by Lynne Murray
“Come sit in the front room, it wasn’t too bad this time.” Another look at the pickup as he closed the door. “This might be a short interview.”
Dennis led us along a gleaming hardwood floor, around a corner and down three steps. The walls were severely white. We passed a slate gray fireplace. Dennis gestured to a couple of chairs facing a sofa across a carpet with a glass coffee table in the middle. The chairs were held at bay by a thick, coarsely-woven gray carpet. Dennis sat on the sofa while Wade and I took the chairs. There wasn’t even a way to move the chairs to see Dennis better. Wade concentrated on his notepad. “When did this most recent episode happen?” he asked.
“Last night. They usually come at night. It’s like they pick me up to examine me. I’ve never felt so helpless.”
Wade flicked a glance at Dennis, “Have they harmed you?”
“No, they just lift me up with some kind of tractor beam. I can’t move once they grab me. I end up on some kind of smooth white surface. They scan me and then drop me back down.” Dennis’s voice took on a faint hint of strain.
“Walk us through the last visit. Was it the same aliens as before?”
“Yes.”
“Can you describe them?”
“I can’t clearly see the ones that pick me up, but they seem to have humanoid forms. The one who looks down on me is huge. All I can see is a giant eye in a kind of gap in a cloud.”
“Are there several or only one individual?” Wade asked, noting something on his tablet.
“I only ever see one of them looking at me. The ones who transport me to their ship shine blinding lights on me, but they’re smaller than that big eye in the sky.”
“Do they ever try to communicate with you?”
“No. This time they didn’t take off my clothes, last time they did. I wondered if they might be considering breeding experiments.”
“Did they do physical measurements or take physical samples?’ Wade asked.
“You mean like, probing and orifices?” Dennis asked, not in the least shy about discussing possible invasion of his body.
“So did they use instruments of any kind on you?” Wade’s face was impassive.
“Not that I could tell.”
Wade looked through his notebook. “I’ve got four other episodes, so this would be the fifth.”
“Do you think they’re seeing other abductees?”
“It’s possible, but no one else has reported it in this area so far.”
“They’re watching now,” Dennis said in a creepy voice.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
“Follow me.” Dennis rose and went toward the back of the house. Wade nodded at me and we trailed him through the house after Dennis out a side door to a flagstone patio that wrapped around the house. Dennis stood in the middle of the space and looked up.
I followed his gaze. “My god,” I gasped.
My glasses revealed that a seam had opened in the overcast sky and an enormous eye peered out. It resembled a human in that it had a gray iris set in a white eyeball. No sign of eyelid or lashes, the eye filled the rip in the sky. Distances made no sense, but the giant eye looked to be the size of a Greyhound bus. The pupil moved as it tracked across the three of us and continued to stare.
The little red letters inside my glasses read:
Ekrot – Caution: Little data. Repeated sightings span centuries. Presumed to be disinterested in contacting other life forms. Possible Earth sightings over several thousand years. Most recent recorded sightings include 1870 on West Coast of Western Hemisphere of Earth and again in the same location in 2018. Longest-lived and fourth largest, known sentient being. No records of any contacts outside of its own species. Reclusive. slow moving, presumed harmless, possibly dangerous in the unlikely event that its migration were interrupted.
I pushed the glasses down and the eye disappeared. Nothing but sky.
“You can see it, can’t you?” Dennis said in a slow, hypnotizing voice.
“Yes,” I said. I looked at Wade and whispered. “How is it that Dennis can see it?”
Wade spoke quietly, but Dennis didn’t seem to be paying attention to anything but the Ekrot. “When we interviewed him the first time, Dennis described an Ekrot in detail only someone with customized glasses could see unless they had Seer blood. We had him sign a statement and the pen he used took enough of a DNA sample to determine that he has small traces of Seer ancestry. That’s actually common in humans. Seers are highly sensitive to life forms. They have been visiting earth for thousands of years and they appear to have been very friendly with humans to the point where there's enough of their DNA in small amounts in the general population that many people are able to see Ekrots when they visit. Let's try a small experiment, take off your glasses and look. Do you see it?
I took my glasses and squinted up at the sky. “Nope. Nothing.” No giant eye, nothing but blue sky and cirrus clouds.
Dennis continued to stare at the eye in the sky, which was slowly retreating. The gap in the clouds snapped shut and it was gone.
“It’s gone now,” I said. Wade nodded.
Dennis seemed to emerge from a trance. Wade tapped him on the shoulder. “That was an Ekrot,” Wade said. “It’s just passing through. We don’t know why. It might be migrating or going to meet a mate or mates, or to attend some sort of Ekrot gathering. They favor large natural landmarks. There have been sightings throughout human history, but they never contact humans or even animals.”
Dennis said. “It wants something from me.”
“That’s not likely,” Wade said, “Ekrots seem to find Earth pleasant but they’ve never been known to contact humans, or any other species for that matter.”
“They made an exception for me,” Dennis argued. “They look at me.”
“We probably interest them the same way a ladybug interests a human,” Wade said to Dennis with a helpless shrug.
“They have helpers who picked me up and examined me in their ship,” Dennis insisted.
“That’s not possible, Dennis,” Wade said. “Ekrots aren’t known to associate with other species. They never even fully enter Earth space. They seem to peek through some kind of portal to pass the time till they’re ready to move on, like a commuter watching foot traffic while waiting for a train.”
Dennis didn’t want to leave the patio.
“They sometimes come back. You can go out through here.” He opened a locked gate that let us out onto a walkway that bordered the property. We walked back to the truck from there.
“I thought the presence of aliens was supposed to be secret, what with all those disguises and all.”
“Most aliens who live and work here or even pass through, move unobserved among us. They find it easiest to use disguises. But the Ekrots never stay here long. They show up every few decades in the same area. Up until recently Earth people who saw a giant eye in the sky assumed they were having a religious experience.”
“What about Dennis, won’t he tell people all that stuff you told him about Ekrots and create a panic?”
“Trust me, people who talk about being abducted by aliens are rarely taken seriously. Dennis might talk, but no one would believe him.”
“Isn’t the Ekrot evidence of a sort?”
“No, the sighting is too rare and few people can see them without the kind of sensory glasses we’re wearing. Dennis never remembers what I tell him about the Ekrots. I’ve interviewed him four times and explained each time. He’s not letting go of the abduction story. I don’t know why.”
“Wow.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“My theory is that Dennis is a prime example of a human who wants to suck up to what he perceives as a supernatural being. Lately, he’s started talking to the Ekrots. They don’t talk back, but they keep showing up.”
“Why do the Ekrots keep looking down on Dennis in particular?”
“Maybe they enjoy his worshipful attitude. Maybe they’re just stringing him along. I
think they’re messing with him.”
“Why?”
“Don’t ask me to explain alien senses of humor. Of course, it could be something else entirely. We don’t have enough solid evidence to tell for sure. It could just be that they’re curious. The last known sighting near Mount Davidson was around 1870. Back then the place was probably all scrub grass and wildflowers. No tall eucalyptus tree forest—that was planted in the 1880s. There definitely were no buildings or humans in this part of town.”
“That puts local history in a whole new light,” I said.
“Knowing how aliens have been involved gives it a new perspective.” Wade checked his phone messages when we got out on the pavement. “Looks like we’re going to drive down to Pacifica next.”
Chapter 10
Wade drove south along the coast road. The ocean, looking pale gray under a low cloud cover, appeared to our right and then disappeared behind hills, only to appear again.
“You gave Dennis a lot of information,” I ventured.
“Every time he calls in, I explain about the Ekrot, but he never remembers and he seems to be getting his abduction information from some conspiracy online places.”
“There must be some aliens you don’t want people to know about,” I ventured.
Wade sighed. “It’s a real thing. There are aliens who scoop people up and experiment on them. But most people seriously don’t want to know it’s true—too scary. Dennis called the hot line because people he confided in told him he was crazy.”
“But if someone sees something you need to keep secret, do you ever have to erase people’s memories like in the movies when they shoot them with a memory loss gun?”
Wrong question. Wade’s face screwed up as if he had bit into a very sour lemon. “Memory blocks are possible, but only in an extreme emergency.”
“Have you ever done it?” I felt like I was crossing some kind of line to ask, but I couldn’t help myself. The way he hesitated made me want to ask more than ever.
“Some of us are qualified to perform memory blocks in the field,” he said slowly. Not really answering the question. “The procedure is not without side effects.”
“Such as?”
Wade drove off the road and stopped the truck on the shoulder just outside the entrance to Fort Funston. Once home to anti-aircraft guns and Nike Missiles, it had become a 45-acre park hugging the coast. Wild winds off the ocean tempted hang gliders to jump off its cliffs and dog walkers prowled the paths.
Wade turned in his seat to look at me. I caught my breath for a moment, suddenly aware of how only a few inches separated me from him. His amber eyes were serious, framed by dark eyelashes and eyebrows. I felt the force of up-close male energy and I had to concentrate to keep from reaching out to touch his hair, the color of dark honey with threads of auburn.
“Whole areas of memory can be erased. But that in itself can be more noticeable than just blocking the brain’s access to the memory,” Wade said. “Sometimes simple hypnotic suggestion can do that.”
I took a breath and reminded myself that he was supposed to be instructing me about alien behavior. “I guess I’m curious because I’ve got so few memories of my early life and I wonder.” I left it at that.
“Angie, I’m glad to answer all your questions when I can. But things are above my pay grade. In an emergency, in the field, I could do a mind wipe. But then we’d all have to live with the consequences. I’d hope I made the right decision. I can’t say more than that.”
Uh-oh, that sounded like regret for something that went totally wrong. “I get it, if you told me more you’d have to erase my memory.” I tried to joke my way out of it. Which did not work.
Wade didn’t laugh or even smile. “Ask Mr. Kirby about all that.”
He pulled back onto the coast highway and we drove in silence. At this hour on a windy day, we didn’t see many cars on the road or people at any of the beaches we passed. Just past the town of Pacifica, Wade turned off the highway and onto a side street bordering the ocean. He drove to a block of what had been homes facing the ocean. Only one house remained, the other houses and even the sidewalk in front of them were gone.
“Wow,” I said.
A huge disk the size of a jetliner hovered off the edge of the cliff, nosed up against the one house still clinging there.
The rest of the homes on the block were gone as if a giant hand holding an equally huge garden trowel had reached down, gouged them out and tossed them into the sea. The land under the houses had collapsed down the cliff. Only a chain link fence and a few mailboxes stood forlorn on their posts in front the blank space that had been driveways and front yards. Caution tape and “Hazard” notices posted on the fence snapped in the wind off the ocean.
“Why isn’t everyone flocking here to look at the flying saucer?”
“Take your glasses off and look again.”
The moment I no longer looked through the lenses, the ship disappeared.
“It’s cloaked. Damn Harvesters. Check your readout.”
“It says, Harvester Vessel. Restricted permit for salvage only with security cloaking of machinery and personnel.”
Wade parked in front of the last house. We got out, immediately hit by the cold wind. I followed Wade up the short driveway. He knocked at the door. No answer. He glanced at his tablet. “Ms. Stewart, are you there?” He kept knocking and calling out again.
A dazed-looking woman in a silk robe answered. She looked at Wade, liked what she saw and smiled. She ignored me.
“Are you Ms. Stewart?”
She contemplated the question for a while, as if unsure of the answer. At last, she said. “I’m Isabel Stewart. Can I help you?” she asked.
“We’re from the Coast Patrol, ma’am.”
I noticed that he didn’t say the Coast Guard, but she might have thought he did. Interesting. I wondered if he had a fake ID in case she asked.
She didn’t ask. She just nodded.
“We have reports of an unauthorized vehicle parked in your back yard.”
“That’s just silly,” she said. She eyed Wade with definite interest. She had stopped holding the silk robe together and it became clear she was naked underneath. “Call me Isabel.”
“Why do you say it’s silly to have a vehicle behind your house?” I asked. “We could see it when we drove up.”
Isabel looked at me with annoyance then she giggled.
“Haven’t you noticed the vehicle?” Wade asked.
“You must mean Dave’s truck,” Isabel said, with a flirtatious sideways toss of her hair. “He’s repairing my back steps
“The vehicle is a bit larger than that.”
“Is it now?” She looked Wade up and down with a seductive smile. “How large is it?”
“Definitely bigger than a truck,” I said.
“Come in, I’ll show you.” She turned and led us through the house to a kitchen and dining room arrangement. The dining room had a west-facing window that would have displayed a stunning expanse of ocean if it hadn’t been blocked by the flying saucer, which was easily three times the size of Isabel’s house. We were so close that I could see a row of lights that ran along its rim. No sign of anyone in or around the ship.
“Just a small cruiser,” Wade told me. “Minimal crew, three or four at most. Rogue scavenger, not an organized Harvester.”
Isabel ignored the ship, led the way through an open doorway into the kitchen. She threw her back door open, totally ignoring the wind blew her robe all around her. Definitely naked. Whatever substance or hypnosis had fried her mind, she didn’t seem to feel the cold.
There was no back yard. The cliff ended just beyond her back steps, a few feet past her door. It was all ocean from there on. If the alien craft hadn’t been parked there, we could have stepped out and right over the cliff edge. Terror surged over me. I wanted to turn and run back out the front before the whole house fell into the ocean.
“Have you had erosion problems in the past?” Wad
e asked. His face showed no shock or fear at the house teetering on the edge, propped up by an alien spacecraft.
Isabel waved a casual hand, “Of course. The back yard used to be 20 feet wide, now we’re down to—well, practically nothing.
A ramp descended from the ship, extending over the small sliver of yard and partly into Isobel’s door. A seven-foot tall grasshopper man strolled down and into the kitchen. It wore nothing that could be described as clothing, but chitinous plates or possibly armor protected its abdomen and limbs. A transparent helmet enclosed its head with opening for spiky antenna that twitched.
The hairs all over my body stood on end.
“This is my handyman, Dave,” Isabel said. “He’s helping me retrofit the house against earthquakes.” She leaned forward to whisper to me, “A very handsome young man, if you know what I mean.”
“She’s seeing something I don’t see,” I said softly.
“Look without your glasses,” Wade said.
I slipped my glasses down my nose and looked over them to see a tall, handsome man with piercing green eyes wearing a green plaid shirt over a t-shirt and blue jeans. I slid the glasses back up. Yup, seven-foot tall grasshopper.
“They model their disguises on broadcast television actors,” Wade added. “It seems to work for them.” His voice shifted from ironic to gentle. “Have a seat, Isabel. We need to check the paperwork on this repair.” Wade pulled a chair out from the kitchen table and patted the seat.
Isabel sat down, her robe falling to half cover her. She didn’t move to pull it around her, just sat serenely, completely unfazed.
Wade held up a flat, glowing square. “Identify yourself, Harvester. Show me your license, registration and permit to harvest.”