away the blood from his forehead, to see his hazel eyes and crooked smile.

He can imagine the scene, so comforting: he would simply walk into the operating room and tell the doctors that everything is all right, it's just a slight bruise, no need for all of this. Everyone can go home now.

A faint but alarming sound reaches Mac through the window, shattering his daydream. It comes from a monitor at the head of Art's gurney. Mac has seen the movies, the television shows - he doesn't need to be a doctor to know that his son's heart has flat-lined. The doctor who appears to head the team grabs a syringe held out to him by a nurse. He plunges the needle into Art's chest and pumps its liquid in.

He stares at the monitor and looks for a change.

The heart doesn't respond.

Mac is tortured by "if onlys." If only Art had been sitting in a different seat in the family's van, there might have been less damage. If only the firemen had been able to free him from the twisted wreck more quickly. If only the rush-hour traffic hadn't been so heavy, delaying the ambulance on its way to the hospital. If only he hadn't lost so much blood.

So much blood . . .

"Come on . . . Come on!" The doctor shouts, pressing Art's chest with such power Mac is surprised his son doesn't fall through the table.

Maggie squeezes Mac's hand; when he looks at her, he sees that she is biting her lower lip with such force blood runs down her chin.

There's panic in the operating room now; the monitor's long, droning, monotone note seems to be terrifying everyone. There's cursing and yelling. Instruments are flung to the floor; people rush back and forth, undoubtedly carrying out logical, preassigned tasks, but to Mac it merely seems the pointless, random scurrying of panic, back and forth, from one end of the room to the other. Mac can't see his son now because of the crowd of milling, frantic doctors and nurses, ten people trying with all the skill they collectively possess to bring Mac's son back.

And still the note drones on.

***
MacKenzie took another sip of Grand Marnier. He was almost numb . . . ready to pass out. The liquor worked like it always did, numbing the pain, the wound that festered in him.

Two years since little Art died. Two years, and the pain lingered.

He felt the room spin as he sipped again. Hovering on the verge of consciousness, he sometimes fell into a dreamlike state, then came out of it, back into a waking stupor, back to watching meaningless images on the TV.

His line of consciousness blurred, and as he slipped away, he heard a quiet voice that he at first assumed came from the TV. "I'll take your pain. I'll take your pain."

His last thought as he tumbled into the oblivion of sleep, only vaguely aware of the half-full glass falling from his hand, was to wonder how he could hear the TV when the sound was turned down.