The Joshua Files - a complete box set: Books 1-5 of the young adult sci-fi adventure series plus techno-thriller prequel

by M. G. Harris

  Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

  Hey Josh. Notice you say on your profile that you’re from Oxford. Me too. Us UFO-philes should stick together. I saw a UFO once, you know. It was at night; my dad was driving me home after a party and there it was, for just a few seconds, hovering in a field. Dad said all he saw were the lights of an airplane. But he didn’t get a proper look cos he was driving. It hovered all right, then swung into the air and shot off. Planes don’t do that – at least, no plane I ever saw did. If you say you think your dad was abducted, then I believe you.

  Reply

  Thanks, TopShopPrincess. (I’m guessing you’re an Arctic Monkeys fan, right?) It’s good to know there’s one person out there who believes me. The guys at school think it’s a laugh. I only mentioned it once and I never will again.

  Comment (2) from TopShopPrincess

  Too right! Arctic Monkeys rule!

  BLOG ENTRY: AEROMEXICO PILOT FILMS UFOS IN CAMPECHE!

  I’ve been spending a lot of my time looking through UFO sightings reports. It’s amazing what you can find on the Web. People I might once have called “nutters”, logging up hours online to post information, rumours, opinion. I can’t get enough of it. If I keep looking, I might find the one report that will lead me to Dad. It’s not unheard of. People often get abducted in groups. Years later, they find each other again. No connection in their normal lives, but they know each other, somehow. I’m not talking about déjà vu. This is real. Total strangers who know stuff about each other that they couldn’t know if they hadn’t met.

  If Dad was taken along with anyone else, there might be hope.

  We heard about the plane crash a few days back. I’ve been tracking rumours in the UFO boards. Now they’ve hit the mainstream news.

  So I’m not just going on the words of some random UFO fans. A commercial airline pilot with Aeromexico is one of my key witnesses!

  Aeromexico Pilot Films “UFOs”

  “In the late evening of June 15, a commercial airline pilot flying Aeromexico Flight 231 filmed six unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed.

  In a sighting that bears an uncanny resemblance to the widely reported event of March 2004 – in which pilots of the Mexican airforce filmed eleven UFOs – a videotape made widely available to the news media shows the bright objects, some sharp points of light and others like large headlights, moving rapidly in what appears to be a late-evening sky.”

  Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

  I looked up the news stories you blogged. Awesome! I can’t believe you’ve actually got airline pilots backing you up on this one.

  Reply

  For all the good it does! Remember, I’m working against total scepticism here. Mum’s argument, basically, goes like this:

  1. The plane was found on the nineteenth of June. The corpse was at least three days old, but could have been older. So we don’t know for definite that the crash was on the fifteenth, the day the UFOs were sighted.

  2. People are always spotting UFOs in Mexico. The stories amount to nothing.

  3. If the body wasn’t Dad’s, then whose was it? No one else was reported missing.

  4. Dad could have planned another trip, not just to central Guatemala, but to somewhere in Campeche, Mexico. There are lots of Mayan ruins in Campeche.

  Comment (2) from TopShopPrincess

  Hmmm. Well . . . not being funny or anything, but your mum does have a point.

  Reply

  Maybe so, TopShopPrincess, but she’s wrong about UFOs. They haven’t only been around since the 1940s. They go way back. There are ancient Sanskrit manuscripts from India that talk about flying-saucer-type objects. Ancient Sumerian clay tablets 4000 years old with carvings of flying machines. UFOs – they’re ancient history.

  While I’m reading TopShopPrincess’s response to my blog post, I notice my mother standing in the doorway. She’s wearing her dressing gown – again. She’s scarcely been out of the house since we heard about Dad. I wonder if she’ll ever get back to teaching history to those rich kids at the college.

  “Mum, you have to look at this,” I say, waving her over. “A pilot for Aeromexico spotted those UFOs too. Fifteenth of June. Almost the the same day they think Dad’s plane crashed. What if they got it wrong; what if his plane went down on the fifteenth?”

  Despite herself, Mum can’t resist looking. She stands, reading over my shoulder as I hold my breath. Is this it? Finally, the point at which she takes me seriously?

  After a few minutes, she says in a tired voice, “Read the bottom line of the report, Josh. ‘Mexico has a long history of fanciful UFO sightings, most of which are dismissed by scientists as space debris, missiles, weather balloons, natural weather phenomena or hoaxes’.”

  “God, that is SO patronizing!” I shout.

  She just stares blankly at me. “I’m getting tired of this, Josh. When’s this going to stop?”

  “Why won’t you even talk about it?”

  Mum explodes. “Because it’s preposterous! People don’t get abducted by aliens! UFO sightings . . . they’re just some trendy zeitgeist thing. It’s a mythology, a modern mythology!” Then she sighs, sinks down on to the bed, runs one hand through her hair, exhausted and desperate.

  “Please, please listen to me, Josh. We both know what happened to your father, and as ghastly, as unforgettably horrible as that was, we have to learn to live with it!”

  “What about the fact that his plane was in northern Campeche . . . in Mexico? Dad was supposed to be in central Guatemala, the place where they found the murdered Mayan king. That’s hundreds of miles away!”

  “Josh, he makes these trips all the time,” she says wearily. “He doesn’t give me every single detail. That’s why he always goes out to Tuxtla first and rents his cousin’s Cessna. Otherwise it takes ages, driving all over the place, or else it costs a fortune on commercial flights. That’s how it is with Mayan archaeology. All the new discoveries are in the middle of nowhere.”

  And she goes on to say more stuff, but I’ve stopped listening. Instead, I think about what she said just a few seconds earlier.

  “You said ‘makes these trips’. ‘Rents his cousin’s Cessna’. You’re talking like he’s still alive. Is that what you really think too, Mum?”

  Mum shakes her head very sadly. “No. But I can wish it, can’t I?”

  There’s a knock at the door. We’re not expecting anyone. I can sense it – something’s wrong. Mum feels it too. Nervously, I open the door.

  It’s a copper. He introduces himself as Detective Inspector Barratt of Thames Valley Police.

  “It’s about Professor Garcia,” he says, standing at our doorstep. “The Mexican police have been in touch. And I’m sorry to say it’s rather bad news.”

  The head wasn’t burnt to a crisp like the rest of him. It had been sliced off before the fire, which started in the crashed plane.

  Barratt tells us, “The Mexican investigators reckon that wild animals must have made off with the head. They found it miles away, features ravaged, decomposed beyond any recognition. According to the coroner, the dental X-rays are conclusive; a match with Professor Garcia.”

  He goes on; there were something called hyaloid fractures – the hyaloid is a little bone deep in the throat that often breaks during strangulation. And petechial haemorrhages – tiny broken blood vessels in the eye, another classic sign of strangulation. Taken together, they point to one thing: murder.

  Listening to DI Barratt, I feel like a lizard is slowly crawling along my spine. It’s the most horrible and yet the most thrilling thing I’ve ever heard. Now our pain isn’t just a twist of fate but something malign, something intended. There’s a prickling of the hairs on my skin. Even the air around us seems to be charged. I look across at Mum, and I can’t read her expressionless face. But her knuckles are white to the bone.

  Barratt lets that news sink in for a few minutes, then carries on. A
s things turned out, Dad hadn’t been seen at Cancuen for four days before his death. On 12 June, he’d flown out of Cancuen, told the other archaeologists he’d be flying back to Mexico. They’d assumed he meant Tuxtla, where he’d hired the plane. But the police had talked to the plane-hire guys. Dad hadn’t been there either. At first, no one knew where he’d gone for those missing four days.

  The Mexican detectives were certain that Dad was dead before the plane crashed, probably even before it took off – strangled to death, maybe by whoever flew the plane. The theory is that a second man was in the plane with Dad – he probably doused Dad’s dead body with lighter fluid, then parachuted out. Since no witnesses have come forward saying anything about the crash or any parachutist, it’s likely that the incident took place at night. They’re putting the date of death at 16 June, based on the examination of the crash remains. It’s a theory that works with the facts.

  Then last week someone came forward. An anonymous tip-off. There’d been talk of a secret night-landing in a small beachside town.

  “A place called Chetumal,” Barratt says. “Do you know it?”

  Mum shakes her head. “No. I mean, yes – I’ve heard of it. Never been.”

  “Well,” Barratt begins solemnly. “There was a late-night meeting. So we’ve heard. The kind of small-town gossip police hear all the time. But this time it ties everything together.”

  “Do the police out there have any suspects?” Mum asks. Her voice seems artificially flat.

  Barratt coughs. “They do, Mrs Garcia. I’m afraid so. They’ve already made an arrest. It’s going to be another shock for you. I’m very sorry.”

  We wait. The air is thick with our anxiety.

  “There was a woman out there. In this Chetumal place. The professor had been seen visiting with her, you see. This past year. Many times. Plenty of witnesses. Incidents of affection, you understand. In a small town like that, there’s always gossip. But where there’s smoke. . . Rumours spread, the wrong people get to hear.”

  Mum’s face drains. Her voice cracks. “I see. Was she . . . a married woman?”

  “I’m afraid so. Her husband, you see. . .”

  And in a tiny voice, Mum says, “I understand.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs Garcia.”

  I blurt, “Well, I don’t understand. Can someone explain?”

  Barratt turns sympathetic, watery eyes on me.

  “The woman’s husband. The jealous type. And a qualified pilot. No alibi. Motive. Opportunity. Far as they’re concerned in Mexico, they’ve got their man.”

  “So we’re supposed to just believe this – village gossip?”

  “I’m sorry, lad. These things happen.”

  And I shout, “Not to my dad!”

  Mum pulls me close. Her cheeks are already wet with hot, silent tears. I bite my lip. It’s not easy to stay calm.

  BLOG ENTRY: FOUR MISSING DAYS AND A MURDER

  So, it’s official. My dad is dead. Not only dead, but murdered.

  I thought it was bad before. But after today I’m just sort of tired. There’s a weird kind of numbness. Like I’ve reached a limit.

  Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

  Josh . . . omigod, I can hardly believe you aren’t making this up.

  Reply

  TopShopPrincess – I couldn’t. I’m living it and I can hardly believe it’s happening.

  It’s a bad night, one of the worst. I can hear Mum crying next door. She’ll get up every so often to be sick. She’s melting away, losing herself in tiny pieces.

  I phone the doctor, but they only put me through to the health information service.

  “Call your GP in the morning. If there’s no difference tomorrow, she can prescribe something to calm your mother down. This will have been a terrible shock.”

  Mum doesn’t get up until late afternoon. We sit together at the kitchen table. I trace patterns in a pool of spilled cranberry juice. I’ve lost all sense of the future. What do people do after a thing like this? I have no idea where to start.

  Mum begins to shake. She asks for a small glass of brandy. A little later she stops shaking and begins, very softly, to cry. I don’t feel like crying any more – just the opposite. I have an urge to run – anywhere. To get far away from this house of bad news.

  She gulps down one of the tablets I picked up for her, wipes her face with a tissue and blows her nose. I’ve never seen her look so bad. Not even the very first day.

  Finally I speak up. “Why do you believe it?”

  “Because it’s my worst fear.”

  “That Dad dies?”

  “That he’d find another woman. Your dad is – was – a very attractive man, Josh. I’ve always known it. And these excavations, they go on for ever.”

  I’m quiet for ages. I had no idea. And I can’t think what to say. “You never said.”

  “Of course not.”

  “Did he know?”

  “Of course not, he hated jealousy.”

  I think about how my parents were together. OK, no one likes to see their parents kiss and stuff. Obviously, it’s gross. But I sort of liked that Dad was always really affectionate with Mum. She is shy, reserved. Very British and all that. Not him, though. Always pleased to see her, big hugs and kisses when he came home. My whole life, they’d held hands, watched TV in each other’s arms. All that, had it been a lie?

  “But how?”

  She sighs. “Men . . . are that way, I suppose. DI Barratt said the woman is in her late twenties. Late twenties! You probably think that sounds old. But to a man your father’s age. . .”

  She leaves that one unfinished, goes back to her brooding. I can sense waves of anger building inside her.

  I chip in, “Not Dad, though.”

  Mum snaps, “Why not? He’s just another man, isn’t he? I should have been more suspicious. What a fool I’ve been! La casa grande y la casa chica! Not as though I haven’t seen plenty of Mexican men behave this way. It’s finally happened to me.”

  “‘La casa grande. . .’?”

  “The big house and the little house. A nice little euphemism for a married man’s family and his mistress’s. Haven’t you wondered where some of your uncles disappear to when they’re in their forties? To their younger women, that’s where. But the first wife, if she’s in the know, then she’s supposed to be quiet, dignified. She’s supposed to cover for him! ‘Where’s your husband?’ ‘Oh, away on business!’”

  I stare at Mum. I can’t believe how easily she believes it. She’s judging my dad without evidence, as if he were just any macho latin husband. If she thinks that about him, is she going to start treating me like just another one of “them”?

  “No. It’s not fair to accept this without hearing Dad’s side. I don’t believe he’d do it.”

  She’s quiet for a long time. “I wish . . . I’d like to believe that.”

  “Well, why not?”

  She looks at me with a faint glimmer of hope.

  “Do you think we could? Just, not believe it?”

  I take a deep breath. “I don’t believe it.”

  But she can’t meet my gaze. She looks down, begins to tremble. “I must be a terrible person,” she says, her voice quavering. “Because I think it must be true . . . why else would they arrest someone?”

  Why else?

  I wonder about that all afternoon.

  BLOG ENTRY: THIS IS A LOW

  Mum spent today in bed again. It’s been over a week. Well, I feel like I’m grinding through it, going to school every day, which takes my mind off stuff for a few hours. But each day I come home to find that Mum hasn’t moved. When I came home today, I found her listening to “Waters of March”. She and Dad didn’t have one tune, but I’d guess that one was probably in their top five. She’d put it on a continuous loop and was lying flat on their bed, staring up at the ceiling.

  Since Dad’s death, jazz has been banned from our house. Miles Davis, Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Tom Jobim and all those guys – th
at’s my dad’s music. Me, I’m not a fan, but you get used to it. Mum and me – we have this unwritten rule now. Hearing jazz is just too miserable – for us both.

  And yet there she was, wallowing in it.

  Well, I said nothing. Just closed the door quietly so that I didn’t have to listen.

  I’m trying to keep things going here. I even cook sick-person food for Mum. Tomato soup with soft white bread. Chicken broth and buttered crackers.

  But still she won’t eat. Finding out what really happened to my dad seems to have finished her off.

  What the heck am I supposed to do?

  Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

  Jeez . . . Josh. You need to get some help, man. I’m out of my depth here. Call the doctor!

  Reply

  So . . . I did it. Called the GP. Told her that Mum was hardly responding. Just staring. And that was it.

  They sent some paramedics round. Said Mum needed some time with specialists. I don’t know if Mum even understood what happened. I prepared a bag for her; make-up, toiletries, spare clothes. As she walked through the front door, she got this look in her eye.

  It made me crumble. I feel like a traitor.

  Comment (2) from TopShopPrincess