The Grays (20 page)

“It’s not what it seems,” Dan said. “It’s explainable, trust me.”

“Dad, it’s not,” Conner said. “That’s the whole point!”

Dan went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. Chris answered on the third ring. “Have I woken you up at nine-fifteen, old man?”

“We were out with the ’scope. It’s a good night for the Crab Nebula.”

“Speaking of nebulas, the Kelton clan has arrived with what’s probably a pretty nebulous video of that prank.”

“Prank?”

“The affair of the fiery balloon.”

“That could be historic footage.”

“How so?”

“You saw somebody in the field, buddy. And then you didn’t. I think that somebody was an alien.”

He had indeed seen somebody. It was also further support for the prank theory, but they could get to that later. “When you come, you might think about bringing some spirits.
Mon femme
has stripped our bar.” He hung up the phone, then returned to the living room where the crowd had surrounded the gigantic TV. “We gather round the campfire,” he said, “and see shapes in the sparks. And thus the mythologizing begins.” He sat down. “The Jeffers will be here directly.”

Paulie Warner burst in from the kitchen, followed by his parents and then Chris and Nancy. The energy in the room exploded as the two boys excitedly traded speculations. “It’s the grays,” Conner yelled, “they’re doing an operation right here at Bell!”

“Okay, Conner, sure,” Paulie said.

Terry said, “What we actually have is some unexplained video.”

“Edited,” Dan added. “Most carefully, I’m sure.”

“Not really,” John Kelton said, his voice sharp with annoyance. “It’s actually just pulled out of the camera. Not edited at all. There’s no reason to edit it.”

“We copied it onto a DVD,” Terry said as he dropped the gleaming disk into the player’s open tray. “Beyond that, you’re seeing what the camera saw.”

The player absorbed the disk. This was followed by blackness, then a couple of flashes.

“Fascinating,” Dan said.

“Just wait,” John snapped.

There was a sound of gasping, then crunching. “That’s us running,” Conner said.

“You were really there?”

“Conner was there,” Dan told Paulie.

Another flash, then a blur. Dan was beginning to think that this might be pretty minimal when suddenly the screen filled with light. And with screaming—as terrible, as powerful, as it had been the moment it happened. Silence fell. Paulie sat close to Conner, Dan was pleased to notice. He heard his own voice shouting, then saw himself and Conner in the light of the thing.

“Conner, you were
right there!”
Paulie whispered.

It was the eeriest thing that Dan had ever seen. Two faint seams were
present, one running the length of the object, the other around its center. Behind the thing, something seemed to be moving in the light, almost as if it was climbing out of an opening that was concealed by the object’s bulk.

“There’s your culprit,” Dan said. “Nancy, be prepared to ID a student who needs disciplining.”

The object rose a bit and seemed to shimmer.

The woman’s voice, which had been screaming and then silent, now cried out more clearly and a cold horror shot through Dan as powerfully and unexpectedly as a lightning bolt from a silent sky. “My God,” he said—whispered.

“What? What, Dan?” Conner was pulling at him.

“Don’t miss this,” Jimbo said.

In the flash of a single frame, the object disappeared leaving behind it the fleeting shot of a figure, barely visible in the dark. The figure seemed to turn, but it all happened so quickly that you could see little. There was silence, blackness. Dan heard his own voice say that he didn’t think they were alone.

“It
is
the grays,” Conner shouted, jumping to his feet. “I told you, Paulie, it’s the grays!”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Paulie said. “I gotta go to the john.” He headed out of the room.

Dan hardly heard them. His mind was reeling. Because Marcie had been involved, he had recognized her voice in that last scream. But what could it mean? Had she pulled the prank? Maybe she’d gone insane. It would fit with the bizarre seduction, maybe even vindicate him in Katelyn’s eyes . . . eventually. That was going to be one hell of a siege.

But then he thought, what if it
wasn’t
a prank? What if Chris and Conner were right, and some sort of genuine anomaly was unfolding? Perhaps he and Marcie had both been traumatized by it. Psychological trauma was well known to drive people to sexual activity. It even had a popular name: battlefield syndrome. He was confused and, frankly, afraid. He wished he hadn’t drunk all that booze at the Peep. He felt lousy, his head was pounding, and now he had this bizarre, impossible thing to consider.

“Boys, can you slo-mo the last little part?” Chris asked. “The figure?”

Terry stabbed a couple of times at the remote, and the figure appeared again, frozen, its back to the camera.

“Let me juice the contrast,” Terry muttered.

The scene became lighter, the figure more clear.

“Is that a balloon?” Katelyn asked.

“It’s the head, Mom.”

As Terry shuttled the image forward frame by frame, the figure turned in short jerks, until its face was visible in a blurred three-quarters view.

Total silence fell as every person there reacted to the image. It was not clear, far from it, but anybody could tell that this was no disguise and no inflated toy. The one fully visible eye was black and slanted, gleaming. It gave the creature a breathtaking look of menace. The lower part of the face was complex with wrinkles, like a very, very old human face might be, the face of a man deeply etched by the trials of his time. There was the tiniest suggestion of a mouth, little more than a line.

With another flick of the shuttle control, another frame appeared. Now the mouth had opened slightly, and the sense of surprise it communicated was so vivid that it was eerie.

Another flick of the shuttle and the figure was gone.

Dan found himself feeling his ear and remembering what Conner had said. Dear heaven, what if this was real?

His mind rebelled. It just could not be true, because if it was, then he was involved and so was Marcie. But why? In the name of God,
why?

“Look at that,” Paulie said as he returned. He went to the glass doors and stepped out on the deck.

Conner followed him. “It’s them,” he said softly, his voice trembling.

“Jesus, it might be,” Jimbo said.

A glow rose behind the stand of pines that separated the house from the field beyond.

Dan went onto the deck. The glow was smaller, but it was still very damn bright, and was indeed out in the field.

Were they in contact? Aliens had chosen to land in a little college town?

It just did not seem possible. No matter what was happening, that was not the whole story.

Then he saw stars slowly wheeling around him—an aura, another one, the third in two days. Maybe if he could get to the couch, they wouldn’t notice the staring emptiness of petit mal. Hardly able to navigate through the sea of stars that now surrounded him, he somehow found the couch, nearly sitting on Maggie’s lap.

“Slow down, buster,” Katelyn snapped.

“Sorry! Sorry!”

He slumped back. Before him was not the gleaming sliver he usually saw,
but a room. There was a person there—a child. She was exquisitely beautiful . . . and recognizable.

He cried out and the seizure was over.

“Dan!”

“Sorry!”

“Dan, aren’t you hearing me? Stop the boys!”

Then he realized that Paulie and Conner were outside and running like two mad things toward the field, flashlights bobbing.

The world seemed to stop. Harley and Maggie looked up at him, their expressions identical, eyebrows raised, slight smiles playing on their faces.

Chris said, “This could be it.”

Katelyn burst out the door and went running down the stairs. Dan followed.

“Come on, Conner,” Paulie yelled.

“Calm down,” Conner yelled back. “Stay together!”

Dan was aware that the Warners had come out onto the deck, and were quietly standing and watching. Then he saw Chris beside them. “You better come down here,” he shouted.

It all seemed to be happening in slow motion, as Chris came across the deck and down the stairs.

Dan ran after Conner and Katelyn, moving more slowly through the woods because he had only the light of the object to guide him.

When he broke out into the field, he saw an extremely bright light, but it appeared to be more of a pinpoint. He could see the silhouettes of the two boys close to it, and Katelyn coming up behind them.

“We mean you no harm,” Conner yelled. Then,
“Nous vous voulons dire aucun mal.”

“Conner get back,” Katelyn shouted.

“Come to meet us,” Paulie cried. His voice almost bubbled.

Dan ran harder. The children should be very damn afraid.

“Wait! I’m getting a mental communication,” Conner said. “They want us to come closer.”

“Hold hands, buddy!”

The two boys went forward—and suddenly the light went out. “Run, boys,” Dan shouted.

Then he heard laughter, a lot of young laughter. There was more laughter behind him, and he turned to see the Warners breaking out of the woods. They were laughing, too.

“Aw, shit,” Chris said from the dark. “I never win.”

There were flashlights up ahead, and as Dan arrived, he realized that he was surrounded by kids, and they were laughing and jeering and shining flashlights on Conner, who was trapped in the center of a circle of derision.

It had been a prank, and it looked as if most of Conner’s classmates were here.

Conner put his hands over his head as if he was being stoned by the voices. Katelyn ran around the outside of the circle, trying to part it, to get to her boy.

Harley and Maggie Warner came up chuckling amiably. “That’s our gasoline lantern,” Harley said. “It came back from Neptune just in time.”

Dan closed his fist, pulled back—and just barely managed to stop himself from decking Harley.

“He-ey,” Harley said. “It’s a joke. An innocent practical joke. They’ve been planning it all day. We need something to cut the tension, man!”

“At my son’s expense!” He was not as careful as Katelyn, who was still trying to gently push kids aside. He grabbed a fistful of somebody’s jacket and hurled what turned out to be a girl to the ground. As she screamed and cursed at him, he waded in and reached his son.

“Get out of here,” Conner shrilled, “please just get out of here!”

“Conner, come home,” Katelyn said, joining them. She looked around them. “You’re pitiful, all of you!”

“Asshole!” came a muffled yell from the dark. “Bitch!”

Their arms around their boy, Katelyn and Dan headed for home. As they passed the Warners, Dan said, “You stay away from our place and keep that fat troll of yours away from our son.”

“Dan?” Harley called after him. “Hey, man, stay loose.”

When they returned to the house, Chris was already back. He and Nancy were replaying the video.

“It’s real, you know,” Chris said.

Conner started to run downstairs.

“Hey, wait.” Chris caught up to him. “Hold on. We have historic footage here. Come on back, take another look.”

“Dr. Jeffers, I really can’t right now.”

“Forget those kids, Conner. The Warners are idiots, and the Keltons haven’t got the faintest idea what this actually is. This video is one of the most precious records ever created by the human hand.”

Conner was silent. Dan saw why. Tears were pouring from his eyes. But he raised his head. He said, “Could I possibly be homeschooled?”

Dan’s heart almost broke, but he said, “You have to learn to face it, Conner. To gain control.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Katelyn said. “He does not! And the fact that Harley and Maggie keep letting these things happen is a big part of what’s wrong with child-rearing these days. They’re passive, they believe in the mythical wisdom of the child, but children are savages and they need boundaries or they turn mean.” She threw her arms around Conner. “You’re the exception, love. You
are
a miracle, and if they can’t handle that, then they’re scum. That’s all.”

Conner sighed. “Mom, they happen to be people I have to spend every day of my life with.” He moved away from her. “So, Dr. Jeffers, what have we got?”

“Come on. We’ll go frame by frame, from the top, making a note whenever a new point of proof is present in a frame. Hey, you could count the rivets in this thing if it had rivets. There’s a lot here. This is wonderful, convincing footage.”

Dan hardly listened. He was in a state of complete turmoil. He had to understand about Marcie, and he did not. He just did not get it.

Then he did. “I remember,” he said.

“What?” Katelyn snapped.