JENNY

(Note: While it is true that this is not science fiction, it is also true that it could be called a horror story. The difference here is that it is based on real events and covers an investigation into areas that are now prominent in the world of the Paranormal and is seen in many movies. I do not believe that “Jenny” was lying, but that she truly believed what she was saying during the sessions. You’ll have to decide for yourself if her story fits into your version of reality. There is much more to this and can be found in the book Conversions. Click on the cover of that book to the right which will take you to Amazon. Frankly, I don’t understand why this book hasn’t done better… it is a damn fascinating tale that is something of a history lesson with the added benefit of being true.)

I call her Jenny for no other reason than I decided that she didn’t need to be plagued by self-styled researchers, skeptics, debunkers and the producers of radio and television talk shows. She is a kind, almost fragile woman of thirty-two, who came from a broken home but who has been happily married for seven years. She has one child and hopes to have another. She is thin, blond, and shy. She warms to people slowly but only because she is so shy. I have not known her to lie, at least on purpose, and I know that she isn’t a student of history, literature or the paranormal. She reads the newspaper daily but rarely reads books, watches the local news almost religiously but stays away from the national news because she believes it to be too sensational and that most of it has nothing to do with her life or her family. She doesn’t watch the cable channels that often delve into the paranormal, but she has seen some things. She is a quiet, good person which is at odds with who, under hypnosis, she claimed to be.

I also point out that her trouble began in a series of nightmares so vivid that they brought her wide awake several nights a week, so frightened that she couldn’t go back to sleep of hours. She was losing sleep but had no idea what was in the nightmares that was so terrifying. Upon awakening she had virtually no memory of what the dream had been, only that it filled her with horror and fear and often left her shaking.

Almost every other night she would get up and wander from room to room in the dark. She could see out the windows, onto a street that was filled with a yellowish glow from the lights. She would sit in the dark and work at not really remembering what she had dreamt and once she calmed herself sufficiently, she would go back to bed. Most of the time she couldn’t get back to sleep immediately.

Someone told her that rather than fight the dream and try to forget it, maybe she should confront it. Maybe she should not only try to remember it, but she should write down what she remembered each night and that might tell her how to conquer her fear of those dreams.

There is a certain element of psychology in that. A standard technique in defeating phobias is to confront them. If a person is afraid of snakes, then the technique is to slowly introduce them to snakes, maybe first with photographs, then with video tape and finally with a living snake in a glass cage across the room. Eventually the person is able to approach the cage and might even hold the snake in his or her hand. This flooding technique is often very successful.

So, if Jenny wrote down the dreams, even the small fragments that she could remember, she might be able to confront her fear and then maybe defeat it. She put a pad and pencil in her bathroom. She would retreat there to write down her impressions as soon as she awakened so that she didn’t have to turn on the bedroom light and wake her husband.

The first imagines made no real sense to her. There would be a bright light and people seeming to stand in the light or just beyond it. Maybe they would gesture at her, as if asking her to join them. Sometimes there was a high-pitched whine and other times there was a rushing like wind through the trees. A few times there was just a total darkness around her and a fear that her husband was paralyzed, or had just died, or was about to die.

She did tell a few close friends about these dreams but none seemed to have any idea about how to help her. They didn’t recognize the symptoms as manifested in the dreams. They were as puzzled as she was. Then, one night, watching a television documentary about alien abduction, she heard another woman talk of lights in the bedroom, and of strange, shadowy creatures standing just outside the circle of light, beckoning her to join them. And she heard of spouses who lay next to the victim without the slightest idea of what was happening.

This, she thought, was what she had been experiencing. There were differences, of course, but it was close enough and it explained so much. Alien creatures were invading her bedroom, and “switching off” her husband in the parlance of the abduction phenomenon so that he would be unaware of the situation around him. She could be taken from her bed and then, later, returned, with neither knowing what happened. Her only memories were fragments that she thought of as horrible dreams. Maybe those fragments were something else. Maybe she was beginning to understand what had been happening to her for so many months.

Now Jenny made the mistake that so many others have made. She believed that she had identified the problem and began research into it. The Internet provided the clues with search engines that could find nearly anything she wanted. She began the quest and found herself immersed in the UFO sub-culture known as alien abduction. She began to read all that she could find on the subject, search for documentaries that would tell her more aliens, and she tried to locate a UFO researcher who would be interested in her case.

At that point the nature of her nightmares began to subtly change. Now she realized that the figures just outside the lights were not human, but were certainly humanoid. They were short, slender, grey creatures with teardrop-shaped heads, huge dark eyes, and thin, spindly arms. They wanted her to accompany them to their ship for some kind of experimentation or examination. She never remembered any of that, but she also learned that such amnesia surrounding the specifics of the abduction wasn’t all that uncommon. The aliens didn’t want their human victims to remember what they had experienced and they attempted to “wipe” out the memories. Sometimes the only clues were these horrifying nightmares.

Frustrated by her lack of progress, or her understanding of how to stop the abductions, Jenny began to look for someone to help her. Someone versed in both alien abduction and hypnosis, which she had learned on the Internet was about the only way she could remember everything. She wanted to explore her... dreams... and she wanted someone who could answer her questions about them. She was searching for the man or woman in all the horror movies, ostracized by society because of their strange beliefs, but who had all the answers when they were needed. What she wanted was a Dr. van Helsing.

What she got, instead, was me.

I am always reticent to offer assistance to those who believe they have been abducted. I do not want to validate their fantasies because I believe that most of those claiming abduction have not been abducted by aliens or anything else. They are lead into those beliefs by friends, family, the Internet, books, movies and television. They see others, with similar experiences, and it makes it seem so real to them. This sort of belief can overwhelm a person, suck the life out of them, and create family discordance that can wreck the strongest marriages.

And, I realize that too often the people who come to me aren’t really interested in exploring their strange experiences and nightmares, but want me to tell them that it is all true. They don’t want to believe that somehow these memories don’t exist and there are other causes for their problems. They are looking for psychological counseling, or therapy, and I don’t want to do that. It creates more problems than it solves, at least for me.

If the person is insistent, then I suggest one of those who specializes in abduction research. There are dozens of them, all with support groups, many with newsletters, and a few with book contracts. All, client and researcher, are interested in proving that alien creatures are invading our bedrooms for all sorts of suspected and alleged reasons. I believe that the person will be happier, relatively, in such a support group.

Which is not to say that I haven’t engaged in abduction research. Back in 1976, I was the first to report that the aliens had invaded a house and taken the residents out. Prior to that, victims reported abductions had taken place on deserted stretches of road, usually when the person was alone and usually late at night. In most cases the victim or victims could be considered a “target of opportunity”.

The Pat Roach abduction, which was first described in Saga’s UFO Report in 1976 deviated from what was then the classic abduction in a number of ways. It has since been written about in various books and was even featured on an installment of the old In Search Of... television program. And, it is a case that I believe has been solved. Pat Roach suffered from an episode sleep paralysis. Poor hypnotic regression and a will to believe were responsible for changing this little understood psychological phenomenon into a case of alien abduction, at least in this specific case.

I have investigated other cases as well, searching for some sort of answer. With California documentary producer Russ Estes and clinical psychologist Dr. William Cone, I wrote The Abduction Enigma which outlined our research and our conclusions about alien abduction. We found no solid, independent evidence that alien creatures were abducting humans, but we did find evidence of sloppy research techniques, poor science and an over reliance on hypnotic regression as a way of investigating the cases. We came to believe that most stories of alien abduction had terrestrial explanations for them. We didn’t need to “invent” alien abductors to make some sense of the information and the various reports.

And that too, was a reason that I didn’t want to get involved in another abduction case. I could not, in good conscious, enter into an investigation believing that I knew the answers already. If aliens were not abducting Jenny, but she sincerely believed that, I thought my participation could produce more harm to her and that it could do no real good.

But Jenny was insistent, claiming she wanted answers and not validation. I warned her about my reservations concerning hypnosis, and that it is quite easy to lead a subject while he or she is under the influence of hypnosis. And, I made it clear that she had already contaminated the research with her reading of abduction material and watching abduction shows. She already knew too much for us to believe that she hadn’t formed some opinions about the reality of alien abduction and that she hadn’t been influenced by all that she had read and heard, not to mention what her friends and family were saying to her.

She told me that she understood all that and believed that my natural skepticism would make the investigation more rigorous. If I was convinced, in the end, that she had been abducted, then we all would learn something. If, on the other hand, I found some answers, whatever those answers might be, then maybe that would end her nightmares and she could sleep more soundly. Either way, she was sure that she would be better off than she was at the moment. Given those very specific conditions, I agreed to assist in the investigation.

I was not, and am not, however, a qualified hypnotist, and while I knew that I could learn the technique in a weekend, given the right environment, I just didn’t want to “mess around” with someone’s head. I knew how easily it was to make a mistake that could have severe consequences later. I decided to find someone who was versed in hypnosis and who knew something about psychology. This way we would be much less likely to make a mistake and create more disturbing dreams.

I was able to find a young man, I’ll call Tom, through one of the nearby universities. As an added benefit, he knew something about UFOs and a little about alien abduction. He hadn’t been exposed to a great deal of the literature so that he was coming into this investigation with few preconceived notions. I asked him to avoid learning anything more until we had made some progress in the investigation. I believed that I had enough experience with alien abduction that we would run into nothing that would surprise us. I felt that we were prepared.

And yes, this sounds a little arrogant, but the truth is, I had been investigating UFOs for more than thirty years at that time, and I was among the first to study abductions. True, my study led me away from the idea that aliens were involved, but I did then, and do now, understand the phenomenon.

 

First Meeting

 

We met Jenny on a cold November night with a sky filled with stars, a hint of snow in the air, and no wind at all. It was calm and quiet as only such a night could be. There seemed to be no airplanes in the sky, no cars on the Interstate, and nothing moving. The only signs of life were the bright lights in the windows of the houses along the street and a suggestion of wood smoke in the air. Someone had started a fire.

Jenny met us at the door, dressed in jeans, a light blouse and a gray, torn sweater. She looked apprehensive, her face seemed pale and her eyes overly large. Her voice was strong, however, as she invited us into the house.

Without a word she led us downstairs into a large family room dominated by a fireplace. Over the mantle was a family portrait that in years past would have been in oils but looked like a color enlargement of a photograph with the oil painting texture added by a computer. Her husband looked younger and smaller than she did and the child in the portrait was little more than a baby. He looked like a smaller version of his father.

As I stood there looking at the picture, she asked, “Can I take your coats?”

She took them and disappeared through a door at the far end of the room. When she returned she asked, “Would either of you care for anything to drink?”

She offered Seven-up, Coke, coffee and beer. Given that this was a research trip, both Tom and I opted for something soft and cold even though the night outside was cold.

When she returned, we sat down and Tom asked, “Have you ever undergone hypnosis?”

She shook her head, and looking like the kid who was on his first visit to the dentist said, “Never.”

Tom, sitting in the big soft chair angled toward the couch, leaned forward and said, “It doesn’t hurt. You just go to sleep. Well, not really sleep, but you enter an altered state of consciousness. You might be able to remember events better. You might be able to remember those nightmares better but everything is still in your hands. I can sort of guide you, but I’m not in control here. You are.”

Quietly, she said, “Okay. How do we begin?”

Tom set his Coke down on a small table near his chair and said, “Get comfortable. Lie down if you want with your legs straight out, your arms at your sides so that there is no distraction from these pressure points. When you are comfortable and relaxed, let me know.”

Jenny stretched out on her couch, and then seemed to wiggle slightly as if trying to get more comfortable. She closed her eyes when she was ready. Her breathing deepened as she relaxed without instructions from Tom. Finally, without opening her eyes, she said, “I’m ready.”

Tom pulled his chair around so that he was seated close to her head and began speaking to her quietly. I tried not to listen, knowing that if I concentrated on his words, I might fall into a trance accidentally. Dr. J. Allen Hynek, when working with Dr. James Harder in Pascagoula, Mississippi, had fallen into a trance by listening to Harder as he hypnotized the witnesses there. Two or three years after that event, Harder had told me that as we worked with Pat Roach (and it is a story that Hynek often denied). Given that, I kept my eyes moving, looking at the fire place, at the portrait, at the furnishings and finally at the bookcases that dominated one wall. I wondered if I would find many books about UFOs there.

Later, as the investigation continued, I would take a look at the books. Yes, there were books on UFOs, including one that I had written about UFOs in the 1990s. There was a great deal of fiction, some of it historical fiction, a few romances, and some of the latest nonfiction.

The UFO books bothered me at first, but as the investigation continued, they became less important. Besides, rather than books on abductions, though she did have one by Budd Hopkins and one by David Jacobs, most of her books were about sightings and investigations of other UFO cases.

Now, in that first session, Tom leaned back and then gently took Jenny’s wrist and raised her arm, leaving it suspended in air, almost as if there was an invisible string attaching it to the ceiling. In a normal tone of voice he said, “That’s got it. She’s under.”

I looked at him and he said, “I told her that she was to ignore me for the next few minutes. She was just to remain relaxed and concentrate on her dreams. When she was ready to begin, she should tell me.”

We had already decided how we were going to proceed from this point. Tom would ask the questions and if I had something I wanted clarified or explained, I would either whisper it to him or hand him a written note. That way I wouldn’t inadvertently contaminate or prematurely end the session.

With the preliminaries completed, I took a final, long pull at the Seven-up, turned on the micro cassette and put the recorder on the end table near her. We would have a tape of the events, if we ever needed it (Later, I would think that we should have used video tape, but I wasn’t thinking in a visual sense at the time). And, we would be able to verify those things that might have become confused during the session.

When Jenny finally said, “Ready,” Tom began to ask his questions, quietly, directing her back to her nightmares. He tried to be careful, letting her know what he was after without suggesting to her exactly what she was to say. It was a difficult game because, later, we didn’t want to be accused of leading the witness as so often happens. Under hypnosis it is extremely easy to lead the person to a specific point without saying much to them about it.

 

First Session

 

Finally, after ten minutes of careful prodding, Jenny said, “I see the light. Bright light. Light all around me. Around the bed, coming from the ceiling.”

“You mean the ceiling lights were turned on?”

“No. Just lights from the ceiling but not the ceiling lights. I don’t know why they don’t wake Brian up. He’s still snoring away.”

“Are the lights colored?”

“Just bright. Maybe blue. A slight tinge of blue, but bright. They hurt my eyes. Brian won’t wake up.”

“Is he still snoring?”

“No. He stopped but his eyes are closed. He doesn’t move. He’s quiet.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not doing anything. I’m lying on my back looking at the lights. I don’t want to look lower.”

“Why?”

“Something is there. I don’t want to see it but I know it is there.”

“What’s there?”

“Shapes in the lights. Dark shapes. Human shapes. I can’t see anything about them because the lights are so bright in my eyes. They’re not standing in the light. They’re just beyond it. Outside of it. In the dark.”

“Are they people?”

“I don’t know. I can’t tell.” Her voice, which had been strong, though quiet, had changed subtly. There was a quaver in it now that hadn’t been there. She was frightened, but not badly frightened. She was just looking at shapes that might have been people.

“What are they doing?”

I didn’t like that question because it implied that the people were doing something though Jenny hadn’t said anything like that. They were just shapes outside the light. Maybe they weren’t doing anything.

“They want me to come with them.”

“How do you know?”

“They’re waving to me. Beckoning to me. They want me to join them but I don’t want to go. I want Brian to chase them away. I want him to do something.”

“Where is Brian?”

“Right there,” she said, annoyed, as if it was obvious to anyone. “He’s sleeping right there. I don’t understand why he won’t wake up.”

“Is he injured?”

“No. He’s asleep.”

Tom fell silent. Later he told me he wasn’t sure what to ask because he was worried about contamination of the witness. He just sat there, quietly.

Jenny said, “I don’t want to go with them but they are insistent.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell. They want me to go with them, but I don’t want to leave Brian.”

“Where do they want you to go?”

“With them. Through the light.”

Again Tom fell silent and waited. Finally she said, “I sat up and swung my legs out of bed. I don’t know why I’m doing this. I just want to stay right where I am. If I go with them, I won’t see Brian again... No, that’s not right. I’ll see him but I won’t be with him.”

At the time this made no sense to me. How could she see him and not be with him? I didn’t understand what she was talking about then, but I know now.

Her voice dropped and then rose. She said, “I don’t want to go.” And then she shouted, “You can’t make me.”

She was quiet again and then said, “I’m standing by the bed. I feel an incredible sadness. I feel like my life is over and if I pass through the light, I won’t be able to come home. I won’t be able to return.”

Tom reached out and touched her hand and said, “But this is just a dream. You have nothing to fear from it. All you have to do is wake up.”

“No,” she said. “This isn’t a dream. I know it isn’t a dream. This is real.”

Tom shot a glance at me, almost as if asking permission to make a few comments. We had talked about this and I had wanted our discussion with Jenny kept to a minimum. We just didn’t want to tell her which direction to take or what we wanted from her. We wanted her impressions without commentary, but she was becoming agitated.

Looking back on it now, I’m a little surprised that I didn’t anticipate this. I had been involved in several abduction investigations and I knew that the subjects often become frightened at some point. I just hadn’t anticipated the fear that suddenly enveloped Jenny. She was struggling on the couch, almost as if she was fighting against some unseen, invisible restraint. She was sweating heavily and the color of her face changed from a pale gray to a crimson. Her breathing was heavy, deep, as if she had run a long distance.

Without comment from me, Tom said, “You know you got out of this in good shape. Nothing happened to you. Brian is still here.  You don’t have anything to fear.”

“I do if I go into the light. If I go into the light, I know I won’t come back.”

To me, the place she had to go was into the light. From a psychological point of view, this was the thing that had to be done. Once she entered the light, and we brought her out of the trance, the fear she felt would evaporate. There was something about that light that frightened her and once she knew what it was, the reason to fear it would be gone.

It also struck me that this was just too simple. I had talked to Jenny many times over several weeks, and I knew that her fear was real. I couldn’t believe that we would show up and in the matter of an hour or so, have the answer. Force her into the light and the nightmares should end.

Without prompting, she said, “I don’t what to go, but I have to. They’re making me.”

“How,” asked Tom.

“I don’t know. They just are forcing me forward. I want to scream. I think I am screaming, but Brian doesn’t hear. He just lays there. Why won’t he help me? Brian! Help me.”

Tom said, “Brian is right there. You don’t have to be frightened.”

“No,” she hissed. “He’s not right there. He’s in bed and he won’t help me.”

“Where are you?”

“I’m at the edge of the light and hands are reaching out to me.”

“Edge of the light,” repeated Tom. “I don’t understand what you mean.”

“One of the hands touched me. It’s a human hand. A regular hand.”

Her voice had changed. Suddenly it had fallen back to a normal tone. There was no fear in it. She sounded relaxed. She sounded calm.

“I understand why I must go now,” she said.

“Why?” asked Tom.

“Because I died.”

 

  

Vampyr?

 (Note: This is the first chapter of Vampry? Click on the book cover on the right for a direct link to Amazon. If you enjoyed this, and you like the book... please add a rating. If you enjoyed this, let me know in the comments, and I can add additional chapters. It's all about entertainment in the world today. Please enjoy this preview.)

Chapter One

The legend of the vampire had always fascinated Brian Lassiter. From the moment he'd first learned of it in the Saturday afternoon movies, he'd searched for everything he could find about it, quickly exhausting the books in the library so that he had to special order additional volumes from occult bookstores, specialty shops and eventually Internet websites. And, in an age of high-speed computers with humans walking on the moon, there wasn't much room in the world for old fashioned vampires, their supernatural existence, or their ancient legends. No one believed in such things anymore.

Not that Lassiter cared what the modern world said or did. He sometimes lost himself in the past, reading of Civil War exploits, cavalry charges into hostile camps, and tales of knights and battles and the horror of the medieval world. Lassiter's boss, Robert Mulvaney, used that love against him often, assigning him the stories that had little appeal to the reporters who saw themselves as latest Woodward and Bernstein or as the new Diane Sawyer.

So, Lassiter sat in his chair and looked at the latest assignment sheet trying to read something into it. Mulvaney had tossed it into the blizzard of paper that had drifted across his desk piling up against the side of the computer. Lassiter had rocked back in the old, wooden chair that squeaked in protest, and then held up the paper as if trying to decipher some secret code written on it.

"A four-day old murder?" he said.

"Fits right into your scheme of things," said Mulvaney, rubbing a hand across his balding head where the sweat glistened in spite of the air conditioning and the overcast day.

"My scheme of things?"

"It's a little weird," said Mulvaney. "The body was drained of blood." He then laughed, trying to sound like Bela Lugosi as the first of the young women had agreed to stay the night because the bridge was out.

"Christ," said Lassiter. "I do a single feature on Halloween and for the rest of my life I'm tapped as the resident expert on everything from vampires to flying saucers."

Mulvaney pushed a stack of paper to the side and parked a hip on the corner of the desk so that he was looking down on Lassiter. "Just look into it. With all the wackos running around out there, you don't know what this could turn into. Maybe a nice serial killer to boost circulation."

Lassiter shook his head. "Anything to boost circulation."

"Reality, pal. CNN clobbered everyone on the Gulf War so long ago. Twenty-four hours a day, there was CNN, ready to tell you that missiles were falling in Israel and Riyadh. By the time we could hit the street, everyone already knew what had happened. Hell, the one thing we used to have going for us...the detailed, in-depth report, was gone. CNN had already talked to all the experts, thrown up the graphics and told the world what the results were. And now there is MSNBC, FOX news, and specialty channels that can cover everything. We’re being beat into the ground."

"But a serial killer?" said Lassiter.

"Not a major one like Bundy or that Green River guy. Someone who would be of local interest with no national attention." The tone of Mulvaney's voice changed so that suddenly he sounded like a priest praying. "One body found under mysterious circumstances. Maybe it's only one killing... but who can tell? Then a second and a third. The police are baffled. The local TV devotes a minute, minute and a half to the latest victim, but we can take it further. Everyone wants to know why those people were killed. Is there a link? Does the killer go after young blondes, or maybe yuppies? Yeah. A yuppie killer. The body count rises. There's panic in the streets. People stay home, barricaded in their houses, venturing out only to buy groceries and the latest newspaper because the TV just doesn’t have the depth."

Lassiter had to laugh. "Yeah. Let's create a horror like that so that we can sell papers and see a dozen satellite vans parked outside."

Mulvaney took a deep breath and then pointed at the sheet in Lassiter's hand. "Just check it out."

"Now?"

"You working on something that I don't know about?" asked Mulvaney.

"No. It's just getting late in the day."

"The news never waits and never sleeps. Cable proves that every day."

Lassiter stood up and pulled his suit jacket from the back of his chair. He batted at his rolled-up sleeves and then decided that it was too hot to worry about them. He walked across the carpeted expanse of the city room, glancing to the right so that he could look out the bank of windows. Rain had speckled the glass and was just beginning to drip.

Lassiter walked down the steps and stopped at the glass door of the lobby. The street was already rain slick and it was beginning to rain harder.

He glanced at the paper in his hand again. Linda Walston had been found dead. Police had been called. No one seemed to know much about the case. Just one woman dead, in her home, possibly by violence. Mulvaney didn’t even know if she had been killed. Maybe she had a heart attack.

Lassiter shook his head and wished that the newspaper provided a covered parking lot like the one for those who worked in the telemarketing firm across the street. There was something wrong when telephone solicitors had better parking places than the guardians of the republic.

"Doesn't look like it's going to let up soon," said a voice behind him.

Lassiter turned and saw Sarah Brandon. She was a tall, thin woman who had been out of college for just over two years. She'd started as the entertainment editor but had moved up quickly.

"No," said Lassiter. He waved the paper with Walston's name and added. "I've got an assignment."

"If you've got to get your car anyway, how about giving me a lift?" Grinning, she added, "Pull up in front here and I'll run out."

"Why don't you get your car?" asked Lassiter. "Then I can run out."

"Because, we've moved beyond the days of women's liberation. I have my job and equal pay. Now I want someone to be nice to me. I want someone to get my car in the rain for me."

Lassiter laughed. "Or we both could wait right here until the rain stops."

"You're not in a hurry?"

"Not that much of a hurry. I have a four-day old murder. If I run out in the rain, it won't make any difference. She's still going to be dead."

"That's pretty hardcore, Lassiter," said Brandon.

Lassiter shrugged and then turned his attention back outside. The rain was falling in sheets creating a gray that made it impossible to now see across the street. At the corner was a flash of red as the traffic signal continued to cycle.

Brandon moved up so that she could see out the window. She wiped the fog from the inside of it. "Doesn't look like it's slowing at all."

Lassiter was suddenly aware of her as a woman. He glanced out of the corner of his eye and examined her profile. He realized that she was better looking than he'd thought. When he'd first met her, a year earlier, he'd been more impressed with her intelligence.

"I've got to hurry," she said. She turned to look at him as if she could convince him to run to her car.

"Nope," said Lassiter. "I'm not going out there. It's just too damn wet."

There was a flash of lightning and the lights flickered, went out, and then came back on.

"Maybe I can wait too," she said.

"I'll spring for the Coke, if you'd like one."

But even as he spoke he could see that the rain was beginning to slacken. The building across the street was visible again, the lights behind the windows casting a pale, yellow glow.

"I think it's beginning to stop."

"Yeah," said Lassiter shrugging.

"I'm going to try it," she said.

"You'll still get drenched."

"You want a ride?"

"Sure. To the police station."

"I'll be right back but I'm not going to wait long. You'd better be ready."

"I'll be right here."

 

Lassiter stopped just inside the door of the police station, letting the air conditioning hit him like a solid force. It had been so hot and humid outside, with a steady rain that darkened the sky that it was almost pleasant to just stand inside where the humidity couldn't get at him. He rubbed a hand through his rain slick hair and then opened the second set of double doors.

He stepped into a tiled corridor that looked as if it had been taken under siege. The walls had once been painted a soft green but were now scarred and broken. The floor was littered with cigarette butts and spit and unidentifiable material. There were old wooden benches bolted to the floor with people sitting on them. A young woman in a short skirt and tight blouse had her hands cuffed behind her. She had pretty legs, but her hair and face looked as if they belonged to an older woman. As he passed her, she stared up at him as if daring him to say something to her.

An overweight man stood near a bulletin board that held administrative announcements and informational circulars. He was studying them intensely but Lassiter noticed that one hand was cuffed to a black man who sat on another bench, his left hand cuffed to the arm.

Lassiter stepped to the window at the far end of the corridor, feeling like he was walking through a rogue's gallery. He was fascinated by the people there, waiting for the arresting officers, but he didn't want to talk to them. They were more like the exhibits in a museum than people waiting to see what direction their lives were about to take.

Beyond the window, the contrast was difficult to believe. It was brightly lighted, the walls looked freshly painted. The floor was carpeted and there was an arrangement of desks, each looking as if it, the papers, files, pens and in-out boxes, had been straightened by someone with a compulsion for neatness.

A sergeant in a pressed blue uniform, the buttons and badges gleaming, looked up at Lassiter, studied him for a moment and then grinned broadly.

"I wondered how long it would be before the vampire hunter arrived."

"I write one story on Halloween and for the rest of my life I'm the vampire hunter."

The sergeant closed the file folder, glanced at the computer screen, and then said, "What can I do for you?"

"Who's on the Walston case?"

The sergeant laughed. "Now why aren't I surprised?"

"Because you have no imagination," said Lassiter without smiling. He leaned on the sill of the window cut through the wall that separated the desk sergeant from all those who were waiting processing by their arresting officers.

"That's not the way to gain my cooperation," said the sergeant. He glanced at the computer screen set on the left side of his desk and said, "Looks like Foley's caught it."

"He around?"

There was a buzz at the door to his right and Lassiter grabbed at the knob, opening it. He pushed on through and then stopped by the counter where a couple of police women were working.

The desk sergeant, a pencil in his hand, said, "Foley's in the detective room."

"Thanks."

Lassiter walked to the closest door, opened it when another buzzer sounded, and stepped through into the detective office. It was brightly lighted and filled with metal and wooden desks. There were no windows, and there was a metal cage in the far corner. Half a dozen detectives sat at the desks and none of them looked up as Lassiter entered.

Foley was the red-haired man sitting with his back to the door. He wore a white shirt, suspenders and a shoulder holster that held a snub-nosed revolver while everyone else on the police force carried a Glock. He had a file folder in front of him and a series of glossy prints spread out on the top of his desk.

"That the victim?" asked Lassiter.

Foley turned, glanced up and then casually gathered up the pictures, turning them over. "The ghoul has finally arrived."

"What the hell is it with you guys around here?" asked Lassiter, pulling a chair over from the closest desk.

"Well, we read newspapers and I figured that you'd be here a lot sooner than this."

"What do you have?"

"I've got a young girl killed. Cause of death? One of four different things. Suspects? None. Motive? None. Now, where do you want to go with it?"

Lassiter was quiet for a moment and then said, "I'm just trying to do my job."

"Right," said Foley. He sifted through the photos, found one and handed it to Lassiter. "That was how she looked when we found her."

The woman in the photo was nude, lying on her side, one arm flung up, over her head, partially hiding her face. Her skin was unnaturally pale and Lassiter wondered if that was the result of the flash on the camera.

"No reason for it," said Foley quietly.

"Who found her?"

"Kids playing in the woods."

Lassiter handed the picture to him. In the back of his mind, he wondered if it might be the first victim of a new serial killer just as his boss had wanted. He wondered if it had been a boyfriend who had killed her in anger. Or maybe it was a rapist who decided that he didn't want the victim to be able to give the police a description.

"No leads?" asked Lassiter.

"You people with the press," said Foley. "It's so easy to sit there and say that we should be doing more to find the killer but you never have a suggestion on how to do it. There was no physical evidence at the crime scene with the exception of a single thread caught on the thorn bush that might have been there for weeks and have nothing to do with this case."

"Hey," said Lassiter, holding his hands up as if in surrender. "I'm on your side here. I'm just asking questions."

"Maybe you should go try to answer a few." He stopped and said, "Sorry. This one gets to me. She was nineteen and had just moved into an apartment with a couple of other friends. They were saving money for the fall semester. Just useless. No reason for it."

Lassiter thought of all the clichés. Cops weren't supposed to get involved. They were to be cold and composed and analytical, searching through mounds of evidence until they had learned everything they could and then assemble a comprehensive picture of the crime. They were not supposed to get angry.

Foley seemed to shake himself like a dog just out of the stream. "Now, what can I do for you?"

"The victim's name was Linda Walston?"

"Right. Been dead about three days when we found her. Kept the crime scene and the fact we had a body quiet so that we could process the area without two hundred amateurs trampling the evidence under foot."

"And you have nothing?"

"Nothing at all. I've got a dead woman who was killed somewhere else and dumped here..."

"Why somewhere else?"

"There was virtually no blood in the body. That, by the way, could also be a cause of death. There was no blood where we found the body."

For just a moment Lassiter thought about vampires, but that was the stuff of movies and fantasy novels. There were hundreds of cases where the victims had been drained of blood and all had mundane explanations. And more than a few where it seemed that the bodies had been drained but that was the reaction of the body to death.

Foley was holding a picture of the victim that her parents had supplied. It showed a pretty blonde who looked as if she might have been twelve or thirteen. Foley was shaking his head slowly. "Just doesn't make sense." He glanced at Lassiter. "No sign of a sexual assault."

"But she was nude."

"Yeah but the nuts know that clothing retains microscopic evidence. They take the clothes to keep us from getting anything to work with. Too many criminals watching too much television giving away too many of our methods."

"What do you think?"

"That the world is getting to be a lousy place," said Foley. "There was no reason for this."

 

 

Sitting in the car, and looking at herself in the rearview mirror, Sarah Brandon decided that she should have waited for the rain to stop before venturing into the parking lot. A man could get soaked, let the air dry his clothes and hair, and not look all that bad. A woman just couldn't do it. Her hair hung down in strings and it would take a comb and a hair dryer to repair the damage.

"Fuck it," she said and pushed open the door with her shoulder.

She walked around to the curb, looked at the house number and then at the paper she held. It was a small frame house that was nearly buried under the vines, bushes, trees, and flowers growing around it. The lawn was small and patchy, not doing well in all the shade cast by the larger plants and trees.

She walked to the front gate, pushed it open, and then walked on up to the front door. There was nothing remarkable about it. An average door on an average house. When she pushed the doorbell, she half expected to hear the five notes that had become synonymous with alien spacecraft thanks to Steven Spielberg. Instead, she got an ordinary ding dong.

And the woman who answered the door wasn't what she expected. She was a tall woman with black hair and small glasses. In a pleasant voice, she asked, "May I help you?"

"Mrs. Rosen?"

"Yes."

"You reported seeing a flying saucer?"

"An unidentified flying object," Rosen corrected. "Yes, I reported seeing one."

"My name's Sarah Brandon. I'm with the Gazette."

"Oh. Won't you come in?" Rosen stepped back, out of the way. She pointed at a room to the right. "Have a seat."

"Thank you." Brandon sat down and pulled her notebook out of her purse.

"Would you like something to drink?"

"No. Thank you." Brandon opened her notebook and asked, "Your full name?"

"Judy Rosen... I know, but then, it's my married name."

Brandon smiled weakly. "Normally we don't chase down reports of flying saucers."

"UFOs."

"Whatever. But you said that you'd seen the... creatures that were inside it."

"Yes. I did say that."

"That's the first time I've heard anything like that from around here."

Now Rosen smiled weakly. "There are hundreds of reports like this but the media isn't interested so they never get any publicity."

"So you're blaming us," said Brandon.

"No," said Rosen. "No."

Brandon lifted a hand and pushed her wet hair away from her forehead. "Why don't you tell me what you saw?"

"You really want to know? You don't look as if you care one way or the other. I don't think you believe me."

Brandon put the cap on her pen and sat back in the chair. She studied the other woman for a moment and then said, "You have to admit it is a fantastic story. Creatures from another planet landing out here, where only you could see them. Why not at the United Nations? Or the White House?"

"I don't know why I thought anyone would want to hear this story. Maybe after all the fuss over that Russian report of creatures a couple of years ago..."

"That was from an official agency," said Brandon.

"Oh," said Rosen. "The hundreds of reports by sober Americans don't count, but the reports from a single Russian newspaper have credibility."

"It was an official report. There has been nothing like it here."

"There has," said Rosen, "but you in the media have just overlooked it."

"I don't remember anything like that."

"No? In 1964 a police officer in New Mexico saw a landed craft and two beings. He watched it take off and there were burned marks left on the ground when it was gone. The Air Force labeled it as an unidentified case, but our media isn't interested. Don't want to risk personal credibility on a flying saucer story."

"I don't want to debate the reality of this," said Brandon. "I came to hear about what you saw."

Rosen stood up and walked to the window. Without looking at Brandon, she said, "I didn't see much. A small craft and one creature. Short, skinny. It looked in my direction and then ran into the ship. A moment later it took off. Straight up. It was gone in seconds."

"Not much there."

"What did you expect?" asked Rosen.

"Was there anyone with you?"

Rosen shook her head. "I was alone."

"That seems to be the way it always is. A single witness. No way to verify the report."

Turning, Rosen said, "You don't believe me."

"I'm sorry but you have to admit that it is a fantastic story. Never any proof. These things are never seen on radar. No pictures. Nothing on the ground."

Rosen laughed. "So the government would like you to believe. But they are seen on radar."

"You have no proof," repeated Brandon.

"That I saw something? No. I have no proof."

Brandon turned slightly and noticed the floor to ceiling bookcases. There were a number of books about flying saucers on the shelves. She suddenly understood exactly what she had found. A woman alone who had invented the tale of a flying saucer so that someone would visit her. It was sad when the only hope someone had for companionship was to invent a story of alien visitors. Very sad. Brandon closed her notebook.

"Why is it that you press people refuse to believe the truth? Thousands of sober, rational American citizens have reported UFOs."

"But no one ever has any proof. No one has a piece of metal that can be analyzed."

"So’ you're not going to write anything?"

Brandon stood up, deciding that she'd wasted enough time. There were important stories to find and write. Not more nonsense about UFOs and alien visitors.

"It was very nice to meet you," she said.

"But you're not going to write anything about it," repeated Rosen.

"I'll write it but that doesn't mean that it'll get in the paper," she lied.

Rosen moved toward the door. "I want you to know that something is about to happen. You'll soon believe everything that I had to say and you'll be sorry that you wouldn't listen. You'll see."

“Thank you for your time," said Brandon. "If you see anything else, please try to call so that we can see it too. Maybe we can get pictures."

"Classic," said Rosen. "You're too sophisticated to believe in UFOs, just like the church was too sophisticated to believe that the moons were orbiting Jupiter. Don't tell me the truth because I already know what it is."

"Well, thank you anyway," said Brandon. She moved to the door, opened it, and saw that it was raining again. Not as hard as it had been, but hard enough to soak her before she could get to the car.

"Terrific," she said. "Absolutely terrific."