by C. J. Odle
There were differences between the figure and the costume Marina had worn, but they were only the differences between living skin and trickery. Translucent, hairless, almost jellyfish-like skin covered a slender frame with an overlarge skull. Eyes too big even for that head stared at Jake, dark as pools of obsidian.
Jake felt the large black eyes drill into him, transfixing his mind like a pinned butterfly. His body froze, and a subtle vibration started inside his head. He tried to move his feet but couldn’t. He felt no connection to them. The vibration left his head and swept slowly down his body in a horizontal band, rising upward again once it reached his feet. He tried to scream in frustration, but his mouth refused to cooperate. He concentrated and focused as the band touched his chest.
With an explosive karate shout, Jake tore a foot from the sand and charged toward the alien.
The steering wheel felt hard beneath his forehead, and the smell of leather filled his nostrils. With a groan, he lifted his sweaty head from the wheel and checked his face in the rearview mirror. A trickle of blood on the side of this mouth had started to congeal. He relaxed into his seat, then groaned again, and rolled his head to avert his eyes from the bright sunlight.
When Jake thought about the vibrating band sweeping through him, he could feel a phantom of it still inside him. He shuddered and opened the glove box, relieved to see a half-empty bottle of water. He screwed off the cap and drank most of it, saving the last dregs to tip over his forehead. The water felt good on his skin as it ran down his face. Jake sighed.
The alien had been scanning him. That’s what it had felt like.
Jake’s head began to clear, and he suddenly remembered Sarah. What must she have thought as he’d recoiled from her just after their lips had touched so tenderly? He wanted to call her to apologize and explain, but what could he say? He didn’t have an explanation, or, at least, not one that he would want to share. If she knew what was happening to him, well… who would want to spend time around a freak?
As far has he could see, there were two options. Either go and check himself into a clinic and get dosed up with god knew what, or actually try and find out why he was seeing this alien. His time at the convention had proved that other people also went through similar experiences, even full-scale abductions. Jake pulled out his phone and checked Gemini’s virtual business card.
He contacted Gemini through their website, and the address for their headquarters was texted to his phone in under a minute. He texted back suggesting he stop by in a few hours, and they confirmed straightaway. While Jake was driving home, Sarah called twice, but on both occasions, he let the call ring out. After the second call, his phone beeped, and the voicemail icon flashed, but he decided to listen later.
As soon as he got back to his penthouse, Jake strode across the hardwood floor toward the bathroom area, unbuttoning his sweaty shirt and peeling it off as he walked. He flung it down and turned the power shower to max before hurriedly removing his remaining clothes and stepping in. The steaming water pummeled his body and helped cleanse his mind of the unpleasant afterimage that lingered from his vision.
Jake got out of the shower and wrapped a fluffy towel around his waist and then lay flat on his king-sized bed for an hour until his phone showed four thirty p.m. He dressed and left his apartment to drive to Gemini’s headquarters.
Their headquarters were only twenty minutes away, in a leafy suburban house in Mid-Wilshire that looked like the last place on Earth a youthful collective would operate from. Specifically, in the basement, which Adam led him down to. One glance at the unmade bed in the far-right corner, the pizza boxes on the floor, and the mess everywhere else told Jake everything he needed to know.
“This is your parents’ place, isn’t it?” Jake guessed.
“I’ve got to live somewhere,” Adam pointed out. “And they mostly leave us alone here. They’re cool.” He wore jeans and a bright-yellow T-shirt that emphasized his long neck, and his Afro had been cut shorter.
Jake scanned the basement to take in the details. On the far left was a large desk with laptops, keyboards, and monitors. Behind the desk stood a haphazard stack of servers and cables. Billy sat in front of a monitor tapping away, the tiny lights on the servers flickering as he worked. On the near right of the room, Marina slumped in the middle of a large beanbag, her blue hair even more vibrant under the bright ceiling spot light directly above.
“His mom doesn’t complain too much about the servers down here,” Marina said. “Mostly because he paid for the house.”
“He paid for the house?” Jake exclaimed in surprise.
“The guys won some money in tournaments,” she explained.
“Baseball?” Jake asked. “Football? Chess?”
“Computer gaming,” Marina said.
“We’ve got everything we need down here,” Billy said from the other end of the basement. “A totally secure network with plenty of power. No one can find us.”
“Unless they ask the pizza guy?” Jake suggested.
“We’re careful about that,” Billy assured him, even though Jake had been joking. “We’re careful about everything”
“What can we do for you?” Marina asked. “Your message sounded urgent.”
Jake still hadn’t worked out the best way to put it. He stared at the brown carpet in front of Marina’s purple skirt and short leather boots while Adam stood by his side. Billy looked up from the other end of the basement, and suddenly Jake felt three pairs of eyes on him as they waited for him to speak.
“Hey, Jake,” Adam said, putting his hand on Jake’s shoulder. “Relax, man, you’re with friends.”
Jake let out a long sigh. “I’ve experienced some… stuff. I used to have visions in my teens—”
“I knew you were psychic!” Marina exclaimed, sitting up straight on the beanbag. “Sorry, didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“Jake ran his hands through his hair and took a deep breath. “The visions were nearly always prophetic. They stopped when I was fifteen, and I’d almost forgotten about them. But over the last few days, they’ve started again. I also had a lucid dream for the first time.”
“What have the recent visions and dream been about?” Marina asked.
“Of a desert, with a jellyfish-skinned alien with large oval eyes.”
“Have you seen other kinds?”
Jake shook his head. “I’ve never seen any kind of alien until now.”
“Well, I’ve seen aliens like yours,” Marina said. “They’re a kind of Gray.”
“Gray?” Jake asked, confused.
“Yeah,” Adam said. “Gray aliens are the classics, the ones you see in films. You know, the long, dangly arms with three fingers, short little guy with the big bulb-shaped head.” He grinned and gestured with his hands in the air to emphasize the shape.
Marina pushed herself up from the bean bag. “Most Grays, like the name suggests, have gray skin. But a few are sort of translucent white. That’s what I’ve seen anyway.”
Never in his life had Jake imagined he would be comparing alien visions with a young woman with electric-blue hair. “But why are they called Grays?” he asked.
“Roswell,” Marina and Gemini answered together.
“I’ve heard of it, but don’t recall the details,” Jake said, throwing his hands up.
“New Mexico, 1947,” Adam explained. “A UFO crashed on a ranch, and the government covered it up. Tried to make out it was some sort of weather balloon. But too many people were involved, and some started to blab. Bodies of some little guys were found.” He gazed into the distance. “Must have been quite a party.”
Marina brushed her bangs from her eyes. “And that’s where the whole alien Gray tag started. The alien bodies recovered had light-gray skin.”
Jake vaguely remembered being drunk and watching a documentary on cable TV. As far as he could recall, the whole thing had been debunked years ago, but he decided not to mention it. He suddenly felt torn again, as he had at the alie
n expo. When Adam and Marina talked about alien bodies and Roswell, it sounded like something out of National Enquirer, and Jake found it hard to take seriously. On the other hand, he couldn’t deny the truth of his own experiences.
“Jake, what happens in these visions?” Marina asked. “What does the alien do? You said it was in a desert, right?”
“Well,” Jake began, “it just stares at me with its large eyes.”
“Nothing else?” Marina’s mischievous eyes glinted.
He flinched before replying, hesitant to reveal more. “No, nothing else. Why do you ask? Isn’t being stared at by a jellyfish-skinned alien enough?”
“Sorry, it’s just that recently a couple of people online reported visions of being scanned, like the alien was checking them out. I’ve never had that, though.”
“Still”—Adam smiled—“that’s not as bad as being abducted in broad daylight.”
Jake tensed up, his pulse quickening.
“Did you hear about the lights on Friday night?” Marina asked.
“I—I did, actually.” Jake’s throat tightened, and he put his hands on his hips to stem the rising feeling of panic. “There were two, right?” He tried to play for time as his mind churned with the news that his scanning experience wasn’t unique.
“Yeah. Two bright ovals,” Marina confirmed.
“Showtime,” Adam said and then strode over to sit down next to Billy. They tapped away at their keyboards in unison, and Jake could see why they called themselves Gemini.
“Hey, Jake,” Billy said, waving him over. “Come and check this out.”
Jake walked over to the far left of the basement, feeling calmer now that the questions had stopped. Billy motioned for Jake to stand behind the desk at his side. Gemini’s fingers flew across their keyboards, pulling up page after page of information on the two monitors. Jake watched the small pi tattoo on Billy’s middle finger bouncing around.
“The government doesn’t want anyone to see this,” Billy said.
“But their network security is so weak,” Adam said, “they might as well just publish it.”
“You’re been breaking into government databases?” Jake asked, pretty sure he shouldn’t be involved in that kind of activity.
“Don’t worry, it’s easy,” Billy assured him.
Adam swiveled the large monitor in front of him toward Jake. “Look, man, here are the lights.” Crystal-clear HD footage showed the two oval lights streaking across the sky. Racing from left to right, high above the skyscrapers of LA, exactly as Jake remembered them.
“Where is this footage from?” Jake asked.
“The most secure part of the LAPD mainframe,” Adam replied.
Marina walked up to Jake’s side as Billy pointed at his monitor.
“Here’s the Roswell stuff.”
A slideshow of photos passed before Jake’s eyes. The images were in black and white. He could see the remains of what appeared to be a flying saucer lying broken in a field. Three US airmen stood with their hands on their hips staring at the fragments, while another airman peered out from the open window of a military jeep. The next photo showed a gray alien lying twisted on the ground, and a fragment of the flying saucer could be seen to the far left. A man in a white lab coat held a large-format camera with a flash attached and hunched over the small figure. The next few photos showed a succession of top military officials standing by the crashed spacecraft, and then by the twisted body on the ground.
“Go on,” Marina said. “Show him the autopsies.”
Billy nodded and hit a single button on his keyboard. The screen went blank and filled with an image of an alien lying on a mortuary slab. A doctor in a white coat leaned over the body with a scalpel in his hand, about to make an incision on the top right of the chest. On the other side of the slab, two men with cameras bent down to take shots. A nurse with a clipboard looked toward the doctor, pen poised in her hand.
Billy pressed another key, and the image changed. The alien’s chest had been cut open, and a bloodlike liquid spilled out of its body onto the mortuary slab. The image was black and white, and so the exact color of the liquid wasn’t clear, but it looked dark. The doctor with the scalpel was leaning over the figure, pointing into the chest. Two other doctors peered in, while the nurse with the clipboard took notes.
Jake stared at the screen. Unless this was an incredibly elaborate hoax, it had to be real.
“Adam,” Marina said, “the memos.” Adam touched the keyboard, and a cascade of files opened. He clicked one, and it expanded to full screen. Jake stepped closer to read the contents. On the scanned page of official White House stationary, President Truman signed off a request from the military to keep all Roswell material highly classified. The government agreed full disclosure would cause widespread panic. The second paragraph acknowledged the request to set up a special task force to study the technology of the spacecraft and promised an answer would be forthcoming shortly.
Adam clicked on another file, and this time the letterhead revealed a government department Jake had never heard off. He read slowly. The memo detailed two military facilities in the USA where parts of the recovered alien bodies were being analyzed. There were also samples at Harvard and at the University of Cambridge in the UK. The memo was stamped “Top Secret,” and dated 1948.
“Jake,” Marina said. “I know this is a lot to take in. Even having had visions, it still threw me when I first saw it. But it’s real. Aliens have been visiting us for some time, and most eyewitness accounts give pretty much the same description.”
Jake edged out from behind the desk and walked over to the beanbag to sit down.
“But we haven’t even shown you the autopsy reports yet,” Billy complained.
Marina glared at Billy and stepped toward Jake. “Are you OK?”
Jake put his head in his hands and tried to think, the bright spotlight above him. He felt stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. Either aliens existed, and he’d seen one in his visions and dream and potentially been scanned. Or they didn’t, and his imagination was making the whole thing up. Both options were equally unpleasant.
Gemini’s evidence had been compelling, and Jake’s instinct as a lawyer found it hard to reject. Which led to only one conclusion—a conclusion he couldn’t face.
“I made a mistake coming here,” Jake said and then strode toward the door.
Chapter Seven
What did it take to wipe away the truth? By evening, Jake didn’t have an answer, but he was willing to make the effort to find out. He picked up a case of beer from his local store and drove back to his apartment. The first bottle hardly touched him, the second and third sloshed around in his stomach yet still left him sober. He downed the next one even quicker.
Except that it failed. Every time he closed his eyes, he could see the strange creature from his visions and dream, waiting for him like an unwanted guest. Jake tried what he could to distract himself, turning on music, then cranking it louder until certain his neighbors would complain. Right then, Jake would have welcomed the argument, if only to release the tension.
It got late, and then later. Jake knew he couldn’t simply stay awake all night, but equally he doubted he would be able to sleep. He remembered some sleeping pills in the bathroom cabinet, left over from a brief period of insomnia a few months before, and he walked over to rummage around and dig one out. He knocked it back with a glass of water, and eventually it helped enough for him to drift off into something approaching dreamlessness.
He still woke too early, getting up and throwing on his running gear without even stopping to eat. Maybe hard physical exercise could achieve what self-medicating couldn’t.
Jake pounded the sidewalk, oblivious to the noise of the traffic, even without his earbuds in. He inadvertently bumped a few Tuesday-morning commuters, knocking coffee and papers out of hands. His phone rang, and he checked it, but when he saw Sarah’s name he let it go to voicemail. He still hadn’t listened to her fir
st message, and now the icon flashed to show another.
Jake ran in the direction of his gym, got there, and hit the weights. Running gave him too much time to think, but the raw effort of trying to shift so much metal took more concentration. Even this failed to stop his thoughts from intruding, so Jake grabbed one of the punching bags in the corner, putting on gloves and slugging out his frustration. He remembered the pictures of the autopsy at Gemini’s headquarters, and slugged the bag even harder.
Jake kept up the pace, trying to obliterate the thoughts of aliens with the fatigue a complete workout provided. He slumped into one of the rowing machines. He’d always thought of himself as an athlete, so now he set his sights on the kind of time a real athlete might manage, aiming for a stroke rate in the high thirties.
Luckily, he felt the moment when the vomit started to rise from his stomach and managed to dash to the bathroom in time. He bent over one of the sinks while the bitter taste filled his mouth, hating the way his body could be so weak. It felt even weaker once he’d thrown up, and he stood there shaking in the aftermath.
After a while, Jake showered but still didn’t feel clean. On impulse, he headed for the gym’s sauna. He sat inside wrapped in a thick white towel, enveloped in steam, sweat running down his body in small rivulets. He showered again, then couldn’t help looking at the gym’s massage rooms. Normally he didn’t bother with what he considered to be pampering. Today he felt he needed it.
The hardest part was putting his body in a stranger’s hands and doing nothing. Jake lay on his stomach while the masseuse started to work the knots from his shoulders, back, and calves.
“You have a lot of tension,” she said.
A lot, then less. Slowly, the effects of the massage started to work through him. There were candles burning nearby, releasing their scents of essential oils. This added to the growing sense of calm in the room.
