A New Beginning

by Kevin Ryan

Bell nodded. "Actually, she had some wild years, but she

  always took care of Jimmy. Their parents died when they

  were young, and they were living with an aunt who doesn't

  much care about either of them. Jimmy still lives there."

  "Jimmy said she was planning to move to Pueblo with

  him," Liz said.

  Bell nodded. "Yes, she had gotten into a hairdressing

  school. They were supposed to leave in a few weeks."

  The table went silent for the rest of the meal. Liz found

  she wasn't hungry, but forced herself to eat. As she did, she

  found the new thing inside her asserting itself more

  strongly, pushing aside the fear that she had felt for so long.

  And she realized that she knew that new thing's name.

  It was determination.

  * * *

  13

  Liz and her friends walked back to Johnny's Garage in

  silence. They automatically headed for the studio apart-

  ment in the back of the garage.

  "So what do you guys want to do tonight?" Michael asked.

  "Well, Space Boy, those of us who have worked all day

  are looking forward to sleeping," Maria asked.

  "We'll have to work out sleeping arrangements," Max

  said. Gesturing to himself, Michael, and Kyle, he added,

  "We can sleep in the van."

  As the group came around to the side of the garage, Liz

  shook her head and said, "We'll squeeze in. The floor will

  be better than another night in the van seats."

  They reached the apartment door and found a pile of

  blankets and sleeping bags next to it. "The locals are a

  simple and friendly people who offer travelers oatmeal,

  blankets, and diner food," Maria said with a smile.

  "That's really nice," Liz said, examining the pile. They

  were all old but clean. She grabbed up what she could and

  stepped inside, the others close behind her.

  * * *

  "What happened in here?" she asked. The room looked

  different, like it had been painted. There were some other

  changes as well.

  "Don't get us started," Michael said. "Isabel, our alien-

  redecorator."

  They took a few minutes to figure out how to fit every-

  one. There were three sleeping bags, some blankets, four

  regular pillows, and two couch pillows. The guys insisted

  that the girls take the sleeping bags and pillows, while

  they made do with the blankets, the one pillow, and the

  two couch pillows.

  Max and Liz would sleep next to each other, taking the

  first turn on the bed. Maria and Michael would share a

  blanket on the floor, though Liz could see that things were

  strained between them. At least, she could see the strain

  on Maria's face. Michael, on the other hand, seemed

  unusually relaxed. That meant that Kyle and Isabel would

  be next to each other. Kyle looked uncomfortable, but

  Isabel seemed oblivious. Well, there was a little room.

  They wouldn't be on top of each other.

  The way things looked for the near future, Liz figured

  they had all better get used to being close together.

  Back in Roswell, she had dreamed about the day after she

  and Max had left home and they could spend the night

  together without worrying about parents. Well, she was get-

  ting her wish, but none of those dreams included four other

  people in the room. And Liz found that, at the moment, Max

  was not the most important thing on her mind.

  By now, everyone was sitting in his or her respective

  sleeping area. Liz stood up and said, "I want to talk to you

  all about something."

  * * *

  The room immediately fell silent. Everyone was looking

  at her. From the look in Max's eyes, Liz knew that he

  already knew what this was about and he was not pleased.

  Max didn't wait for her to go on. "Liz, we all feel for

  Jimmy, but this is a police matter. We can't get involved,

  not right now," he insisted.

  "Max, in case you weren't paying attention, the police

  are among the missing," Liz replied.

  "Liz, we just can't. We're less than five hundred miles

  from Roswell. We can't do anything to call attention to

  ourselves," Max said. He paused and said seriously, "I'm

  sorry, Liz, but I can't allow it."

  Liz felt the blood rising to her face. "I'm not asking your

  permission." She saw the surprise on Max's face. And hurt,

  too. Liz hated to see him look like that, but this was too

  important. "As you said, you aren't making all the decisions

  for this group," Liz said. She softened her tone. "I'm not

  talking about sending up a huge alien-flare to the Special

  Unit, but maybe we can help—find something out and

  place a call to the state police. That's it," she said.

  "It makes me uncomfortable," Max said.

  "Everything makes you uncomfortable," Isabel chimed

  in, surprising Liz. She had barely spoken since they'd left

  Roswell. "If we never wanted to make you uncomfortable,

  we wouldn't have left the house since we climbed out of

  our pods," she added.

  Smiles broke out in the room at that. To Liz's surprise,

  one of them on was on Max's face.

  "There's something else," Liz said. "I know for a fact

  that if we don't do something, Jimmy's sister Jessica is

  going to die."

  * * *

  "Did you have a . . . ," Max asked.

  "I saw it when I touched him. I saw him at her funeral.

  I also saw her ..."

  She tried to describe the room that wasn't a room and

  the screams, but she knew they wouldn't understand

  unless they saw that place, heard those screams, and felt

  the menace that she had felt. "Whoever has her is very

  dangerous," she said simply.

  Michael was the first to speak. "I'm in," he said. That

  once might have surprised her, but less than two days ago

  Michael had been the one to insist they help the air force

  pilot's daughter she had believed was still alive and the

  victim of a government conspiracy.

  "I don't like bullies," Kyle said. "I'm in."

  "I'll help," Isabel said.

  Liz looked at Maria, who shrugged and said, "What?

  You already have a majority. Okay, I'll help. My grand

  waitressing powers are at your disposal."

  Liz looked at Max last.

  "That's the problem with democracy, not everybody

  gets what they want," he said, a tight smile on his lips.

  "Okay, I'm in. What's your plan?" he asked.

  When she didn't respond, he prodded questioningly:

  "You do have a plan?"

  "Well, I assumed we would come up with something

  together," Liz explained.

  It was true; she had been so focused on convincing the

  group that she hadn't thought about the next step. Reach-

  ing into her pocket, she pulled out one of Jimmy's flyers.

  She had taken it from the diner as a reminder. Now she

  thought of a more practical use for it. "Isabel?" she said,

  * * *

  holding out the flyer with the picture of Jessica on it.

  "I'll do it," Isabel said. "But it's a long shot. Since I don't

  know h
er, she'll have to be asleep for it to even have a

  chance of working. And she'll have to be dreaming some-

  thing useful about her surroundings, something that will

  tell us about where she is or who has taken her."

  Liz nodded. "A long shot it is. We know what will hap-

  pen if we do nothing."

  Isabel tried to clear her mind. She found that most of the

  usual petty thoughts and distractions weren't there. They

  had been replaced by a single thought, by a single pain.

  Jesse.

  Leaving him had pushed aside a lot of things. Cleared

  out the cobwebs. Now, he seemed to have taken up resi-

  dence in her brain as well as her stomach as a large, heavy

  ball. By force of will, she loosened the knot and was

  relieved when it began to disappear. Flashes of her pain

  reared up from time to time. She let them come and then

  bubble away.

  When her mind was finally clear enough, she opened

  her eyes and focused on the picture. She saw a girl of some-

  where between sixteen and eighteen years old. She was

  pretty, and the picture looked posed, like a school picture.

  Jessica was smiling. Isabel concentrated on that smile.

  Images of Jesse and other feelings that were surpris-

  ingly strong rose up. The knot started to form in her stom-

  ach again. Isabel didn't fight it. Instead, she concentrated

  harder on the picture, the smile.

  Jessica.

  Then Isabel began to feel the girl.

  * * *

  There was no better word to explain what dreamwalk-

  ing was like. She simply concentrated until she was able to

  feel people. The closest analogy she could make was the

  feeling she had about people that lingered after she had

  dreamed about them when she slept herself. Dreamwalk-

  ing was like that feeling, but instead of dissipating as she

  woke up, it grew stronger and stronger until she was with

  them in their dream.

  With certain people, the feeling lingered long after the

  dreamwalk. She still had flashes of Max from the time that

  she had dreamwalked him while he was in the Special

  Unit's White Room. He had been so scared and vulnerable.

  She had felt it all; she had also felt him more clearly than

  she ever had before while they were growing up.

  Then there was Alex. Isabel had dreamwalked him a

  number of times. At first it was just to find out if he was a

  threat to their secret, but even then the dreamwalks had

  left her feeling closer to him, connected to him in a way

  that she had had no words for at the time.

  Eventually she was able to give that closeness a name.

  For a very short time around the night of the dance when

  she and Alex had held each other and she had called the

  closeness by its proper name—in her head if not to him.

  Then Alex was dead.

  Oddly enough, thinking of Alex did not distract Isabel.

  It focused her concentration and her energy. It had hap-

  pened before, and she liked to think that he was somehow

  helping her. Isabel began to feel Jessica more keenly,

  though the girl remained just out of sight, as if she was

  dancing on the edge of Isabel's peripheral vision. There

  was a cloud between them. Isabel had no trouble giving

  * * *

  that cloud a name. It was fear. Wherever she was, Jessica

  was very afraid, even while she was sleeping.

  Isabel concentrated again and suddenly found herself

  in a bedroom. Looking at the decorations on the wall, she

  realized it was a little girl's bedroom. On the bed she saw a

  dark-haired girl of perhaps nine or ten sleeping fitfully.

  It was Jessica, Isabel realized. And she was dreaming

  about her herself as a little girl, sleeping in her room. The

  room felt very familiar to Isabel, but she knew that was

  only because it was familiar to Jessica. There was some-

  thing else, too, a sense of deja vu, as if Jessica had not only

  been here before, but had had this dream before.

  Suddenly, Isabel was sure that Jessica was in the middle

  of a dream she had had since she was a little girl. That

  made the dream less helpful for Isabel. A recurring child-

  hood dream wouldn't have the kind of detail that Isabel

  and the others would need to find Jessica in the real

  world. There was a noise from inside the closet on the

  other side of the room, and the girl on the bed opened her

  eyes. Isabel could see fear in young Jessica's eyes.

  Jessica glanced with recognition as if remembering this

  dream. Whatever was in that closet scared her badly. Isabel

  considered interfering, but decided to let the dream run its

  course. Perhaps it would show her something helpful.

  Jessica got out of bed and walked toward the closet. She

  did so almost unwillingly, as if she knew what was inside

  and was being forced by some twisted dream logic to seek

  it out.

  Isabel felt a swell of sympathy for the scared little girl in

  front of her in a long white nightgown and the scared

  young woman out there somewhere. She wanted to stop

  * * *

  the girl from opening the closet door, but Isabel forced

  herself to keep out of it. Jessicas life would likely depend

  on what Isabel could learn here.

  The girl padded across her room and reluctantly put

  her hand on the closets doorknob. Slowly she turned it

  and started to pull at the door.

  An instant later, the door practically exploded open,

  throwing the girl backward and onto the floor in front of

  her bed.

  What happened next, happened quickly. The first thing

  that Isabel noticed was the noise: A loud roar sounded

  from the closet.

  It wasn't an animal sound that Isabel had ever heard,

  nor did she recognize it as anything from any movie or tel-

  evision show she had ever seen. It was a high-pitched and

  piercing series of clicks and tones that Isabel could feel in

  her chest.

  Isabel was sure of one thing, though: It was terrifying

  Jessica. Feeling her panic rise, Isabel realized that there

  was something unnatural in that sound. Reflexively,

  Isabel found herself raising up her hand to defend herself

  as Jessica backed away from the closet as she sat on the

  ground. Then the creature that made the sound took a

  step from the darkness of the closet into the light of the

  room.

  It was hideous. Isabel couldn't believe that it had come

  from a child's imagination. The creature had roughly the

  shape of a person, but that was where the resemblance

  ended.

  Covered in a scaly brownish-yellow skin, it had a large

  head that came to a point in the back of its skull. Its eyes

  * * *

  were a bright yellow, and it had a wide mouth that jutted

  out from its face and was full of long teeth.

  It was a monster, and Isabel felt her blood run cold just

  looking at it.

  A scream sounded from behind her, and Isabel turned to

  see Jessica cowering against her bed. The creature looked

/>   down at Jessica, and then it seemed to notice Isabel.

  The monster began to make its sound, which was even

  louder now that it was free of the closet. When it lurched

  forward, Isabel instinctively raised her hand and sum-

  moned her energy. Before the monster could take a step,

  Isabel released her power and hit it full force in the chest.

  The creature betrayed a moment of surprise as it sailed

  backward into the darkness of the closet. As Isabel caught

  her breath, she sensed motion next to her. Then she turned

  to watch Jessica getting up and heading for the closet.

  "Wait," Isabel said.

  But before Isabel could act, the girl grabbed the closet

  door and slammed it shut.

  Then Jessica looked up at her and said, "We should go."

  Isabel nodded and said, "All right."

  She took Jessica's hand, and they started walking for

  the bedroom door. They had only taken a few steps when

  Isabel felt the little girl jerk in her hand.

  Looking down, Isabel saw that something was pulling Jes-

  sica toward the bed. A claw with three fingers had snaked

  from underneath the bed and had grabbed Jessicas ankle. She

  recognized it as belonging to the creature from the closet.

  Jessica screamed, blind terror in her voice. "Help me,

  don't let him take me!"

  Isabel pulled on Jessica's hand, trying to tear her away

  * * *

  from the bed. But the creature was very strong, and Jessica

  started to slip down to the floor.

  "Nooooo!" Isabel heard herself scream.

  Then the world flashed around her, and Isabel found

  herself in a large room. No, not quite a room, she realized as

  her heart hammered in her chest.

  She looked around frantically and saw that the creature

  was gone. She was relieved, but still felt the tension and

  adrenaline of the encounter in Jessica's bedroom. As she

  started to relax, she took note of her surroundings. She

  was in a ... place that she had never seen before.

  It wasn't a room.

  It had a floor that was made of some sort of metal and a

  ceiling maybe ten feet above. But it did not have walls. The

  floor and ceiling seemed to go on forever on all sides until

  they just disappeared into the distance.

  There were no lights that she could see, but there was