The Forgotten Girl

by Rio Youers

  His nostrils flared. I think he was caught between wanting to read me the riot act and showing me the same affection he was showing Lou. Either way, I found his concern quite touching.

  “Just a few days,” I said.

  “Stay as long as you want,” he said.

  * * *

  Something surprising happened in those three days: I saw Dad in a more paternal light—due largely to his concern, but also to my unusual predicament—and for the first time in forever, I actually enjoyed his company.

  We spent one night watching the skies over Spirit Lake. A few burly clouds masked the stars to the north but it was otherwise clear. Dad claimed to have seen a UFO crash into the lake in the summer of ’57, and that the area had been closed to the public for almost two months afterward. “Saw a lot of unusual traffic on Ribbon Road during that time,” he told me. “Big old Lincolns with government plates, military vehicles, trucks with covered beds. They wouldn’t say what they were doing, but I knew; they were dragging the lake, finding the truth in however many pieces, and driving it all away.” Almost certainly the fruit of imagination (he was ten years old at the time), this nonetheless sparked his fascination with all things extraterrestrial and conspiratorial. ’Nam did the rest.

  The lake was a sacred place for Dad. He could often be found sitting in a lawn chair on the shore, pointing his homemade radio telescope at the sky and taking readings, or reclining pensively on the rocks with nothing but his memories. He said he was waiting for another UFO sighting, but that wasn’t all of it. The area was a favorite location in the months before Mom became too sick to leave the house. I have memories of them stumbling across the shale hand in hand, giggling wildly whenever one of them lost balance; of him getting close enough to a blue heron to hand-feed it a fish, and Mom squealing euphorically; of them wading to their waists—fully dressed—for no good reason, then driving home afterward soaked and happy.

  It was his church—a place of both intimacy and huge distance, where Dad felt closer to the things he believed, but which could never be proved. When I asked why he so often went there, he replied, “We always come back for the things we’ve lost.” To this day, I don’t know if he was talking about the aliens looking for their downed ship, or Mom.

  We were there that night to watch the skies, so Dad said, although I suspect it was really an opportunity for father and son to bond. Either way, I embraced it. Dad informed me that he’d been getting “spikes” on his radio telescope for the past two hours. “I had it tuned to 1420 megahertz, which is a protected spectrum. This means the spikes were unquestionably extraterrestrial.” He dropped ass into the lawn chair beside mine, rifled through a nearby cooler, and handed me a frosty-cold beer. “This is a great night for a sighting.” I had my doubts, seeing as his “radio telescope” was in fact a DirecTV satellite dish connected to an arrangement of gizmos from RadioShack. Who knows what he was tuning in to. The “spikes” could have been some horny teenager Snapchatting cock shots to his girlfriend. But hey, Dad seemed happy, and what else were we going to do? Go fishing?

  We listened to the water against the shoreline, as rhythmic as a heartbeat, to the coyotes yipping and howling, to the sounds of our bodies working—breathing and sniffing and yawning. Dad pointed out constellations while I feigned interest. He told me the story of the ’57 UFO crash for the ten thousandth time. We talked about Ebola and Back to the Future and whether or not Mama Cass choked to death on a ham sandwich. We drank steadily, but not too much. We avoided politics and barely talked about Mom and didn’t see any UFOs.

  With a single beer left in the cooler and a contented vibe between us, I decided to ask about Sally, hoping to do so in a way that didn’t sound like I’d lost my mind.

  “I thought she was the one,” I said, and sighed dramatically. “She was cool, right? I’m not just imagining that because I miss her?”

  “Yeah, she had that cool hippie thing going on,” Dad said. “Definitely your type.”

  A deliberate pause, as if I were reminiscing about Sally’s cool hippie thing. Dad stretched out a yawn. His scars glimmered in the dim battery-powered lamp posted between our seats.

  I asked, “What did you like most about her?”

  “She danced spontaneously,” Dad replied with barely a second to think about it. “I admired her energy. She had a pretty singing voice, too.”

  “Yeah,” I said, as if I remembered it. “She did.”

  “I like that she never judged me,” Dad continued. “Most people do, but she took everything I said in her stride, whether she believed it or not. I’m sure she was just being polite, but I liked that about her.”

  “Right,” I said.

  “Like I already said, she was a peculiar girl. No denying that. But in some ways—her sweetness, her tenderness and patience—she was a lot like your mother.”

  I had opened my mind. I imagined the neural pathways flowing with activity. No blockages or breaks. It was like turning on a tap. The connection points fizzled with life and glowed. My brain crackled vibrantly.

  One decent memory, I thought. That’s all it’ll take to trigger a cascade. I envisioned pushing the first domino; rolling a snowball downhill; flicking a smoldering cigarette butt into brittle grass.

  I was ready.

  “Any particular memories?” I invited.

  “Sure,” Dad said, but when it came to recounting them, he mostly faltered and frowned. It can be hard to recall memories on demand, and Dad was no spring chicken. He partially uncovered a few things, like when Sally sang a selection of Nina Simone—or was it Etta James?—songs by candlelight during a power outage, and how for his birthday she’d recited Rudyard Kipling’s “If—” from atop the kitchen table. He recalled that he first met Sally on the day Michael Jackson died/arrived. “Or was that the second time? No, it was definitely the first. She wore a leaf in her hair. A maple, I think.” These were not the clear, dependable memories I’d hoped for, and they did nothing to begin the cascade. At the very least, it was nice hearing Dad talk about Sally. He did so with a fondness that made me want to find her even more.

  “All these years searching,” I said, pointing at the stars. Dad thought I’d changed the subject but I hadn’t. “Against the odds, with nothing to go on but phantoms and gut instinct … how’d you keep from losing faith?”

  Dad finished the last beer and dropped the empty into the cooler. He sighed and said nothing for a long time, and I wondered if he’d thought my question rhetorical, or if he’d even heard it. Then he turned to me with a contemplative smile.

  “Really, son, it’s a matter of belief, and how it defines us.” His eye tracked skyward again, as if drawn by a magnet. “I’m more afraid of not believing than I am of not finding what I’m looking for.”

  Pale light spilled through the trees as we made our way home, with the dawn chorus in full voice. Dad carried the lawn chairs and lamp, and I—favoring my sore ankle—the heavier cooler. We didn’t speak until we reached his land, veering around the many holes and traps. Something occurred to me as I looked at all the places he’d been digging. It was a long shot, but I saw no harm in asking.

  “This is going to sound crazy, but did I buy you a shovel recently? As a belated Father’s Day present or something?”

  “Last time you bought me a Father’s Day present,” he said, “Mom was alive to watch me unwrap it.”

  “Right, okay.” I sighed. “Well, a birthday present, then.”

  “Do you even know when my birthday is?”

  “March twelfth.”

  “March fifteenth, and no, you didn’t buy me a shovel.” He stopped, turned, and held the lamp up to my face. “What’s with all the questions, Harvey? Is there something wrong with your memory?”

  “Occasional blackouts,” I said, forcing a smile. “It’s a vegetarian thing.”

  “Sure it is.” He lowered the lamp and started walking again, but not before tipping an amused wink. “Or maybe your girlfriend really did wipe your mind b
efore returning to Alpha Draconis.”

  “Could be that, too,” I said.

  I followed him back to the house and asked no more questions.

  * * *

  I called Chief Newirth to let him know where I was; I didn’t want him thinking I’d skipped town after our conversation. That would look about as innocent as buying a shovel on the day my girlfriend disappeared. He told me to keep him in the loop. I didn’t like how—over a phone line, and with only a few words—I was able to detect the suspicion in his voice. Or maybe that was the old paranoia creeping in.

  The next forty-eight hours were spent looking after myself. I slept well, ate good food, and made time to read. Not for pleasure—for information. I learned more about Sally, in small part from the half memories that Dad shared, but mainly from an old notebook I uncovered. Additionally, Dad had an abundance of reference materials. Magazines. Books. Newspapers. Audio and video recordings. I even took his old truck to the library in Newton (I didn’t want to go to Green Ridge—just the thought of being back there made me anxious) and supplemented my research online. I turned pages until the words blurred and my head throbbed, but it was worth it; I procured critical information. Not only about Sally.

  I also found out about the spider.

  Ten

  Dad’s library was an airless jungle of crammed shelves and teetering stacks, predominately non-fiction books with titles like Corporation: Evil and The Assassination Nation, and yellowed newspapers, some of which dated as far back as the Vietnam War. I’d ventured in knowing there was little chance of finding anything to my taste, but quite charmed by the idea of losing myself in a good novel. Dad had assured me he owned several modern classics, so I figured I’d at least try looking for them before venturing to the bookstore.

  I made sturdy footstools out of encyclopedias and used them to reach the top shelves. I removed titles placed like Jenga blocks, searched through wavering stacks, and upended boxes that clearly hadn’t been opened for years. Eventually—on the verge of defeat—I disinterred a copy of Orwell’s 1984 and ran it around the room like I’d scored a touchdown. With everything so precariously placed, disaster was inevitable; I brushed a tower of books as tall as me and it toppled spectacularly. The shock wave caused a second and third tower to fall. I groaned, slipped the paperback into the back pocket of my jeans, and set about fixing the mess. It was then that I came across the book Dad had written, Reptilians Among Us, an eight-hundred-page doorstop he’d self-published after failing to win interest with the major presses. Its black cover was adorned with insipid green lettering and a collage of well-known faces, all Photoshopped with lizard eyes and forked tongues. It was actually kind of wonderful.

  Intrigued, I turned to page one and started reading, but didn’t get beyond those opening two lines. I imagine the publishers’ slush readers had stopped at exactly the same place. I rippled a few pages and saw pictures of the Alpha Draconis star system and President Obama and some old movie star whose name I couldn’t recall. I jumped to another set of pictures somewhere near the middle and saw David Bowie as Ziggy Stardust and, top right on the right-hand page, a darkly handsome face that made me scream, snap the book closed, and throw it across the room.

  “Jesus Christ,” I said, backing up, looking at the book where it landed, fearfully, as if it were a poisonous snake or a fat black …

  Spider, I thought.

  It was him, I knew it. He was younger in the picture, obviously, his face not as deeply lined, his widow’s peak more black than silver, but those Emperor Ming eyes and angular brows were unmistakable. I exhaled steadily and rubbed the gooseflesh from my forearms, still feeling him—his many legs—crawling through my brain. I reeled from the room and went downstairs, crossed the kitchen to the backdoor. “You okay?” Dad asked, because clearly I didn’t look okay, but I grunted something vaguely positive and stepped outside. The air was sunshiny and clean and I took deep gulps of it, until my trembling had eased and the sweat on my throat had dried. Several cats curled around my legs. I scooped one of them into my arms and clutched her.

  * * *

  The picture pulled at me, though, and within an hour I found myself back in Dad’s library. This time I was armed; I had my red feather. What nightmares could an old black-and-white picture possibly evoke with such a vivid reminder already clenched in my fist? I retrieved Reptilians Among Us from where I’d thrown it and flipped the pages until I saw him again. A smiling head shot. I recalled that he’d smiled often in the moments before violating my mind.

  I touched his face—ran my finger from his striking brow to his nose, over his smiling lips and then to his throat, where I made a swift cutting motion. “Fuck you,” I said, then slammed the flat of my fist—the one holding the feather—down between his eyes. “Fuck you.” I struck the picture again. “FUCK YOU.” And again. The page creased. My voice echoed through the house. I didn’t care.

  Did it help, this mimicry of violence? A little, perhaps; I was still nauseous, but could look at the picture without rage—could focus on the caption beneath it: Former Tennessee Senator DOMINIC LANG used reptilian mind control to coerce terror suspects at Guantánamo Bay. Fucker had a name. He’d always be the spider, but with a name I could find out more about him. Jesus, I knew he didn’t hatch from an egg or ride the E train from Alpha Draconis, but as a former senator, his story—or at least some of it—would be available to me.

  I’d started reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War when I was fifteen, not because I had any intention of going to war, but because it seemed like a hip thing to do. Much of it was beyond me; not difficult to understand, just not relatable. I had memorized several quotes, though, because they sounded smart and cool. One of them came to mind as I looked at the spider’s picture again. If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

  I parked the feather in my dreads, freeing up both hands, and flipped to the back of Dad’s book. There wasn’t an index, so I started skimming for that name, Dominic Lang. I’d take anything written by Dad with a truckload of salt, of course, but it was somewhere to start.

  After thirty minutes—and with a tight, achy knot in my skull—I’d found only a couple of references that didn’t reveal much, so rather than go through the entire book, I took it downstairs. Dad was in the living room sorting through his vinyl records, placing some of them in a box with the word BUNKER written on the side in permanent marker. I found this curious, but didn’t have time to think about it. I opened Reptilians Among Us, pointed at the spider’s picture, and said to Dad, “What can you tell me about this man?”

  Dad’s murky blue iris floated behind his monocle, which he wore for reading. He couldn’t wear glasses because he only had one ear.

  “Dominic Lang,” he said, and sneered. “Reptilian. Possibly an overlord. The media called him the ‘Terrorist Whisperer.’ He made a fortune interrogating prisoners of war with what he called ‘advanced intellective analysis,’ and what I call ‘reptilian mind control.’”

  “What else?” I asked.

  He told me what he knew. I extrapolated several feasible details, then asked if any of the books in his library could provide further reading. I don’t know if he thought I’d taken a sudden interest in his bizarre humanoid theories, but he scuttled away and returned with an armful of books. Some would offer scant and unreliable information. Aliens on the Hill, for instance, and The Babylonian Brotherhood. Others—The Interrogation Files and Beyond the Chamber—would prove more valuable.

  “What’s this all about?” Dad asked, watching as I sorted through the titles.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. “Maybe nothing.”

  “You’re not going to tell me?”

  I smiled apologetically, found a quiet corner, and started to read.

  Most of the books had indices, so I found what I was looking for quickly. With certain information revealed, I was able to dig deeper … and deeper. Over the next several hours, I delved into yet more books
, both at Dad’s house and at the library in Newton. I scoured the Internet, cross-referenced everything, and made copious notes in a legal pad with the words KNOW YOUR ENEMY scrawled across the front.

  The red feather was my bookmark.

  This is what I learned:

  * * *

  Dominic Lang’s twin died in utero and for six weeks he shared the womb with that little corpse. He would one day tell his constituents—holy-rolling Republicans, by and large—that the hand of God had cradled him before unmaking his brother, and that he’d been born with a divine blueprint in his pocket. What he didn’t tell them was that he’d hogged all the blood and nutrients in the womb, effectively starving his twin. In a leaked e-mail exchange with his former legislative director, Lang purportedly wrote, “I’d have bitten off that little fucker’s head if it meant only one of us was getting out of there alive.” Lang fervently denied this, of course—claimed his e-mail account had been hijacked by terrorists or heathens. His God-fearing majority believed every word.

  May 9, 1953. Lang was born at thirty-four weeks. The only son of Rudolph and Patricia Lang—a diplomat and English teacher, respectively—he was not, by any measure, a healthy infant. In addition to the complications of being born premature, his heart was enlarged and his blood pressure too high. Doctors said he might not live through the night, which almost proved the case when, not even twelve hours old, his heart stopped beating. By some miracle the medical staff revived him, and although he went on to grow big and strong, it was clear he was not like other children. He was withdrawn, inaccessible—didn’t voice a single word until he was eight years old. In 1958, he was diagnosed with autism, a term that was new to most Americans, and largely misunderstood. Some specialists suggested the condition was due to his heart having stopped beating and his brain being denied oxygen. Others maintained that a cerebral imbalance was common in survivors of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome.