The Night the Heads Came

by William Sleator

  I very deliberately avoid looking at Tim’s father while I’m telling this story; I don’t want to see whatever obnoxious reaction he’s having. The man in the suit remains expressionless, occasionally asking me for details in a blank voice. There is a long silence when I finish.

  Then Tim’s father bursts out with, “Do you honestly expect us to believe this ridiculous, transparent—”

  “You know this is all on the record,” the man in the suit interrupts him.

  But Tim’s father just laughs and shrugs. “Fine. Great. It’s on the record that my son was taken away by little green men.” And then he suddenly becomes very serious and leans toward me and says, “It’s also on the record that this delinquent is blatantly trying to perpetrate a hoax, to cover up what he really did to my son!”

  Now I’m angry too. “Tim is my best friend! Why would I do anything to hurt him?”

  “He had three hundred and fifty-seven dollars on him,” Tim’s father says. “And you were the last person who saw him.”

  “If I wanted three hundred and fifty-seven dollars, I wouldn’t get it by robbing my best friend and then dumping him somewhere and then coming back and telling everybody I was with him. That’s crazy! And anyway, in case the rest of you don’t know it, Tim outweighs me by about fifty pounds. Right?” I ask Tim’s father.

  “Uh … yes, I’d say that’s accurate,” he says a little stiffly.

  “Look,” I say. “All I want is to find Tim. Why else do you think I went to that doctor? Why else do you think I’d … embarrass myself by telling everybody here this crazy story I’m remembering now? And you can ask the doctor about it. He said a lot of people remember being abducted by aliens. And that’s what I remember.” I look around the table, breathing heavily. Even Tim’s father doesn’t say anything. Now I’m beginning to sympathize with all those people who have memories like I do—who I used to think were crazy. “Why don’t you call Dr. Viridian?” I say to the man in the suit. “I have his number, and so does Captain Kroll.”

  They have a speakerphone here, so that everybody in the room can hear both sides of the conversation and it can be recorded. The man in the suit calls Dr. Viridian’s number. But it doesn’t ring. There are three tones, and then a taped voice says, “We are sorry. This number has been permanently disconnected.”

  Tim’s father sits back in his chair and crosses his arms.

  “But that’s crazy!” I say. “We were just at his office yesterday. He told me he would be there if I needed his help. And we called him several times this morning and got his message.”

  “That’s true, we did,” Mom says.

  “I know this doctor has a good reputation,” Captain Kroll says. “Other districts have sent people to him. Maybe you could try again. I mean, in case you might have dialed wrong.”

  He tries two more times. There is the same taped response.

  “Well, whatever happened to that doctor, I think what Leo is saying makes sense,” Captain Kroll says. “Why would he attack and dispose of his best friend and then come back and say he was just with him? It sounds to me like there’s a third party involved, someone who attacked them and didn’t want Leo to remember what—”

  “This is not the time for speculation. We’re just looking for facts now,” the man in the suit says. He looks around at the others. “And it seems to me we’ve collected all the facts we can from Leo today. You’re free to go. But don’t leave town. We may need you at any time for further questioning.”

  Tim’s father doesn’t say anything then. But as we’re on our way out of the building, he comes up to Mom and me and says in an undertone, “Don’t think you’re off the hook. I’ll get you for this, I promise you that.” And he strides away.

  “He’s nuts,” Mom whispers. “He has a problem, and all he can think of to do is take it out on somebody else.”

  I agree. He’s scary. I wonder what he’s going to do next, and when.

  But at least I’m not in trouble with the cops, for the time being, anyway. It’s still only noon when we get home, and Mom goes off to work for the afternoon.

  Which leaves me alone and free to call the woman who put that ad in the paper about Dr. Viridian’s patients getting together. I’m more curious than ever, now that Dr. Viridian has vanished.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I feel a little nervous about making this call. Who are these people, anyway? I can sense that Mom and Dad don’t want me to get involved. But what can I lose by just calling?

  I call the number in the ad. A woman’s voice answers.

  “May I speak to Annabelle Kincaid, please?” I feel my pulse picking up.

  “Speaking.”

  “Oh, hello. My name is Leo Kasden. I saw your ad in the paper. I had one of those experiences too, and I went to Dr. Viridian about it. And I was hoping to find somebody else who might have had a similar experience.”

  “I’m glad you called. Viridian’s always talking about how it’s not an uncommon experience. Then you ask him to introduce you to some of his other patients, maybe form a support group, so you can have somebody to share it with, because nobody else understands. But helpful Dr. Viridian won’t help you there. Suddenly it’s all confidential, professional ethics, whatever. The ad worked better than I expected. Got nine people coming tonight. You’ll be ten, if you can make it.”

  “These are all people who were … abducted?” I ask her.

  There’s a pause. “I thought you said you were too,” she says suspiciously.

  “Well, yes. I mean, I …”

  “How old are you, anyway?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Oh, I get it. So you’re a little shy,” she says. “Well, you don’t need to be. You’re welcome to come.” She gives me an address and directions. “See you at eight o’clock tonight,” she says.

  I quickly thank her and tell her good-bye and hang up.

  It’s odd that Dr. Viridian refused to organize a support group. Why doesn’t he want his patients to talk to each other?

  Mom and Dad are hesitant, but they can’t come up with any reason why I shouldn’t go. And then I realize what’s really bothering them. They’re worried about me driving alone in the car at night, afraid I might black out again.

  I’m worried about it too. It’s only about ten miles to this person’s house, but the drive scares me. I almost consider asking Mom or Dad to come with me—except I’m sure the people at this meeting won’t want intruders there who didn’t have the experience they did. And anyway, I refuse to be crippled by this irrational fear. After supper, I get in the car and go.

  I drive as fast as I can, keeping my eyes on the road and avoiding looking at the sky. I’m afraid I might actually see some lights in the sky; I’m worried that the car might break down again. My hands are slippery with sweat on the steering wheel, even though I have the air-conditioning on.

  Nothing happens on the way there. I find the address in about half an hour.

  But as I walk toward the house I’m still apprehensive about driving back, when it will be later.

  A fat woman answers the door. She’s middle-aged, wearing tight pants and a lot of makeup, and she has long hair, like a teenager. She’s holding a cigarette. “Hi, I’m Annabelle,” she says. “You must be Leo, right?”

  “Yes. Nice to meet you.”

  “Come on in. Everybody else is here.”

  There are about ten people sitting around in a small living room, which has fake wood paneling, a shag wall-to-wall carpet, maple furniture, and family photographs on the walls. Folding chairs have been moved in from another room, so there will be enough places to sit. Everybody introduces themselves, but I forget most of their names right away.

  I’m the youngest one there; all the others look like they’re thirty or older. There are four women, including Annabelle. Two of the men are wearing suits; everyone else is dressed more casually. Some of them, including me, seem a little shy or uncomfortable about being there.

  One of the
men in a suit already seems to have taken charge. His name is Herman. “Annabelle says you’re a patient of Dr. Viridian’s too,” he says to me as I sit down in a folding chair. “That makes five of us here.”

  “Well, I saw him once, yesterday. But I don’t think I’ll be seeing him again. You know his phone’s been disconnected?”

  “Yeah, we know,” Herman says.

  “I had an appointment with him today,” a thin, tense woman says. “The office was locked, no name on the door, nothing. Now I don’t know who I’m going to go to for therapy. I keep having these … these awful dreams, you see.”

  “It’s okay, honey,” Annabelle comforts her. “That’s what this meeting is all about—to help each other. Maybe some people have other therapists they can recommend.”

  “Yes, well, we might as well get started,” Herman says. “We all tell each other our experiences, agreed?” People nod and murmur assent. “I’ll be happy to go first, to break the ice,” Herman volunteers. Nobody argues with him.

  Herman had his first experience several months ago, when he was driving alone at night. He saw the lights in the sky before he blacked out. He woke up in the car the next morning. Someone he knew told him about Dr. Viridian’s ad—Herman doesn’t admit to reading that particular tabloid himself. Dr. Viridian explained the procedure and hypnotized him, and then it all came back.

  “The car died, and then before I knew it there were all these little purple guys with big eyes,” Herman says. “I tried to run away, but they pointed this ray gun thing at me, and then I had to do what they said. We rode up in this thing like a transparent bubble to their ship, a big saucer. All kinds of shiny, futuristic machinery. I have to admit, I was really scared. But they promised they wouldn’t hurt me. They were just doing tests—scientists studying the human race. There was a thing kind of like an X-ray machine; they stuck things into my body; they did all kinds of stuff. They made me forget everything before they brought me back. A couple months later, same thing happened again.”

  “It happened more than once?” I ask him, thinking of the drive home.

  “Uh-huh. Blacked out the second time too. So back I go to Dr. Viridian. Same story came out. The aliens just did more tests. Didn’t hurt me, though. Hasn’t happened again since, knock on wood. But … I keep wondering if they’ll come back—and when.”

  A lot of people talk at once, agreeing with this. It seems that a fear of the experience recurring is quite common.

  The five people who didn’t go to Dr. Viridian went to someone named Pierce. I listen to the other people tell their stories, and I tell mine. At first it seems to me that all the stories are different. Sometimes the little men are orange; sometimes they’re blue; sometimes they glow in the dark. They take some people from their cars, like me, but other people were actually taken from their houses. The tests they do on the people seem different too—at first. And the aliens give a variety of reasons for being here. Sometimes, as in my case, they are here to save the Earth. Other times they are scientists studying our species. Sometimes they are explorers, who simply ask questions.

  But as more people tell their stories, I begin to see that they are really not so different after all. Everybody’s aliens are different colors and have different features. But they are all humanoid, and they are all short; all, in other words, similar to the traditional “little green men” of the tabloids.

  I think about the bizarre creatures in our own oceans on Earth—octopi and giant worms and things—how different they are from us. So why are all these aliens from other planets so ordinary, like little people? It’s the same thing that bothered me about my own memories, and now it bothers me even more.

  The interiors of the spaceships and what the aliens do to the human subjects also vary in specific details. And yet all the spaceships are gleaming and futuristic, like the spaceships on TV shows everybody has seen. And although everybody is terrified by the experience, the aliens are never cruel or threatening; they never want to take over the Earth or hurt the human race. Their motivations, though they vary from case to case, are always benign or scientific.

  And the more I hear, the more skeptical I become.

  I keep thinking “traditional”; I keep thinking “derivative.” There is nothing truly weird or unexpected, nothing that everybody hasn’t heard before—nothing that would require much imagination or skill to make up. Yet at the same time, the specific details are all slightly different. No two people were taken by exactly the same aliens.

  The people in this room seem to have been abducted by ten different species of aliens. And yet each species of aliens is like something from a cheap comic book.

  And the overall effect of hearing all these stories together is that I don’t believe any of them. In fact, if someone’s intention was to concoct a group of stories on purpose so that they would not be believed, this would be exactly the way to go about it. Nobody believed my story when I told it at the police station this morning.

  And yet all these people really did have amnesia—they lost hours of time, which in every case can be verified. All of these people got back their memories—these memories that sound like they were designed not to be believed—when they were hypnotized by Viridian or Pierce.

  The more I think about it, the more eerie it seems, and the more frightened I get. It’s like a conspiracy. It seems clear to me that the real motivation of the hypnotists is not to bring out these people’s true memories; their motivation is to cover up what really happened to them when they had amnesia.

  And the scary part is, what is it that the hypnotists are working so hard to cover up?

  Do I dare to suggest this idea, in order to find out if anybody else has noticed it too? Most of these people seem so fervent in their beliefs of what happened to them. What will their reaction be if I, the youngest one here, tell them they’ve probably all been duped?

  But I have to. I have no choice. I may never see any of these people again. This is probably my only chance to find somebody else who sees the same sinister pattern I do. And I want to find somebody else because it’s too frightening to understand it alone.

  We’ve all told our stories now. Everyone is just sitting around talking to each other. “Excuse me, Herman,” I say.

  He glances over at me.

  “Could you try to get everybody’s attention again, please? There’s something really important I need to say.”

  It takes Herman a little while, but finally he gets the people to quiet down. “Yes, what is it, Leo?” he says. They are all looking at me.

  I try to explain my idea to them, hesitant at first. “Isn’t it peculiar that there are ten different species of aliens? Wouldn’t it make more sense if some of us were abducted by the same species? And isn’t it peculiar that all our memories are like something we could have seen on a TV series or read in the newspaper?”

  Nobody says anything for a moment. Then Herman sits up straighter in his chair and says, “What are you getting at, boy? Are you trying to say we’re imagining these memories—just like everybody else thinks?”

  “No, no, that’s exactly the opposite of what I mean,” I say very quickly, before the babble can break out again. “I’m not saying something didn’t really happen to all of us; I’m not saying we weren’t really abducted by aliens. What I’m saying is that I think the doctors took away our real memories and gave us these other stories. They did it so that no one would believe us and so that no one—including us—would know what really did happen to us.”

  Again, no one speaks for a moment. I hurry up and continue. “I mean, isn’t it peculiar that when Annabelle arranged this meeting, Dr. Viridian disappears? Maybe he was afraid that once we all heard each other’s stories, we might figure out he was up to something. Why wouldn’t he talk to the police to try to help find Tim? And what about Dr. Pierce? When was the last time anybody saw him?”

  No one has seen him for several days.

  “Maybe somebody should try to call him, just
to see,” I suggest. “By the way, where is his office?”

  “In the industrial zone,” says one of the women.

  “So was Dr. Viridian’s,” I say. “It’s interesting that these two doctors who treat people who were abducted both have their offices in the most polluted part of town.”

  “I’ll call Dr. Pierce now.” The woman picks up the phone, dials, and listens. Then she hangs up and turns and looks at me. “Permanently disconnected,” she says quietly.

  I leave soon after that, surer than ever that the hypnotists are trying to cover up what really happened to us. I’m just as scared as I was on the way here. As I start to drive, I tell myself it will be quicker going home, because I know the way.

  Except, I suddenly realize, I’m not driving home. A cold panic creeps over me. I’m taking a complicated route in this unfamiliar neighborhood. At each intersection, I know whether to go left or right or straight ahead. Somehow I am compelled to do this; I have no choice.

  Now my pulse is racing; I’m sweating more than ever; I feel like screaming. Is this some kind of posthypnotic suggestion? I’m completely conscious, yet I can do nothing to control the route I’m taking. Where am I going? This is a nightmare.

  And it gets even more terrifying when I begin to notice that the big van behind me is making all the same turns I am.

  I drive faster, making an effort to keep my hands from shaking on the wheel. The green van drives faster too. It doesn’t seem to be trying to catch up with me or force me off the road. It just stays close behind me, following every move I make.

  And then I turn left and I really do scream. Because now I recognize where I am.

  I’m heading toward Bridgetown on Route 38.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Except for the green van behind me, the road is deserted—just like it was two nights ago when I was driving this way with Tim. There are no houses or factories or gas stations on this stretch of road, no place to stop and try to get help. Not that I could stop. Whatever is controlling me won’t let me.