by C. J. Odle
“This part of the beach is pretty safe, even this late.” They walked in silence for a while, the sand lit dimly by the ambient light from the boardwalk. To their left, the waves of the sea crashed gently to the shore. In the far distance Jake could make out three figures sitting in front of the surf, and the sound of a guitar drifted on the breeze.
“Have you always lived here? Jake asked. “You seem to know it so well.”
“Pretty much, except for around a year. If it weren’t for Mom leaving me the house, no way could I afford to rent. It’s crazy now, what you have to pay. It’s really changing the area.”
“And what about the art—have you always been an artist?”
“Another inheritance from my mother. She used to be a potter and encouraged me to be creative. I grew up making a mess with paints, crayons, and clay. I loved it. It was a lot of fun.”
“Your paintings have real vitality,” Jake said, clasping his hands behind his back.
“Is that a compliment?”
He laughed. “It is.”
“I try to paint from the heart.”
“From the heart sounds good.” Jake was careful with his words. He didn’t want to flirt right now. Walking with her, listening to her, the strength of his feelings made him wary of appearing superficial.
Sarah stepped toward the boardwalk and then stopped and turned to face Jake. “Sandy and Jess will keep an eye on things, but I should get back.” She laughed. “I love my friends to bits, but they can’t be trusted for a minute.”
Jake smiled. “No problem.”
They turned right to walk along the boardwalk and return to the gallery, and came across a tall wino stumbling around drunk, clutching a bottle in a brown paper bag. Dressed in a dark hoodie, he held what appeared to be a firework in his other hand. He veered toward Jake and Sarah before lurching over the boardwalk to plant it in the sand. They watched while the man took out a lighter and sparked it on the third attempt. He lit the fuse, which fizzled as he stepped back. Whoosh! It flared into the night sky and burst into concentric rings of intense color.
Jake clapped. “Bravo!” The wino gave a deep bow before stumbling off.
“Crazy guy, in a good way.” Sarah smiled, and turned to start walking briskly along the boardwalk, past the colorful graffiti on the shuttered storefronts. Under the bright streetlights, Jake noticed that Sarah was wearing the same pendant as before. This time the turquoise stone was tucked under her white tank top, but the faint outline was visible beneath the thin fabric. Sarah’s street soon appeared, and they turned left onto it.
“So, mystery man, what is it that you do?” she asked, slowing down and flipping her hair again. “Presumably not selling a few paintings in an inherited shop?”
“I’m a lawyer,” Jake said. For the first time in his life, he felt almost apologetic about it, and he didn’t know why.
“The world always needs people who are going to look after the innocent,” Sarah said. It was probably the kindest remark anyone had ever made about his profession.
As they approached the gallery, a gaggle of partygoers spilled out onto the street and started to walk toward them.
Even dressed casually for the beach, Jake carried his wallet, so he took out a business card. “This is what I do.” He stopped, and so did Sarah.
“It looks more like you’re giving me your number,” Sarah joked.
Jake flipped the card over and retrieved a pen from his pocket to write his cell number on the back. “This is me giving you my private number. So, do you—”
A figure in a strange, gray-headed costume suddenly appeared in front of them. The costume swelled out around the occupant’s body in latex and foam. Saucer-sized eyes bulged from the mask, while three-fingered hands stretched out toward him. For an instant, Jake’s chest contracted, tension flashing with fear, and something worse: recognition. He forced himself to breathe again. Of course he recognized it. It was every clichéd sci-fi movie’s depiction of an alien, the effect spoiled only by an oversized T-shirt advertising some convention. That, and the bunch of fliers gripped in one of the three-fingered hands.
“Come to the convention or see your world annihilated!” the alien demanded in tones of doom that would have worked better if the woman in the costume hadn’t sounded quite so young or been struggling to contain her laughter. “Seriously, California’s biggest alien expo, this weekend. Come along. Learn the truth. Take a flier?”
“Shouldn’t an alien expo have something a bit more high tech?” Sarah countered with a laugh. She waved away the proffered fliers.
Jake took one. It was a particularly lurid green, as though trying to proclaim its alien-ness in dye, with details of the expo spelled out in a range of fonts, suggesting it had probably been designed by two or more people with a lack of consensus. It should have been something to laugh at as the “alien” rushed off down the street. Instead, he folded it neatly before tucking it into his wallet.
The boisterous cluster of guests passed them on the street.
“Hey, Sarah! Great party, thanks.”
“Nice one!”
“See you guys later.” Sarah waved, and then called out, “Who was that in the E.T. outfit?”
“Some friend of Jimbo’s.”
Sarah looked at Jake. “Well, you don’t see aliens every day. Although, I guess around here…”
Jake wished he could dismiss it as easily. In his head, he knew of course it had just been one more instance of the kind of oddness you found in LA, just another day in the big city. Yet his heart still beat too fast, and a subtle sense of unease continued to worm its way through him.
“Where were we?” Sarah asked.
Jake shook his head. His buoyant mood deflated. He’d been hoping… well, he wasn’t sure what he’d been hoping for, but now other, unsettling thoughts occupied his mind.
“I need to get back,” Jake said.
“You’re sure?”
“Sorry.”
“OK, see you around.” Sarah looked disappointed. Jake gave a short wave before turning away and walking down the street.
Chapter Five
Once home, Jake returned to the leather chair by the windows and looked out at the night sky. He had his computer out and was checking weather websites, trying to find any recent mention of an unusual storm or light activity over LA. He scrolled through the previous days’ forecasts. Hopefully there would be a jokey segment somewhere telling their geekier viewers exactly where to look to see the upcoming meteor shower.
It would have been reassuring. One mention of a safe, predictable astronomical event, and the whole episode could have been forgotten. The “alien” had unnerved him, and the uncomfortable feelings he’d pushed away when he’d seen the brilliant ovals streaking across the sky returned with a vengeance. If they were simply a natural phenomenon, then he’d just have to deal with the sleepwalking and the vision, both of which could feasibly be explained by stress.
There was nothing. Not on NBC or the local KNBC. Not even on Fox. A trawl of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s website didn’t turn up anything but the usual round of storms, tornadoes, and other weather warnings for the rest of the country. A similar search through NASA’s website also drew a blank. Jake began to look for contact details, but then he forced himself to close the lid of his laptop.
“You’re thinking of contacting NASA to ask them about strange lights in the sky?” Jake muttered to himself. “Could you sound any more like a crank?”
He leaned back in the chair and gazed once more at the night sky. After a few aimless minutes, he sprang to his feet and ferreted around in one of the carefully concealed storage units by the front hallway. He pulled out a large box and opened the lid… Yes, there it was.
His adoptive parents had bought him the telescope in an attempt, Jake suspected, to steer him away from his stories about strange visions. The more he learned about the hard sciences, their theory went, the less credence he would give to anyth
ing he couldn’t explain. The telescope had lain dormant for years, but Jake hadn’t been able to bring himself to throw it away.
He took it out, dusting off the lenses and making sure all parts were intact before setting it up on its tripod. He did it furtively, partly because in LA there were some pretty strict anti-stalker laws in place for Hollywood, but mostly because he couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable. As if by simply looking skyward he risked opening up Pandora’s box.
He peered through the telescope, trying to remember how to align it properly and focus the lenses on the patch of sky where the lights had first appeared. Once in position, he waited. And waited. Jake was someone who found it difficult to be patient. Yet he forced himself to persevere.
Nothing happened. The sky remained defiantly blank. Again and again, Jake found his eyes drawn downward toward the seductive lights of the city, and each time he needed to blink away the haze, letting his eyes adjust once more. He waited an hour, two. Long enough that if he’d had work in the morning he would have chided himself for wasting time better used for sleep.
Eventually he got up. The other night the lights had been and gone long before now. They weren’t coming again. With a shrug, Jake stepped away from his telescope and went to bed.
Desert. Searing heat, radiating down with fierce intensity. No shade, nothing to offer relief. This heat might last forever, slowly baking him to death on the sand. Jake was dressed for work, his feet shifting, sinking in, and forcing him to step and keep stepping to maintain his balance. He looked toward the two dunes in front of him, which were rising upward to take crisp bites out of the clear blue sky.
He reached down and touched the sand, lifting a handful of it and feeling the grains slipping through his fingers. He could hear the dry whisper of the sand sighing as the dunes shifted. There were no plants that he could see. Only the sand, scattering around him in the endless wind.
Jake turned toward the figure before it appeared over the dunes, not yet a shape, just the merest shimmer in the heat.
Slowly, the shimmer became a blurred figure. It moved with a smooth certainty, gliding over the loose sand.
There was something about it. An element of otherness. Something not quite right.
Jake stumbled backward, his feet slipping and sinking. Unable to tear his eyes away, he felt a deep terror. If he could see it, he would understand, and suddenly confronted with it, Jake wasn’t sure he was ready. That he would ever be ready.
The figure moved toward him inexorably, and with every stride its silhouette became sharper and clearer, distinct against the bright sun. There was something wrong with it. The head too big, the arms too thin, the torso unlike any human.
Jake stayed frozen to spot as his mind tried to catch up with what his eyes were seeing. The figure came ever closer, and translucent white skin became visible. It couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be…
The dream cut off abruptly as Jake’s eyes snapped open. Lost momentarily in the space between dreaming and waking, he struggled to understand where he was. Only when he finally tumbled from his bed did the panic start to recede.
On all fours, he waited until his breathing returned to normal and the sweat faded from his skin. He just wished the image from his dream would fade as quickly, the translucent white-skinned creature standing in the sun with its oversized black eyes.
Jake climbed back into bed but couldn’t fall asleep. Not with the image of the alien filling his mind, and the strange sense of how real the dream had been. Much more vivid than the vision in the bar, and unlike anything he had ever experienced. He’d felt no pain during the dream, but perhaps that was because he’d been powerless to resist. He’d never had a lucid dream, or even seen an alien in a vision before. Jake stared upward, his skin clammy with fear and his heartbeat erratic.
After an hour or so, his pulse calmed, and he got up to take a long, hot shower, and then made some coffee. He waited until dawn, and then switched on the TV before making breakfast. Normally, Jake grabbed breakfast in a hurry, often on the way to work. Sometimes he missed it completely. Now he took his time, scrambling three free-range eggs and grilling two strips of bacon before finally taking his plate and sitting down on the sofa in front of the TV. The news ran in the background with the usual round of politics, violence, celebrity gossip, and sports. Jake only left it on because it was preferable to the silence.
“Finally,” the newscaster said, “we have a live report from the intrepid Tasha Baker on the phenomena being seen around Los Angeles at the moment, with several people spotting strange lights in the sky.”
Jake dropped his fork onto his eggs and turned the sound up.
“Thank you, Grant. Several people around the Greater Los Angeles area have reported seeing lights in the sky over the past few nights. People describe oval-shaped lights that have come and gone quickly, moving in straight lines, and exhibiting a variety of colors.”
Jake put his plate down on the sofa and leaned forward. The lights were real. That much was certain. There were interviews with a few people who claimed to have seen them. Their responses varied from excitement to outright disbelief.
“I mean, you hear about this kind of thing,” one woman said, “but you assume it’s only crazies and drunks who ever see it, right? But when you see it for yourself, it changes things.”
It was obviously a slow news day based on the amount of attention the story received. After the eyewitness accounts, a meteorologist assured viewers there was no reason for alarm.
“How do we know these lights are not UFOs?” Tasha asked.
“Although no current astronomical phenomena are likely to be responsible, I can say with 100 percent certainty, little green men are not about to land in Los Angeles!”
“Could it be the northern lights?” Tasha asked.
“I think we’re a little far south for those,” the meteorologist replied.
Jake flicked through the other channels but drew a blank. Only KNBC was covering the story.
He turned off the TV and finished his eggs and bacon. At least he hadn’t been hallucinating when he’d seen the lights. But that wasn’t much comfort. In fact, considering his dream, it was no comfort at all. Quite the opposite. Would the dream turn out to be prophetic? Just like his adolescent visions…
Jake picked up his plate and walked to the kitchen, where he methodically washed up and made some more coffee, then sipped it slowly while leaning against the granite worktop. A shaft of sunlight struck his face, and he strode over to his desk to open the drawer where he filed papers and notes. Jake sought out the lurid green flier for the alien expo. Last night he’d put it away without thinking. Now he unfolded it gently, spreading it out and holding it flat as if it might fly away.
“You’re not really thinking about it?” he asked himself aloud.
He was. More than thinking about it. The sleepwalking and vision he could accept as being caused by exhaustion and stress, but although possible this had also caused the dream, particularly after seeing the “alien” at the party, Jake couldn’t explain it away so easily. There was something too undeniably real about the translucent white-skinned figure.
Jake had always been skeptical about extraterrestrials, but now he felt on shakier ground, and a crack of self-doubt taunted him. He opened his laptop and browsed the website for the expo. Located in a conference room of a downtown business hotel, the list of exhibitors included amateur scientists, and even an ex-military advisor to the Pentagon. There was also a woman claiming to be a high priestess from Atlantis.
Jake lowered the lid. The expo might hold a clue that would help him get to grips with whatever was going on. At the very least, it should also provide a bit of light relief.
Fifty minutes later, Jake was parking his Porsche in the lot of a smart business hotel, six blocks down from Grand Park. The hotel was close enough to his apartment for him to walk, but he still felt slightly fragile and enjoyed driving in the lighter traffic of Sunday. This was the day that he no
rmally got up early to venture out of the city and explore the San Gabriel Mountains roads.
Jake stepped into the elevator and went up to the fourth floor. The doors opened directly into a surprisingly large room. He bought his ticket from a woman sitting at a desk to the side of the entrance, and she handed him a program before he walked in. Jake estimated that there must be at least eighty exhibitors, and even at ten a.m., quite a few visitors were already milling around.
The well-lit conference room had four rows of stalls, one on each side of the long room, and a double row back-to-back in the middle. Jake started to browse the stalls on the far right. The frontage of the first announced a support group for those identifying as alien abductees. A thin man with an earnest expression sat behind a table displaying books on abduction, while two elderly ladies stood asking questions.
Jake walked on and stopped at the display of an independent documentary producer making a film about global sightings of UFOs and then at a stall selling cookies in the shape of flying saucers. He was still hungry.
The overall atmosphere of the expo appeared a little strange, caught between carnival and absolute seriousness, as if those there were determined to enjoy themselves but worried that doing so might make it less likely people would believe them.
Jake felt torn. A part of him desperately needed to talk to these people in the hope that he would find others who might have experienced the things that were plaguing him. The skeptical part of him, however, refused to take this seriously. He paused, stuck between the two, and was just on the verge of leaving when he spotted the alien outfit.
Jake stared at it. It was unmistakably the one from the party, identifiable even in a room full of costumes and masks, latex suits, and adventurous makeup. The costume hung at the back of a stall at which two young men and an equally young woman were sitting. None of them looked older than college age. With the almost-identical posture of their tall, gangly bodies, the two young men could have been brothers, except one was clearly African-American, and the other Asian, possibly Korean. They tapped away behind a pair of high-spec laptops, only glancing up occasionally.
