The Face Stealer

by Robert Scott-Norton

  Carla came back from the hall. “Bad line. Couldn’t hear anybody.”

  Dennis continued speaking to Max. “We've been looking for our boy for twenty-five years. Don’t you think if there was a way to find him, we’d have done it ourselves?”

  “I'm not giving up.”

  “I felt like that once.” And with that, Dennis turned on his heel and headed into the kitchen, nodding his head, indicating that Max should follow him.

  Dennis led Max down the path to the shed at the bottom of the garden, where he pulled a key from beneath a flowerpot, unlocked the padlock and swung open the door. Carla hurried to keep up, mumbling something about dementia affecting more and more people every day. Dennis ignored her and fumbled for a light switch. It was dark in the shed, and when Dennis flicked a switch Max saw why. The windows had been boarded up with hardboard, blocking any natural light from coming in to the space. The hardboard was being used as noticeboards with papers and photos pinned with thumbtacks. Along the left wall, metal racks had been installed, all rammed full of clear plastic storage crates; Max could make out files and papers bound inside each one. He stepped across the threshold and it felt like he was entering a private secret world.

  “Dennis, what’s this? What have you been doing in here?” Carla had stepped inside behind Max, but she was now venturing further, casting her eyes about and taking in all of the material. She pulled a photo from the first noticeboard she reached. Max didn’t recognise the woman in the photograph. There were many faces looking down at them from the noticeboards. Max did a quick count and saw at least a dozen.

  “A fraction of some of the missing people in the last couple of decades in Southport,” Dennis said with the confidence of a man talking about his pet subject.

  Carla seemed shocked by what she was seeing. She folded her arms. “How long have you been doing this? You told me you were writing a book.”

  Dennis shrugged. “I didn't think you'd understand. I thought it would be easier on you not to know.”

  “But what is it all? Where did you get it?” Max asked.

  “My research. An attempt to find my son. Find who's responsible for his disappearance and make them pay.”

  “You've been doing this for twenty-five years?” Carla said, picking up a file from a table covered with an array of Manila folders, box files, and loose papers. “And you never thought to tell me.” She looked pale.

  “I always meant to tell you, but you stopped asking me about my writing and I—well, it became a sort of hobby.”

  Some hobby, thought Max, scanning the shelves and walls, taking in the sheer volume of information this ordinary man had accumulated. This wasn't a hobby: this was fanatical.

  “Where's it all come from though?”

  “It takes time and patience. Whispers in the right corners, money exchanged with the right people.”

  Carla was riffling through a sheaf of papers she'd pulled from a storage crate. “Have you found him?” Her voice was soft, gentle. “Tell me you've found him.”

  Dennis reached an arm out to his wife, perhaps to pull her into an embrace, but she withdrew, dropped the papers from her hand onto the floor and stepped away, back towards the garden.

  Her melting eyes were lost in confusion. “You shouldn't have shown me. I'd have preferred not to know.” She paused for a second outside the shed, then lifted her head, pushed her shoulders back, and strode towards the house.

  Dennis reached past Max and closed the door, sealing them both in his domain. “She'll be all right. It's been a while since we've spoken about what happened.” He then proceeded to the table at the end of the shed and pulled out a chair for himself and a folding stool which he offered to Max. Sitting himself down, Dennis opened a drawer and offered a photo to Max. The man in the photo was the same man he’d encountered outside the hospital with Cindy.

  “His name’s Dominic Thadeus,” Dennis said.

  Max couldn’t speak.

  “I can see from your expression he’s the same man. He turns up a lot when people go missing. He was one of the group that came to see us when Ben went missing.”

  “And these other missing people?” Max gestured at the noticeboards.

  “They’ve been the focus of my research. He’s visited each of the families of these missing people as well.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “Like I said, money to the right people, friends at the paper, friends at the police. If you want something enough, you’ll find a way, and I want to find my son. Now, tell me again what happened. Start at the beginning and don’t miss anything out.”

  Dennis grabbed a pencil and notepad from a desk drawer and Max told his story again, starting with how Cindy had attacked him and tied him up. It seemed like days had passed since the events of that night, but Max realised that it had been less than forty-eight hours since this mess began. When it came to the part about being arrested for Heather’s murder, Max blinked back the tears. Dennis looked down at his pad whilst Max regained his composure. Throughout the story, Dennis barely interrupted, letting Max talk whilst taking notes in a shorthand scrawl.

  When Max had finished, Dennis had half a dozen pages of notes, and Max needed a drink. Dennis folded his notepad and placed it back in the top drawer.

  “Dominic Thadeus, works for a government agency. I can’t be sure it’s his real name but it’s the one he’s used for the last twenty or so years. It’s difficult to get hold of personnel records of their agents.”

  “But still,” Max said confidently, “a name's worth something to the police.”

  Dennis shook his head. “These people are beyond the police. They're untouchable.”

  “No one's untouchable.”

  “They are. Believe me.”

  “Then what can I do? What's been the point in us even talking?” Max knew he was raising his voice but he was past the point of caring. “Dennis, it's been a shit couple of days. I'm tired. I'm losing the will to live here and so far I've been doing most of the talking. I'd appreciate a bit of quid pro quo. What's this agency you're talking about?”

  “MI18,” he said, as if that explained everything.

  Max shook his head. “Is that like MI5 or something?”

  Dennis nodded slowly, the corners of his mouth upturned in the merest hint of a smile. Then Max understood that the problem wasn't a lack of information. Hell the shed was full of it, it was distilling the years of facts Dennis had acquired and condensing it into something manageable by anyone unfamiliar with the content.

  “It's not surprising that you haven't heard of MI18. Few people have. But it's been funded by the taxpayer since the end of the Second World War.”

  “Why the secrecy? What do they do?”

  Dennis seemed stuck in the groove of his story and rose a hand to Max to silence him. When he started speaking again, Max felt like a little boy sat in class. “During the war people were terrified of Hitler's Luftwaffe. They were understandably concerned about being bombed and the people of Great Britain became more wary of the sky above them; it had become a potential threat and more eyes were trained on it during the war than ever before.

  “So, given that more pairs of eyes were trained on the sky and the population was already jittery, it's understandable that reports of incursions into our airspace jumped through the roof. People were seeing enemy planes everywhere. The police were taking the brunt of these reports but it was a military matter after all and reports were passed to the war office. During that time, a military intelligence department was created to investigate these reports. This was MI18.

  “It was impossible to investigate all the reports that came their way. Those that came through with no real detail were logged and dismissed, but there were some reports that were reported in such astonishing detail that the department couldn't easily dismiss them. These reports you would now label UFO sightings.

  “Of course the thing with UFO sightings is that just because something starts off as being unidentifie
d doesn't mean it's going to stay unidentified. You'd have hoped the police would have done a better job of fielding calls from drunken members of the public than they actually did. However, for every two dozen erroneous calls, they'd be the odd gem and it was these that helped convince Attlee's government that the department was worth keeping active—at least for a time.

  “What surprised everyone though was that after the war the number of sightings didn't decrease: they ballooned. Was it just a sign that a population recovering from the war were plain paranoid? Or was it the start of something else? Had all our fighting with each other gotten us noticed?” Dennis's eyes sparkled.

  Still in his stride Dennis continued. “Over the years as the political climate changed and governments came and went, it became necessary for the sake of maintaining consistency, to take the organisation off the government radar. Place it away from the whims of political parties and their budgets and let it run itself.

  “The government believed they had successfully dismantled this department, but MI18 had taken on a life of its own and gone underground. It seems they splintered into a network of smaller groups in an effort to stay low key, and it must have worked. The government don't acknowledge the department exists, they deny ever having a department dedicated to UFO investigation, spinning a line that the war office directly dealt with UFO calls, but there's enough evidence for us to conclude that they're lying.’

  “But what are they doing?”

  Dennis stood and pulled a crate from the shelving, placed it on the floor in front of Max and lifted the lid. “They've been keeping us safe mostly.”

  The crate contained several Manila folders and ring binders, a handful of which Dennis now withdrew and held open for Max to look at. There were photographs. In the main they seemed to be taken at night or in low light conditions, and showed shapes in the sky. Max took a handful of papers and photographs from a file and flicked through them. He stopped a few times to get a better look at some of the photographs. One particular image caught his eye. It had been taken on a country lane, on the side of a large hill. A brownish vegetation was prevalent on the ground and went all the way across the landscape, giving the picture an earthy feel. The sky was blue with wisps of cloud trailing towards the distant horizon. But there, slap in the middle of an otherwise empty sky was a dull grey sphere, a line of amber light neatly split the shape into two perfect semi-spheres. From all the classically bad UFO pictures he'd seen, this one put the others firmly in the shade. This one made Max pause.

  “It's a good one isn't it,” Dennis said quietly.

  “You seem to be saying that this department is still concerned with UFO reports.”

  “They are.”

  “How do you know that? How do you know any of this? It's conspiracy theory nonsense.” How did you ever think this would help you find your son? Was what he actually wanted to say but held his tongue.

  “It's not nonsense. It's the truth.”

  Max was struggling to get his head around the story he was being fed, because for now, until he had any proof in his possession that's all this was, a story.

  “This Thadeus, he works for this agency? But you said they dealt with shapes in the sky. Why would they be interested in your son? In these other missing people?”

  “I said that's how the department started out. I also said that they weren't able to dismiss all the reports they received.”

  “You're saying little green men are at work here.”

  Dennis shrugged his shoulders.

  “That's all I have. It's just information. You can make of it what you will.”

  Max didn't know what to make of it. He wasn't sure how it was going to help him track down Cindy. Nor was he sure how any of this was going to help him clear his name.

  From his jeans pocket, his phone started ringing and vibrating. He pulled it out. Number withheld. He didn’t know whether the police could track his phones usage so he’d been reluctant to use it. The battery was on its lowest bar now anyway so the matter was almost academic.

  “Hello.”

  A crackling line. The kind he used to get at home. The kind he had at Sylvia’s. He ended the call.

  “I think I should go. I don’t know what that was about but I’ve a terrible feeling I’ve put you both in danger.” Max turned and ran out of the shed back to the house.

  Max heard the phone ringing from inside the house as he hurried along the garden path to the kitchen door. He pushed open the kitchen door and stepped inside. Dennis came hurrying after him from the garden. As soon as he stepped over the threshold, the ringing ended. Max heard Carla’s voice shouting into the handset.

  “You’ll have to speak up. I can’t hear a word you’re saying. There’s a lot of static on the line.”

  Static.

  Max ran for the hallway where he heard Carla speaking from. Dennis entered the kitchen behind him and followed.

  “Put down the phone!” Max shouted. Rounding the corner, he could see Carla standing away from him, headset to her ear. “Put the phone down. It’s connected to the phone line.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Dennis was behind him now, breathing heavily.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Max waited a second. Then another. He wanted to be proved wrong. He needed to see that everything was OK and he’d just made a fool of himself, but when Carla turned round and Max saw her missing features he knew he’d been terribly right after all.

  Dennis had time to gasp, but that was all, as Carla struck out quickly and effectively. With one hand, she grasped Max by the throat and slammed him against the wall. A picture fell and the glass shattered.

  Dennis grappled with her arm, trying to loosen her grip, but she swung her other arm up, hand balled into a fist, and knocked him to the ground. Her grip was so tight on Max’s neck it felt that her fingers were going to puncture his skin and rip out his windpipe. Max kicked and struggled against his assailant, but she didn’t seem to care about the kicks or punches. Max was amazed at her strength. But he was fast losing consciousness. The hallway was fading from his vision as he choked for air.

  Dennis charged at his wife’s lower body, sending her flying through the glass of the front door, into the porch beyond. Max fell to the floor, reaching for his neck, rubbing it with his hands, convinced he’d feel torn skin and blood, but he was in one piece. He leapt to his feet and grabbed hold of the first thing to hand, the upright vacuum cleaner, and shoved it towards Carla just as she was getting to her feet. She fell back again, and Max pulled Dennis to his feet, and dragged him towards the back of the house.

  “Is that what the others were like?” he managed to say through rapid breaths.

  “Yes. And as strong.”

  “We need to help her.”

  Max pulled him into the kitchen, slammed the door shut and put his back against it.

  “No, we need to get away.”

  “We can’t leave her like this. I need to get her some help.”

  “There’s nothing you can do. She’s gone.”

  “You don’t know that. You told me you’ve just been running from them.”

  “Shut up. You don’t know anything about it.”

  “She can help us,” Dennis said breathlessly. “We need to find out what did this to her.”

  Max realised the truth of what Dennis was saying. If he could communicate with these creatures, maybe he could find out something that could help him.

  “We need to contain her. Have you got anything we can tie her up with?”

  Dennis didn’t get a chance to reply as the kitchen door slammed into Max’s back, throwing him aside. Dennis threw himself forward instead and managed to get the door shut. Max recovered quickly and joined the man, hoping that the combined weight of two men would stop her getting in.

  A thought came to Max. “You had some rope in the shed, hung up by the door. Go and get it.”

  Dennis didn’t wait to be told again and ran out of the kitche
n. The door shook again and again, and Max was pushed forward, not able to keep it closed on his own any more, the door inched open. He looked across the room and saw the pan on the draining board. He let go and propelled himself across the kitchen, reaching for the pan handle just as the door slammed open behind him and Carla scurried into the kitchen. In a deep swinging motion, he brought the pan to bear on Carla’s arm, knocking her against the wall. Max stood his ground and raised the pan again before whacking her on the shoulder.

  His aim was to keep her on the floor as long as possible. Carla lifted her arm and the pan connected with that. Max heard the impact and saw the red mark it had left on her uncovered arm.

  He tried a third time, bringing it low, hoping to connect with her knee, but she fell back out of reach and the pan smashed into the wall sending shards of plaster flying. She powered forwards, not giving Max another shot. The pan clattered to the floor and Max raised his hands desperate to keep the faceless creature from getting too close. His hands grabbed Carla’s shoulders as she ran forwards, and he twisted her to one side, hoping to use her momentum against her. He was partially successful as he brought her off course. Max slipped on the tiles, and his leg connected with hers as he fell.

  Horrifyingly, Carla fell onto him and Max was staring inches away from her featureless face. She twisted her head and shifted her hands. He struggled against her, bringing his knee up into her abdomen, but if she felt the pain, she refused to show it.

  Then Max heard a scramble of footsteps come into the kitchen, and heard the distinctive noise of the pan connecting with flesh. In the sudden confusion, Max saw a loop of rope appear over the top half of Carla’s body. It was pulled tight and suddenly Carla was unable to use her arms to grip onto Max. He scrambled away from her, grateful for being free of the creature’s hold, and did his best to keep her still as Dennis tried to heave her off him.

  But she was still more powerful than her small frame should have allowed. Her arms slipped from the rope and suddenly she was free once more. Max heard a noise of metal on metal as she reached behind her and pulled something from the draining board. He tried to shout a warning to Dennis, but he was too busy trying to get the rope back on her. Max made a grab for her arm but too late, Carla’s left hand plunged towards Max. It was only his instinct that made him turn and that saved the knife from entering his heart. Instead, the blade sliced through his shirt and punched into his shoulder. He fell backwards, knife sticking out of his shoulder, the cold blade of the steak knife embedded to the hilt.