Otherworld (3 page)

Graham left Officer Petrie in the Dickeys' quaint country living room and went to steal Pops away from the horde of reporters. He found them not standing in front of the porch as before but moving in one large group toward the old man's barn. The old man himself led the way, talking all the while. Graham ran. He covered ground quickly and came up on them in time to invade their circle and get close to Pops.

He spoke in the farmer's ear. “Excuse me, Mr. Dickey, but could you come answer some questions for us?”

“Right now?” Pops asked. He wasn't looking at Graham but at his audience.

“Yes, sir. We'd really appreciate it.” And then, to reassure the man, “Then you can talk to these people all you want.”

Pops seemed to want to talk to all these people now, but he relented. “Okay.”

Graham escorted him back to the house, amateur reporters in tow, all asking questions. He ignored them and held open the creaky door for Pops, let him enter, and then turned to face the crowd himself.

“Okay, you people. Just hold on to your horses and whatnot. Mr. Dickey'll be back out, and you can ask all your questions soon enough.”

“It's a cover-up!” one man called out.

Graham gave him a look that said,
Die. Right now, just fall over.

“Could we have your name, sir?” another person asked.

“Captain Graham Lattimer of Trumbull Police.”

A young guy with his phone held aloft to record video pressed forward. “Captain, was this the work of a
chupacabra
?” He was laughing as he spoke.

“What?” Graham had no idea what the man was saying. “Nobody's chupin' anything, the heck that means,” he answered. “That's all.” He stepped into the house, leaving the reporters behind him.

Gertie Dickey was handing Officer Petrie a basket of corn bread. Pops was perched on the edge of an easy chair, leaning forward, peering toward the screen door, probably to make sure that the reporters weren't leaving.

“They'll stick around,” Graham assured Pops. He turned to Petrie. “Did you get ahold of that vet of yours?”

“Yes, sir. He's on his way back.”

“Good.”

Gertie Dickey extended her basket to Graham. “Would you like some corn bread, Captain Lattimer?”

“No, thank you, ma'am. I'd appreciate some aspirin if you got it, though.”

 

By the time Mike Walsh arrived at the Dickey farm, his beige import was one of just four vehicles in the driveway. One was a rusted pickup, and the other two were Trumbull police cruisers. Mike removed a small recorder from the glove compartment and walked to the front door. It was open, leaving only a screen door through which he saw four men seated. They saw him before he could knock.

“Ship has sailed,” admonished a man wearing a police uniform. He was the older of two officers in the room and bore the put-upon countenance of one in charge.

“Excuse me?” said Mike.

“Everybody's already gone. You're a little late.”

“Sorry.” But he wasn't. He was irked by the officer's tone. “My name's Mike Walsh. I'm from
Spotlight Magazine
. Do you mind if I come in?”

“Yes,” the older cop said. “Interviews are over.”

“You know, I just drove from Houston. I have a right to ask some questions.”

“I don't care if you drove from Baton Rouge or the Bay of Pigs. We're asking the questions right now, and you'll have to wait.”

Mike pondered the officer. He looked like he'd slept in his uniform. The cop's brow seemed permanently furrowed, the creases deep crevices of stress, the brown thicket of his eyebrows contorted into Spanish tildes. He gave the impression of a walking migraine.

“I can wait,” Mike said. “I've got nothing but time.”

The cop pursed his lips like he wanted to spit and held Mike's gaze.

Mike looked down. Calling through the screen door was comfortable enough. It held the impression of a barrier. But now he felt sure this policeman would gladly push it open onto his face.

The cop shook his head and muttered, “Sheesh.”

An old man in overalls piped up. “Come back later,” he said.

Mike scrutinized the four of them. The younger police officer and the fourth man, a middle-aged fellow in a collared golf shirt tucked into khakis, seemed embarrassed to be there. Mike remembered he didn't want to be there himself.

“Whatever you say,” he said, and he left.

 

Inside the Dickey home, the four men resumed their conversation. Still seated in his green upholstered easy chair, Pops spent most of it listening. So did Sam Petrie, slumped in a wooden dinner chair, looking scolded and worn. The bulk of the exchange took place between the captain and Dr. Lewis Driscoll, a local veterinarian.

“So, tell me, Doc,” Graham began, “what leads you to believe aliens were involved in the death of Mr. Dickey's cow?”

“Well, let me tell you. That cut was so even, so perfect. No ragged edges. Nothin'. And it looked a little burnt. The cut was small. Real small. And too small to remove the organs through it.”

“How do you know the organs are missing?”

“I examined it.”

“You cut it open?”

“Yes.”

“I see.” Graham was dumbfounded. He was certain an alien hadn't killed Pops Dickey's cow, but he couldn't explain how organs were missing when the wound to the animal was too small to have been their exit point. There would be no way to further examine the animal, though, now that Driscoll had widened the original puncture.

Doc Driscoll continued, “The amount of blood was unusual as well. There was an uncommonly small amount of blood inside the animal, like it had been drained. But there was hardly any blood on the ground.”

“Soaked it up.”

“I don't think so, Mr. Lattimer. The ground's practically frozen. It couldn't soak it up. If anything, it would've frozen it.”

“Maybe animals, then. Maybe raccoons or something drank it up.”

“Maybe, but animals don't usually come out after blood. They may come out for the internals, you know, but not for blood. They'd get into Mr. Dickey's trash before they'd get into animal remains.”

Driscoll began a rather compelling argument, explaining to those in the Dickeys' living room how he had started out interested in UFOs as a hobby but eventually became a serious researcher. He'd read all the books and articles, seen convincing film footage, and even attended a few seminars on the subject when they came to Houston. He was a believer.

An hour later, the two police officers walked to their cars together.

Petrie spoke. “What do you think, Cap?”

Lattimer stopped. “I think that man's fruity.”

And that was that.

 

The sun idled into the horizon, putting itself to sleep, casting a kaleidoscope of ambers and oranges and violets onto the lower evening sky, the fireworks of day's end.

Mike sat in a flimsy lawn chair on the roof of his parents' house, admiring the view. He was spending more and more time at his old homestead, finding the familiarity comforting when he could take his mind off of Molly. He sipped sweet iced tea from a plastic Houston Astros cup his dad had gotten at a home game with a five-dollar soda. It had been an interesting day. A day complete with first-day-of-school jitters (at age thirty-six, no less!) and mad dashes for a story on aliens from outer space. He chuckled. He pictured the headline: E.T. KILLS A COW. He chuckled again and poured some tea down his throat. His teeth ached, and he wondered why he was drinking iced tea on a freezing winter night.

The sun drifted down and vaporized, and Mike sat alone in the darkness. He gazed at the sky and the few stars that were visible. The landscape of infinity before him, Mike's mind drifted. Mike thought of his life and how empty it had become since Molly left. The last year was an eternity. Eyes fixed on the firmament above him, he mentally connected the dots, creating his own constellations, and dreamed of his wife. He remembered lying with her on the cold roof of their Colorado cabin on the first night of their honeymoon. They watched the stars. The night sky outside Colorado Springs was an infinite panorama. Endless space and endless time. Molly reached out and clasped his hand, and they felt so close to heaven and so close to each other. A light snow began to drizzle down, so they cuddled.

Their love felt primeval, primordial. Love did not seem to exist anywhere but between the two of them. And yet in the gnaw of this memory for Mike, in the draining flood of many memories, many aches, buried in the endless onslaught of moments both precious and regrettable, he could see the germination of his possessiveness and thus his inevitable neglect. He'd made an idol of his wife, and she'd withered under the weight. We always neglect the gods we presume to possess. Now he was sure he'd fallen from grace.

Time flew.

When Mike began to shiver, he tossed the chair into the back lawn and shimmied down the ladder. He left a “thank you for dinner” note for his mother, who had long since turned in, and had started for the door when his father's gun cabinet caught his eye.

As a kid, Mike had spent countless hours staring into the cabinet at his father's weapons. He'd always wanted to touch them, to cradle them in his hand, to somehow soak up their power through his skin, but he never did. They were forbidden fruit. He did not have the kind of father who wanted to pass on the interest to his boy. The cabinet stayed locked, his father's hobby a solitary pursuit. He often warned Mike about the dangers of firearms. “The only time a policeman draws a gun is when he intends to take a life, and that's what guns do, Mikey,” he said. “They take lives. Guns make death. Don't ever forget that.” Mike never forgot. Even before he saw a dead body in the river by his home, he had seen death in his father's gun cabinet.

He peered into the cabinet, much like he had as a child, eyes wide and mind racing. He wanted to hold one of the guns. He threw a guilty glance over his shoulder to his parents' bedroom. They slept soundly. He could hear the drone of his father's snoring. Mike tried the latch to the cabinet and found it unlocked.

Of course. No kids to worry about anymore.

The hinges on the cabinet door squealed. Mike tensed. Immediately he was angry that he should be thirty-six and scared, ashamed to hold a piece of a collection his father had begun when he was much younger.

He opened the door further, but slower this time, and winced, waiting for it to creak again. It didn't, and the opening of the door felt like the opening of a tomb. The smells of oil and leather and metal wafted out. Tentatively, he reached out and touched one of the pistols. Its sleek silver looked like it would feel hot and slippery, but it was hard, dry, and cold. He slipped his hand around the gun's grip and lifted it from the cabinet, plucking the fruit from the forbidden tree. He read the words on its side: LLAMA 45. He wanted to look down the barrel but could not bring himself to do it, to peer into its death eye. The gun sat heavy in his hand, and he admired it. He assumed it was loaded, and he pushed it carefully into his inside coat pocket.