Another loud clap of thunder, this time right above her. Lucy flinched and ducked her head. The light flared bright, and then a twig snapped in the trees behind her. She twisted toward the sound, but no shapes emerged from the dark.
“Hello?” she whispered, but got no response.
She turned back to the light, but it was gone, and the tree trunks, once sharply defined, were now little more than a thick black smudge. Anything could be out there. Anything could be watching from the shadows, and Lucy would never know. She rubbed her hands together for warmth. The thunderstorm was moving to the northeast now, away from her, the low rumbles growing quieter and quieter. She stared at the place where the light had been, soothing her tired and skittish mind with the reasonable explanation that what she’d seen had been some form of lightning. Raging currents of static electricity. Surges of electrons flowing from cloud to ground. A bright flash lighting up the night, gone as fast as it had arrived.
She reached for the car door handle, but the sound of a running engine coming up the road made her pause. Headlights swept over the trees, illuminating the forest for a brief second before reaching her in an explosion of white. The pickup truck traveled in the opposite direction as her, headed up the mountain and making good time. She stepped into the road and waved her arms over her head.
The pickup pulled alongside her car, and the driver, a young man with a thick beard and curly hair, rolled down his window. “Tire blown?”
“I don’t know. I might have run out of gas or something with the spark plugs?”
The man pulled forward a few feet and parked on the shoulder, leaving the engine running, the high beams illuminating Lucy’s broken-down car. She explained how she’d gotten turned around and was trying to figure out how to get to the main road when the car shut down without warning. The man made a complete circle around her car, then opened the driver’s door. The dome light flared.
Lucy inhaled sharply. The man glanced at her, then sank down into the driver’s seat and turned the key. The radio blasted to life, blaring a David Bowie song. Lucy jumped back, startled by the noise. The man turned the headlights on and off and then on again. Both beams worked fine. He pressed a little on the gas, revving the engine, then he climbed back out of her car, hooked his thumbs into his belt loops, and rocked on his heels.
“Can’t say I know what happened, but it seems to be working all right now. Bad place to have a breakdown, you ask me. Strange things happen on this road at night.” He swung his gaze along the trees edging the road, then turned and gave Lucy a tight-lipped smile. “Good news is, you’ve got plenty enough gas to make it to the station down on Boulder Drive about ten miles from here. I know the owner, Matt. He can take a look under the hood for you, if you want. See if there’s any spark plugs loose or cables missing or something so this doesn’t happen to you again.”
Lucy nodded. “Yeah, okay. Boulder Drive?”
“I can lead you back that way. Make sure you get there safe.” He went to his pickup.
Lucy got into her own car, turned off the radio, and buckled her seat belt. She stuck close to the pickup, following the twin red lights around sharp corners and wide bends. Every few minutes she glanced in her rearview mirror. The road behind her collapsed in total darkness.
A reasonable explanation for everything, Lucy repeated to herself the whole way to the gas station.
The driver of the pickup was already talking to Matt when Lucy pulled up alongside a pump. He waved her forward toward an open garage door, then motioned for her to stop, and came around to the driver’s window.
“Heard you had a little trouble on the hill?” He spoke with a slow drawl and an easy smile. “Want me to have a look?”
She explained again what happened. He told her to leave the engine running and then held open the door for her as she got out. “There’s a fresh pot of coffee in the office. Go on in and make yourself comfortable.”
She thanked him, and the pickup driver too, who gave her a two-finger salute and said Matt would take good care of her. Then he wished her better luck on the rest of her trip and left.
The gas station office was small and cramped, with a large metal desk and swiveling chair, file cabinets, and stacks of car magazines. Lucy poured herself a cup of coffee and stirred in a good amount of sugar and cream. Just holding it, warming her fingers around the cup, was a comfort. This day had stretched on too long; this night even longer. Her cell phone beeped inside her purse. She took it out, surprised to see it had somehow turned itself back on. She had two voice mails. She listened to the first one.
“Lucy? It’s your mo . . . It’s Sandra. Wyatt gave me your number. Listen, the way you ran out of Cici’s . . . I just . . . I think we need to talk about what happened. Wyatt said he went by your motel, but you weren’t there? We’re both worried about you.” There was a long, crackling pause and then she said, “I’m worried. Lucy . . . I need to know if you’re okay. Please . . . call me . . . call one of us . . . as soon as you get this.”
The second one was from her father. “I just got off the phone with your mother? She said you bolted out of a hypnotherapy session and they don’t know where you went and now no one can get in touch with you? Lucy, what the hell is going on? Do I need to come out there?” The only time she’d ever heard him this riled up was over a business deal that wasn’t going his way.
She texted Robert first. Don’t come. I’m fine. Please, just trust me.
Almost immediately he responded. If you need anything . . .
I know, she wrote back.
Before she could reply to her mother, Matt sauntered into the office, wiping his fingers on a greasy rag. “You said it just shut down on you? The engine? The lights? The radio? All of it?”
“Yes.” She slipped her phone back into her purse. “It sort of hiccupped and then nothing.”
He frowned at the wall for a few seconds and then shook his head. “Well, I took a close look at the spark plugs and the fuel line, but all that looked good. I checked the battery to make sure it was holding a charge, and it was. I checked your fluids. That’s all good. As near as I can tell, your car’s in great condition. I didn’t find anything that would explain it just shutting down on you like that.”
“Nothing at all?”
Matt wiped the rag across the back of his neck. “I guess it could be something with the computer chip. Everything’s run by computers these days,” he said with some disdain. “But I don’t have the equipment to test for that.” He leaned forward and shuffled through a pile of papers on his desk. “I know a guy in Bishop could take a look at it for you.”
She took a business card from him and asked how much she owed.
He waved the question away with the rag. “Fill up your tank, we’ll call it even.”
Boulder Drive reconnected with the highway one mile south of the gas station. To the south was a violent glow, lights sparking on the horizon, a road that led her straight back to the one place she’d been trying her whole life to leave behind. To the north, mountains crowded the road, but beyond them were endless possibilities, new places, whole towns, entire cities of people who didn’t know her name, had no idea who she was or where she’d come from or what she’d done. Lucy idled at the intersection, torn for a moment about which direction to take.
She didn’t want the memories she recalled under hypnosis to be true. The implications terrified her—what she might have done, what she didn’t do. More than that, she didn’t trust them. But if they were accurate, if what she’d recalled under Cici’s guidance actually happened, then Celeste and Nolan weren’t the only two people at the observatory that night. And after what just happened on that dark forest road, she needed to be certain. If there was a reasonable explanation for what happened the night Nolan went missing, she needed to find it. Lucy eased her car onto the highway heading south and back to Bishop.
CASEBOOK ENTRY #6
SIGHTING:
Mountain Lights
DATE: November
13–22, 1999
LONGITUDE/LATITUDE: All over Eastern Sierras and White Mountains
SYNOPSIS: Sudden and significant increase in UFO activity. Numerous sightings are being reported online by residents from Bishop all the way to Olancha. Reports even coming in from Mammoth and June Lakes in Mono County. Locally, Channel 9 news and the Bishop Register have filed three separate reports (see attached documents).
OBJECT DESCRIPTION: Though there are some outliers, descriptions of UFOs appear to be consistent. Orange, green, and sometimes blue orbs hover for several minutes, then make a sharp counterclockwise circle and shoot straight up into the air before vanishing.
OTHER WITNESS STATEMENTS: I have followed up with four witnesses who submitted a report. Three refused to talk to me, saying they changed their minds, it was probably just an airplane or lightning. One woman pretended not to be home.
WEATHER INFORMATION: Some cloud buildup over White Mountains with reports of thunder. Otherwise no significant weather patterns. No meteorological phenomena would explain this many multiple and separate reports of lights behaving erratically over such a large area.
LOCATION DESCRIPTION: Inyo means “dwelling place of the great spirit.” I do not think it is coincidence that our area is experiencing such miraculous events. For reasons unknown to us, They have chosen this place and this narrow moment in time to make Themselves known. They have chosen me.
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE: One of the witnesses initially reported capturing the lights on video, but later said the tape was destroyed in an electrical fire. Also, according to an article in the Bishop Register, Inyo County deputies went to the area where a craft was recently spotted and claimed to have found nothing unusual. Typical. Even if they had found something, they would never tell us. I would have gone out there myself, but if there was evidence, the government has it now.
CONCLUSION: This is the largest documented cluster of UFO activity in the history of this region. While not all accounts can be confirmed, there is enough evidence here for me to state with absolute certainty that a paradigm shift is coming.
Nolan knew he shouldn’t be writing any of this down. It was too dangerous now to keep a written record of his encounters, and yet he couldn’t stop himself. He found his casebook on his bed the day after his expulsion. Lucy must have left it there for him. Other than a bent corner and a few rumpled pages, the casebook was unscathed, all of his notes intact. He was tempted to tear it to pieces right then or set it on fire, this thing that had caused him so much trouble, but there was so much of Celeste in these pages—to destroy these memories of her would be heartbreak. So he tucked the book in his bottom desk drawer, which had a lock, and tried to forget about it, only to take it out again a few days later when the news started reporting strange lights in the sky, sightings happening all over the valley. It was dangerous, yes, but the work he was doing was important, the events worthy of documentation. If he didn’t record the truth, who would? He would be more careful this time, though. He would make no mention of Celeste, not even in code, and when he wasn’t writing in it, the casebook would stay locked in his desk.
Nolan only left the house for work now. For ten minutes in the parking lot after his mother had been called down to the school, she’d wept into a ratty old tissue pulled from the bottom of her purse. “I raised you to make better decisions than this.” She’d sobbed. “I raised you to be a better person. I don’t understand what’s going on inside your head? Fighting? Nolan, look at me. What do you have to say for yourself?”
He didn’t know what to tell her that hadn’t already been said. No one seemed to care that the whole thing had been Patrick’s fault, that the fight would have never happened if he hadn’t stolen Nolan’s casebook, copied the pages, and passed them around to his classmates. No one seemed to care, either, that Patrick had—technically—thrown the first punch. Both boys were expelled, but only Nolan’s mother was given a brochure about mental illness from the school guidance counselor. To her credit, she’d balled up the glossy bullshit and tossed it in the garbage on the way out of the principal’s office. He thought that would be the end of it, but last night he overheard her talking on the phone, her voice drunk and loud enough to float through walls. “I don’t see any other choice, Robert. I can’t afford the private schools around here and Bishop won’t let him come back until next school year. If he stays, he’ll be a year behind, if he manages to graduate at all.” She was talking about sending him to live with his father. He was running out of time.
The day after the basketball game, he’d driven to Gabriella’s on his way home from work hoping to talk to Celeste, to try and explain. Gabriella had answered the door, but refused to let him inside. “She doesn’t want to see you right now, Nolan.”
He’d called a few hours later and when Gabriella told him Celeste wasn’t there, he called the restaurant, but the woman who answered said she wasn’t scheduled to work that night, and so he tried the house again, but could only bring himself to dial the first three numbers before hanging up. The things he needed to say to her needed to be said in person. He was going to try and wait her out—eventually she’d have to let her guard down—but his mother sounded resolute, and if they wanted to escape this place, slip away unnoticed and drop off the grid, make new lives for themselves someplace else, then they had to move fast. Nolan needed to figure out a way to make Celeste understand what was at stake. Somehow he needed to regain her trust.
He drove by Gabriella’s and by Jake’s on the way to work and on the way home from work for five days straight. He saw her sometimes through the window or walking down the driveway to get the mail, but she never smiled at him, never waved, never waited when he called her name. She ignored him, turning and going back into the house, pretending he didn’t exist.
Finally, three days before Thanksgiving, she came to him. He found her waiting by his pickup the way she had the night of their first kiss. Only this time there was no picnic basket and she didn’t look at all happy to see him. Nolan spoke first.
“Have you seen the lights?” he asked. “They’ve been all over the news this week. Dozens of sightings up and down the valley and even at some of the mountain resorts.”
“Nolan . . .” She sounded tired.
“I think They’re here for you.”
“I need you to stop following me,” she said. “You humiliated me. And I’m trying to let it go, I’m trying to forget, but you’re making it impossible.”
“We have to talk about this.” He tried to get close to her, but she backed away.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.” She started to walk away from him.
“Then just listen.”
She stopped with her back to him, but she stopped, and that had to mean something.
“Look,” he said. “I know you’re upset.”
She laughed, a fragile, cruel sound. “That’s the understatement of the year.”
“I screwed up, okay? I screwed up big-time, but you have to try and understand—”
“All those things you wrote about me?” She spun around to face him. “Is that what you really believe? What you think I am? A Star Being?” She stumbled over the words, a look of confusion passing over her face. “Because I’m not. I’m definitely not from anywhere up there.” She pointed one finger to the sky.
Nolan took a step toward her. “You don’t have to do that. You don’t have to pretend. Not with me.”
She hugged her arms around her chest and shivered.
“I know you’re scared,” he continued, speaking slowly, quietly, like he was trying to calm a spooked horse. “But you don’t have to hide from me. I’m on your side. I want to help you.”
Nolan moved to comfort her, reaching his arms for an embrace. She pushed him away.
“Don’t touch me.” Her voice like ice. “Don’t come any closer. I’m not what you think I am. I’m not that, okay? I’m not. I was born in Florida.”
She was trying to protect him by lying, but he didn’
t need her to do that. He could take care of himself; he could take care of both of them. All they needed to do was leave Bishop, under the cover of night preferably, find a new town, give themselves new names, blend in, and if the government tracked them down in this new town, they’d move on again, to another new town, and another, as many as it took. There were millions of towns on this planet, a million places to hide, and he didn’t care where they were as long as they were together.
Celeste was still talking, saying something about a group home in Philadelphia. Why was she talking about Philadelphia? What did that have to do with anything? Was this where she wanted to go next? Nolan struggled to get his brain to catch up to her mouth. Sound floated around him, but he couldn’t quite capture the words. He focused on her lips until she started to make sense, the individual sounds syncing up in his brain to form coherent sentences again.
“I stayed in Bishop because of you,” she said. “And I’ll always be grateful for what we had. I mean, you made me feel like I was someone important, someone special, but I just, I have to go now, okay? We have to move on.”
“Yes, that’s exactly what I’ve been trying to tell you,” he said, glad she was finally understanding. “It’s not safe here anymore. We have to leave.”
She looked annoyed, confused. She shook her head. “Not us, Nolan. Just me. I’m leaving.”
“I’m coming with you,” he insisted. “What did you say the other night? We just go? We just get in the car and start driving?”
Her expression softened. “No, Nolan, not anymore. That was before. I can’t go anywhere with you now. Not after what happened.”
“It was an accident.” Panic flared white-hot behind his eyes. “It won’t happen again. I won’t write about you anymore. I won’t write down any of it, if that’s what you want. I know better now. I learned my lesson. I would never let anything happen to you. I’d die before I let them take you.”
“Nolan, slow down, you’re not making any sense. No one’s dying here. No one’s ‘taking’ me. I’m just, I’m going, that’s all. I’m leaving Bishop.”
Everything We Lost Page 32
