From the Desk of Infinity

(Blogger’s note: This is another of those “trunk” manuscripts. It was written in the late 1970s, as best as I can remember and based on a couple of clues in the story. Unlike Isaac Asimov in his Early Asimov, I updated the tale. In his case, he published his early stories just as they had originally appeared, stuck in that earlier time. Since, this story hadn’t been published, I updated it. At one point Steve offered Elaine coffee or a cigarette. In our world today, smoking would be outlawed in the building and he wouldn’t have offered the cigarette. Steve used a tape recorder then but now he used his cell phone to record the conversation. And, of course, she didn’t take the pictures using a film camera but rather a digital camera. That complicated things a little bit because the film made for a better delay in getting the pictures.

Drawing of an alien made
during the hypnotic
regression session.

The other thing is that the story is based on a UFO abduction case that I investigated in the mid-1970s. Some of the details came out of that investigation, including the idea of using a green pen (originally a felt tip but now a gel) to draw the alien creatures. I believe that tale is the result of sleep paralysis rather than a real UFO abduction. For those interested in that, I suggest reading The Abduction Enigma, which tells the full story and how we (Russ Estes, Bill Cone and I) reached that conclusion. For those interested in learning more about this but don’t have access to the book, you can read a little about it here:

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2005/03/alien-abduction-and-leading-witness.html

http://kevinrandle.blogspot.com/2007/08/abduction-enigma.html

And no, I’m not comparing myself to Isaac Asimov, merely using the technique that he used in writing his book about, well, writing his early stories.

Oh, for those interested in such things, this story’s original title, and the one used here was “From the Desk of Infinity.” It doesn’t have much relevance for the story. Bob Cornett and I were putting together an anthology of our short stories and we called the book, From the Desk of Infinity. We figured one story should be titled that, and this one “won” the honor.)

 

I finally got the story that I had been looking for, complete with pictures. The story that should have won me worldwide fame and fortune but that has netted me nothing except sleepless nights. A woman gave it to me and I could see it in print. Unfortunately, it would have to go under a pen name into one of those cheap newspapers that you can buy on your way out of the grocery store and that no one believes. They make sensational reading but you don’t hear people quoting them as sources around the water cooler.

She came into the city room one rainy afternoon. If it hadn’t been for the rain and the lack of any “real” events happening, I probably wouldn’t have listened to her. But the gloom filtering in the windows, the harsh artificial lights and the heavy sound of traffic three floors below put me into the mood to listen to horror stories.

She was almost five-seven, had brown hair to her shoulders, a brown blouse and an unfashionably short skirt. Nothing daring, just above the knee. She stopped to talk to one of the secretaries who sit in the first row of desks. They sometimes do what was once known as paste ups, a feature for the what was once called the woman’s section and point people to the rest of us. Since I had just done a story about a related happening, Debbie pointed to me.

As she walked up, I stood, watching her eyes. The eyes sometimes give a clue about the person. She stared back at me, almost saying that she didn’t care what I thought, just that I should listen. I held out my hand, wanting to use the old newspaper joke, “I’m Cash, from the Register,” but thought she might not appreciate the humor. Instead, I just said, “My name’s Ketchum. Can I help you?”

She hesitated before she spoke, which didn’t fit with the signal I had gotten from her eyes. Her hand was warm and moist, indicating that she was nervous but her poise hid it well. I was surprised by the old-fashioned gesture. “I’m not sure.”

I pointed to a chair at the empty desk, next to mine. “Why don’t you have a seat and we’ll see what we can do.”

She pushed the chair around so that it was facing me, pulled the rain hat from her head and slipped off the raincoat, letting it drip on the carpet. She didn’t have a purse, but dug a cell phone out of the coat pocket and set in on the desk. She set her umbrella on the floor, out of the way. Her motions were measured and slow. Again, she seemed to be hesitating. Since I didn’t know if there was going to be a story or not, I proceeded carefully. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

She shook her head, almost as if to shake out her hair. She started to say something and changed her mind. “I think coffee would be good. With sugar. If you don’t mind.”

“All right. I’ll just be a moment. Make yourself at home.” I slipped off to get the coffee, wondering what this was all about. It didn’t feel right. Most people came into the city room ready to blab their fool heads off about anything and everything for as long as someone would listen, but she didn’t seem to want to talk.

I set the coffee in front of her, catching her attention. She had been staring into space, not seeing or hearing anything around her. She stirred the coffee slowly with her finger, licked it, still seeming to debate what she should do.

I said, “I don’t believe I got your name.”

“Oh, that wasn’t very nice of me. Elaine. Elaine Jorgenson. I live here in town, or rather on the outskirts of town.”

She tugged at the hem of her skirt but was staring at the floor. “I have a story, or rather had an experience that might interest you.” She sipped the coffee, waiting for me to say something. Silence is sometimes the best stimulate but I said, “Go on.”

“I’m not sure that you’ll want to hear this or that you’ll even believe it but it’s all true. I can assure you of that.”

I rolled my eyes. I’m always afraid of storis that begin with “I’m tell the truth,” or some variant of that. However, I waited and then opened my laptop. “You don’t mind if I take a few notes, do you?”

“Of course not. You can write down whatever you want but you’ll probably end up throwing it away.”

“So you said.”

She fumbled through one of the coat pockets looking for a Kleenex but once she found it, just balled it up in her hand. “I don’t know where to begin.”

I was becoming irritated at all the delay. I could see no reason for it because she had come to us. “Why not start at the beginning,” I said sarcastically. She didn’t notice.

“That’s the problem,” she said. “I’m not sure of the beginning.”

It was late afternoon now and most of the staff had gone. We were almost alone. Only one or two of the night people slipping in. I rubbed a hand across my forehead, took a deep breath and watched her. She seemed to be psyching herself up.

“Let’s see. It started four nights ago.” She looked at me to make sure that I was paying attention. “It was about eleven when I saw it from the window in my house. I don’t know why I looked out just them, but I did and saw it hovering over the trees to the south. It was just a bright light that hung there for a few seconds and then flashed away.”

That was no big deal. I stopped typing and picked up the coffee and told the cup, “Lots of people have seen things like that. In fact, some have made better reports.”

“You’re getting a head here,” she said, slightly sharply. She took a sip of the coffee, punishing me for interrupting her. She set the cup down and stared at it before starting again. “It was back the next night about the same time. After a day, I know what I wanted to do if I ever saw it again so I picked up me cell. I couldn’t get a signal. I gave up for the moment and went back to the window. The thing then flashed brightly once, as if to say good-by, and shot away.”

I typed a few notes but didn’t interrupt her with questions because I could always go back and I was quickly losing interest. I pulled out the bottom drawer of my desk and put my feet up on the edge, rocking back in the chair. “Go on,” I said again.

“Well, I thought that if it had come back once, maybe it would come back again, so I made sure my camera was charged. It is 64 megapixels and when I bought it, was told that it was good in daylight and low light but to be sure to make sure I focused it properly. When the object came back that night, I tried to take some pictures.”

I sat up suddenly and leaned forward. “You got pictures? With you?”

Now she reached into another coat pocket and brought out the camera. It was a good one. Top of the line.

“I haven’t done much with them,” she said. “I wasn’t sure what to do.”

I said, “Can I see them?”

She called the pictures up on the small screen and turned the camera around for me. He scrolled through them, saw that two or three were good but the small screen made it difficult to be sure.

“Can I download these?”

“I didn’t bring the adapter.”

“Didn’t bring the adapter,” I repeated. I grabbed my phone, stabbing at the intercom button. “Who’s in the lab?” I heard one of the secretaries say something about checking for me. I put a hand over the mouth piece. “I think we can get those downloaded and prints made pretty quick. If that’s all right with you.”

I looked away when I heard someone answer me on the phone. I told her what I had and said, “Right now, if you can.” The lab tech, Leigh Roberts, said that she would be up in a few minutes to get the camera. I cradled the receiver and said, “Sorry about the interruption. I just didn’t expect pictures.”

“They might not be too good. I’m not familiar with the camera. I just got it.”

She sat holding the camera and said, “The night after I took the pictures, I wasn’t really interested in it anymore. Oh, I would have looked for it if I had been awake, but I wasn’t. I fell asleep on the couch watching HBO.”

“So, it might have reappeared?”

“It was there. That I do know.”

“But if you were asleep, how would you know?”

“Please. Mister Ketchum, you’re jumping ahead again.”

“I’m sorry. Please call me Steve. That’s make us friends.”

She ran a hand through her hair and stared out the window. I followed her gaze and was surprised to see that it was almost dark. The overhead lights in the city room were turned out to save money in these austere times, so I turned on my desk lamp. It threw a circle of bright light on my desk, hiding the things outside it in shadows.

“You know, it was strange,” she said. “I woke up about eleven and had the feeling that someone was watching me. I came wide awake and thinking. There wasn’t any of this slowly waking up. I was there right now and frightened. I knew that there was someone in the room with me.

“I peeked through my eyelashes and could see him standing over me, looking down at me. There was only the light from the TV screen and I could hear voices from it. I peeked at this man, standing there, but could only see a vague outline. He looked young. I guess small would be a better word. I thought that he was young because he was small. The funny thing about this is that I didn’t panic or scream but quietly laid there hoping he would go away, thinking I was asleep.”

I held up a hand to stop her. “The photo tech is here.” I stood and walked over to Leigh, telling her to call as soon as she had downloaded the pictures and examined them. Back at my desk, I asked Elaine if she wanted more coffee.

“No. I just want to get this thing told now that I’ve started.”

“Fine.” I sat down, loosened my tie and rolled up my sleeves. “You said that there was a young man in your house. Did you see what he looked like?”

“Not just then. Later, I got a good look at him and all the others. But right then I didn’t know what was happening. I watched him through my eyelashes so that it looked like I was looking at him through tall grass. Anyway, I didn’t move. He waved at someone, signaling for them to come over and then he reached down. Now, I opened my eyes and got the first real look at them. They weren’t human. They looked almost human, but there weren’t.” She paused there.

“Are you going to tell me that these guys, in your house, were from a flying saucer?” I looked away again, staring out the window. Across the street I could see the lights of a high rise and through one of the windows, I saw a man sitting there, reading the newspaper.

“Please,” she said. “Let me tell this my way. At the time I didn’t know who they were but I later found out there were from the flying saucer.”

“What did they look like?”

She hesitated as if wondering if she should answer my question. Then she said, “I was going to save that for later, but since you asked.”

“Damn right I asked.” But I was no longer taking notes. We’d ventured too far into the weird.

“They were about four feet tall, very thin and wearing shiny clothes, like those flight suits that pilots sometimes wear. They had long arms and hands that only had three fingers or rather two fingers and a long thumb. They had long, skinny faces with two eyes, a nose and mouth.”

“Hardly a good description,” I interjected.

“What’s wrong with it?” she demanded.

“Nothing’s wrong with it. I meant that it wasn’t very imaginative.”

She took offense at that. She stared at me and then said, her voice shaking with anger. “I think we’re through here. I should have known better.”

I thought about not saying anything more and letting her storm out of the city room. I didn’t want to get caught up in a flying saucer story.

But rather than leave, she said, “There is nothing imaginative about it. I’m telling you what I saw.”

I found myself apologizing to her. “Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that quite the way it sounded. I meant…” I let the sentence trail off because I had meant it. I’d said it to get a reaction.

After a moment, she sighed and then said, “Anyway, the one that had been near me from the start reached down toward me. I sat up and jerked away from him, screaming not to touch me. He didn’t seem to hear, or maybe just didn’t care. He reached for my arms, grabbing me. I felt some of the will drain out of me. I struggled for a moment but then gave up because it took too much effort to resist. I let him and his friend pick me up.”

I resumed typing. I had questions, but I kept them to myself.

“That was a strange sensation,” she said. “There seem to be no effort in picking me up. They grasped my upper arms and I just floated up. I saw a third man… or maybe I should say creature, standing in the corner, examining my TV. He didn’t pay attention to us. We went to the door. I say went because I don’t know how we got there. They seemed to float along, carrying me with them. I shouted, ‘I don’t want to go.’ But they didn’t pay any attention to that.

“Outside the house I saw the craft, which was the thing that I had been seeing over the last few days. It was much larger now because it was so much closer. Maybe the pictures will give you some indication of the size. It was disc-shaped and had a dome on top. It was hovering about four feet above the ground and there weren’t any steps or ladders into it. The funny think about that was that I was thinking that they could fly across space and come into someone’s house, but they forget to put out the steps or open the door. They didn’t need the steps though. We just floated up.”

I had been thinking about some sort of foot prints or impressions from the craft, but she had just eliminated that theory. I had to marvel at the way she created the story to leave no room for evidence. I wasn’t thinking about the pictures.

“The inside was brightly lit up. I started to put a hand up, to shield my eyes but they wouldn’t let me. I blinked, trying to adjust my eyes to the light while they stood around and watched, fascinated by my eyelids. None of them ever blinked. I watched pretty closely after that, but I never saw them blink.”

That was another weird detail. If nothing else, she had a finely crafted story with plenty of little details.

“I was taken to another room. It had one wall that was curved but all the others were straight. I was left there for several minutes. At first, I just sat on the table where they left me, but then got up to look around. For some reason, I wasn’t scared. A little anxious maybe, but not scared.”

She took another sip of the coffee and made a face. It had gotten cold. She set the cup on the desk and then said, “There wasn’t much to look at in the room. A few machines that looked like computers but I couldn’t really tell. There were a few panels on the wall that look sort of like one of our TVs. One or two had lines running through them. You know what I mean? Like oscilloscopes.”

She shrugged. “I guess they wanted me to have a good look around. Maybe to show me that they meant me no harm. No one came back until I sat on the table again. Then two of them returned. They were dressed differently than those I had seen before. Instead of the shiny suits, they were wearing cloth gowns or some sort. Maybe like doctors wear.

“One of them came over to me and pointed at my throat. I didn’t know what he meant and shook my head. He reached up and started to unbutton my blouse. I didn’t like that and pushed his hand away. The other one touched my shoulder and the first finished unbuttoning my blouse, pushing it from my shoulders. I couldn’t move to stop him.”

I typed a note on my laptop before glancing at the clock. The pictures should have been ready by now. I wondered about these women who had to imagine that they were stripped by extraterrestrial beings. Some people claimed that men have big egos but I don’t remember them claiming that a creature had flown across the galaxy to get a look at his body. I would have tried to get rid of her at them point, but I wanted to examine those pictures first.

She didn’t notice that I had stopped typing and continued. “They kept at my clothes, unzipping my pants, unhooking my bra and pushing down my panties. I noticed that the room was warm, now that I didn’t have my clothes. I felt worse than being undressed in public. At least there you have something in common with half the population but here, all I could say was that they were humanoid.

“One of them pushed on my shoulder, causing me to lie back. I swung my legs up so that I was prone, feeling like I was on an examining table and wondering what was next. One of them slipped a helmet over my head and there was a series of flashes as if they were photographing me. I had visions of being the centerfold in some kind of alien biological journal.

“Nothing seemed to happen for quite a while, except for a tingling at my scalp. It seemed like electricity. I was surprised when someone told me that it was over and that I could sit up. I looked around but couldn’t find the one who had spoken.”

“You mean it spoke to you in English?” I’m not sure why I asked because I was getting bored with this.

She said, “I don’t know. I just knew that it was now over.”

I nodded and thought “telepathy,” but didn’t say that.

“There was another creature there,” she said. “He wasn’t dressed like those in the lab coats but looked more like one of those who brought me in. I felt compelled to look at him, to stare at his forehead. I tried to look away but couldn’t. All the time he was talking to me quietly, soothingly, saying that I should relax, to take it easy, to remember good things. He talked about standing on a cliff, looking down at the ocean, feeling the light breeze on my face, wind in my hair, watching the waves roll in, slowly rolling in, each behind the other. Washing the shore briefly and then slipping away to be followed by another. I listened to him, carefully, hanging on his every word, trying to picture the scene, trying to relax.”

She hesitated and then said, “Since then, I’ve had a little time to think about it. I think he was hypnotizing me.”

“I’ve been told that it can’t be done without a person’s permission.” I threw that in there quickly, trying to slow her down, now back to typing my notes.

“Maybe you can’t if the victim is actively resisting but I bet you can if you can get them to listen to you. After all, a stage hypnotist usually hypnotizes a few people in the audience by accident.”

“Good point.” I picked up the coffee but it was cold and I didn’t drink any of it. I said, “Listen, this is getting rather complicated.” I pulled my cell across the desk and asked, “Do you mind if a record the rest of this. That way I can just concentrate on what you’re saying and not worry about making notes.”

I realized that I was running hot and cold on this. One minute I was wishing she would wrap it up and the next wondering what would happen next. I didn’t know if I was beginning to believe her story, or that I was working up the courage to ask her to dinner.

“I said you could do anything you wanted.”

I ignored the implied invitation and just said, “Thanks.” I tapped on the phone and pushed it closer to her, waited for a moment and then said, March fifteen, Elaine Jorgenson?” I looked at her and she nodded. I had the last name right.

“All right, Elaine, just start where you left off and I’ll pick up the rest of it later from my notes. Go ahead.”

She moved her chair so that she was closer to the cell and then leaned forward. It was too bad because the desk now hid her legs, and I had had trouble keeping my eyes off them.

“As I said, he was talking slowly, trying to get me to relax and I felt myself sliding away but didn’t have the power to stop it. Once I was under, he asked me a lot of questions about what I liked and didn’t like and why. Then he would take me back and make me relive some experiences, like when my parents died, my first date, that sort of thing. I had the idea that they, these creatures, didn’t understand our emotions and were trying to build a profile.

“After several minutes of that, closer to half an hour, I suppose, they told me to wake up and that I could go. I shook my head and tried to ask some questions. I wanted to know who they were and where they were from. I was a little angry too. They didn’t have the right to take me out of my house, take my clothes and then probe my mind and body. The more I thought about it, the madder I got, but they just ignored me. One of the explorers, that’s what I call the group that came out to get me, brought my clothes back and dumped them on the table.”

I could see that she was a little upset, annoyed, at what she was describing. It was the first real emotion I had seen during her telling of her tale.

“None of them offered to help. They just stood and watched. That made me feel naked again. It was sort of perverted, having to dress like that, in front of an audience. As I put on my shoes, one of them grabbed my arm and floated me back to my house. They put me on the couch, they looked around quickly to make sure they hadn’t left anything behind that I could use as proof and then they left.”

Now she looked at me rather than my cell. “I was sitting on the couch, rather stunned, afraid to move or breathe and trying not to think.”

When she didn’t say anything more for several seconds, I reached over and ended the recording. Thinking about the pictures, I called down to the photo lab and was told that Leigh was on the way up.

The shots turned out better than I had hoped. Viewed on the camera’s screen, a great deal of the detail had been lost. Now I could see the brightly glowing disc shaped object against the black background. There were even some bright stars in the sky and a hint of tree tops.

Leigh set the prints down in front of me. She handed me a flash drive and said, “I made some prints, enhancing them for the detail. I put everything on that drive for you. That includes the originals and my enhancements.” She handed the camera back to Elaine and said, “Everything is just as you left it.”

I pushed one of the prints under the desk light and reached in the drawer for a magnifying glass. I didn’t think about the flash drive at the moment as I examined one of the prints.

Elaine had stood up and was now looking over my shoulder. “They turned out pretty good, didn’t they?” She sounded pleased with herself.

Back in the old days of film, if she had shown up with just the roll so that we had to develop it, that might suggest some truth to her tale. But in the world today, she had to know the pictures were good. She could have downloaded them to her computer and them put the sim card back into the camera.

I looked up at Leigh and asked, “You see anything to suggest manipulation?”

“No. I did a preliminary check and didn’t see anything. The pixelization doesn’t show manipulation, but I’ll need some more time to be sure about that.”

“You still have copies?”

“Sure. I downloaded everything to my computer.” She hesitated and then said, “The only thing I found were the pictures of that UFO.”

I understood what she was saying, but the camera was fairly new, and most people download the pictures and then wipe them from the card before putting it back in the camera. I wasn’t sure that this little fact was significant.

The pictures convinced me that there was something to the story. It was the first time that someone had claimed to have been on a flying saucer and showed up with something to substantiate the claim, as far as I knew. This wasn’t much better than a “moon potato,” but it was something a little better. I turned on the cell recorder again. I said, “I have a series of questions to ask, but first, I’d like you to draw a picture of the aliens.”

“All right, but I’m not a very good artist.”

“Don’t worry about that. Just do your best.” I pulled a green gel pen out of the holder. If someone was going to draw aliens from space, I thought the natural color was green. She apparently didn’t catch the humor in that.

By the time she finished, most of the night staff had arrived. The overhead lights were turned on again, destroying the mood, seeming to move it from the dark recesses of horror into the bright lights of the mundane. Somehow it made the story seem less real. However, with the photographs, there was a place to begin an investigation without having to rely on the eyewitness.

The interview was basically over at that point when I finished with the questions which were just to check the facts against what she had said earlier. Finished with that, I stood up, straightened my tie and asked, “Would you care for some dinner? It’s getting late and I’m sure the paper would spring for one dinner.”

She shook her head. “I just want to get home. This was more tiring than I thought it would be. Maybe another time but thanks anyway. At least you sort of believe me.”

“To be honest, I don’t know what to make of this. I’ll follow up on it, though.” But the truth was, I wasn’t being honest because I did know what to make of it. She’d had some sort of a psychotic episode that didn’t involve aliens from space. But still, there were the pictures. I was sure that our photo lab would spot the flaw.

“There is one more thing. They told me that they would come back to see me sometime soon.”

I had to grin. Though my experience with this sort of thing was limited, I did know that the aliens sometimes said that. I said, “That’s old hat. They always tell the victim that but they never do return I wouldn’t worry about it.

I helped her with her coat and walked her to the door. Without thinking about it, and without meaning it, I said, “Thanks for the story.”

“Thank you for listening.” She turned then, pushed on the door and stepped into the hallway. She didn’t look back.

I went back to my desk and sat down, rubbing my face with both hands. I looked into the coffee cup but it looked more like industrial sludge than coffee so I set it down. I was wondering what to do, thinking about erasing the story from my cell but then remembered the photographs. If I was going to look into this, the place to start was with the pictures.

I picked up the phone, hesitated, then scrolled down to his number. He was a friend who was a photographer who played with cameras the way some people played with cars. If there was a way to fake something, or something had been faked, then he could tell how it was done or what the fatal flaw was. He agreed to meet me.

He surprised me. He scrolled through the pictures on my laptop and then asked, “Mind if I copy these.”

I pulled the flash drive out of my pocket and said, “They’re all on here.”

He plugged the drive into his computer, brought them up in one of his photo analyses programs. “What am I looking at?”

“Woman brought them into the city room and said that she wasn’t sure what she had photographed.” I didn’t want to suggest a bias to him. If that didn’t satisfy him, he didn’t mention it.

After about ten minutes he said, “If these are faked, they’re very good. It’ll take me some time to go over them carefully. There is nothing obvious in them.”

“How long?”

He pulled on his ear and puckered his lips. “I don’t know. Say three hours, maybe four to get the preliminaries done. The rest will take longer but after three hours I should be able to guess which way these will go.”

“I’ll give you a call.”

He grabbed my sleeve. “That’s three hours after I get to them. I have a lot of other work to do. My bread and butter in these lean times. I can’t drop what I’m doing right now, even to do you a favor.”

“Not a favor. I’ll pay for the work.”

He shrugged and said, “If it’s that important, Ill bump them up to the front of the line.”

I reached for my wallet. “How much will it cost?”

He was offended by the offer of money. “We’ll worry about that later.”

“No, we’ll settle it now. This isn’t my money. It’s the paper’s. This is a business deal made by two people. All right?”

“Then I’ll send a bill. Now, get out of here and let me get to work on wasting your money… the paper’s money. I’ll call when I have something.”

“You’ve got my cell?

“Yeah.”

“Then good night.” He opened the door and I stepped out. Halfway to the car, he turned out the porch light. I shot a glance into the sky, wondering where all the flying saucers were. The stars twinkled back at me. Nothing unusual.

I thought of other places I could go while I waited. I could call the police to see if there anyone had made any UFO reports but I’d probably be shuffled to the public affairs officer who wouldn’t be there until morning. I could call the airport to ask about radar, but I figured the stealth technology would suggest an out if there was nothing seen on radar. There was one so-called expert in town. At least he had been interviewed by some Japanese film crew recently so he might know something and we had interviewed him about that interview.

I learned that no one had called the police according to the desk sergeant I talked to. The airport guys shuffled me around but it was clear that they had nothing that would be helpful. The local expert was interested in the story, had heard one or two like it, but didn’t have any reports from the last few days. He was sorry he couldn’t help.

I grabbed a quick bite at one of the local taco houses. They weren’t as hot as those I had gotten when I lived in Texas, but they would do. Back in the city room, I sat at my desk, wondered how I would pitch the story at the budget meeting in the morning, and waited for a phone call. It came just after eleven. I looked at the clock, thinking that it was strange that the call would come at that hour.

“They look good, Steve. I’ve done about everything that I can do here. Tomorrow, at the shop, I can go a little deeper into this, but it looks good for now. Everything lines up. Looks like these are pictures of just what they seem to show. No manipulation.”

“Thanks, Bob. I do appreciate it.”

“You won’t when you get the bill.”

I smiled at the phone. “Try me.”

With nothing else to do, I decided to go home. Oh, I could have written the first pass at the story, but I just didn’t feel up to it. So, I left for the night but couldn’t sleep. I found myself staring out the window, looking for the aliens. I asked myself if I really did believe the story and surprised myself by saying that yeah, I thought I did.

In my study, I sat in front of the laptop and tried writing the story but somehow everything sounded as if I was making fun to the story or that I had dropped off the deep end. The words just wouldn’t come and the few that did weren’t the right ones.

The next morning, I went to see the managing editor. He listened politely, though he did have to suppress a chuckle or two. He asked to see the pictures and wanted to see my expert’s findings. He then carefully, quietly and ruthlessly killed the story. He said that no such nonsense was going to appear in his newspaper.

I argued with him for fifteen minutes, pointing out that we had run the ghost hunter story, a monster sighting or two and some of the most recent pictures of the Loch Ness monster that had been taken under alleged scientific conditions. I didn’t mention the puff pieces for the politicians who had the same political persuasion as the editor. Why not just carry it as a feature rather than straight news?

No. No way. Not even close. The newspaper, he was always careful to call it a newspaper, wasn’t going to be made a laughingstock by some crazy woman who couldn’t find a boyfriend so she dreamed up aliens from space. They hadn’t rejected her. They had searched her out. The newspaper was not going to carry such trash. Period. End of transmission. End of discussion. As if there had ever been any real discussion.

At noon, I swung by the photo shop/computer shop and offered to buy Bob some lunch so that I could pump him about the pictures. As we sat down, he pulled several prints from his pocket. “I’ve done everything that I can think of and I can’t find any evidence they are faked. I pixelated them, found no evidence of an insertion or manipulation. That’s almost impossible to hide if you have the right equipment and I have the right equipment. I’m convinced that you have a true anomaly here. If they are faked, I don’t know how it was done.”

The food arrived and I bit into a chicken leg. “Then you think these are pictures of a flying saucer.”

“Now, I didn’t say that. I merely said that the pictures weren’t fake by any means I know, so let’s not go drawing all sorts of unwarranted conclusions.”

“I’m afraid that I don’t understand. The evidence, the images on the pictures seem pretty clear cut to me.”

He set down his fork. “You and about half the population. Just because a picture isn’t faked doesn’t mean that it is of an extraterrestrial spacecraft. As just a single example, I have seen one picture reprinted quite a bit showing a windmill and a teardrop-shaped object. Now, that picture isn’t faked. It is real. But it is not a picture of a flying saucer It’s a picture of a lens flare. It is the interpretation that is faulty. So, all I’m saying is that is that this is a picture of something strange and if it’s faked, I found no evidence of that.”

“So, the what you’re saying is that you believe that the pictures were taken the way they were claimed to have been taken.” I realized that my sentence was somewhat complicated.

Bob understood it. He said, simply, “Right.”

As we parted after lunch, and after I had given Bob the details of how I had obtained the pictures, I would pass his conclusions onto the witness. I would have to tell her that the paper wasn’t going to run the story but I’m not sure she would care about that. I would tell her about the UFO expert who would probably like to hear her story. At that point I would be out of it because there was nothing else for me to do and I had a job that required I write a story or two.

I made an appointment to see her later that evening. She would supply some coffee and I could bring me cell phone to make a recording, if I so desired. Even if the paper wouldn’t print it, there were other places to publish it. Some of them would even pay for the privilege. Maybe that would cover my expenses such as the money that I now owed Bob.

Her house, though on the outskirts of town was easy to find. It was on a large lot, out by itself, surrounded by trees and was, at least, a hundred and fifty yards from the nearest neighbor. Beside it was a large open field that was also tree lined. If a spacecraft were to land in it, the neighbors would have a hard time seeing it. I thought about knocking on a few doors, just to see if anyone else had noticed the flying saucer, but decided that would wait until the next day. It was something I would have to do, if only to satisfy myself.

I was surprised to find the front door open. I knocked and shouted, “Elaine. Are you there? I’s me, Steve.”

There was no reply. I stepped into the living room, saw that the TV was on, there were coffee cups sitting on a table, waiting, but no sign of Elaine. I shouted again.

The rustling sound caught my attention and I ran to the window. Outside, in the field behind the house, hovered the craft. It was huge and seemed impossible to have gotten there without everyone in town seeing it. At first, it was only a dark shape but then the lights flared. I could see the dome, the portholes, and the outline of a door or a hatch. I pulled out my cell, thinking of pictures. These would be pictures that no one could dispute, at least to me. I knew the truth.

Elaine wasn’t in the house. I know that she wasn’t there because I saw her leave. I didn’t see her get into the thing or behind one of the windows, but I knew that was where she was. She had told me it would happen and I hadn’t believed her. Maybe she will return.

I doubt it, but I hope so. I’d just like to know for sure.

(Afterthought: As I mentioned, this story has a basis in reality. I investigated the case, interviewed the witnesses and arranged for the hypnotic regression. The picture at the top of the story was drawn by the witness in a state
of hypnotic regression. Here is the same picture, or rather her original drawing of the alien creature that she claimed came into her house. This was drawn prior to the hypnotic regression sessions. I was surprised by the difference in the two. Remember, they were drawn by the same hand. The only difference was the state of mind. I don’t know what the significance might be. I found this interesting and thought others might agree.)