28
The sun wasn’t right. The thought vaulted Kate from a peaceful half-asleep state into full wakefulness. She lay on the couch, in the living room, still dressed in the clothes from the night before. The patches of sun on the floor were right under the windows, as though the sun was directly overhead. Noon. Really?
She rubbed at her eyes and tried to run a hand through her hair, but it got caught up in the tangles, and she decided to leave it alone. Where was Val? Where was Felix? Again, she looked at her phone, not at the time but seeing if she’d missed a call. She hadn’t. So they went out for breakfast. Without asking her to come? Not likely.
It gnawed at her. Val was irresponsible and immature, yes, but not so much so he would vanish after a night like last night.
Although maybe he would. He’d gone through so much, between his mother and the boy, why shouldn’t he be allowed to flake out?
Because there was a dead body baking in her car for the second day, that’s why. The car was done. The next step would be to think of a way to trash it, to burn it up, before anyone could see the decomposed mess resting on the carpet in the trunk. And to do it in a way that wasn’t suspicious.
Kate turned on the coffee maker, going through soothing morning tasks. It was hard to think about things like hiding bodies when you were doing something as mundane as making coffee.
She added sugar from a bag that looked like it had been there for a very long time. On a cursory inspection there didn’t seem to be any critters lurking in it, so she dumped it in the coffee. There was no milk or cream. The fridge was empty except for three bottles of ketchup, a Tupperware container she would never open, and a few beers she’d brought over. When they found a place in Santa Fe—they could start looking today—they’d have a real home. With food in the fridge, they’d get jobs, and it would be blissfully mundane. No arrests, no monsters, no bodies.
She looked at her phone again while she waited for the coffee to cool. 12:20. Should she call the sheriff’s office? To make sure he left…or he was still there? She could take the truck and see for herself. The Daytona in the yard kept drawing her attention. She expected to see flies swarming around the trunk, or blood pooling in the gravel under its tail pipe. But it looked like her car; her normal, shitty car.
Pulling the outdated phone book from its place under the house phone, she used her cell phone to call the sheriff’s office. A prerecorded message picked up. If this was an emergency, she should hang up and call 911. If this was in reference to a parking violation or a traffic fine, she should press two. She mashed the zero button until a disgruntled woman answered.
“Otero County Sheriff’s Daphne Maze how can I direct your call.” The words spilled out in a monotone void of punctuation.
“Is Spence around?”
“He’s on nights this week.”
Of course, considering he was the one who came to the house in the wee hours.
“Can you tell me if Valentine Slade is still there?”
“This Kate?”
“Yeah.” It was stupid to come to this town and hope for even a prayer of anonymity.
Daphne rattled some papers around on her end of the line. Kate wanted to ask her if she’d forgotten what she was doing, forgotten what she was looking for, but she figured as long as she could hear something on the other end of the line, Daphne probably knew what she was doing.
“He’s not here.”
Fuck.
“Do you know when he left?”
“You know it ain’t my job to keep a tail on your boyfriend for you. Says here he left around five with one-a them boys from Immigration.”
“He left with them?”
“Uh huh.”
“Did they say where they went?”
“Not to me.”
“Thanks for your time.”
Daphne hung up without saying goodbye.
Kate stared at the phone in her hand for a moment then flipped it shut. She should have asked for a number to contact Immigration. She didn’t even know where to begin looking that one up. If only there was a computer here, she could Google it for sure.
How would Felix have found him if he was out with Immigration? Val didn’t have a cell phone; there was no way to get in touch with him. Did that mean he wasn’t with Felix after all?
She would call Spence at home. Back to the phonebook, digging through the “S” section. That had to be him. God, did he still live in that same old place he grew up in? The desire to leave Lott welled up in her throat like acid reflux. It crossed her mind to go. Leave a note explaining where Val could find her. She couldn’t take her car, though. If only there was a swamp somewhere where she could ditch the whole thing. It worked for that creepy guy in
Psycho
. He was only in California. That wasn’t too far...
The phone rang in her ear after she punched in Spence’s number.”Hullo?”
Was that his mother?
“Hi,” she said, stuttering a bit. “Is Spence around?”
“He’s asleep.”
“May I leave him a message?”
“Yup, hold on, I gotta get a pen.” Spence’s mom sighed as if Kate was really putting her out. “Go ‘head.”
“My name is Kate Fulton.” She gave her phone number, repeating it three times, and making the woman spell it back to her. “Have him call me as soon as he gets up.”
The line went dead.
What a charmer.
Now what?
She looked out at the zinc-yellow car in the driveway, then drew the shade so she wouldn’t have to look at it any more. She could drive into town; see if they were at Woodstone’s Saloon.
It seemed to make more sense to stay here and wait. She peered around the shade out the window. If she kept it drawn, then she couldn’t see them (or anyone else) if they came down the driveway. She lifted the shade, and sat down on the couch, scooting over to the far side. She lay her head on her arm, settling in to watch.
When she woke up the phone was ringing, a popular R and B song playing next to her ear.
An unfamiliar number. No, Spence’s home number.
She answered it, wondering how long she’d been asleep.
“Hi, my mom said you called.”
It was like a flash back to middle school.
“Yeah, I was wondering if you’d seen Val.” Her mouth tasted like the coffee she’d drank. But in a foul, stale way, and she needed to brush her teeth before she made contact with another person, missing boyfriend or not.
“Yeah, he left around five with the guy from USCIS. Vargas, I think he said his name was.”
“He didn’t come back?”
“Guy said he’d run him home.”
“He didn’t.” Kate struggled to kick the afternoon nap cobwebs. “Was he one of Rich’s guys?”
“I hope not. Val seemed a little weird with him. I asked if he was okay, but he said he was just tired.”
Kate exhaled into the mouthpiece. “You have any clue where they might have gone?”
“None. It’s too soon to do a missing persons. Man, since Val’s been back there’s a lot of folks we can’t quite keep track of.”
She didn’t laugh.
“Why don’t you come into the station? I’m on in an hour, you can meet me there and we’ll try and figure something. He seemed off this morning. I didn’t really think anything of it, but it got my spidey senses tingling.”
“He was supposed to meet his friend from jail. Felix. Felix was supposed to come to the house, but he never showed.”
“So he’s off with Felix?” Spence asked.
“I hope so. But I can’t imagine he would be so excited to see Felix he’d forget to come see me.” It sounded so conceited and snotty. Men did douchey stuff all the time. Even Val had.
“You think we should be worried yet?” Spence asked.
Kate waffled. “Yes? I think? It seems so weird. But between his mom and the boy...” And the monster and the bodies. It made her want to cry. She chewed at her lip. “Yeah, I am worried.” Val would never leave her with a body in the trunk.
“Okay, come on down to the station when I’m on duty. I wouldn’t look to Harvey for much sympathy on this one.”
“Thanks, Spence.”
They hung up, and she was alone again. She looked at the car. Could she drop the whole thing down the mineshaft and report it stolen? She’d take a shower then head into town.
29
Val woke himself up screaming. After hearing all about his abduction (surely there must be a better word—encounter?), Val found he remembered his dreams, and the images gave additional credence to Felix’s story. Miles of whiteness, broken up only by himself, his brazen orange prison jumpsuit and the petite gray aliens. In his dream they took his red blood with large, strange syringes. In his dreams he couldn’t hear anything at all except a monotonous hum.
As his eyes popped open, Val saw white. Not a dream, then. White walls, white ceiling. But also, he noticed, as he took in deep gulps of air through his mouth—he couldn’t seem to take in enough air—a bed, and pillows, too many pillows. Where was he? A red plastic cup next to his bed dropped off the table and startled him. Drenched in sweat, a loose fitting white shirt clung to his thin chest. What the fuck was he wearing? The sheets were soaked. He thought maybe his throat was bloody it hurt so bad. His pulse thundered in his ears. Fuck. He liked it better when he didn’t remember.
As his heart rate dropped back down to a normal level, Val started to think about where he was. A hotel room. But...not a hotel room, since hotel rooms have windows and the doors aren’t simply smooth on the inside. He wore strange white cotton clothes, loose fitting and comfortable. He looked like he belonged in a UFO cult. And what the hell, maybe he did. Val looked for his boots and saw no shoes of any kind. His feet were bare and cold. He didn’t see much in the room he could use to harm himself, were he so inclined. Wherever he was, they had him on suicide watch. Great. He lay back on the bed, feeling the cold dampness of his sweat all around him. He didn’t know the time, but his stomach gurgled. He hadn’t eaten since some chips for lunch the day before. He looked around for a phone.
The walls, ceiling, and carpet of the room were a flat white. He wondered if they intended to make him feel as though he was back on an alien spacecraft. He wondered if that’s where he was. Best to not think about it, nothing he could do if he was.
The walls were bare. Canned-smelling air blew in on him from a vent in the ceiling, turning his sweat cold. He pushed himself up off the bed and stood up on shaky legs. He peeked in the bathroom, and used the fallen cup to get himself a glass of cold water which slid down his inflamed throat like an incendiary. He rubbed at his eyes and looked at himself in the mirror. Damn. Not a pretty sight. His eyes were bleary and red and all the white in the room (and several years in prison) made his skin look pale and sallow. The collar of his shirt and the armpits were soaked a darker gray from sweat. Gross. The sweat made his hair look darker, too. He ran his fingers through it and it stayed standing up, and that made him smile a little. He turned away from the mirror. On further inspection of the room, he noticed a shiny white bubble in the corner. A camera.
“Hey,” he said to it, his voice weak. He swallowed past the broken-glass feeling and repeated himself, louder. “Hey! I’m fucking hungry in here!” He gave the smooth surface of the door a few pounds with his fists, then dropped into a white chair. No TV, no books, no music. He’d been in the room and awake for all of five minutes and already he was petrified of being bored to death. He didn’t expect an answer to his plea to the camera, but he heard a door open and close, then a pause, and then the door to his room opened. A bland faced woman with blonde hair came in, carrying a tray. She wore a white uniform, something like an old nurse uniforms, but somehow more modern, and let the door close behind her. She set his tray on the table. Eggs, sausage, toast and hash browns. And a glass of OJ to boot.
“Where am I?” he croaked.
She looked at him, Hindu-cow stupid, with large blue eyes.
“Where am I?” he asked again, each word dragging like fingernails down his throat.
He didn’t even feel she was looking at him, yeah, her eyes were pointed this way, but they seemed dull and glazed and unseeing.
“Can you even hear me?”
She turned then, put her back to him, and as she touched the door, it opened on a smooth mechanical hinge.
“Hey!” He could tackle her. Or hit her. But her eyes…what if her skin felt as empty as her stare had been? What if he grabbed her and it was like holding nothing?
The food smell brought a wash of saliva to his mouth, but he didn’t want to seem overanxious. He didn’t want this minion to see him flapped, though the sweat on his shirt and his ungainly, spiky hair didn’t help.
He let the door close behind her, and listened as a second door opened. Some kind of airlock? It looked as if it was held closed by magnets. Moving towards his food, he wondered if they were going to drug him again like before. He picked up his white plastic fork, and noticed fresh track marks on the inside of his elbows. It looked as though the tests had already begun, though his ass felt fine. That was where they probed you, wasn’t it?
It didn’t matter if they drugged the food, he was hungry, and letting it sit there, smelling the way breakfast should, wasn’t an option. He ate, and afterwards he lay on the bed, drowsy, not due to medications, but boredom.
He used to think New Mexico was too brown. After all this white, though, there were a lot of shades of brown: reddish brown, dark brown, light brown, yellow brown, and more often than not it was matched against a big blue sky. Not green like the east, but he longed for it. He thought about his aunt and his cousins, and how when he’d turned fourteen his mother had called and said she wanted him back. Goodbye, cushy boys preparatory school. Goodbye ocean. Goodbye, sixteen-year-old girlfriend who had taught him everything a young man needs to know about pot, pills and punk. She hadn’t been terribly popular with his aunt and uncle, with her black 1986 Plymouth Reliant station wagon. Val drifted in his memories, back eleven years. He started to doze and woke himself up. He didn’t want to dream. The cool air blowing over him made it easy not to succumb to sleep.
My kingdom for a television
, Val thought. Or a book. Or even a note pad. He could play tic-tac-toe with himself, or maybe draw his Space Puma.
Val heard the sound of the airlock cycling, and a man stepped in, wearing a fresh black suit.
“Good morning,” he said, extending a large, warm, clean hand. Val took it, wondering why he felt the need, in these circumstances, to feign politeness. They shook. The interaction left Val with a strong urge to wipe his hands on his sweaty white cotton pants.
“Where’s Felix?”
“Is it too cold in here?” the man asked, the concern on his face looking like a well-executed façade. It set Val on edge.
“It’s fine. Where’s Felix?”
“Are you sure? We can tap it down a scosh if we need to. Say the word.”
Scosh
? Who says that? “Felix. Where is he?”
The man looked confused, as though Val said something he didn’t compute. “Not here.”
“Can I see him?”
“I am afraid not.”
“Do you even know who I’m talking about?”
“I am afraid not.”
It struck Val. No contractions. Like the guy at the diner. The realization rippled across his skin, and the tasty breakfast lurched in his stomach.
“How about your breakfast? That was good?”
“Yeah,” Val said. He felt vulnerable lying on the bed on his back. He swung his legs to the side and sat up, rubbing at his greasy, tousled hair.
“I need you to come with me. We need to run a few tests.”
“Don’t you mean more?” Val asked, holding out his pale, thin arm and showing off the track marks there.
“We took a bit of blood while you were asleep. We also put you on a saline drip because you were dehydrated. It must have been a terribly traumatic night for you. I trust you are well rested? Aside from the nightmares, that is.”
So they’d been watching him sleep. Not surprising, yet still not something he liked to hear.
“You can’t keep me here.” Val said this for something to say.
The smile got a little bigger. “Come with me, Val. The tests will not take long. We can get you something to read after.”
This guy went for the big guns, it seemed. A bribe to ease Val’s boredom wasn’t an offer to be refused. His other option was to sit here and stare at the wall.
“Okay,” he said, standing. The man looked at the camera, and the door popped open. He gestured for Val to go ahead, and then he went, stepping off the carpet and onto smooth cold floor. The door closed behind them with a solid click before the second door opened. It confirmed his airlock assessment. A guard with a strange-looking rifle slung over his shoulder stood on the other side to greet them and escort the two of them down to a pristine white hall that looked a little too much like Val’s dream for comfort. He could feel sweat beading on his forehead, despite the ultra-chill forced air in the building (
ship?)
, and resisted the urge to wipe it away. He could smell himself as he walked and wished for a shower.
Val followed his nameless escort, with the armed guard at his back. The hall was empty, smooth walls stretching on for infinity in either direction. He wanted to touch it, just to stabilize himself, but he kept his hands at his sides. Would they walk down here forever?
“We’re underground, aren’t we?” Val asked, hoping this was the case. His escorts ignored him. The man stopped and waved a pass card, and a door in the wall popped open. He entered the room. Looking behind him, Val only got a moment’s chance; he thought he saw another door, white on white, across the hall. Then the door behind him closed, and Val was brought face to face with a man sitting at a large white empty desk. There was one chair facing him. Val’s eyes burned from the lack of color. His guy gestured at the one chair. Val sat.
The two men in the room could have been brothers, and they certainly shopped at the same nondescript tailor.
“Call me Jones,” the second man said. He and Val repeated the handshake ritual, and this time Val didn’t stifle the urge to wipe his hand. If either Jones or the first guy (Jones II?) noticed, they didn’t let on. A spoon rested on the white Formica surface of the desk before them, reflecting a whole lot of nothing in its concave silver surface.
If the test had anything to do with vanilla ice cream, Val thought, he might scream. The two men smiled at him with little private smiles. Val smiled back, not letting it touch his eyes. He couldn’t tell where the wall ended and the ceiling began. His heart beat faster. He teetered on the edge of an anxiety attack, and closed his eyes.
“Are you all right?” Jones II asked mildly.
“I’m cool,” he said, his eyes still closed.
“Shall we postpone the testing?”
“No, let’s get it over with.”
“Open your eyes.”
Val did. There. There was the line where the ceiling started. He wasn’t sure if he’d found it, or if he’d merely tricked himself, but it served to center him a bit nonetheless.
“I need you to move the spoon.”
“Move the…excuse me?”
“Without using your hands.”
“Like with my mouth?”
“Like with your mind.”
Val laughed; a huge braying sound in the white room. He could see a little dollop of spit that landed on the table near the spoon, and wiped it away with his hand. Why had he pushed the wheel when Felix was driving? If they didn’t know about it, maybe they would let him go.
If he was crazy, he wasn’t the only one.
“What do you mean?” Val asked.
“Use your mind,” Jones said. “Move the spoon.” His even, patient voice would have been at home on a self-help CD.
“What are you talking about? People can’t just…move things. With their minds.” He thought about the knife moving, all the things he’d seemed to move.
The smiles Val received made him feel about four years old.
“Try.”
“I did,” Val said. “Nothing happened.” A lie. He’d been thinking about overpowering these two yahoos, then trying his luck with the armed guard outside. Once he had the gun, Val reasoned, he’d be home free.
Jones’ voice broke into his thoughts. “You did not. You were thinking about something else. Now relax your body, sit up straight so your spine can align itself properly, and try again.”
Heaving a sigh worthy of a teenager, Val sat up straight.
Move, spoon.
“Nothing. I tried.”
“Visualize. See it, and you can make it happen.”
“I don’t know who you think I am,” Val said. “But you’ve got the wrong guy. I can’t move spoons with my brain.” He’d already told Felix. They must know.
“You know you were taken aboard an alien craft. That alien blood runs in your veins.”
Contaminated.
“And they didn’t do anything to me. They just looked at me.”
Looked at me sort of like you are doing now
Val thought.
In a white room that looked an awful lot like this one.
The hairs at the base of his scalp prickled at the thought. He wasn’t underground at all. The thought came as a certainty. He was above ground…very, very high above ground.
“Relax.”
“Fuck relaxing.”
The unwavering smiles did nothing to soothe him. He stood up.
“I can’t.”
“Val,” Jones said. His eyes looked dry and red. It was the only thing that removed him from utter normalcy. “Did you ever take karate as a boy?”
“No.”
“In the martial arts, they say there is no such word as ‘can’t’.”
The contraction sounded, well,
alien
, coming from Jones’ lips.
“Well, in the real world, where people don’t have magical powers, there is a word called ‘can’t’ and it aptly applies to this situation.”
“It is not magical. Please. Take a seat and try again.” Val hesitated. “Focus, Val, please.”
“Sorry,” he mumbled. He stared at his bare feet, pasty, but not white, not against the glaring colorlessness of the floor.
“Remember, this is a test.”
“I must be failing.”
“You are just nervous.”