The Elevator Ghost (6 page)

SIX

Alien Ghosts

“On the top
floor. It's the closest we could get to outer space,” Benjamin Hooper breathlessly informed Carolina Giddle when she asked him where he lived. He and his sisters were coming out of the laundry room as Carolina Giddle was going in.

“I've seen spaceships from my bedroom window. Always late at night, round about two in the morning. You know how people say they're like saucers? They aren't. They're more like flying hotdogs but with rows of lights where the wiener goes. Hotdogs flying sideways. The power source is probably right in the middle which makes sense because it would be protected by the top and the bottom, and the extraterrestrials' quarters would be there in the middle too in case there was any, like, you know, flying space debris that might…”

Benjamin had finally run out of breath. His older sister, Lucy, set down the laundry basket she was carrying. She sighed and shook her head.

“Benjamin is space crazy,” she said. “He can talk for hours about outer space…”

“And exterterriswheels,” Emma, Benjamin's younger sister, added.

“That's me!” Benjamin grinned and zoomed a detergent container back and forth in his hands as if it were a planetary rover from a space shuttle. “Aliens are my primary interest. I don't think I'll be a regular astronaut when I grow up but more of a researcher-­detective tracking extraterrestrial incursions…”

“You must tell me more when I come up to babysit on Sunday evening.” Carolina Giddle flashed a smile at the three children.

“Will you tell us a story?” Lucy asked. “We heard you always tell ghost stories.”

“If you're sure you won't be frightened.”

“Yay!” Emma did a pirouette and dropped her armload of towels.

“Phooey.” Benjamin brought the soap bottle to a sudden halt. “I'd sooner hear a story about aliens.”

Carolina Giddle hefted her laundry hamper to her other side. “We'll have to see what settles into the storytelling air of the evening. My grandma always said you can feel a good story coming the same way you can feel a good ice cream coming when you first hear the tinkle of a Dickie Dee bell.”

On Sunday evening, even as his parents were leaving phone numbers and instructions with Carolina Giddle before they headed out the door, Benjamin was packing his collection of model spaceships into the living room. He wanted Carolina Giddle to have a full viewing of his collection.

“Don't touch them, Emma,” he warned. “You know what happened to my Mars ­climate orbiter.”

“But I needed a treadmill for my Barbies.”

“Perhaps you can help me clear a space to put out some snacks, Emma.” Carolina Giddle opened her large handbag. She drew out a lumpy plastic grocery bag and a couple of plastic containers.

“And, Lucy, could you find me a plate for these Martian Munchies?” Carolina Giddle held up something round and green, like a tennis ball flecked with icing sprinkles. “I hope none of you are allergic to popcorn.”

“Not me! I'm not bellergic.” Emma did one of her little twirling dances perilously close to another of Benjamin's models. “What's in these?” She stopped and tapped her fingers over Carolina Giddle's containers.

“Well, let's see. In this one I have delicious frozen alien worms.”

“Eww, worms.” Lucy made a face.

“From Venus.” Carolina Giddle toyed for a minute with her silver hair clip. It looked like a giant dragonfly. “Worms are a great delicacy to the Venusians.”

“Well, actually…” Benjamin gave a little yank on Carolina Giddle's sweater. “It's very unlikely that there are worms on Venus. The Russians thought they spotted a scorpion but scientists have decided it was just a lens cap that fell off some of their equipment.”

“There is much yet to be explored on Venus,” Carolina Giddle said knowingly.

Emma opened the lid on the other container.

“Oh, wow,” she giggled. “These look like bugs, too.”

“Jupiterian Jumbles,” Carolina Giddle said. “Very healthy. I make them with carrots and celery and peanut butter.”

It took Benjamin the better part of an hour to present all of his space models to Carolina Giddle. Lucy and Emma busied themselves with a game of Chinese checkers, careful to lick peanut butter and green icing off their fingers as they moved marbles over the playing board.

“Hey!” Benjamin finally noticed the snacks were disappearing. “Save some of those for me.”

“Yes, it is your turn to take a little sustenance,” Carolina Giddle said. “Why don't we all find a comfortable spot around the coffee table? I'll light a few candles, and we'll need to find a spot for Chiquita.”

All the children in the Blatchford Arms had heard about Chiquita.

“She's fond of a good ghost story,” Carolina Giddle noted.

“Is it your birthday?” Emma asked, eyeing the candles as she crunched the head of a Jupiterian Jumble.

“Oh, dear, no! But candles always help me to focus when I'm telling a story. I call it the incandescence factor.”

When they were all settled, and Chiquita was chewing on something that looked suspiciously like a real worm, Carolina Giddle began.

“This is a story my Aunt Bedelia told to me when I went to stay with her for a couple of months when I was ten — about your age, Lucy. She lived in Roswell, New Mexico — ”

“Roswell!” Benjamin jumped up from his cushion and nearly stepped on his model of the Starship
Enterprise
. “That's where some UFOs crashed and they found bodies of aliens but the army said they weren't really extraterrestrials — ”

“Yes, Benjamin, you're right. But you must be as quiet as a stealth plane, or this story will never get off the ground.”

Aunt Bedelia did live right where those sightings were said to occur. There is a good deal of debate about what actually happened, but no matter what anyone reports, Bedelia — who was about twelve years old in 1947 — never forgot what she saw and heard one night…

They lived on the edge of town, and their yard backed right out onto the desert. That night Bedelia's dog ran out of the yard. Bedelia saw Muffin racing away, dodging cacti and jimson weed. Bedelia went after him, even though she'd been warned by her parents not to go out into the countryside by herself, especially at night.

The last glitter of sunset sat on the horizon like a thin ribbon of dying radiance, and ­already Bedelia could see a full moon rising in the desert sky.

“Muffin!” she called. “Muffin!”

She heard him bark in the distance, but she couldn't see where he was.

Bedelia figured she must have walked for about half an hour when she finally stumbled into a small gully. Muffin was there at the bottom, crouched, whining at something half hidden by a stand of creosote bushes.

There was a whitish glow to whatever it was that was hiding. Eerie, like captured moonlight.

Oddly, Bedelia wasn't frightened. But a strange feeling came over her. Something like sadness.

“Here, Muffin,” she called softly, and the dog turned and looked at her as if he, too, were pained by what he saw.

Slowly, Bedelia made her way down to him and gave him a reassuring pat.

“Who's there?” she said, her voice quaking just a little bit.

As the evening darkened, the glow intensified slightly, and Bedelia became aware of a strange sound.

Who…owooo.
It was kind of a cross between an owl's hoot and a baby crying
.

Who…owooo.

Muffin's whine blended in, making the sound even more melancholy.

“I won't hurt you,” Bedelia said.

Slowly, a creature emerged from behind the creosote bushes. It was no bigger than Bedelia herself, and humanoid in shape. It had a very large head. The glow it emitted seemed to pulse like a light from a generator when it is running low on power.

In one hand, it held a tubelike object.

“Who…what are you?” Bedelia asked.

The creature tilted its head a bit and gave her a puzzled look. At least it had stopped its mournful crying. It reached up and rubbed a finger against a panel on its chest. A small rectangle on the panel pulsed on and off. Then the creature spoke in a voice that sounded like it was being created by a machine.

“I am Maroo,” it said.

“Where do you come from?” Bedelia asked.

“From home,” the creature said in a strange artificial voice followed by a small sob that definitely didn't sound like a machine. “I am lost.”

“Lost?”

“Our ship was intercepted and we crashed. I was on it with my father.”

Bedelia was so sorry for the creature that she reached out to give him a comforting pat. Before she could touch him, though, the tips of her fingers tingled as if they were zapped with a cold current. She drew her hand back quickly.

“You can come home with me and we can send for help,” she said.

“I want to find my father.” Maroo's head swiveled to the left and then to the right. ­Bedelia ­noticed moisture seeping from one of his large ­almond-shaped eyes. “Will you help me look?”

“I'd like to help you but I don't know where to begin.”

“Would your companion know?” Maroo looked at Muffin, who was lying down on a patch of sandy soil by the creosote bush.

“Muffin?” Bedelia gave a small laugh. “Muffin's just a dog.”

“I can ask him?”

“I'm afraid dogs don't speak.”

But then Muffin surprised her by rising and wagging his tail and barking.

Bedelia watched as Maroo's finger scanned the panel on his chest and found another small rectangle that pulsed.

“Rroof, roofff, ruff ruff,” Maroo barked.

“Rrooff woof,” Muffin barked back. He headed away from them slowly, toward the west.

“He knows where to go,” Maroo said to ­Bedelia.

“Maybe he does.”

Bedelia and Maroo followed Muffin.

They had been walking for about a quarter of a mile when they noticed flashing lights. Something was happening up ahead.

They came to the crest of another gully. When she looked down, Bedelia could see some army jeeps from the base nearby and a couple of ambulances.

The vehicles were at the edge of a wreck of some sort. There was a mass of twisted metal. It was strange metal like a cross between aluminum and fish skin. The lights from the army vehicles gave the wreck a silvery glow. Bedelia noticed what appeared to be rows of small windows in a part of the craft that hadn't been so badly damaged — windows that scattered the light back at the soldiers and the medics milling around.

She heard a gasping sound from Maroo. Medics were carrying something out on a stretcher.

It was a creature that looked exactly like ­Maroo. Its eyes were closed. Black liquid seeped from a wound in the side of its head. She saw Maroo's hand go up to the side of his own face as if he expected to find the same liquid oozing there.

Somehow Bedelia knew that the slight figure on the stretcher, so completely motionless, was dead. Muffin whimpered.

Then they noticed another stretcher being carried out of the wreckage. On it was a figure similar in shape and appearance to Maroo but quite a bit larger. There was a gash across this creature's chest and more of the black liquid. But the creature's eyes were open. One of its hands moved to touch the wound.

Maroo uttered a strange cry, like something caught in a machine.

Although it was hard to tell from that distance, Bedelia was certain the creature looked up to where they stood at the crest of the gully. Then its eyes closed, and its arm and hand fell limply to the side of the stretcher.

At the same instant, it seemed to Bedelia that something soft and glowing rose from the stretcher. The misty glow moved toward them. As it ­ascended the walls of the gully and moved farther and farther away from the activity around the wreck, it took on definition. It became a ­duplicate of Maroo only larger. Glowing as Maroo did. White, luminescent.

Maroo ran down to meet the figure. They clasped each other in a ghostly hug. By Bedelia's side, Muffin wagged his tail and sighed softly. They watched as the two figures moved away from the crash site, as if they were being drawn by some unseen force. In minutes they were no more than two flickering lights in the distance, like a couple of fireflies in the night.

Oddly, without Maroo at her side, Bedelia felt suddenly frightened. She turned and hurried for home with Muffin scurrying along behind her.

“Where have you been?” her mother said crossly when she got home. “I've told you not to be running around outside after dark.”

“Muffin got lost,” Bedelia said, “but I found him.”

Something kept her from telling her parents what really happened that night.

She knew they would just think she was making up stories. And in the morning, she half ­wondered if it was something she'd dreamed.

When she and Muffin trekked out to the site the next day, there was no trace of the crash. The sand was oddly smooth and devoid of plants, as if it had all been carefully swept.

As they headed back, Muffin stopped at the crest of the gully where Maroo had stood with them and watched his father pass away on the stretcher below.