God Told Me To

by C. K. Chandler

  His hair was soaked and dripping with rain, his raincoat wet through the shoulders by the time he’d climbed the steps and entered the building. The wetness began to chill him. He was shivering when he stepped out of the elevator on the third floor. He walked through the cavernous reading room to the section designated as 315-M, where old newspapers were kept on microfilm. The librarian fixed him with an odd expression as he told her what he wanted. She gave the impression she didn’t think a shivering, badly scarred man was to be trusted with public information. He impatiently flashed his shield and rudely told her to get it in gear.

  Eddie Cook’s friend had picked up a woman in the winter of 1954. Bernard Phillips had been born in August of the following year. Subtracting nine months from the birth date had given Nicholas November 1954 as a starting date.

  He sat in front of the screen and cranked the microfilm copies of all the daily newspapers for that month through the projector. There were more papers in 1954 than now. The Journal American, the Daily Mirror, the Tribune. His hair and clothing dried while he cranked the filmed pages, but he continued to shiver with chills and beads of perspiration dotted his forehead. He expected the information he wanted would be found in one of the tabloids. Instead, it turned up in the paper that prints, “All the News That’s Fit to Print ,” the Times.

  On Saturday, November 13, 1954, the front page headline told of a run-in between Senators Joseph McCarthy and John C. Stennis. What was then called Indochina was in a state of transition as the French were moving out of that country. On page three, Pierre Mendes-France was reshuffling the French cabinet. On page twelve, next to a story about Jill the Giraffe of the Bronx Zoo, a small article grabbed his eye with the heading: NEW JERSEY WOMAN CLAIMS RIDE IN FLYING SAUCER.

  The woman’s name was Judith Phillips.

  He took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

  He took out his notebook and made notes on the article.

  It was night by the time Nicholas stopped his car in front of the residence of Eddie Cook’s old friend from the New Jersey State Police. The rain had continued through the evening, forcing him to drive the unfamiliar Jersey roads slower than he wanted. He leaped impatiently from the car, slamming the door. His impatience turned to anger when he saw no lights burning in the windows of the house.

  The porch steps were loose beneath his feet as he climbed them. He slapped and rattled a screen door until a naked overhead light went on. Nearly five minutes passed before the inner door opened.

  Kevin Callaghan looked like he maybe shaved once a week if could remember where he last dropped his razor. He wore a gray undershirt and dark pants that were bunched at the waist and ragged carpet slippers cut at the toes to accommodate swollen feet. He smelled bad. He carried a shotgun. He couldn’t stand up straight.

  Nicholas was stunned. It wasn’t uncommon to see retired police officers who had hit the skids, but never had he seen one quite this bad. He wondered if he had come to the wrong address.

  Callaghan’s voice was gruff and unpleasant. “You be Nicholas?”

  Nicholas nodded.

  The man waved his shotgun. “Can’t be too careful. This is a run-down area in a run-down town.”

  “May I come in and talk over what I mentioned?”

  Flecks of spittle rained from his mouth as he talked. “I don’t know. You call me over three hours ago. It’s late now. My hell, Carson’s on the TV already.”

  Nicholas explained, “I had to drive over a hundred miles.”

  “You weren’t clear to me. When you called I figured you was just down the road a piece.”

  Nicholas had made it clear over the phone that he was a New York officer calling from the city. But he didn’t bother arguing with Callaghan. He merely switched the paper bag he carried from his left hand to his right.

  Callaghan raised a grubby hand from his shotgun and scratched his whiskered face. He watched the paper bag like a fish eying a worm.

  “That old case you mentioned. Never did make no sense.”

  “Could we talk about it.”

  “Memory gets fuzzy this time of night. Carson’s on the TV it’s so late.”

  Nicholas shrugged and turned as if about to leave.

  “Aw, now what the hell. Any friend of Eddie Cook . . .”

  His lungs still filled with the rain-clear night air he’d been breathing on the porch, Nicholas was not prepared for the stench that hit his nostrils as he stepped inside the house. Stench and the muggy heat of a long-closed-in place.

  Callaghan put his shotgun on a rack. There were three other rifles on the rack, but they all needed oiling and cleaning. Callaghan led Nicholas through a short hall to a living room. He snapped a wall switch that lit a ceiling lamp. Four bulbs were in the lamp but only one winked on. The room was a mess.

  “You make yourself comfortable. I’ll see if I can find us something to drink.”

  Nicholas handed him the bag. “Let me buy.”

  Callaghan shuffled to some other place down the hall. Nicholas pushed a pair of pants off a chair and sat down. The air was so foul that he found it difficult to breathe. There was a fireplace thick with old ashes. On the mantel were a few pictures of Callaghan in his state police uniform and some mementoes from his time on the force. The mementoes had an abandoned and dusty look, indicating the man felt no pride in his accomplishments. Nicholas shook his head and knew that he would never be able to tell Eddie Cook the condition of his old friend.

  “Here you go, fella. What’s your name again? Nickerson?”

  “Nicholas.” The glass Nicholas took had once held jelly. Callaghan hadn’t bothered with ice cubes. “About the Phillips case.”

  “Think I’ve heard of you, Nicholas. Didn’t you work on the Crystal murders ’bout eight, nine years ago?”

  “No.”

  “Damned if you don’t sound familiar. See, my memory is all screwy these days. The Phillips thing. My hell, over twenty years ago. Hard to remember.”

  “Have a drink. Maybe it’ll come back to you.”

  Callaghan foraged through a full ashtray and came up with about an inch and a half of cigar. He lit the butt, coughed, drank.

  “Nick—what is your name again?”

  “Nicholas.”

  “Could’ve swore I know you from somewhere. Anyway, the Phillips thing. A crazy female.”

  “Crazy? Or hysterical?”

  “Any difference? You get a crazy female. Thinks she’s been raped. She’s going to be hysterical.”

  It took an hour of steady prodding before Nicholas got the full story. Callaghan’s recollections floated in and out of focus. He mumbled. Twice he left the room to refill his glass, and the second time he brought the bottle back with him. Every few minutes he would lean over and slosh more gin into his jelly glass, but he never offered to refill Nicholas’s glass.

  Nicholas’s head began to spin in the thick, overheated air.

  “Tell you the God’s honest, Nickerson. I thought about not letting her in the car.”

  “You were on duty, weren’t you.”

  “We only rode single patrol those days. Now there’s always two, sometimes three men who can cover for each other. What in hell would you think if you come on a naked woman screaming on a highway in the middle of November. I still don’t know. Don’t know who dropped her there. You put yourself in my place. Didn’t have all that much time left to go before gettin’ the pension. I wasn’t goin’ to risk no crazy female charging me with rape.

  “I made her stand outside until I got my call in on the radio. Called in and told them what I found.

  “I got her a blanket out of the trunk. Made her wrap herself up. She had a nice pair of tits. But not for me. I wasn’t about to touch her. No sir! I asked her who had done the number on her. Asked for a description. This is when I begin to see she’s a real crazy. She tells me, says to me, she says, It wasn’t men.

  “By now I got her inside the car. Wrapped in the blanket. It was a cold w
itch of a night, Nickley. So I tell her she’s upset. Tell her she doesn’t know what she’s talking about. And I’m headin’ for the nearest hospital.

  “Damn to hell if she doesn’t start to scream. Yells to me, Not that way! They’re out there!

  “Come on, lady, I say to her. There’s nothing out there but the city dump and an old dirt road that’s not been used since before the war. The Second War.

  “Know what she pulls next? She reaches over and grabs the wheel. We were damn lucky there weren’t no ice on the road. Or any other traffic. She’s got the blanket off now and here I’m struggling with her and trying to control the damn car. I manage to finally stop the car. I’m pissed now. I gave her a couple raps to quiet her. Pow!

  “So that makes her quiet, see. After a while she says, says real whispery, It was big as a house.

  “What? I ask.

  “A house, she answers. But it didn’t land. It hovered up over and they raised me.”

  Callaghan dropped his glass and spilled gin over his lap. He made no attempt to dry himself before refilling the glass.

  “Damn if by now but I’m just thinking about getting her to a hospital. I try to humor her. I asked her how they raised her? Did they use a rope?”

  “I floated, she says. I floated up into it. And they took my clothing. I couldn’t see them. Only a light that blinded me.

  “Sudden-like she wants to know where we are. I nod out the windows and tell her those are the lights of Jersey City.

  “They took me, she says, they took me from Cape Cod. I was walking alone on the beach. I heard this sound. A hum overhead and I couldn’t run. I looked up and it was like a cloud coming down over me.

  “Ma’am, I tell her, what were you doing in Cape Cod in November?

  “She and her husband like it there, and she claims they were on a honeymoon. Damn to hell if her husband don’t back her up on a lot of this nonsense she’s talking.

  “Okay, ma’am, so what else happens to you in this big cloud?”

  “It was like a medical examination. They had instruments. But they weren’t cold. Or metallic like ours are. They were warm. Almost alive. They put it inside of me.

  “Put what?

  “Instruments, tubes.

  “Then she glances at the clock on the dashboard. It was a little after ten-thirty. She says, It seemed to last so long. But it was only after ten when I went out for my walk.

  “I reminded her that Cape Cod is a bit of a distance from Jersey City. Her husband backed her story. But damn if it don’t always look to me like some crazy woman just couldn’t handle getting fucked. She said it was her honeymoon. Probably got a look at the guy’s whanger and ran off. Never did, though, never learned how she got from the Cape to the Jersey Sound.

  “That’s about the story, Nickelby. She talked some more ’bout their warm instruments. I dropped at the hospital and made out my report. I half ’spected her to make some charges against me. She never did.”

  Callaghan’s head flopped down and he began to snore. Nicholas went over to him and shook him.

  “What happened next? What kind of investigation did you do on her story?”

  The old man waved his arms. “Nothing to investigate. The husband backed her story and she never give us no descriptions. Few weeks and the hospital released her. Only one thing I know for sure.”

  Nicholas had to shake him awake again.

  “What!” he demanded. “What do you know for sure?”

  “For all her crazy talk. Naked and crazy. She wasn’t raped.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Doctor examined her. No sem’nal fluid.”

  Nicholas stood on shaky legs. The heat and smell and the effort of putting together the old man’s story had exhausted him. He whispered his thoughts: “Judith Phillips had a child nearly nine months later to the day.”

  Callaghan’s eyes opened and clouded with suspicion. “Wasn’t me. That why you come here? Look me up and accuse me of a thing like that. It was probably one of them nut doctors in the hospital who bagged her.”

  “I don’t think it was a doctor. And I don’t think it was you, Callaghan.”

  “I was a straight cop. Nothing wrong in thirty years and you come here, accuse me of something like that. You go now.”

  The detective drove with the car windows open. The wet night air woke him, but during all of his long drive Nicholas’s stomach jumped with nervous excitement.

  A police shield, especially a New York City shield, doesn’t carry much weight in the mental ward of a Jersey hospital at 4 A.M. But a twenty-dollar bill does.

  The male nurse who brought Nicholas the thin file on Judith Phillips watched that the detective took nothing.

  There was little to take.

  Judith Phillips had been admitted and held six weeks for psychiatric examination. Medical examination at time of admission showed she had not been raped. She had a few minor bruises. It was believed that her initial confusion was due at least in part to wandering nude in the cold November air. There had never been tests given for pregnancy.

  ELEVEN

  The Deputy Commissioner’s long face had the look of thin crystal about to shatter from an icy cold. He stared at the two detectives sitting across from him, his eyes moving between the men in unctuous appraising glides.

  Nicholas was speaking. “Listen to me, sir. A child was born of that union. Bernard Phillips. I’ve checked the birth records. I checked the—”

  “Settle down, Lieutenant.” The manner in which Nicholas was handling himself was enough to cause Hendriks to question the detective’s sanity. Erratic gestures. A voice rising to peaks of excitement, then falling. “You have been working hard. You have recently taken serious wounds. I am going to recommend you take a leave.”

  “A child was born! And it wasn’t a human being. It was special.”

  “Lieutenant.”

  “It may even have been born as a kind of God.”

  The Deputy Commissioner’s eyes narrowed. It was always a shame to see a good officer go off the deep end. He clucked his tongue against his cheek, then spoke with an oily compassion:

  “Please, Lieutenant. I am trying to be reasonable about this situation. I would, however, appreciate it if you manage not to add heresy to your science-fiction.”

  “I am going to prove it! Prove it as a scientific fact.”

  Hendriks pointed a bony finger at Nicholas. “Quite enough.” He turned his attention to Detective Jordan. “You. What do you have to say?”

  Jordan’s shoulders moved in a small shrug of discomfort. “Sir, I tend to go along with you.”

  “And just to where did you have in mind that we should go along together?”

  “What I mean to say, sir. Like you, I think the lieutenant needs a rest.”

  “Very astute.” Hendriks looked at the round, red, overfed face of the detective. He thought he spotted a slight smirk, and he felt a sense of loathing and betrayal. Nicholas, while a sad wreck, had at least provided Hendriks with a means to extricate himself from the absurd special assignment into which he’d allowed himself to be talked. But there were no mental explanations for Jordan’s behavior in this affair. “About yourself, Detective Jordan. How are you feeling? I believe you went along with this . . . this . . .” and his hand fluttered above his desk as he tried thinking of a phrase for Nicholas’s latest report.

  Nicholas said, “I kept him in the dark, sir. He didn’t know what I was—”

  “Well, Jordan?” the Deputy Commissioner again silenced Nicholas.

  “To be honest, sir, I—”

  “I expect honesty, Jordan.”

  “There were strange coincidences, sir. I thought a man of the lieutenant’s experience should be given every chance.”

  Nicholas leaped from his chair and leaned over the desk.

  “Listen! Maybe Bernard Phillips doesn’t realize his power. I try to make myself believe he’s still finding out about himself. He’s only twenty-one. Learning,
flexing his muscles. I don’t want to believe he’s really cruel.”

  Jordan pulled the lieutenant back into his chair. Jordan bent down near Nicholas and spoke quietly and calmly. Meanwhile, the Deputy Commissioner reached into a desk drawer and pressed a small button which activated a tape recorder.

  Nicholas spoke somewhat more softly.

  “I’m only trying to understand what goes on in Bernard Phillips’ mind. How he sees himself. He must see himself as God. At least his victims recognize him as God.”

  The Deputy Commissioner pressed an intercom button. “Come in here with your steno pad. Bring another person.”

  When the stenographer and a witness had entered the office, Hendriks said, “Detective Lieutenant Peter Nicholas, I would appreciate if you would repeat, calmly repeat, what you’ve been telling me.”

  While Nicholas spoke, Hendriks wore a sad and pensive expression and rubbed his thin nose.

  Detective Jordan kept his eyes on the floor. He, too, had concluded that Peter Nicholas had taken the big step, but he didn’t like what was happening. Didn’t like Hendriks’ sleazy maneuverings, nor the grotesque, shambling spectacle Nicholas was making of himself.

  “In 1954 a woman, Judith Phillips, was abducted and taken aboard some extraterrestrial vehicle. A very ordinary woman, only recently married. She was on the vehicle approximately thirty minutes. That is, thirty minutes of earth time. She was examined and artificially inseminated. Nine months later she had a child. A son. From the day of that birth the Phillips family was never the same. Even as an infant, Bernard controlled them. They cut off all outside relationships, saw no one. The father sold his small accounting firm. That sale and a small inheritance had just about run out at the time of his death. The parents devoted every waking moment to the care of their child. They never had another. The child never went to school. Never associated with other children. He was shielded from view. Where or how he was educated I haven’t determined. Quite probably he didn’t require education. The parents killed themselves when their usefulness was ended. Or maybe the eleven-year-old Bernard Phillips told them to.”