by Sylvia Nobel
“As in praying mantis?” I asked, staring at a pair of bulbous eyes set in a long insect-like face minus a nose and mouth. The claw-like webbed fingers appeared almost reptilian and I knew that if I’d come face to face with this ugly thing in the middle of the night, I’d be having nightmares too.
“Exactly. The other thing that leads me to believe he is telling the truth is his description of the classic Oz Factor.” The excited catch in her voice had Lupe and me trading another quizzical glance as she swiftly paged through the folder again. I had to remind myself that we weren’t admiring pictures of purebred dogs and cats, we were looking at renderings of space aliens, for heaven’s sake! Oh, man, I could only imagine Tally’s reaction. But, no matter how outlandish it sounded I had to ask myself one question. If Javier was fabricating the story, how could a child so young describe the mantis creatures with such dead-on accuracy?
“Eyewitnesses,” Mazzie exclaimed, “have reported being struck by a bright beam of blue light that leaves them paralyzed. Then they’re taken to a ‘house’ where time flows at a different rate, all sounds of the environment cease and they find themselves in a domed room subjected to terrifying examinations by creatures with glowing phosphorescent eyes.”
“Dios Mio,” Lupe whispered, breaking into sobs. “To think that any of these things have happened to my… to my friends is too awful to think about,” she sobbed, stumbling from the table. She fled to the door marked Damas and slammed it behind her.
“Do you want to go after her?” Mazzie asked, eyeing me with sympathy.
“No, let’s leave her alone for a few minutes.”
The wind sang a dismal little tune as it whined around the bare branches of the scraggly tree. A few drops of rain struck my face and she began gathering her papers together. “It isn’t just a friend of hers missing, is it?”
I hesitated for a fraction of a second. “I can’t say.”
She pinned me with a knowing look and said softly, “You don’t have to.”
“Thank you very much for your time and insight on this subject. You’ve given me a lot to think about,” I said rising with her. “I’d still be interested in sitting in on one of your encounter groups. Here’s my card.”
“I’ll think about it.” She nodded goodbye. As I watched her slip through the restaurant door, I decided that being in possession of the additional knowledge on this bizarre topic had not really simplified my job one bit and I could not shake the disturbing sense of foreboding growing deep inside me.
10
For a long moment, I stood staring at the neighboring tin-roofed adobe cottages beyond the wire fence separating them from the restaurant’s back yard. Judging by their condition and the architecture, I deduced that these sturdy, time-weathered structures had been rooted there in the same spot for fifty or sixty years. My gaze roamed from the picnic bench to a rusted wheelbarrow full of faded flowers, and on to a colorful ceramic chicken perched on the windowsill. Trying to marshal my disjointed thoughts, I drew comfort from the homey sights. Eventually, I walked over to the outside restroom and tapped on the door. “Lupe, are you all right?”
“Yes,” came her muffled reply. The latch snapped and she stepped out, dabbing at the corners of her eyes. “I’m sorry. Maybe it’s because I’m not feeling so good, but I couldn’t listen to her anymore. I can’t bear to think of what has happened to Gilberto and dear, sweet Uncle Raymond. These creatures…they must have stolen them away for one of these terrible experiments.” She gulped and swallowed hard. “Kendall, what am I going to do? Tell me! What can you do? What can anyone do?”
Sharp hysteria edged her voice, so I laid my hands on her trembling shoulders and forced her to meet my eyes. “Lupe, there may not be anything either of us can do at this point but pray. But let’s have a reality check before we talk about this any further, okay?”
She nodded in silence.
“I don’t know how much of this space alien stuff I’m willing to buy into. Granted, Mazzie La Casse does not strike me as a nut case, just the opposite in fact, and there appears to be an extraordinary number of people who, for whatever reason, believe that they’ve had some sort of encounter with…some kind of beings, and it sounds suspiciously like Javier may be one of them. Even so, I think we should keep our feet planted securely on terra firma if we’re going to progress with this investigation. Do you get what I’m saying?”
A half shrug accompanied her “No.”
I ushered her towards the door. “Logic dictates that we’re dealing with a human factor here, not space creatures, so that’s how I’m going to have to proceed.”
If anything, she looked even more disconcerted and just a little bit angry. “You think someone is…pretending to be a spaceman to scare people? Why? Why would anyone do that?”
“I don’t know. But that’s the assumption I’m going with for now.”
She stared at me with alarm. “I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse.”
I agreed with her wholeheartedly as we stepped inside once again. All eight of the tables were empty and the waitress waved cheerfully as we headed towards the front door. It was then I noticed the large, somewhat crudely drawn mural of a woman covering one entire wall. “Who do you suppose that’s supposed to be?” I muttered to Lupe as we pushed open the screen door and stepped outside in time to see Mazzie La Casse preparing to climb into a silver Honda.
“Maybe it’s the gypsy,” she replied, yawning her disinterest.
“What?”
She waved an impatient hand back at the restaurant sign. “La Gitana. It means gypsy.”
“Oh. Gotcha,” I said, distracted by the sudden commotion in the street. Four young boys, shouting something at the tops of their lungs, pedaled their bikes in mad pursuit of a dented pickup truck painted solely with gray metal primer. I couldn’t make out much about the driver through the dark armor of window tint except that he wore a broad-brimmed hat pulled low over his face. As the truck turned left onto Ruby Road, two other boys standing on the sidewalk lobbed rocks and yelled in unison, “Russell Greene will cook your spleen and eat it on rye bread. Run before he breaks your neck or you could wind up dead, dead, dead!”
The man rewarded the boys’ lame limerick by lowering the window just enough to flash his middle finger at them. Russell Greene? Why did that name sound familiar? The boys gave chase, pelting the tailgate of the departing vehicle with rocks before it vanished in a curtain of yellow dust.
“Now what do you suppose that was all about?” I said to no one in particular.
Mazzie peered over the top of her car and shook her head in disgust at the gang of pre-teen boys now hooting with laughter. “Poor tragic soul. He was one of the people implicated by the authorities in connection with those animal mutilations I mentioned.”
My attention gauge shot up. Of course. He’d been mentioned in one of Walter’s articles I’d read last night. “Why is he a suspect?”
She glanced at her watch. “About twenty years ago he was piloting a private plane with his brother and girlfriend onboard when it crashed during a terrible snowstorm in Montana or Colorado, I forget which. Anyway, the two passengers died instantly. Because he was lost in such a remote area and wasn’t found for weeks,” she paused, her expectant gaze sliding between Lupe and me before concluding with, “he…and this is just one of the versions I’ve heard…he ate the flesh of his own brother and his girlfriend to survive.”
Lupe stifled a gasp and looked like she was going to lose her breakfast. “Not an appealing visual,” I admitted, suppressing a little shudder of horror, “but I don’t understand the correlation to the animals.”
She looked askance at the six raucous boys racing past her car before she returned her attention to us. “The rumor going around is that he still harbors a taste for raw flesh.”
I’m sure my face reflected the same look of horrified disbelief as Lupe’s.
“As I told yo
u, I don’t think the animal mutilations are human in origin,” she said with a careless wave. “But, I did try to talk to him one day a few months ago about several eye-witness sightings in the proximity of Morita….”
I cut in, “Whoa. What does he have to do with Morita?”
She eased herself behind the wheel, pulled the door shut and rested her arm on the window rim. “He’s the caretaker over there.”
How interesting. “And what did he say?”
“Not much. He was getting into his truck outside the feed store so I ran over and knocked on the glass. I asked if I could talk to him about reports from several campers in the area, who said they’d seen bright, pulsating lights hovering over the mountains. There had also been sightings further west on the reservation and east towards Ruby that same weekend.”
“And?”
“He wouldn’t even talk to me, just shook his head and drove off.” Her face glowed with excitement as she motioned for me to come closer. “Listen, I hope you’ll reconsider allowing me to visit with the boy. By employing hypnosis, it may be possible for me to tap into repressed memories that might reveal important clues about what he saw.”
Still feeling unsure about the whole weird subject, I sidestepped her request. “I’ll check into it.” I thanked her again for her time, and when her Honda disappeared around the corner, Lupe blew her nose for the umteenth time, asking in a clogged voice, “So, what should we do now?”
Taking note of her ashen complexion, I said, “I plan to pay a visit to Loydeen Shirley before I go find the Sundog. You, I think, should go straight home to bed.”
“But what about Sister Goldenrod?”
“What about her?”
“If I leave now, I won’t get the information from her about the coyote…and my bag is still there.”
I thought about that for a moment. “Is there anything in it that you can’t live without until tomorrow night?”
“No, I guess not.”
“Then there’s no problem. I’ll pick it up later and tell her why you had to leave early. If she balks at sharing the information with me, I’ll suggest she call you at home.”
She nodded, her expression one of profound relief. No doubt she was suffering as much from emotional overload as she was from her cold.
As we started across the street towards our cars, a strong gust of wind rushed in sending paper scraps and leaves whirling in all directions. “So much for the rain,” I muttered, watching the storm clouds sail away towards the Santa Rita Mountains. A single shaft of sunlight punched through the gray mist as Lupe settled into her car. I looked up at the bright patch of blue and smiled. “Looks like you’ll have nice weather for your drive home,” I told her as she fastened her seat belt. “I’ll call you if I find a phone,” I added, glaring at my useless cell phone and its non-existent signal.
“All right.” When she revved the engine, black smoke poured from her exhaust pipe.
I fanned away the fumes. “Oh, and if I were you, I’d stop and put another quart of oil in this puppy when you get to Tucson.”
She nodded, but her watery eyes reflected concern as she put the car in reverse. “If you do go to Morita, please be careful. I don’t think I would want to meet a person who would eat another human being.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine. And you take care going home.” As I watched her car sputter away down the road, part of me wished I was going with her, but I steeled my resolve. A promise is a promise is a promise.
The fourteen raindrops bequeathed by the much-anticipated non-storm had done little to dampen the parched ground. A steadily rising wind stirred up a hazy sheen of dust, and I could taste the grit in my mouth as I trudged back to La Gitana and stuck my head in the door. Matt, his buddy and a third man who looked vaguely familiar were camped out at a table, flirting with the buxom waitress, who giggled as she slapped Matt’s hand away from her rear-end. Her face reddened when she spotted me. “Hi, you forget something?”
“No, I was wondering if you could give me directions to the Sundog Ranch.”
“Sure thing.”
I scribbled the directions in my notepad. “And could you tell me how to get to 44 West 1st Street?”
“Who you trying to find, honey?” the waitress asked, popping lavender bubble gum.
“Loydeen Shirley.”
She pointed out the window. “Go past the ceramic shop over there and turn left. Her house is set back a ways from the road on the right hand side. You can’t miss it.”
“For being a stranger in town, you sure seem to know a lot of people,” Matt observed, rocking his chair back on two legs. “But I guess it’s a reporter’s job to nose around, huh?”
How could he know that? I caught the extra emphasis he’d placed on the word ‘nose’ and while I found his cocky attitude annoying, the cold predatory gleam in the third man’s mustard-colored eyes had me recoiling instinctively. In a matter of seconds, I took in his KNIGHTS OF RIGHT-STOP THE INVASION! T-shirt stretched across a well-muscled chest, and bare arms that bore tattoos of skull and crossbones and prominent swastikas. He was one scary-looking dude.
I dragged my gaze back to Matt and kept my face expressionless while trying to remember who else knew I was a reporter besides Sister Goldenrod, Payton Kleinwort and of course, the Border Patrol agent who’d waylaid Lupe yesterday. But, considering how small the town was, I shouldn’t be surprised that news of a stranger would spread like wildfire in a strong wind. “It’s a tough job, but someone’s got to do it.” I waved at the waitress. “Thanks for your help.”
“No problem.”
I couldn’t get out fast enough and the strong sense that curious eyes were boring into my back as I crossed the street to my car set my nerves on edge. The thick-necked guy with menacing eyes bore a slight resemblance to the moose with the earrings yesterday who’d roughed up my car, but then there were so many men here with the shaved head look, it was difficult for me to be sure.
It took me all of five minutes to locate the white slump-block house sitting along a rutted unpaved road only a few blocks from the small downtown area. A FOR SALE sign at the mouth of the driveway leaned at a forty-five degree angle and the weed-choked lawn looked as if it hadn’t been mowed for months. A pale green car bearing a University of Arizona sticker in the back window sat adjacent to an older model Chevrolet. I parked and took note of the empty birdbath and dead flowers in the small rock garden adjacent to the front porch. Apparently Loydeen Shirley wasn’t too concerned about curb appeal because the place projected an aura of decay and sad neglect.
An aged Bassett Hound lying on a ragged mat thumped its tail and looked up at me with forlorn brown eyes. “Hi there, doggie,” I said, knocking on the screen door and then kneeling to scratch him behind the ears. The tail thumped harder. After a minute dragged by and no one answered, I knocked again, louder this time. Finally, I heard a bubbly cough and shuffling steps. The door squeaked open far enough to reveal a cranky-faced woman wearing a ratty housecoat and crown of curlers. A cigarette smoldered in one hand. “Loydeen Shirley?”
“No. Who are you?”
I flashed a cheerful smile. “My name is Kendall O’Dell and….”
“If you’re here to look at the house you need to call for an appointment.”
“I’m not here to see the house.”
Her bloodshot eyes narrowed to slits of suspicion. “Then what do you want?”
“Walter Zipp and I work for the same newspaper.”
Her indifferent shrug annoyed me, so I tried another approach. “Walter’s wife, Lavelle, was Bob Shirley’s cousin. Perhaps you knew him?”
“Of course I knew him, he was my son-in-law.” I had the distinct sense she would like to have added ‘you idiot’ but she snapped, “Why do you want to see Loydeen?”
I remembered what Walter said about the woman’s reluctance to discuss her deceased husband, so I rustled up my most beguiling smile. “I was just in
the area and thought I’d stop by to visit. Maybe I could chat with her for a couple of minutes.”
“About what?” She sucked so hard on the cigarette I thought she was going to inhale the whole thing and then before I could say another word, she burst into a fit of coughing. Holding onto the doorframe for support, she hacked and gagged and wheezed so violently I thought she was either going to barf or check out altogether. Not sure what to do, I called out, “Is there anything I can do?”
“Jesus, Grandma!” A young woman with spiky brown hair appeared out of nowhere and rushed to the woman’s side. “You’re not supposed to be up.” She shot me a startled look and shouted, “Wait there, I’ll be right back,” as she led the still-coughing woman away.
Oh, my. I eased my weight onto an old wooden Adirondack chair beside the door and leaned my head back, suddenly feeling bone weary. Two nights of lost sleep were catching up with me. I wished I could close my eyes and lie down on the mat beside the dog. “Want some company, fellah?” As if he understood, the hound raised his freckley brows and wagged his tail.
As I sat there listening to the lonesome whisper of the wind dancing through the high grass, I sensed more than just an air of disregard surrounding the place, an actual pall hung over the house. But then, it had only been three months since Bob Shirley’s untimely death.
I think I may have actually dozed off for a few minutes when I heard the hinges on the screen door squeak. I blinked and looked up as the lanky girl stepped onto the porch and pulled the front door shut behind her. She wore heavy eye makeup, hip-hugger jeans and a midriff T-shirt that showed off her belly button ring. “Hi, I’m Jennifer Shirley.” Her open, friendly smile was a welcome contrast to her grandmother’s brittle reception. “Grandma says you know Walter and Lavelle.”
