Otherworld (29 page)

“What do you mean?”

“A psychologist working with the Diaz family handed over some of the little girl's crayon drawings as evidence.”

“I thought they never saw him,” Steve said.

“They didn't, but the little girl's convinced she knows what he looks like.”

“And?”

“Skinny black body. Large gray head. Looks like an alien.”

“You gotta be kidding me.”

“I wish I was. It sounds stupid, I know,” Graham said.

“Didn't you say she was nearly abducted once before?”

“Yeah. On her way home from a friend's.”

“And someone saved her, right?”

“Oh, yeah. She calls him ‘the good man.'”

“What does he look like?” Steve asked.

“Don't know. She hasn't drawn him yet.”

“Aliens,” repeated Steve, stifling a grin.

“Yeah, laugh it up. I'm just trying to catch the kid. It's hard enough with all the whackos around screaming about cover-ups and sheesh.”

“Well, you'll have to pardon my bad timing, then,” Steve said. “But I need you on something.”

“Okay,” Graham said.

“I've been doing a lot of thinking and praying, and I think I've decided to resign.”

“Say what?”

“It just doesn't feel right, Graham. It never has.”

“Who knows about this?”

“Just my wife and now you.”

“You're gonna step down?”

“Well, I'm not positive yet. I just … well, you know. I need you to pray about this for me.”

“You know I will. But I have to be honest, here. My selfish prayer will be you change your mind.”

 

Winter fury cleared the streets on Halloween night. The trick-or-treaters stayed indoors for costume parties or harvest festivals in church and school gymnasiums. Only a few brave souls (with coats covering their Power Ranger or Spider-Man or clown or hobo costumes) ventured out with bags in hand and Mom and Dad in tow, constantly asking, “Are you ready to head back now, sweetie?”

Mike drove to Dr. Bering's house, and the two rested in armchairs, facing each other in Bering's study. Outside, the wind howled against the house and rattled the windows.

“Looks like a storm may be kicking up out there,” Mike said.

“I wouldn't be surprised. We've had some dreadfully foul weather lately. I mean,
really
, with this cold of an autumn, I wouldn't be surprised if our Christian neighbors begin predicting Armageddon,” Bering said.

Mike chuckled and took a long gulp of coffee. The temperature in Bering's study wasn't exactly warm. He wondered why the professor didn't turn up the heat.

“I hope everything came off well in Dallas,” Bering said.

“It went all right,” Mike said. “The funeral was real nice. The minister I found was a really nice guy, and he did a good job.”

“Good to hear it.”

“It's just … well, with Molly, things didn't go exactly as I'd hoped.”

“Sorry to hear that, Mike.”

“Well, I don't mean to make it sound bad. We didn't fight or anything. I guess I was just hoping … Oh, I don't know—”

“That she would come back with you?” Bering asked.

Mike nodded. “Yeah, I guess so. And she still might, but she saw my wedding ring was gone, and I don't think she believed I lost it.”

“Why would she think you would lie about that? Especially since you were trying to get her to return with you?”

“That's a good point. I don't know. I guess she was still upset about Vickie and … well, I wouldn't expect anyone to think very clearly under those circumstances.”

“That's very fair of you, Mike. You don't think she's giving you a raw one?”

“A raw one?” Mike asked.

“Yes. Treating you poorly, I should say. Haven't you made it obvious that you want her back? That you're willing to make it work? You haven't pressured her at all. Don't you think she should recognize this?”

“I guess. What are you trying to say?”

“I'm not trying to say much, Mike. I don't know your wife, nor do I know much about your relationship, but it just seems to me that she has no intention of salvaging your marriage.”

“I … I don't believe that.”

“You don't have to,” Bering said with a smile. “I'm just an old fool trying to be a friend. Please don't measure my counsel any greater in these matters than any other friend of yours.”

Mike swallowed more coffee, thinking,
What friends of mine? Robbie? He'd probably say the same thing.
“No, you might be right. I just think that I love her. I can't imagine living without her.”

“Well, then,” Bering said, “I suppose that would certainly be love.” The professor crossed his legs and hunched over slightly, peering into Mike's eyes and smiling. He said, “But you didn't come to visit to discuss your marriage, did you?”

Mike squirmed in his chair uneasily. How did Bering know?

“No,” he said. “That's not exactly why I came.”

“Well, then. Let's hear it.”

Was he ready to make this leap? He had already made it, really, but perhaps there was still time to turn back.
Surely this man is a lunatic, a fruitcake. What he's hinted at all along cannot possibly be real. It can't be true.

“It's the hyperspace stuff. I've read your article over and over and over again, and each time it becomes clearer. More understandable. And I got to thinking. I mean, you describe things in there that can't possibly be researched scientifically. You say so yourself in the article. We don't have the means or the technology or even the understanding to explore another dimension. Yet your work has such an insight. Like you're so sure of yourself and your theories. I was wondering: how can you know so much about it? You just don't seem like the kinda guy who would be so obsessed with the purely theoretical.”

“You tell me, Mike. How can I obtain knowledge of the impossible?”

“Well, this is gonna sound crazy. I don't know if I even believe it myself, but your article just seemed to be almost a personal narrative in some places. Hypothetically, I guess, the only way you could understand the impossible is if you had experienced it firsthand. If—this sounds ridiculous—you had made it possible somehow.”

 

Gertie, still bound to the chair in her bedroom, screamed herself hoarse.

Pops's seventy-one-year-old legs sprung him forward and crashing into Jimmy. They'd been arguing for what seemed like hours over Petrie's corpse until Pops couldn't take it anymore. Something had snapped inside. The two went sprawling, knocking over an end table. Jimmy rolled the old man over and pounced on him, punching and pounding with a demonic fervor. Pops, with strength beyond his ability, grasped the kid at his forearms and pulled him over and off his chest. Pops rolled with him, sitting atop the kid's stomach. The old man grabbed the shotgun and lodged the barrel under Jimmy's chin.

“You idiot!” Pops said. “What are we supposed to do now?”

“Who cares?” Jimmy asked, his eyes firmly locked on the gun barrel pressing into his Adam's apple.

“How long do you think it will take before they realize he's missing and come looking for him?”

In one swift motion, Jimmy knocked the shotgun away from his throat and managed to wrestle it from Pops. He thrust it into the man's belly, sending him doubled over to the floor.

Rising to his feet, Mr. Black said, “I don't care what you do about it, gramps. It's your mess. You clean it up.”

Flying saucer or no, a shift of power was taking place. Pops wanted to believe his sheer belief had willed it all into existence, made the lies true—the grays, the saucer, and even his dominance over his youthful comrade. But the kid wasn't susceptible to the old man's will. He had his own ideas, his own plans, and he had come to see Pops as
his
sidekick. Not vice versa.

“But … but, the grays,” Pops wheezed. “The grays told us to stay together.”

“I ain't going nowhere,” Mr. Black said. “We can stay together, but get this straight. You do things my way, or you end up like the cop. I don't need you for what they told us to do. I can do it on my own, and they know it. They'll see we never needed you at all.”

“You're crazy,” Pops said.

An unearthly anger spread over Mr. Black's face. His eyes narrowed to slits, sleek as daggers.

“No one calls me crazy.” He sneered. He kicked the old man in the hip. “Now get up and clean the mess. I'll take care of the car.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Don't worry about it,” Jimmy said.

Pops's eye landed on the Grim Reaper branded on the kid's forearm, and the most horrible feeling of dread took root in the old man's stomach.

 

“I don't believe it.”

“Don't you?” Dr. Bering replied. “I have a feeling you knew exactly what you believed when you came over here.”

“It can't be true,” Mike said.

“If you say so.”

Mike laughed good-humoredly, but he was nervous. As fluid as these new thoughts were, they were nonetheless pervasive. He was drowning in them and reaching for the safety of any explanation. Strange things had happened to him. Vickie's corpse came alive. The odd sensation of DEATH in Dealey Plaza. This sort of thing grew more and more possible every passing day. Maybe it wasn't so much that he believed Dr. Bering, but that he
wanted
to believe Dr. Bering.

“So you actually communicate with hyperspace?” Mike asked.

And so it began.

“Yes, but
they communicate with me
would probably be more accurate,” Dr. Bering responded. “Mike, compared to our visitors from hyperspace, we are nothings. Less than ants. You have to understand that Kaluza-Klein and all that goes with it do not even penetrate the surface of this. Those are our feeble grasps at understanding. With all probability, our world will never, not in a hundred millennia, be able to bridge the gap to other dimensions. But, as you will see, we don't have to as long as the gap is bridged from the other side.”

“Yeah, okay, okay. You're saying you actually see these people?”

“Oh, yes. Well, I speak to one of them, and he to me,” Bering said.

As if repetition would secure its plausibility: “Okay, one more time: someone from another dimension comes here,
to your house
, and talks to you.”

“Yes.”

Plowing forward: “What about?” Mike asked.

“Anything and everything. His mind is limitless, and so he is limitless in what he can teach us.”

Already breathless: “I think I need a drink.”

“Would you like to meet him?”

Apprehension: “What? You mean now?”

“No better time than the present,” Bering said. “Would you?”

Surrender: “Absolutely.”

Dr. Bering eased out of his chair, almost slinking. Mike followed him, eyes wide, mouth open, and watched Bering kneel on the hardwood floor. The professor's eyes were shut, and Mike believed he was about to pray. What followed sounded very much like prayer. Bering whispered a long string of words, uttering them so softly that Mike could not make them out, but somehow they sounded very, very sweet.