Invisible City (2 page)

Like it matters.

I wish I could stop the TV scenes that begin to play through my head. Two sympathetic policemen at the door, the phone call from the hospital, the phone call from abroad. On TV, I've seen bad news delivered lots of ways. Now it's my turn.

Jackie seems to know just what to do. She has nerve; in the midst of our little storm, she holds firm. She's all gentle Irish humor as she makes us hot buttered toast. She serves us thick slices with mugs of sweet, milky tea. She turns on the TV. We watch a whole movie, but later I don't remember a single detail. I keep glancing at Mom, wondering what we do now. Am I supposed to hug her? Or what?

I know what Dad would say:
Son, you take care of your mother, you got that?

Mom's eyes look glazed, staring. After my initial outburst, things are calm. We take it quietly then.

Later, when I go to bed, I get to thinking. I can't stop wondering about something Jackie said, something I hardly noticed at the time.

So far, the Mexican police haven't actually found his head. The rest of his body was burned beyond recognition. They are
sure of two things: it was the plane Dr. Andres Garcia rented, and his luggage was found thrown clear of the crash.

That's where it begins, that's the root of the matter. Call it what you like: doubt, suspicion, a hunch.

I don't believe it. Not “can't.” I'm pretty sure that I could if only it felt true. But something doesn't feel right. Dad has only been flying for three years. I know he's still cautious, plans every detail.

There's no way he'd fall asleep at the controls.

There has to have been some horrendous, monumental mistake.

So here's the thing—everyone thinks I'm crazy.

Well, it's weird. When people believe you're going a bit cuckoo, they don't actually use words like
cuckoo, crazy
, or even
psycho
. They say things like
normal grief response
and
therapy
.

What's really baffling my mom and her friends is that I'm not even getting “crazy” right. Maybe she'd prefer it if I were crying all the time, or just sitting staring into space. But it's like there's a sign taped to my forehead:
Does not fit the textbooks
.

All I'm doing is looking at the circumstances of this plane crash and asking a few questions that don't seem to interest anyone else
.

1. Dad told Mom and me that he was going to Cancuén in Guatemala. Some Maya king was murdered there hundreds of years ago. So why was Dad's plane found hundreds of miles from where he'd rented it
and
hundreds of miles from Cancuén?

2. Why did the local newspaper not have a single witness who saw the plane come down?

3. Why did that same local newspaper carry eyewitness reports of a major UFO sighting close to where they said his plane had crashed?

Seems to me, you get some information like that, you should ask some serious questions. Maybe wonder about the truth of statements like “Dr. Andres Garcia crashed his Cessna in the jungle of southern Mexico and suffered fatal injuries on impact.”

Why am I the only one wondering about this? Seems totally normal to me. But the more I go on, the more Mom thinks I'm losing it
.

What is it with UFOs, anyway? Why are you automtically a head case just because you say you've seen a UFO? So many people nowadays have—it's not hundreds of people; it's hundreds of thousands. From all backgrounds, all ages, all types of braininess. UFO sightings are rampant; you can't ignore something that so many people see
.

I took those three facts about my dad's plane crash and I put them together like this: What if that body belongs to someone else? What if Dad wasn't in the crash at all? What if he was abducted by the UFOs? What if he isn't dead, just missing?

Mom's first reaction, I have to say, was very reasonable. She said, “Okay. Let's assume that there really was a UFO. What about the body
in the plane? What about the luggage? No one else was reported missing, just your father.” Then she gave me a big hug and said, “I understand, sweetheart; you don't want this to be true. Neither do I. It's unthinkable, unbearable.” Then she slowly began to cry, and it was me who had to comfort her.

Which I can do, because now I'm not so sure that he's dead.

Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

Hey Josh. Us UFO-philes should stick together. I saw a UFO once, you know. It was at night; my dad was driving me home after a party and there it was, for just a few seconds, hovering in a field. Dad said all he saw were the lights of an airplane. But he didn't get a good look 'cause he was driving. It hovered all right, then swung into the air and shot off. Planes don't do that—at least, no plane I ever saw did. If you say you think your dad was abducted, then I believe you.

Reply

Thanks, TopShopPrincess. (I'm guessing you're an Arctic Monkeys fan, right?) It's good to know there's one person out there who believes me. The guys at school think it's a joke. I only mentioned it once and I never will again.

Comment (2) from TopShopPrincess

Arctic Monkeys rule!

I've been spending a lot of my time looking through UFO sighting reports. It's amazing what you can find on the Web. People I might once have called “nuts,” logging hours online posting information, rumors, opinions. I can't get enough of it. If I keep looking, I might find the one report that will lead me to Dad. It's not unheard of. People often get abducted in groups. Years later, they find each other again. No connection in their normal lives, but they know each other, somehow. I'm not talking about déjà vu. This is real. Total strangers who know stuff about each other that they couldn't know if they hadn't met.

If Dad was taken along with anyone else, there might be hope.

We heard about the plane crash a few days back. I've been tracking rumors in the UFO boards. Now they've hit the mainstream news.

So I'm
not
just going on the words of some random UFO fans. A commercial airline pilot with Aeromexico is one of my key witnesses!

Aeromexico Pilot Films “UFOs”

In the late evening of June 15, a commercial airline pilot flying Aeromexico Flight 231 filmed six unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed.

In a sighting that bears an uncanny resemblance to the widely reported event of March 2004—in which pilots of the Mexican air force filmed eleven
UFOs—a videotape made widely available to the news media shows the bright objects, some sharp points of light and others like large headlights, moving rapidly in what appears to be a late-evening sky
.

Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

I looked up the news stories you blogged. Awesome! I can't believe you've actually got airline pilots backing you up on this one.

Reply

For all the good it does! Remember, I'm working against total skepticism here. Mom's argument, basically, goes like this:

1. The plane was found on June nineteenth. The corpse was at least three days old, but it could have been older. So we don't know for sure that the crash was on the fifteenth, the day the UFOs were sighted.

2. People are always spotting UFOs in Mexico. The stories amount to nothing.

3. If the body wasn't Dad's, then whose was it? No one else was reported missing.

4. Dad could have planned another trip, not just to central Guatemala, but to somewhere in Campeche, Mexico. There are lots of Mayan ruins in Campeche.

Comment (2) from TopShopPrincess

Hmm. Well … don't get mad at me, but your mom does have a point.

Reply

Maybe so, TopShopPrincess, but she's wrong about UFOs. They haven't only been around since the 1940s. They go way back. There are ancient Sanskrit manuscripts from India that talk about flyingsaucer-type objects. Ancient Sumerian clay tablets 4,000 years old with carvings of flying machines. UFOs—they're ancient history.

While I'm reading TopShopPrincess's response to my blog post, I notice my mother standing in the doorway. She's wearing her nightgown—again. She's scarcely been out of the house since we heard about Dad. I wonder if she'll ever get back to teaching history to those rich kids at the college.

“Mom, you have to look at this,” I say, waving her over. “A pilot for Aeromexico spotted those UFOs too. June fifteenth. Almost the the same day they think Dad's plane crashed. What if they got it wrong; what if his plane went down on the fifteenth?”

Despite herself, Mom can't resist looking. She stands, reading over my shoulder as I hold my breath. Is this it? Finally, the point at which she takes me seriously?

After a few minutes, she says in a tired voice, “Read the bottom line of the report, Josh. ‘Mexico has a long history of UFO sightings, most of which are dismissed by scientists as space debris, missiles, weather balloons, natural weather phenomena, or hoaxes.'”

“God, that is
so
patronizing!” I shout.

She just stares blankly at me. “I'm getting tired of this, Josh. When's this going to stop?”

“Why won't you even talk about it?”

Mom explodes. “Because it's preposterous! People don't get abducted by aliens! UFO sightings … they're just some trendy zeitgeist thing. It's a mythology, a modern mythology!”

Then she sighs, sinks down onto the bed, runs one hand through her hair, exhausted and desperate.

“Please,
please
listen to me, Josh. We both know what happened to your father, and as ghastly, as unforgettably horrible as that was, we have to learn to live with it!”

“What about the fact that his plane was in northern Campeche … in Mexico? Dad was supposed to be in central Guatemala, the place where they found the murdered Maya king. That's hundreds of miles away!”

“Josh, he makes these trips all the time,” she says wearily. “He doesn't give me every single detail. That's why he always goes out to Tuxtla first and rents his cousin's Cessna. Otherwise it takes forever, driving all over the place, or else it costs a fortune on commercial flights. That's how it is with Mayan archaeology. All the new discoveries are in the middle of nowhere.”

And she goes on to say more stuff, but I've stopped listening. Instead, I think about what she said just a few seconds earlier.

“You said ‘makes these trips.' ‘Rents his cousin's Cessna.'
You're talking like he's still alive. Is that what you really think too, Mom?”

Mom shakes her head very sadly. “No. But I can wish it, can't I?”

There's a knock at the door. We're not expecting anyone. I can sense it—something's wrong. Mom feels it too. Nervously, I open the door.

It's a cop. He introduces himself as Detective Barratt of the Thames Valley Police.

“It's about Dr. Garcia,” he says, standing at our doorstep. “The Mexican police have been in touch. And I'm sorry to say it's very bad news.”

The head wasn't burned like the rest of him. It had been sliced off before the fire, which started in the crashed plane.

Barratt tells us, “The Mexican investigators think that wild animals must have taken the head. They found it miles away, decomposed beyond any recognition. According to the coroner, the dental X-rays are conclusive, a match with Dr. Garcia.”