Scarborough was about to take umbrage at this, but then Davis walked back into the room, carrying a tray with coffee, milk, sugar, spoons, cups and saucers, and an assortment of cookies.
“I thought I’d bring in the whole business, just in case anyone changes their mind. Help yourself, Doctor. I intend to have a cup myself after you.”
Scarborough poured himself a cup of coffee and dumped some milk in it, forgoing the sugar. He drank the steaming stuff and then looked squarely at his host.
“So here we are, Davis. I don’t suppose you can call up your Mr. X or whoever he is and let me speak to him.”
“I wish I could. It’s him that calls me, Doctor, if I may remind you... And not very often at that...”
“But if we’re here for a reason... then maybe he’ll give you a jingle, hmmm?” It was Scarborough’s tum to ladle on the sarcasm. It was mostly for Marsha and Jake’s benefit, but Marsha had drifted off into a pleasant boozy reverie and Jake seemed terribly engrossed in first editions of Gnome Press science fiction novels.
Davis, however, heard it and did not let it pass. “You know, Doctor, for a man whose life has fallen apart, you certainly retain your old... ah... charm. This was one of the bones of contention between us, I believe. You refused to believe that anything so tacky as regular phone calls from an alien visitor should constitute a whole series of theories, indeed a whole career. And now it would seem that you’d welcome a phone call!”
“Look, fellow! You really don’t have to push my nose into it, okay?”
“I’m not pushing your nose anywhere. Merely requesting that you cease and desist with your habitual jibes!”
“Oh, and you aren’t dishing them out yourself! I need your help here, Davis, not your digs.”
“You have my help. But you must admit, you deserve the occasional reminder of the hell you put me through. Especially considering the present situation! You must admit, you do deserve it.” Davis smiled, a touch wickedly perhaps. “So I hope you’ll have a stiff upper lip while I feed you your medicine. All prescribed for your better mental, physical, and spiritual health, I quite assure you!”
Later, when Scarborough analyzed the scene, he realized that it was this “medicine” analogy that had tipped him over into the anger that caused what happened to occur.
Scarborough stood up and shook a finger at Davis. “Look, I’ll accept your help, but I don’t have to take your fucking insults, do you hear me?”
“Insults! I merely toy with language! Insults are too good for a bastard like you, Scarborough! I can’t imagine a reputable man like Jake Camden hanging around with a man of your questionable caliber. But then, apparently the Others have chosen you for some obscure reason for a special purpose... And so I’ll have to put up with your insidious arrogance!”
Things took on a white-hot fury inside Scarborough. Suddenly the past month melted away from him, and once more he was the battler of old, the charging knight of Truth and Dignity and Reason and Vengeance, fighting a tenacious and vicious opponent. “You certainly have little room to talk, you whining, sniveling snake! Granted, your story of phone calls from alien visitors may be true. And granted, you may seem to be sincere in wishing to help me, to please them and to further your own goals. But your nonfiction books and most of your fiction still is filled with bad writing, bad logic, and a truly warped view of the universe that cannot possibly be redeemed even by any truth about aliens and their plans. You may well have secured a dubious place in history for your efforts, Davis, just as I have. But your books will live on in literary infamy—unless, of course, the world and literature does itself a favor and forgets you entirely!”
“Everett!” snapped Marsha in a considerably sobered voice. “Have a care!”
“I’ll say!” said Camden. “Slow down there, boy. This guy is helping to save our fannies!”
“That’s all right. A leopard can’t change his spots. The man’s a blowhard and always will be a blowhard,” said Davis, frowning. “But I must say, Doctor, I truly do not appreciate criticism of my novels coming from a man who only reads Mac Mackenzie shoot-em-up blood-porn!”
“Don’t you dare say a thing about my dead friend!”
“Write by gun, die by gun, I suppose,” said Davis lightly.
Scarborough lost it. He hurled himself toward Davis, throwing out a clumsy blow. Fortunately, Davis was ready for the move and stepped away before the roundhouse could do any damage. Camden jumped in and grabbed Scarborough before he could attempt to rearrange Davis’s face again.
“There, there,” said Davis, laughing. “Temper, temper, Scarborough.”
“I should have decked you years ago!”
“A resort to physical violence. How wonderful, logical, and scientific! Survival of the fittest!”
“Let me go, Jake,” said Scarborough, fighting at the restraint. “Let me do the world a favor by smashing that smug face!”
“Go ahead, let him go, Jake. I’m not in bad shape. This could be interesting!” said Davis, raising up his fists.
“No!” said Marsha, weaving a little uncertainly as she stood up from the couch. “Don’t let him go, Jake. Stop it this instant, both of you. You’re behaving like a little boy, Everett!”
Her shrill words slapped across Scarborough’s anger and staunched it somewhat, allowing him to gain control of the physical part of the anger.
However, he was still furious.
He took a deep, long breath.
“You’re right. God, I don’t know what came over me.”
“Years of enmity perhaps,” said Davis visibly relaxing.
“Yes. I’m sorry. You shouldn’t have said those things, though... I’m sorry... I’ll accept your help, but I can’t stay in your house.” He turned to Marsha. “Marsha, come on. We’ll stay out in the Winnebago tonight.”
“I’ll do no such thing, Everett! I’ve got a nice comfortable bed to sleep in tonight. I’m not going to give it up just because of a childish feud!” She sat back down on the couch, folding her arms resolutely. “Do what you like; I’m staying here.”
“Very well. Jake, I guess I can’t talk you into making a statement.”
“I’ll make a statement, all right. My butt’s nice and cozy here, Scarb. But I think maybe it’s a good idea if you took a walk and cooled down. Glad you came in, but maybe you should go.”
“I see. Well, I guess I’m alone in this then.”
“You’re not alone, Ev!” said Marsha.
“I’m certainly not withdrawing my help,” said Davis. “Damn your eyes, but let me do the damning! Stay if you like, hard feelings or no.”
“No, thank you. I can tell when I’m not wanted.”
And without further ado, Everett Scarborough marched out of the house, slamming the door behind him.
Chapter 13
Blast him, anyway!
When Everett Scarborough stalked out of Lowell Davis’s house, leaving the echoes of an angrily slammed door behind, Marsha Manning felt the strong need for another drink.
It wasn’t as though she wasn’t aware that she’d had quite a few drinks already; in fact, a mild voice in the back of her head suggested that maybe she should stop drinking, period. However, the annoyance she felt with Scarborough’s performance tonight, together with the fogging of her faculties by the previous drinks and the alcohol’s insidious urging, Hey! Just one more won’t hurt! broke any resistance.
So when Lowell Davis said, “Goodness. I think I’m going to have to have another drink after that little display. Anybody care to join me,” Marsha beat Jake Camden in offering him her glass.
Davis refreshed it gladly.
“I’m so... sorry that happened,” she said, allowing the fresh sips to take her back to a more relaxed altitude. “You have to understand... Everett’s been through literal hell lately.”
“Yeah, but he didn’t have to be such a grump with my bud Davis!” said Camden.
“No problem, no problem. Perhaps it’s my fault. I shou
ldn’t have baited him so much... Some age-old altercations have a hard time dying, hmmm?”
They had coffee and cognac and tried to get back the convivial atmosphere they’d been enjoying before Scarborough came in. With Davis’s genial air and Camden’s natural jocularity to help, it wasn’t long before Marsha was feeling just fine, thank you. Nor was it long before she forgot all about Scarborough, grumping around again back in the Winnebago.
What the hell was wrong with the man, anyway? No wonder his daughter had had such a hard time with him. He certainly could be bullheaded and stubborn, no question about that! You would have thought that by now, with all he’d been through, he would be grateful to Lowell Davis for offering to help, for perhaps presenting the key to this whole business. But no... the core of Scarborough’s personality still remained... a hard stubbornness, an unwillingness to let go... Well, perhaps that was what had allowed him to survive this long. Still, you’d have thought he’d be able to control his anger with a current benefactor…
And indeed, a quite remarkable one, it would seem. Marsha had to admit that she was quite taken with this man, this Lowell Davis. He was eloquent, he was smart, and he had a tantalizing civilized sexiness about him that not only captured her imagination, but inflamed her curiosity. He was so much unlike the other men in her life and yet she was definitely attracted to him. She liked the lilting tenor of his voice; she liked his assertive yet eloquent manner; she liked his cologne and whatever personal pheromones boosted its power. She liked the way he dressed; she loved his house, even though she wasn’t a science fiction sort; and, most of all, she liked the way he looked. Now here was a guy, she thought fairly drunkenly, who was actually her type. Much more her type than Scarborough. God alone knew what had drawn her to Scarborough. Oh yes, it was deep—very deep, something fundamental... And he certainly wasn’t just a father figure to her. No, their sex together had indicated much more than that. However, deep as it was, and as attracted as they had been to each other from the very beginning (though of course they’d been loath to admit it), she’d never, ever thought of Scarborough as her type. No, truth to be told, Lowell Davis, still youthful and with a young man’s vigor and self-confidence, was physically much more her style.
And also, there were all the nice things he said to her, the compliments, the attention... It made her feel so appreciated, so extremely feminine, so amused, and yet at the same time so warm and musky-feeling inside.
In short, he turned her on.
There was a stone fireplace in the living room, and since the night had cooled off considerably, Davis built a wood fire. This crackled and snapped and flickered agreeably as they continued their discussions. They talked and talked and talked. They drank and drank and drank.
Camden talked the most and he drank the most. Marsha found that the coffee rounded off the edges of the alcohol sufficiently so that she stayed pleasantly lifted, but not too drunk, as she listened to Davis and Camden swap wild and woolly UFO tales. After all the seriousness that she’d gone through, and Everett Scarborough’s total somberness and sobriety on the matter, the stories and lampoons of the crazier people that they had met seemed a great relief to her; they took her mind off the absurd scariness of her situation, putting it on the sheer absurdity of the whole business.
Finally, both Davis and Camden took turns in telling the story of a writer buddy they had in common—a man named Tom Monteleone.
“Oh yeah, Tom, the ‘Italian Battalion!’” Camden said after they both settled down from whoops of laughter at the very mention of the man. “Now there’s a classic UFO story!”
“Monteleone? Isn’t he a well-known horror author?”
“Yes, and a damned fine writer as well,” asserted Davis. “Started out writing science fiction but left it for better-paying pastures. Terrific guy—tells wonderful stories... but I think my absolute favorite is his UFO story!”
Camden stood and launched into the story, utilizing dramatic gestures for punctuation. “Picture a college dorm in the late sixties. University of Maryland. A psychology major is listening to a radio call-in show with his buddies. On the show, one Claude Derenberger is being interviewed. Now this goof claims to have been picked up by aliens and transported via flying saucer to the planet Lanulus. There he was given a guided tour, he claimed. Now, doubtless the students had been drinking beer—it was, after all, a Friday night—and doubtless our intrepid psychology major—you guessed it, Tom Monteleone—had had a few brews himself. He hops up and cries, ‘Watch this, guys!’ Then he goes to the next room and calls the radio show. ‘Hey fellow!’ he tells Derenberger. ‘I don’t believe this—I got picked up by aliens as well. And they took me to Lanulus too! Did you see the gigantic pyschoelectronic transmission towers on the Canubic continent?’ Without missing a beat, Derenberger says, ‘Right! I saw those!’ So Monteleone pulls a whole long weird tale right out of his ass about Lanulus. The Firefalls of Nardvark, the Electronic nose-picking machines of the Bug People. Derenberger agrees to everything. Great astonishment on the part of the radio show host. At the end of the show, he calls Tom, says, ‘Mr. Monteleone. How would you like to be on the show next week and give the FULL story of your abduction by aliens?’ Tom, he says, ‘Sure, why not?’”
“What tremendous balls that must have taken!” said Marsha.
“Oh yes. Monteleone can bullshit... maybe even better than I can!” Camden seemed astonished by the very thought, eyes wide in admiration of the man.
“I’m sure we don’t have all the facts straight here,” said Davis, chuckling and shaking his head in wry amusement. “But to make a long story a little shorter, Tom went on the radio show, which actually had a national syndication pickup, and if anything his story was even wilder than before. It was much more mysterious and sinister than before, as he told how he was approached by mysterious entities who would see him ‘In Time’ before he was finally shown to a spaceship and given an extradimensional hop to Lanulus. Now of course this was all a great lark for Tom and his friends, and the beginning of a significant career in the lands of imagination. However, Tom had absolutely no idea of what he was getting into!”
“Let me tell you, Walter Mashkin was a nice guy, pretty reasonable guy, as far as saucer aficionados go,” said Camden, “but some of these guys can be pretty loony! The broadcast of Monteleone’s story made waves in the UFO world—and a succession of flying saucer ‘investigators’ paraded through Monteleone’s life, getting him to retell and often making him embroider his story.”
“A true ‘Confederacy of Dunces,’” said Davis.
“Including Everett Scarborough?”
“No, that particular dunce wisely gave Monteleone a wide berth—though he did write an amusing chapter in one of his books on the guy, I do believe.”
“But how long could a student continue this kind of story?”
“Monteleone is an amazingly resourceful fellow. However, what with the oddballs coming to see him regularly, he did get a bit tired of it. But then, things got a little strange. John Keel came to see him.”
“An investigator?”
“Keel? Oh, yeah,” said Camden. “One of the best. And with some of the strangest but most interesting theories about the UFOs.”
“Which I respect but can’t believe,” said Davis. “But he did alarm Monteleone a great deal.”
“Tom gave him the whole story. But by this time he was always telling an item of truth. You see, when he was a high school student, Tom had actually seen an Unidentified Flying Object above a deserted field outside his hometown of Baltimore while riding in his car. He told this to Keel, and he also told a story about strange men who had come to interview him driving in a black Cadillac. The car was an older model, but inside, it had smelled new. Other details about the encounter made Keel shake his head and say, ‘You know, at first I thought that you were just a wiseass college student playing a prank. But some of these details you’ve given me are not known by the general public. In fact, I use them as earmarks
of genuine contact with UFO phenomena!’ “
Camden tossed back the rest of his drink and nodded. “Boy, that sure threw Monteleone for a loop, I can tell you! Especially years later when Whitley Streiber called him before the Communion story hit, told him his bizarre experiences, and suggested that Tom in reality hadn’t been hoaxing anyone, that things had happened to him, things that had been buried under screen memories. Whatever the situation, Tom got written up in a couple of Keel’s UFO books.”
“A mere paranoid sidelight of what is otherwise most certainly low-order comedy,” Davis chimed in. “Later, Monteleone was asked to speak at a UFO conference. It was only when he was confronted by a hotel full of strange folk, some wearing aluminum foil antennae headgear with which they claimed to be receiving messages from extraterrestrials, that it was simply too much for him. He left the convention and refused any further contact or interviews with the UFO world. It was only later that he wrote a play about the subject as well as an article for Omni on the experience.”
Marsha nodded. “That is a good story. I’d like to meet this Monteleone fellow.”
Davis’s eyes traveled down her attractive face and figure. “And knowing Monteleone, I’m certain he’d like to meet a beautiful woman like you!”
“You’re such a flatterer. You know, Jake warned me about you!”
“That’s rather like the pot calling the kettle black. But you know, come to think of it, Marsha, would you like to come up and look at the stars with me on my telescope platform?”
“Well, I suppose I could use some fresh air.”
“Jake? Would you like to chaperone?”
“Naw,” said Jake, looking decidedly drunk and slurring his words considerably. “I think I’ll just stay here, guard those bottles, and tend this fire.”
“As you wish, my friend,” said Davis. “Marsha, you’ll probably need a coat. It’s a bit chilly outside, I think. I think I can spare you a snug little jacket.”
The UFO Conspiracy Trilogy Page 87
