by Terry James
“Well, Mark, don’t let him hear you say that. He says he hears that every day from Air Training Command.”
“Yes, ma’am. It must be hard when you want to be in combat.”
“Sure is,” James Morgan said in a gruff, loud voice.
Mark stood when the lieutenant colonel approached the table.
“You the guy looking for me?” the older man said, eyeing the younger.
“Yes, sir. I’m Mark Lansing.”
James Morgan searched Lansing’s features for any spark of familiarity.
“You’re Clark’s son?” he said softly, finding the resemblance to his remembered friend.
“Yes, sir,” Mark said in an equally subdued tone, feeling, somehow, his father’s presence. This man had been his dad’s best friend. He tried to sense what the two had in common that had made them close friends.
“Sir, I’m sorry to be abrupt, but there’s some things, weird things, going on. Things I’ve found out about Dad. I know that you two made the flight in that Piper that day he…”
Mark Lansing let his thought go.
“Guess we need to go somewhere where we can talk,” James Morgan said after a troubled pause of several seconds while looking into the eyes of his long-lost best friend’s son.
Chapter 3
He chose a noisy lounge on the north side of San Antonio. There were no listening devices, and no prying ears here. He had watched very closely to see if they were followed.
“Now, Mark,” he began, while they waited for the lounge hostess, so they could order drinks. “What, exactly, do you want from me?” Morgan’s tone was blunt.
“Sir, I don’t know, exactly, what I want,” the younger man said. “I can tell you about things happening to me, about things I know.”
“Okay. Let’s have it,” Morgan said, leaning forward on his elbows to hear above the cacophony of noises.
Mark glanced up at the approaching barmaid. Both men ordered drinks, then waited until she left before returning to their eye-to-eye, elbows-on-the-table posture.
“As I said, I know Dad made that flight with you that day, the day he…disappeared.”
“How do you know?” Morgan said.
“I talked to a guy who was a deputy in the marshal’s office the day you reported about the…whatever it was. A guy named Tim Sooter.”
“And what did he tell you?”
“That you told them Dad was riding with you in that J-3. Said you told them flying saucers buzzed the plane. That Dad vanished, his lap belt still locked.”
“You believe them?” Morgan said in a slightly incredulous tone.
“Not then. But I do now, Colonel. You better know I believe them now,” Mark Lansing said, leaning forward to make his thoughts known in a way that would leave no doubt that he meant what he was saying.
“I’ve seen them, Col. Morgan. I’ve talked with them,” he said, eyes narrowing, fists tightening with the intensity of his tone.
“You’ve talked to who?” Morgan asked, clasping his fingers together and leaning further forward to hear Mark’s words better. “The deputy marshals? The military, the FBI? Who?” Morgan’s question was heavily tinged with skepticism that bordered on irritation.
The younger man’s eyes searched his surroundings for the right answer.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure. They aren’t …” he stammered, still searching his thoughts for the way to explain. “They aren’t—normal conversations. They’re more like…dreams.”
James Morgan unclasped his fingers and leaned back in the chair. He reached to take the glass filled with ice and bourbon. He sipped the drink, then measured the man across the table before speaking. “You mean you’ve been talking to someone in your dreams, your sleep?”
“No, sir. It’s not like that. These aren’t dreams. They’re like, I don’t know how else to say it. They are like trances. But, trances when I’m fully awake. Fully aware.”
Morgan sipped the drink again, then placed the glass on the table and rotated it back and forth between his right thumb and fingertips. He spoke, not with disbelief in his voice, but with curiosity.
“These--conversations--tell me about them.”
The man hadn’t immediately got up and left, thinking he was talking with a head case. The thought gave Mark boldness.
“It happens more often now,” he said, sipping on his drink, then, like Morgan, fidgeting with the glass by rotating it on the table’s top. “It began one night when I was home—well, visiting Mother at Taos. Something in my mind told me to go outside. I was in bed, about 2 in the morning, or so. I got up and went onto the patio. It’s like I couldn’t do anything else but go out on that patio that morning.”
Morgan studied Mark’s expression from across the table. He drank hard from his bourbon and rocks.
“That first time, I couldn’t understand what they were saying. But before long I understood them, even though they were speaking some totally crazy language I knew nothing about.”
“Who? Who was talking to you?” Morgan said, moving forward to hear Mark’s word over the lounge noises.
“I don’t know, Colonel. I always see just outlines, shadowy outlines. Human outlines, with no features. They seem outlined by a thin edge of light.”
“What did they say?”
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” Morgan said with irritation. “I thought you said you understood them.”
Mark sipped the drink, going over in his mind the same question posed by James Morgan. The question he had asked himself many times.
“I knew I understood at the time. But I can’t remember anything. That is, I remember only that they were there, that we talked, that what we talked about was…something I knew I understood at the time. But I can’t remember anything now.”
“And you say it’s always the same. You have the same experience over and over?” James said after several seconds.
“Pretty much the same. Only one time do I remember from the…conversations. I know Dad is with them. They have him with them,” Mark said, his voice becoming shaky with emotion. “The one thing I always remember is that they tell me they took him from the plane that day, and he is with them.”
James Morgan’s right hand started trembling while he held the drink. He felt the blood drain from his face, his body becoming weak to the point he felt faint.
“Sir, are you okay? You don’t look very well,” Mark said, rising from his chair to grasp the older man’s forearm.
The colonel took a deep breath and downed the remainder of the bourbon.
“No. I don’t feel well at all.”
Laura met them at the door. She took her husband’s right arm when she saw Mark steadying him.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, helping the younger man.
“I don’t know,” Mark said, helping James sit in a living room chair. “He just got weak and dizzy.”
“I’m feeling better now,” James said, trying to shake off the weakness that had come on suddenly at the lounge twenty minutes earlier.
“Maybe we should call Col. Schmidt,” Laura said, touching James’ brow with the back of her right hand.
“No. I’ll be okay, Super L,” he said, gently brushing aside her mothering gesture.
“Think I better lie down for a bit,” James said after a minute of trying to clear his head. When he tried to rise from the deep, soft chair, he was too weak, and slumped back into the seat.
He tried again, this time succeeding with the help of both Laura and Mark Lansing.
“Really. I’ll be fine. Just want to rest for a while,” he said, shuffling, with their help, to a bedroom.
“We’ve got to finish this, Captain, before the weekend is gone,” he said, lying on his back, while Laura adjusted two pillows to make him comfortable.
“Yes, sir. I’ll give Mrs. Morgan the number where you can reach me.”
Laura closed the bedroom door when they left the room.
“He doe
sn’t seem short of breath,” she said. “He didn’t complain of chest pains or anything, did he?”
“No, ma’am,” Mark said.
“I’m worried about him. He’s always been so healthy,” she said.
“Has he been feeling like this much lately?” Mark said, walking toward the apartment’s foyer.
“Please. Sit for a while. I think we should talk.” Laura took Mark’s arm and led him into the small den. She sat across from him when he was seated.
“James has always been so healthy, Mark. Never even a sneeze,” she said, her face taking on an expression of worry.
“But for about six months, since he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, really, he’s---he’s been having these…” She tried to find the words. “He’s been walking in his sleep, and…”
She was obviously considering whether to tell him about the problem. He moved to put her at ease.
“Look, Mrs. Morgan, you don’t have to tell me, but if you do, it won’t go further, I promise.”
She remained silent, considering the words of the young man who despite their past relationship, was still a virtual stranger. James was very private, and she knew he wouldn’t want the matter discussed.
“Let me just say that this, this dizziness, or whatever, came on him suddenly when I told him about something that’s pretty private in my own life.”
He could see that he had softened her resistance to discussing the problem.
“I was telling the colonel about my own bouts at night. My, sleepwalking, if that’s what it is. When I told him, that’s when he seemed to become dizzy and feel faint.”
She sat forward and became tense when she talked. “Yes. That’s got to be it! This thing has him on edge. It has us both on edge,” she said, nearly coming to tears.
“He’s so afraid he’s going to lose flight status. But, I know it goes deeper. Much deeper,” she said, her throat tight with emotion.
“It’s the thing about Dad, isn’t it?” he asked.
She said nothing but straightened as if she had been punched in the ribs.
“I know my dad was on that Piper with the colonel that day. I told him about it. That’s what caused his…his weak feelings, I think.”
“Who told you? Nobody knows but he and I…and…” She thought better of saying more.
He provided the words for her. “The military who were in charge of the Roswell thing?”
“Oh, Mark,” she said, the tears finally spilling over her cheeks.
“We wanted to tell your mother, and you. They told us that if we did--if we told anyone--James would be charged with murder. They would see to it that he paid for Clark’s disappearance.”
Mark moved to Laura’s side on the sofa and put his arm around her shoulders, patting her hand with his free hand. “It’s okay. I know neither of you would do anything to hurt us. You did the only thing you could.”
He moved to a table at the end of the sofa, took a tissue and handed it to her.
“Thank you, Mark. That will mean a lot to James, as well as to me.”
“I’ve had these sleepwalking episodes, or whatever they are, for months. About six months, like the colonel, I think,” he said, then paused for a moment when a thought came.
“Before I go on, let me ask. Exactly what happens when the colonel has one of these…?”
“I’ve found him out on the balcony, just looking off into space. He’s usually talking, muttering, in words I can’t understand. Sounds almost like a foreign language.”
She stopped to dry her tears, then continued. “I always lead him back to bed without his waking.”
“Does he remember these sleepwalks?” Mark’s question came with increased urgency in his voice.
She nodded “no.” “He never remembers,” she said.
“Has he told the flight surgeons?”
“Yes.”
“What do they say?”
“They say all the tests are just fine. It’s normal for some people to sleepwalk, they tell him.”
“But, he’s never done it before? Never walked in his sleep--until six months ago?”
“No, never. Not that I know of, anyway.”
Mark stood, rubbing his eyes and temples. It had been a long day, and the two drinks he had were making his head spin. He wasn’t used to drinking the hard stuff.
“I talk in my episodes, too. Only sometimes I remember a few things. Sometimes I know what the conversations are about, even though they are in language I can’t understand,” he said, looking at her and cocking his head in an expression that said he was as confused about it as he knew she was from hearing it.
“These episodes, I talk with these people I can’t really see. I don’t even know if they’re people. They’re just dark, shadowy human-like figures, outlined by strange, thin lines of light. They told me, made me know somehow, that Dad was taken from the J-3 that day in 1947. They say he’s with them.”
She was dumbfounded. What did it mean? She watched him take his seat in the chair across from her, not knowing what to say to break the silence.
“What on earth is going on?” she managed, finally.
He snapped out of his deep thoughts with her words. “What on earth? Or somewhere else?” he said with amused irony in his tone.
“You probably think I’m completely nuts, but I’ve reached the point I don’t care what anyone thinks. I need answers.”
The doorbell chimed before he could say more.
“Hope that’s Lori,” she said, rising from the sofa and walking through the foyer to the door.
“Sorry, Mom,” the young woman said when her mother opened the door.
“Forgot your keys. Found them on the floor by your nightstand,” Laura said, hugging her daughter.
Mark Lansing stood, seeing the tall female who walked into the den with Laura.
“Mark, this is our daughter, Lori. She’s home from UT for the next couple of weeks.”
“Thanks, Lori,” Mark said, bending low to look beneath the rag top to see the face of the young woman who had driven him from the apartment building to Randolph Air Force Base.
“No problem,” she said holding the TR-5’s steering wheel and smiling at him.
He wanted to say more to her. The drive was too short, and there hadn’t been time to break the ice.
Laura had whispered to him, after she asked Lori to drive him to Randolph’s officer guest quarters that her daughter knew nothing about what they had talked about. Mark had nodded understanding. The conversation on the drive to the base had been mostly about what Lori was studying at the University of Texas.
She showed no interest in him. She did mention a boyfriend she had a date with Saturday night.
He watched the little red British sports car drive away, considering that he wished he, too, had a date tomorrow night. Instead, he would spend time pouring over training manuals preparing for the advanced simulator training he faced starting Monday.
Something gnawed at the back of his thoughts. He wondered if it would work. He went to the bed and sat on its edge once he entered his temporary apartment. He reached for the phone and dialed.
“Hello?” Laura answered.
“Sorry, Mrs. Morgan, to be calling so late. Oh, Lori should be home shortly. She just let me off. Thank you again for the ride.”
“I’ve been thinking about what we talked about, Mark,” Laura said. “We need to talk again. I just can’t believe these things are…”
“Yes, I know. I’ve got to find out what’s going on. And, that’s what I wanted to ask you about,” Mark said.
“Oh?”
“Would it be possible – that is, could you, would you try something that might help us find out things?”
“If I can,” she said with apprehension in her voice.
“Will you try to tape-record the colonel’s words, if and when there is another sleepwalking episode?”
Chapter 4
He was glad he chose the small snack bar just behind
Base Ops rather than accept the invitation to go with the two pilots who were also TDY for continuing flight training on the simulators. Few people were having breakfast at this early hour on Saturday morning, just as he had figured.
He enjoyed the semi-solitude, eating at a leisurely pace, sipping black coffee, and perusing the San Antonio Light for the latest news from Vietnam. President Johnson was taking some heavy hits from the swelling numbers of protesters opposed to the war.
There hadn’t been any when LBJ landed, though, he thought. Although, he considered further, the press corps--especially the D.C. press corps--was itself a growing, surreptitious, anti-war protest movement.
He read on the second page that Johnson would be returning to the White House Monday. He glanced at page 3, scanning it from top to bottom. He started to bring the pages together to turn to page 4 when a small headline in the lower left side of page 3, which made a fleeting, residual impression on his brain, caused him to again pull the pages apart.
“UFO sighted near SA”
His eyes devoured the brief piece:
“Two light-like objects were reported hovering over an area northwest of San Antonio,” Bexar County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Cox said early Saturday morning.
‘We were called about 2:20 in the morning to check out some weird lights flying around and hovering,’ Cox said. ‘We saw them. They didn’t look like they were in any hurry to leave,’ he said.
The San Antonio Light checked with San Antonio International Airport, and with military bases in the area. None reported recording the objects on radar.”
The brevity of the article irritated him. Before, he would have smiled, shaken his head at such a ludicrous report, then moved on. But that was before…
Probably, they inserted the short piece at the last minute, just before they had to get out the early edition.
“There you are!”
At first, Mark couldn’t distinguish who had shouted. The bright morning light streaming through the snack bar’s doors where the young woman stood blinded him for the moment.
