sedona files - books one to three

by Christine Pope

  Lance shrugged. “Just wait until you see the Christmas festival at Tlaquepaque.”

  “Orbs are old hat to you, huh?”

  “Maybe.” He turned away and gazed out through the darkness, but the only light in evidence was the glow from the town itself, a few miles away from where they stood. “It’s exciting the first couple of times, maybe, but they don’t actually do anything. No one’s really made any contact with them. We’re not even sure if they’re intelligences or not, or maybe some sort of advanced observation device. But at least they give Kara and Kiki something to show off to people besides UFOs.”

  Paul nodded. “Reminds me of the dolphins.”

  Lance raised an eyebrow, and even Michael’s normally placid features took on a confused cast.

  “When I was a kid my parents took me to Southern California one summer.” Paul set the SLR inside its camera bag but didn’t zip it closed — in case any more orbs showed up, Lance decided. “We went on a whale-watching trip, but we didn’t see any whales. The tour operators made a big deal of pointing out the dolphins, though…sort of a consolation prize, I suppose. I was just saying the orbs are Kara’s backup in case the UFOs are a no-show.”

  “Which means she’s been doing a lot of orb tours, I guess.” Lance knew there was nothing to see, but somehow he couldn’t keep himself from glancing up into the black sky, instinctively checking to see if any of those pinpoints of light had decided to move in a way contrary to the laws of physics.

  A low chuckle. “It hasn’t been a good summer for UFO tours, that’s for sure. Persephone’s gotten an earful.”

  “Kara wants to blame it on Persephone,” Michael added.

  A little unfair, maybe, but not exactly untrue, either. After all, if it weren’t for Persephone O’Brien…sorry, Persephone Oliver, the base up at Secret Canyon would still be humming along just fine. But with its corps of hybrid soldiers decimated and the alien-possessed humans who had been running the show deader than high-country grass, the base had gone completely quiet. None of the UFO hunters had dared to go back into Secret Canyon to see what, if anything, was happening there, but the conspicuous lack of UFO activity over the past few months seemed to indicate the aliens had taken a powder for the time being.

  But because the topic of Kara Swenson was a sketchy one, for a variety of reasons, Lance settled for making a noncommittal noise. It certainly didn’t help having the Olivers around as the perfect portrait of newly married bliss. Sure, give them a few more months, and they’d most likely degenerate into the petty sniping and bickering most couples of his acquaintance indulged in. In the meantime, though, the situation had only heightened the tension between him and Kara.

  Most of the time he did a pretty good job of not thinking about Kara’s expectations. Over the past few years they’d settled into a more or less friendly déténte. He would allow himself to admit that he liked her and enjoyed her company, and no more. Of course, he knew he was fooling himself, and lately he’d been having traitorous thoughts about saying the hell with it and confessing that his indifference had only been an act…but he wasn’t quite there. Yet.

  His tone was a little harsher than he’d intended when he said, “Kara needs to understand that there are greater things at stake than her bank account.”

  Michael raised an eyebrow, and Paul suddenly found something fascinating in the sky to the northeast. At first Lance thought he was just intentionally avoiding having to make a comment, but as Paul continued to stare upward, Lance tilted his head as well to see what had drawn his attention.

  It hovered in the night sky, a flat-black triangle that blotted out the stars. Lights shimmered along one edge, then the other. With a rumble Lance felt in his bones rather than heard, it moved slowly on its axis so it faced due north, then shot upward at an angle that should have been impossible.

  For a long moment none of them said anything. Finally Paul remarked, “Looks like they’re back.”

  * * *

  One agonizing sip at a time. That was all the water Kara could manage to get into the stranger. Each time he swallowed, he coughed, and she had to wait for the spasm to pass before she could tip the paper cup — she’d decided not to risk one of her glasses for this procedure — against his cracked lips and dribble a little more of the precious fluid into his mouth.

  Somehow she’d managed to push him up against the couch so he was more or less upright. Although she knew that logically she should have picked up the phone and called 911 so an ambulance could take him to the hospital, something seemed to prevent her from doing so, had made her walk right past the cell phone on the dining room table and instead go to the kitchen to pour some bottled water into a Dixie cup.

  Now she knelt next to the stranger and continued to coax the water down his throat, knowing he needed it more than anything, but also knowing that too much would only make him sick.

  He shut his eyes, lashes incongruously dark and thick against the sunburned, flaking skin on his cheeks. She’d need to hit him with about a gallon of moisturizer after she was done hydrating him.

  This was crazy. She’d never had any fantasies of playing Florence Nightingale or Clara Barton, so why the hell was she sitting here, patiently giving him water in dribs and drabs, when he’d broken into her home?

  All right, so maybe he hadn’t done much of the “breaking,” but he’d definitely entered her home without her permission. In a way it made sense — hers was the house at the end of the cul-de-sac, and if he’d wandered in off the desert, naturally he would have gone to the building closest to the open land. Still…

  “What’s your name?”

  He shook his head. Whether that meant he still couldn’t speak or didn’t want to tell her, Kara couldn’t say for sure. Resigned, she tipped a bit more water down his throat. At least this time he didn’t cough. That was a good sign. She lifted the cup to his lips again and let him drink the last of the water in the cup.

  “How’s your stomach?” she asked. “Do you feel nauseated?”

  Another shake of the head.

  The man was obviously tougher than he looked. She wondered how long he’d been wandering around out there in the heat and the sun. Temperatures had been hovering just below the century mark for the past few days.

  “Let’s try some Gatorade. Gotta replace those electrolytes.”

  She pushed herself up to a standing position and went to the kitchen. Although generally she thought it pretty nasty, the sports drink did come in handy for the times she overdid it in the heat, and so she always kept some around.

  After pulling another cup out of the dispenser and filling it halfway with Gatorade, she returned to the living room. The stranger didn’t seem to have moved, although she noticed Gort had lain down next to him, as if to keep watch while she was in the kitchen. The dog whined a little as she approached, then cocked his head.

  “Your guess is as good as mine, Gort,” she said, and knelt down next to the man and directed her next words at him. “I hope you like raspberry.”

  He didn’t move, so Kara decided to take that as a “yes.” Once again she lifted the cup to his mouth, but he surprised her by reaching up with one hand and wrapping his fingers around the fragile little Dixie cup.

  “Got it,” he told her. His voice was barely more than a raspy whisper, but at least he’d said something. That was a start.

  “No problem,” she replied, and watched as he greedily drank down the Gatorade. “More?”

  He nodded. “Please.”

  She gave him what she hoped was an encouraging smile and went back to the kitchen once again. This time she got out a plastic cup left over from one of the MUFON meetings she’d held at the house, and filled it with the Gatorade. After that, he’d probably want something more substantial. Maybe some soup? She had a few cartons of some interesting organic stuff from her last pilgrimage to the Trader Joe’s in Prescott. Sedona was wonderful, but it could be somewhat lacking in the shopping department, and she made a habit of go
ing over to Prescott at least once a month to stock up on the things she couldn’t get in town.

  When she returned to the living room, she noticed at once that the stranger had pulled himself more upright so he wasn’t quite as slumped against the front of the couch. Luckily, it was leather; if he left any grime on it, she should be able to wipe it off more or less easily.

  “Here you go.”

  He took the cup from her and drank down the Gatorade — not greedily, but in even, measured swallows, as if gauging exactly how much he needed to take in at a time for the greatest benefit. Once he was done, he handed the cup back to her. “Thank you.”

  Although he looked like about a hundred miles of back road — and smelled even worse — there was something about him that seemed calm and efficient, two words she generally wouldn’t use to describe the desert rats one saw around town. He didn’t seem to fit the type. It was more like he’d suffered some accident, some catastrophe that had left him stranded in some of the most inhospitable country in the world.

  “What’s your name?” she asked.

  A blank, pale stare, followed by a shake of the head. His eyes were a startling green against the sun-ravaged skin. “I don’t have one.”

  Maybe he was a little more addled by the sun than she’d thought. “You mean you don’t remember?” She’d heard of cases like that — people wandering in the heat and the sun until it cooked the memories right out of their brains. But he seemed a lot more lucid than that.

  “No. I don’t have a name.”

  It was probably best to humor him. “Okay, Kaspar.”

  His head tilted slightly.

  “Kaspar Hauser,” she explained. “A young man who appeared out of nowhere. He — " She broke off at the look of confusion on the stranger’s face. “Never mind. We can save the history lessons for later. How about some soup?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She essayed a half-hearted smile before heading to the pantry. Well, he might be a wacko, but at least he was a polite one. Luckily, the soup was the type you could just pour out of a carton into a bowl; a minute in the microwave, and it was ready. She used a pot holder to pull it out, dropped a spoon into it, and went back to the living room.

  The stranger hadn’t moved, but Kara noticed at once that one hand now rested on Gort’s head, fingers just barely stroking the soft fur between his ears. The man had an odd, bemused expression on his face, as if he hadn’t been quite sure what the dog’s coat would feel like. Gort’s eyes were half-closed. Clearly whatever misgivings he’d had about the stranger had evaporated as soon as he realized the man was willing to participate in ear-scratching.

  Green eyes looked at her questioningly as she approached with the soup.

  “It’s roasted pepper corn chowder,” she offered, and held out the bowl to the man.

  He took it in both hands, sniffed once, then nodded and took up the spoon. Although she guessed he must be starving, he ate neatly if quickly, with no slurping or dripping. Within a minute he’d cleaned out the bowl pretty thoroughly.

  “More?” she asked, trying not to sound resigned. Most of the time she didn’t keep her pantry all that well-stocked, since she lived alone. More often than not she ate takeout down at the shop because she didn’t have the time to do anything else. If the stranger stayed with her for any length of time, he’d end up eating her out of house and home.

  Well, that was assuming a lot. Her intention had only been to get him hydrated, get a little food in him, clean him up, and send him on his way.

  “If it’s not too much trouble.”

  “No trouble at all.” She took the bowl from him and went to refill it, ignoring Gort’s pleading doggy eyes. Her fault that she’d spoiled the dog by giving him more table scraps than she should. She knew he was expecting to get the bowl to lick, but she wasn’t going to do that in front of the stranger. God knows what he’d think of her.

  The second bowl didn’t disappear quite as quickly as the first, but the man still made short work of it nonetheless. With some food in him, he looked — well, maybe not exactly better, but the sheen of sweat had disappeared from his brow, and his eyes seemed a little more alert.

  What he really needed was a hot shower and a change of clothes. She’d have to hope he could manage the former on his own, because she drew the line at sponge baths. Clean clothes — well, he was taller and slimmer than her grandfather had been, but she still had an old foot locker with some clothing items she hadn’t quite been ready to get rid of. Anything would be better than the foul-smelling, ragged jumpsuit he had on.

  “Can you stand?” she asked.

  He seemed to consider, then set the bowl on the floor and pushed himself upward. Gort immediately set to on the empty soup bowl, and Kara somehow managed to refrain from sighing. At least the stranger didn’t seem to notice, probably because he was too busy trying to keep his balance. He swayed for a second, but then seemed to regain his equilibrium.

  Standing, he was even taller than she had thought. She wasn’t short, standing a little more than five-seven in her bare feet, but the top of her head barely reached his chin.

  Somehow that height seemed a little intimidating. She looked away from him, down the hallway. “How about a hot shower?”

  “Yes, please,” he replied. Something that might have been the beginnings of a smile touched his cracked lips. “I smell terrible.”

  She bit back a smile of her own. “Follow me.”

  Fortunately, the ranch-style house had two bathrooms, one as part of a suite in the master bedroom, and the other only a few steps down the hall, between the living room and the other two bedrooms. Since it was the bath designated for guest use, she made sure it was always stocked with clean towels. And because it had been Kiki’s bathroom before she moved out, there were still a few bottles of shampoo and some soap in the caddy in the shower.

  “Here you go,” she told the stranger, after she reached into the room and flipped on the overhead light/fan combo. “There are towels, and shampoo and soap. I’m going to see if I can rustle up some clean clothes for you.”

  He watched her for a second, and nodded. “Thank you.”

  In reply, she only lifted her shoulders, then went on down the hall toward the spare bedroom — which in actuality was more of a storage room and general dumping ground. Behind her she heard the door to the bathroom shut, and a short time later the water came on.

  She hadn’t bothered to tell him about her inadequate hot water heater, figuring he’d know it was time to wrap things up when the water began to get tepid. Still, she knew he could probably get a good fifteen to twenty minutes of decent showering before the hot water supply began to dwindle. Plenty of time to find something for him to wear.

  The foot locker was the one her grandfather brought back from Korea, and so it had seemed fitting to use it to store the things she couldn’t quite bear to give away to Goodwill: the most obnoxious of Grandpa’s beloved Hawaiian shirts, some well-worn chinos, the package of underwear he’d bought only a few weeks before he died. He’d never even opened it.

  Even now the sight of those things made her throat close up a little, although it had been six years since her grandfather passed away. Resolutely, she reached in and pulled out the least garish of the Hawaiian shirts, the pale blue one with the dark blue and red hibiscus flowers all over it, along with a pair of pants and the package of underwear. Coiled at one side was a belt, and she picked that up, too. Maybe the stranger could pull it to the tightest notch to keep the pants from sliding down.

  She wondered then what her grandfather would think if he saw her now, calmly raiding his old clothes for some stranger who’d wandered in off the desert. Grandpa would have probably taken it in stride, actually. He’d always been the open-minded one of the family, whereas she…

  Temporary insanity, she decided. The only possible explanation.

  Back in college, her nickname had been “Careful Kara.” Kara, the one who would only allow herself a single
drink at frat parties, who collected keys and drove her drunk friends home. Careful Kara, who never pulled an all-nighter to finish a term paper or hooked up with guys at parties. People had teased her, even as they took advantage of her perpetual designated-driver status. She’d never bothered to explain why. Who wanted to hear about a mother who took off when her children were eleven and three, a mother who left her eldest daughter thinking she had to be responsible for her little sister and everyone else around her?

  Careful Kara, who was now running a UFO shop and conducting tours to see orbs and the occasional passing spaceship. Life could definitely throw you some curve balls.

  Mouth thinning a little, she piled up the clothes, then stood. The clock over the daybed ticked away. Almost ten o’clock. She kept late hours, especially if she had a UFO tour lined up, but it had been a long day. And if she was tired, she could only imagine how the stranger must feel.

  No pajamas were forthcoming from the trunk, but shoved away on the top shelf of her own closet were a pair of men’s sweats that had somehow gotten mixed up with her stuff when she and Alan divided their household, just before she’d come back to Sedona to take care of her grandfather. God knows why the sweat pants hadn’t ended up in the charity donations, but they would do well enough for the stranger to sleep in. A T-shirt was easy; she had stacks sitting on the daybed, just waiting for her to silk-screen them and take them down to the shop.

  Since the spare bedroom was a disaster, he’d either have to sleep on the couch or in Kiki’s old room. The latter made more sense, although Kara somehow felt as if she was defiling her sister’s space by letting the man sleep there. Silly, really. Kiki had moved out almost a year ago. It wasn’t as if she needed that bed.

  The room was more or less untouched, as Kara hadn’t quite been able to bring herself to convert it to a second office or studio the way Kiki kept urging her to. The bright turquoise walls glared at her as Kara flipped on the light switch. God knows what Kiki had been thinking, going with that eye-searing combination of turquoise and lime green, but at least the space was clean and uncluttered, and the bed a queen, not the twin bed Kiki had slept on until her senior year of high school. There was no way the stranger could have ever squeezed himself into a mere twin.