Alien Crimes

by Mike Resnick (ed)

  Gladys nodded. “Nothing wrong with that. He doesn’t want the extra inspectors. He does the work better than the national preservation standards ask for, so we have no objections here.” “We” being Gladys and her grandfather.

  “I hesitate to ask this,” Becca said, mostly because she was afraid of Gladys’s reaction, “but could you ask your grandfather about the nat? It’s important.”

  “I’m sure he doesn’t know more than I do. It predates him, you know.”

  “I know,” Becca said. “I’m not looking for the official history. I’m looking for rumors or strange comments or stories that he gives no credence to.”

  “Grandfather ignores anything that can’t be proven,” Gladys said with something like pride. “If you want innuendo, go see Abigail Browning. She knows every old story about Hope—and most of them are just plain lies.”

  Becca had forgotten about Abigail Browning. She had been Jack Conyers’s assistant—and first major resource—until they had some sort of falling out in the 1950s. For a while, she tried to run the “real” Hope Historical Society, but no one would give her funding, which she said was because she was a woman. Jack Conyers always claimed it was because she knew nothing about history.

  She had become one of the town’s characters until the transplanted Californian who started Hope’s weekly “alternative” paper printed a story about an affair Abigail Browning and Jack Conyers had. The story was supposed to be sympathetic to Abigail—see how poorly this married man treated this sad spinster lady—but it had the opposite effect. Abigail lost any support she had among the locals for trying to steal Jack Conyers from his still-living, still-popular wife.

  Becca would talk to Abigail Browning. But Becca also wanted to talk to Jack Conyers.

  She stood. “Please do ask him.”

  “Oh, I will,” Gladys said. “But I’m sure he won’t know more than I do.”

  And with that, Becca knew she had no hope of seeing the town’s official historian. So she’d see the unofficial one, and hope for the best.

  THEN

  The cabin got really hot that day and she wanted to open a window, but she was scared to. Mostly she slept and she hoped Jess Taylor would come back for her. She had to keep reminding herself that it was his cabin, he’d be back, but he didn’t seem to have many things there, and Daddy had run away from more, so maybe Jess Taylor would, too.

  Finally, Jess Taylor came back, looking tired and even more scared than when he’d left. His shirt was covered with sweat and some dirt ran along the side of his face. He had one of those overcoats—the short ones Daddy called a suit coat—and he hung it on a chair.

  She stood beside the table, and waited for him to tell her to leave.

  He looked at her, his big eyes sad. “I have bad news.”

  She held her breath. She wasn’t sure what she’d do when he let her out of here. She hadn’t eaten anything since that apple, and even though she took some water because she couldn’t help herself—it was so hot inside—she would tell him and offer to repay him. Somehow. Maybe then he wouldn’t turn her over to those people.

  “Your mother;” he said—and she let out a bit of that breath— “your mother and the other . . . people? . . . They’re gone.”

  Her stomach clenched. “Gone?”

  “That’s what we say when we mean they died, honey.”

  Her cheeks heated. Everyone had told her Daddy was gone, too.

  “I thought it just meant they went away,” she said.

  “It’s a euphemism.”

  She’d never heard the word.

  He shook his head tiredly. “A word we use when we don’t want to be blunt. There are a lot of euphemisms in our language.” She nodded, even though she wasn’t sure she understood. “You’re sure she’s . . . gone?” she asked.

  “Oh, I’m sure,” he said, and shuddered. “You wouldn’t ask if you knew the day I had today.”

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “Work white men wouldn’t do,” he said. “They consider what I did the dirty work.”

  She frowned. “What did you do?”

  “I’m supposed to sit in a bank,” he said. “But they said, If you want to keep your job, you’ll—”

  He stopped. Studied her like he wasn’t sure what to say.

  Then sighed.

  “I helped bury them, Sarah.”

  “Bury?” She knew what that was, at least. She’d seen it—the wooden boxes, the holes in the ground, the markers. “If they had the boxes and stuff, how did you know my mother was there?”

  It seemed to take him a minute to understand her. Then he nodded, once. “There were no boxes, honey,” he said gently. “They were just placed in the ground.”

  Barbaric, that’s what it is, her daddy said. How can they do that to their own?

  It’s a religious custom, her mother said. We used to have them, too.

  “And they were dead?” she asked, her voice small.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said, and shuddered. “They were dead.” “Where are they?” she asked. “Where did you bury them?” He studied her for a long time, as if he thought about whether or not to answer her.

  Then he sighed again.

  “It’s a place they call the End of the World.”

  NOW

  Abigail Browning lived in a fairy-tale cottage at the end of one of Hope’s oldest streets. Large trees, which somehow thrived despite the desert air, surrounded the place, making it look even more like something out of Hansel and Gretel. Blooming plants lined the walk, plants that Becca knew took more water than summer water rationing allowed. She decided to ignore them as she stood on the brick steps and rapped on the solid oak door.

  A latch slammed back and then the door pulled open, sending a wave of lavender scent outside. The woman who stood before Becca was short and hunched, not the tall powerhouse that Becca remembered from her childhood.

  “Abigail Browning?” Becca asked.

  “Don’t you recognize me, Rebecca Keller? I practically raised you.”

  That wasn’t quite true. Abigail Browning did babysit when Becca’s parents couldn’t find anyone else, but otherwise she had little to do with Becca’s childhood.

  “Sure I do, Mrs. Browning,” Becca said, falling back on her childhood name for this woman, even though Abigail Browning had never married. “I was wondering if you could help me with a case.”

  Abigail Browning smiled and stepped away from the door. “Of course, my dear. Would you like some tea?”

  “I’d love some,” Becca said as she walked inside. The house smelled the same—lavender and baking bread with the faint undertone of cat.

  Now Becca was old enough to appreciate the mahogany staircase, built Craftsman-style, and the matching bookcases that graced the living room. The entire house had mahogany trim as well as built-in shelving, a feature Becca knew that Chase would love—particularly since no one had painted over the original wood.

  Mrs. Browning led her into the kitchen. A coffee cake sat in a glass case in the center of the table, almost as if Mrs. Browning had expected her. Mrs. Browning filled a kettle and put it on the stove, then climbed on a stool to remove large mugs from the shiny mahogany cupboards.

  “I’m not as tall as I used to be,” she said. “Time crushes all of us.”

  Becca nodded, uncertain what to say. “The kitchen looks just the same.”

  “Which negates the ten-thousand-dollar remodel I did two years ago,” Mrs. Browning said.

  Becca looked at her in surprise.

  “I had to update everything. I had dry rot. Or the house did. Your husband helped me.”

  Becca opened her mouth to correct Mrs. Browning, then thought the better of it. Abigail Browning often made misstatements to see how other people stood on things.

  “He’s a good man,” Mrs. Browning said. “Maybe the best in town, and you let him get away.”

  “I didn’t let—”

  “You confused him with your father, w
ho was a horrid, manipulative man, and you forgot that men can be strong without being horrid.”

  Becca felt her cheeks heat. “Would you like to hear about the case?”

  “More than you’d like to hear how you threw away a good man because a bad one raised you,” Mrs. Browning said, taking down two plates.

  Becca did not offer to help her. Instead, Becca stood near the table, hands crossed in front of her, feeling ten years old again.

  “So tell me,” Mrs. Browning said, putting the plates on the table. The kettle whistled, and she removed it from the heat. She grabbed a teapot from a shelf that looked old, but had to be new because Becca didn’t remember it.

  “I was wondering what you know about the natatorium.”

  “I can tell you how awful it smelled when I was a child, but that’s not what you’re asking, is it? Be specific, girl. Didn’t I teach you anything?”

  “What happened when it was built?”

  “Which time?” Mrs. Browning set a beautiful wood trivet on the table, then placed the teapot on top of it.

  “Which time?” Becca repeated. “Things are only built once, aren’t they?”

  Mrs. Browning stood near a chair near the teapot shelf, a chair that Becca remembered had always been Mrs. Browning’s favorite. Becca had sat there once as a child, and had found it uncomfortable, molded to the elderly woman’s body. Only then Mrs. Browning hadn’t been elderly. She had only seemed that way.

  “The foundation for the natatorium was laid at the same time as the hotel, around 1908. It was abandoned that same year.”

  “Abandoned?” Becca asked. “I heard that the work stopped.” “Probably from that horrible Gladys Conyers. She really knows only the textbook history of this town, which, I’m sorry to say, is wrong. People are never saints, you know. You always have to look for the darkness to balance the light.”

  Mrs. Browning peered at her. Mrs. Browning’s eyes, buried under layers of wrinkles, were the same piercing blue they had always been.

  Becca remembered Mrs. Browning trying to tell her that before. You’re the light, Rebecca. Remember that. Good things can come from dark places.

  She shook the memory away.

  “Sit down, child, you’re making me nervous.”

  Becca slid into her usual chair. Odd to think she had a usual chair, when she hadn’t been to this house in more than twenty years.

  “Do you still remember how to pour?”

  Becca smiled. She did remember those lessons. Mrs. Browning had trained her in “company” manners, including how to set a table, how to dress for dinner, and how to pour for guests.

  “I do,” Becca said. She picked up the teapot, handling it as if Mrs. Browning had pulled down her silver service instead of her every day.

  Mrs. Browning watched her every move as if she were still being judged on perfection. Becca remembered everything, including when to ask if Mrs. Browning wanted sugar and cream, and to hold the top of the pot so that it wouldn’t fall unceremoniously into Mrs. Browning’s plate.

  Mrs. Browning smiled, as if Becca’s behavior was confirmation of the work she’d done bringing her up.

  “So,” Mrs. Browning said when Becca finished pouring, “which part of the natatorium are you interested in? The first building or the second?”

  “I’m interested in the pool, whenever it was laid.”

  “The pool.” Mrs. Browning pursed her lips. “So your Chase finally found the bodies, did he?”

  Becca felt her breath catch. Whatever she’d expected Mrs. Browning to say, it wasn’t that.

  “You knew?”

  “Child, half the town knew. Why do you think that no one was allowed near that old wreck?”

  “But you swam there as a child.”

  “All of us did,” Mrs. Browning said. “And some of us brought our own children there, until the place shut down. It was just a rumor, after all. Except for the hotel.”

  Becca frowned. “We’re talking about the nat.”

  “We can’t talk about the nat without talking about the hotel. Have you ever been inside?”

  “Just last night, as a matter of fact.”

  “Did you look at the walls?”

  Becca’s frown grew deeper. “Yes.”

  “Then you understand why I told your Chase not to tear them down.”

  “No,” Becca said, “I don’t.”

  Mrs. Browning touched her hand with dry fingers. “Rebecca, you’ve never been slow. Haven’t you wondered why those walls move?”

  “They don’t move,” Becca said. “They have heat shimmers. It piles up and—”

  “Heat shimmers occur on pavement in sunlight,” Mrs. Browning said. “Not in a dark dusty hotel in the middle of a summer evening.”

  Becca licked her lips. When she was fourteen, she’d run from that hotel. She’d gone there to neck with Zack Wheeler, and when he’d pressed her against one of the walls, it was squishy. She turned to look at the wood, saw it shimmer, change, and shimmer again, and she couldn’t help it.

  She screamed.

  Zack saw it, too, grabbed her hand, and pulled her out of there. They’d run all the way to his car, and even told his father, who had looked at them with contempt. That was the first time Becca had heard the heat shimmer idea, but it wasn’t the last.

  “So what causes it?” Becca asked.

  “Aliens,” Mrs. Browning said. “The aliens haunting the End of the World.”

  THEN

  She couldn’t go to the End of the World. She couldn’t even leave the house. Jess Taylor didn’t want her to. He was afraid for her. She was hot and sad and lonely, and she spent her days crying sometimes.

  But she didn’t practice changing. Instead, she worked on getting every detail right. Jess Taylor had to tell her sometimes that she was using masculine details—he’d actually laughed the time she put bits of hair on her own chin—but mostly, he said, she was looking solid.

  Whatever that meant.

  He wanted the town to think no one had survived. He didn’t want them to question her or him.

  It took him days and days to figure out how to do that.

  Then one day he told her. She was going to take a train.

  NOW

  Aliens? Of all the things Becca had expected from Mrs. Browning, a popular crazy notion wasn’t one of them. Hope had been the talk of the alien conspiracy community since 2001, when one of her colleagues had discovered some metal in Lake Waloon. The lake had receded during one of the driest years on record, leaving all sorts of artifacts in its cracked and much-abused bed.

  The experts, called in by the Historical Society, claimed it was part of an experimental airplane or maybe even one of the early do-it-yourself models from the 1920s.

  UFO groupies looked at the pictures on the Internet and descended en masse to Hope, believing they’d found another ship like the one the government supposedly hid in Roswell, New Mexico.

  Ever since, Hope had to endure annual pilgrimages from the UFO faithful. Becca tried to ignore them, just like she used to ignore the Deadheads when they came through on their way to Eugene to see the Grateful Dead in its natural habitat.

  “Aliens,” Becca said. “Surely you don’t believe that hype from a few years ago—”

  “Yes,” Mrs. Browning said as she cut Becca a piece of coffee cake. “Of course I do. I grew up knowing that we’d been invaded. The fact that the ship was found simply confirmed it.”

  “The ship wasn’t found,” Becca said, and then caught herself. She’d learned in a few short months not to argue with the True Believers. Only she’d never taken Mrs. Browning to be one of them.

  Mrs. Browning cut another piece of coffee cake and slid it onto her own plate. “If you do not believe that twisted hunk of metal was an alien spacecraft, then you won’t believe anything I have to tell you about the natatorium.”

  Becca sighed. “I saw the so-called ship. It’s just a crumpled aircraft.”

  “No,” Mrs. Browning said. “It w
as molded to look like an aircraft. It’s a spaceship.”

  Becca had heard this argument countless times as well. She took a deep breath, and then thought the better of all of it.

  “All right,” she said. “Let’s pretend that you and I agree. Let’s pretend that is a spaceship, and the squirming wall in the End of the World is made by alien ghosts. What else can you tell me?”

  Mrs. Browning delicately cut her piece of coffee cake with her fork, her little finger extended. She had the same manners she always had. She seemed as sharp as she had thirty years ago.

  But Becca knew that sometimes elderly people who lived alone developed “peculiarities.” Now she was going to have to overlook Mrs. Browning’s just to get to the heart of the story.

  And maybe, just maybe, she was going to have to accept that she was wasting her time.

  “Eat,” Mrs. Browning said, “and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  THEN

  She hadn’t been that frightened since Jess Taylor found her. She thought he was going to make her leave by train.

  She didn’t know where he’d send her or what she’d do or who she’d meet. But by now, she knew she could trust him. He brought her clothes. He fed her. He helped her.

  They had long talks when he got home from the bank, and one night, he told her his family had died just like hers.

  “In Hope?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “Far away from Hope in a place called Mississippi.”

  “How come you didn’t get killed?” she asked. She already knew he couldn’t change, so she wanted to know how he got away.

  “I was in the North,” he said. “Ohio. Going to school in Antioch. Then the money stopped—my whole family was supporting me, giving me an education, and I sent letters to find out why, and someone sent me a postcard back. It was a drawing of the day—of the killings—like people were proud of it, and they said Don’t bother to come, but I did anyway and ...”

  His voice trailed away. He didn’t look at her. He was quiet a long time.