Majestic

by Whitley Strieber

  Fortunately it wasn't hard to locate Jim and Kathy. Because of his visitor contact, Jim has been quietly monitored by the government for most of his life.

  The Collinses live in Everly, New Jersey, a small town near the Pennsylvania border. As I drove up from Maryland I expected to enter a devastation of refineries. I found farms and trees budding with spring, and a town of big old houses and wide porches.

  Jim is now sixty-one, Kathy sixty.

  They live in one of the big houses, and there is a swing on their wide porch. Kathy cultivates a wonderful garden and they make their own wine from the grapes grown on an arbor in the back. On the walls of their living room are large framed photographs of their children, and they have a friendly old dog named Horace. I found it all very annoying.

  They were at first extremely suspicious of me. I gave them the cover story that Will had recommended, that I was a new caseworker with the Agency and I just wanted to reconfirm some details. Given what I already knew about them, having read Jim's hypnosis and all the secret memoranda about the incident at Fort Bliss, I was entirely convincing.

  Once they were sure that I was genuine, they became warm, friendly and open.

  The Jim Collins who had never heard of any aliens and thought that flying saucers were "crazy" was transformed into a knowledgeable individual with considerable information about the visitors. His wife claimed ongoing contact, and suggested that some of their children were involved.

  What I wanted to know was whether or not Kathy had ever given a baby to the visitors. When I asked her, she grew furtive. I didn't quite understand, then. But I do now.

  Although shocked by my question, Jim and Kathy were fascinated that I wanted to know more about their personal relationship with the visitors. In all the years that they had been in contact with MAJIC, the secret group that controls human/alien affairs, they had never once been interviewed about this aspect. All of the other interviews had centered around the design and function of devices Jim had seen and touched. When he was lifted by the blue light, did he feel a tingling sensation? How hard had it been to insert the needles into the heads of his fellow soldiers? That sort of thing. MAJIC wanted to know how things worked, not what was being done with them.

  Typical shortsightedness, in my opinion. The problem with keeping things like this secret is that they are removed from the free market of ideas, and understanding proceeds at a much slower pace.

  I wanted to concentrate on Kathy's childbearing years. Why would the visitors want human children?

  I went to Everly expecting answers to some very weighty questions.

  I got Jim and Kathy. Even though their happy marriage and successful lives put me out a bit, I also found them a winning, charming couple. They were intelligent and full of humor.

  And they told me this story.

  Jim knew exactly what he wanted to do when his squad was granted compassionate leave just after the disappearance of Sweet Charlie.

  Obedient to the subliminal instructions of the others he rushed straight into the arms of Katherine O'Mally.

  He took the train to New Jersey with the explicit intention of asking Kathy to marry him. Since the night he'd fallen in love he'd been writing her a letter every couple of days.

  By the time he arrived home he had just three days left before he had to report to his new unit in Pennsylvania.

  He beat his most recent letters, so nobody knew he was coming. His own home was dark when the night train let him off. He went to Kathy's house and stood under the porch light nervously twirling his hat in his hands. Finally he gathered the nerve to ring the doorbell.

  And there she was, her hair up, her robe fluttering about her, her face shiny with night cream. He gaped, he couldn't help it. She was more beautiful than anybody he had ever seen in his life. She was even more beautiful than she herself had been when he last saw her.

  "Oh. My. God. Jim." Her voice was like a touch of air in the summer leaves.

  "Hey."

  "I'm a mess!"

  "Nah."

  "J-Jim—oh! Come in, come in!" She swept the door open. "Mom! Dad! Jim is here. Jim is here at home!"

  He entered the house, feeling huge. Everything seemed too delicate, chairs that you could sit right through, pictures that would fall off the wall if you so much as brushed them. A vase of white flowers on the hall table might wilt if you breathed your beery breath upon them.

  And it was so quiet! He was used to Army places now, green and gray and hard, full of loud guys who didn't know how to talk without dropping "fuckin' " or "cocksucker" at least three times into every sentence.

  The flowers were gardenias. He looked hard at them, as if trying to consume them with his eyes. Though he couldn't say it or even think it very clearly, the obscure hurt that filled his heart when their scent reached him was a dirge for all the Army had taken from him.

  Uncle Sam had stifled the little bit of poetry in him, but he didn't know that. He only knew that the gardenias were real nice.

  There were greetings then, Seamus O'Mally and his wife Angela meeting him halfway down the hall, and the embrace of his pipe-smelling and her Lanvin bodies. Then there was a lot of laughter and Kathy disappeared to put on a new face.

  "What about your folks?"

  "They—I'll—do you want me to come back later?"

  "No, son, but your mom would be glad to see you."

  He recalled his own dark front porch. "I think they're at the movies. That's what I think."

  "They didn't know you were coming?"

  "I just got leave—I guess I got here ahead of my letters."

  "Kathy didn't get a letter, she would have been singing the house down."

  He laughed nervously. He was no good at these conversations with the parents. All he wanted to do was talk about her. Kathy looks real nice. Kathy smiled when she saw me. Was she surprised!

  But he couldn't do that. That would be so incredibly embarrassing. He slid his hands along the tops of his legs. Seamus O'Mally lit his big Kaywoodie.

  "I think the Dutch are falling apart in the Far East," he said.

  Jim thought vaguely about the little boy who put his finger in the dike. The Dutch were in the Far East?

  Where? "Yeah," he said, to cover his ignorance.

  "The only empire that will survive the war is the British. The sun never sets on the British Empire. Except for India, sadly enough."

  "India," Jim said. "Gandhi. He's—I like him." He thought of the little Indian man in the newsreels. Jim knew a good man. "He's got a lot of good things to say."

  Seamus O'Mally stared at him, puffing slowly. Angie sipped her coffee, and he had the feeling that he'd just dropped his pants, somehow.

  And then all of a sudden here came Kathy. Lord, she was pretty! Her skin was glowing. He'd never seen such a glow. And the smoothness of her skin. He prayed to God to let him touch his lips to her skin and he said God, if you will help me to kiss her lips.

  He felt smiles in the air.

  She laughed. "Emmeneger's is open till ten now."

  "I thought they closed after supper."

  "Not anymore. You've been away too long. Everly is a big town now."

  "We got a Chevy dealership," Mr. O'Mally said. "Modern times have come to Everly."

  "Cab Calloway came to Newark," Kathy said. "I didn't go, but Jane Krebs said he would put his handkerchief to his nose. They weren't supposed to know what he was doing, but they all knew."

  "Hi-de-ho," Jim said.

  "What was he doing?" asked Mrs. O'Mally.

  "He was clearing his nose," her daughter replied.

  Jim realized that he was desperate. Never had he had intimate dealings with a girl. Never had he asked a virginal, pure American girl -

  His body was now thinking for him. "Let's go to the soda fountain, Kathy."

  She smiled. "I'd like to very much, Jim."

  "Don't forget your own folks," Mrs. O'Mally called after him.

  "I won't, ma'am. We won't be long."


  As they passed through the front hall Kathy took one of the gardenias from the vase and put it in her hair.

  They went out together, running in order to avoid Seamus O'Mally's sprinkler.

  They had been raised in the American middle class with its puritan traditions very much intact. You didn't make advances, let alone kiss a girl, except after a number of dates and a declaration of intent. You never

  "took advantage" by touching her in intimate places. And certainly you never, ever did that thing.

  Kathy and Jim went down to the end of the block, walking in the intoxicating scent of the gardenia.

  The odor calmed Jim and made Kathy seem familiar and accessible. They had a choice of walking around a small park or going through it. Jim didn't even ask; he led Kathy into the park. They passed up the first two benches, then found one in a more-or-less secluded corner. It was backed by a hedge, so that it could not be seen from the street. It overlooked the small pond at the center of the park.

  "Remember ice-skating," Jim said, "last winter?"

  "It seems so long ago."

  "My tour of duty is up—"

  "Don't say it. I don't want to think about all those months!"

  She remembered the strange dream she'd had of him. "I dreamed about you," she said. She did not say how real it had seemed, how she'd waked up thinking she'd really seen him ...

  "I dreamed about you, too. I'm not good at puttin' stuff in letters, though."

  "I got your letters."

  "What did you think?"

  She leaned her head against his shoulder. His hand stole into hers. She squeezed encouragingly and he gave her a kiss on the cheek.

  The other fellows' talk about their sexual exploits had amazed him. He would never talk about Kathy, but he wanted her more than ever. He understood his longing more clearly than he would have before his exposure to Army talk.

  He remembered the night he had fallen in love with her. It was the same night that Sweet Charlie had disappeared. He'd waken up that morning and realized that he loved the woman who now sat beside him.

  "I love you, Kath."

  There. It was said and so be it.

  "Oh, Jimmy, I love you too."

  He felt himself tremble all over and suddenly he had her in his arms and her lips were touching his. Then her lips opened and she let him into the secret contact of her mouth. Never before had he kissed a girl in this manner.

  It crossed his mind that he might be going too fast. Dutifully, he broke away. "Sorry."

  She sighed. "Last night I had another dream," she said. "I wasn't in my bed, I was somewhere else." She giggled a little. "I don't know if I should tell you this, but in my dream I was naked. Are you ever naked in your dreams?"

  He was almost unable to speak his reply. As soon as she had said the word "naked" his body had gone on fire. He had a boner so huge she must see it in his pants, even in the dark. "Y-yeah. I have been."

  "A beautiful child came to me in my dream. He was dressed all in white."

  A deep and distant chord sounded in Jim's mind. He felt vaguely sick.

  "This little boy had a wand. He waved it over me and dust came down on my body. Fairy dust. It was so beautiful and so clear, like it really happened. So I woke up thinking something good was going to happen today."

  "Did anything?"

  "Anything what?"

  "Did anything good happen today?"

  She laughed. "You came home."

  "Will you do what I said in my letter, Kat?"

  "Say it to me, Jimmy."

  "Marry me?"

  A flush entered her cheeks and her whole body became covered with dampness. This dampness melted certain particles that had been dusted on her in the night, and they released chemicals of subtle concoction, which reacted with her skin.

  She began to smell of an ancient and pure essence. Jim could not perceive this odor consciously but it affected his deepest self. He became almost mad with desire.

  He kissed her again, this time pushing against her, seeking to drive himself into her. "Oh, Jimmy," she gasped. "Jimmy, I will!"

  Kathy was frantic. She'd never felt like this before. She knew he had an erection. It took an intense effort not to reach out, to grasp it as if she was grabbing a lifeline. The earth seemed to be heaving beneath the bench, the grass, the hedges, and the trees to be sighing with their passion.

  Then she had an absolutely delicious, crazy idea. It would let her behold him, drink in the nakedness of him, at least that. "Let's go swimming in the pond," she whispered. And she thought: I'm crazy. I have gone crazy.

  He shuddered and she could not help brushing her wrist against him. Even that slight touch made him recoil as if slapped. He was so hard in there! They really got very hard!

  "We can't do that. It's—"

  "I did it years ago."

  "But we're not kids anymore." He crossed his legs.

  She planted a kiss on his lips. For a moment he resisted, then he could not resist. She was mysterious wine and she made him drunk with her sweetness.

  "We can undress in the hedge," he said.

  He could hardly believe what was happening. She was as hot as he was. Hotter. He got up, stiff-legged, and moved into the hedge behind the bench.

  Should he undress her? And what if they got caught. It wasn't even ten. People might come through the park.

  She turned away from him and dropped her head, presenting him the zipper of her blue frock.

  He unzipped it and it fell away from her pale skin, and from the workings of her brassiere. "Unhook it," she whispered. In the dark he couldn't see. He'd never encountered a hook and eye before.

  She reached back and unhooked it and it all fell away and suddenly she was naked above her waist. She turned around. He was awed, she could not be this beautiful. It was as if the very glow of life came out of her skin. She smelled like a rose, an angel, a baby. He drew near to her, hovering like a hawk above the leaping body of the mouse.

  She laughed a little. "These are buttons!" She was touching his pants.

  "GI issue. No zippers when buttons will do."

  She did not fumble with them. Her hands were deft. He almost collapsed when she pressed her fingers against him to gain purchase on the buttons. Rockets of sheer delight shot from the places where her fingers were in contact with him. She was touching it! Touching it!

  And then his pants were open. She unhooked his belt and they dropped to the ground. "Even the underpants are olive-drab." She giggled.

  "They look clean longer."

  "Look!" She knelt before him and kissed him, a little peck on the Gl-issue boxers. But in just the right place.

  "Come on, be brave," she said, "gentlemen first."

  A part of her told her quite calmly and rationally that she had gone mad. She was undressing a man in a public park! It could not be this way. She wasn't doing this. Not Katherine O'Mally, recently vice-president of the senior class at Our Lady of Sorrows. No, not Katherine O'Mally, the snow-pure daughter of Seumus and Angela O'Mally of Dexter Street in Everly, New Jersey. She had gotten her embossed Sunday missal for being the best religion student, and she was president of Sodality.

  She imagined her next confession, "Bless me father for I have sinned, it has been one week since my last confession. I committed the mortal sin of lust and went on a naked swim with a boy in Town Pond." What would happen on the other side of the confessional? The sound of poor Father Dougherty having a heart attack?

  With a wild laugh that was so strange it scared her a little she pulled Jimmy's drawers down. His penis caught in the elastic and got tangled. Never mind. She grasped the shaft and pulled it free. Then she slipped the pants down and there he was just like that.

  She knew at last what they looked like, those bulges that appeared in their pants.

  "Kath." He was weak at the knees. No girl in his life had ever seen him like this. No man had, not in this state. The night air touching him intensified the feeling of nakedness. Sh
e pulled off her dress and panties and stood before him, her hands hesitantly covering breast and pubis. Then she raised her chin and looked him straight in the eye. With a little flourish she dropped her hands to her sides and stood with the palms open in a familiar posture. "Our Lady of Sorrows," she said.

  The sharpness of her laughter made him hesitate, but only for a moment. He took off his shirt and held out his arms. She came close and he felt himself tight against her naked flesh.

  The night was warm and the world seemed full of a kindness that he had not known about. He kissed her lips and then her cheeks, and then her breasts, crouching and cupping them in his hands. Gently she pressed his shoulders, and he knelt and kissed the soft tangle between her legs. It smelled very strong there. She pressed against him for a moment and he got on his lips the sensation of a warm clam. He drew back, confused. He had no clear idea of what a woman's genitals were like. He didn't quite know what he had contacted hiding there in that thatch of hair. He looked up at her.

  "Do you really want to swim?"

  "Oh, I don't know. It's so crazy. We're in the park!" He wanted to. He wanted to very badly. "It'll be warm. The water is warm in July."

  Hand in hand they stepped through the hedge. The asphalt walk was almost hot against their feet. Jim could feel the stones pressing, tickling. He was aware of his penis bobbing before him. Kathy was too, because she took it in her hand and led him toward the water.

  He stumbled. "God, Kath." He was looking around for other people. But the park appeared empty.

  Warm or not the water shocked them. The mud of the bottom squirmed up between their toes. They didn't care; their bodies were free. Their secret intoxication took them far beyond their capacity for caution. All the careful repressions of their lives fell away and they were animals in the water.

  Jim gave a shout that echoed across the pond, returning flatly from the houses that stood guard on all four sides of the tiny park. The delight in his voice startled people, and one or two porch lights went on.

  Kath spread her arms wide and twirled round and round laughing.

  More lights went on, and figures came out onto a couple of porches. The O'Mallys, living as they did at the far end of the block, heard nothing.