The Probing: Leviathan, The Mind Pirates, Hybrids, The Village

by Frank Peretti

  Brenda’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe they are.”

  “And they stink. I’ve never smelled a dead body, but something tells me it would smell just like those kids.” I shifted my gaze to the surf, where Tank and Daniel were walking around with the metal detector and studying the sand. “Here we go again. I was really hoping we’d have some time to relax. The professor could certainly use some downtime.”

  “Ditto,” Brenda said. “I love takin’ care of Daniel, but I tell ya—being a full-time parent is a lot harder than I thought. And Daniel’s not exactly a regular kid.”

  “Is he giving you problems?”

  “Nothing I can’t work out. Trouble is, I’m so busy bouncing between work and taking care of him that my time, patience, and creativity are in short supply. So I was glad when you invited us to come for some beach time. Even if we have to deal with crazy stuff, it’s good to be with you guys. I know you love Daniel, too, and that takes some of the pressure off.”

  I gave her a sympathetic smile and remained silent while she rolled onto her stomach and pillowed her head on her hands. The beach was quiet, probably because it was a weekday and as hot as blazes. Maybe the rest of the week would be quiet and peaceful. After all, we hadn’t received any directions or plane tickets from the mysterious people who usually sent us on strange ventures. But Brenda had received a vision of those kids, and I had actually met them, so the odds that we were about to be caught up in some bizarre situation were growing greater all the time—

  “Andi!”

  Uh oh. What now?

  I turned at the sound of the professor’s voice. He stood on the edge of the back deck, and when I caught his gaze, he pointed to the house. “Someone here to see you!”

  Who knew I was home?

  Grumbling under my breath, I stood, picked up my towel, and shook it carefully so it wouldn’t spray sand all over Brenda. “Looks like I gotta go. You think we should grill hamburgers for dinner?”

  “Whatever,” Brenda murmured, her eyes closed. “Let me know when, and I’ll help.”

  “Okay.”

  I wrapped my towel around my chest and started toward the house.

  By the time I reached the house, I remembered that I’d given my address to the 9-1-1 dispatcher. I was expecting to find an officer or two in the living room, but instead I found Mr. Diaz distractedly petting Abby in the foyer. Perspiration dotted his forehead, his thinning hair was disheveled, and his eyes were wide with fear.

  I regretted taking my time coming up the hill. “Mr. Diaz.” I tucked my towel more firmly under my arm and hurried toward him. “Is everything okay?”

  His face suddenly rippled with anguish. “Have you seen Maria? I came home and the door was standing open. She’s not in the house. I’ve been through it twice, looking everywhere, and she’s not there.”

  “Maybe”—I spoke slowly in an effort to counter his increasing panic—“maybe she went to the store to pick up something for dinner.”

  “Her car’s still in the driveway. Her purse is still on the counter with her keys inside.”

  I frowned. “Could she have gone down to the beach?”

  “She hates the beach, especially now that she’s pregnant. She says she can’t see her feet anymore, let alone get sand off them.”

  He was pacing now, moving toward the front door, then striding back to me. “I hoped she’d come over here to borrow something, or to talk to your grandmother—”

  “Sabba and Safta are in New York for the week.”

  “So have you seen Maria at all?”

  “Not today.” I patted his arm. “I saw her yesterday, and she was fine. But we were at the university this morning and got back about an hour ago.”

  “Did you see anything? Any strangers? A prowler? A salesman?”

  I wanted to say no, but I had seen someone—the black-eyed children. And every instinct in my body had warned me against them.

  “I did see two kids I didn’t recognize. And about twenty minutes ago they were walking toward your house.”

  “Kids? Like from the neighborhood?”

  I bit my lip. “I don’t think so. They were . . . odd. They came to our door and asked if they could come inside.”

  Mr. Diaz blinked. “Why? What did they want?”

  “They said they wanted to use the phone, but something about them put me off so much that I called the police when they left. I watched them cross our driveway and head for your house.”

  Mr. Diaz went pale and might have collapsed if the professor hadn’t stepped out of the dining room and slid a chair beneath the panicked husband. “I know my wife,” Mr. Diaz said, his voice trembling. “If two kids asked her for help, she’d give them whatever they wanted.”

  “They didn’t exactly ask for help,” I clarified. “They asked if they could use the telephone.”

  Mr. Diaz blinked several times. “Why didn’t you let them?”

  I shifted my weight beneath a load of unexpected guilt. “It . . . felt wrong to let them in. And Abby was growling, so I didn’t think it’d be a good idea.”

  “Were they some kind of gypsies? Do you think they were part of a gang? Could they be runners for some kind of drug cartel—”

  “Relax, man, I’m sure your wife is fine,” the professor said.

  I shot him a grateful smile, glad that he’d stepped in to help.

  “This isn’t like Maria.” Mr. Diaz shook his head. “I’m worried sick. The baby could come at any time. What if she’s hurt or something?”

  Whirling blue lights appeared in the window, so I gestured to the vehicle outside. “The police have arrived. Why don’t we go see if they have any news?”

  C

  HAPTER

  5

  Brenda, Daniel, Tank, the professor, and I stood at the window and watched as two police officers questioned Mr. Diaz. The poor man was in tears, his hands flying in frustrated gestures, his face taut with fear and worry.

  “They always suspect the spouse,” Brenda said, eyeing Mr. Diaz with a narrowed gaze. “Seems like nine times out of ten, the husband did it.”

  “We don’t know for sure if anybody did anything,” I pointed out. “And I was talking to Mrs. Diaz just yesterday, while Mr. Diaz was at work. She seemed very happy and was excited about the coming baby.”

  The professor said nothing, but slowly ran his fingers over his silver beard.

  “Dear Lord.” For a moment I thought Tank was using a figure of speech, then I realized he was praying. “Lord,” he continued, not bothering to close his eyes, “please lead the police to Mrs. Diaz, and keep her safe. Place your angels around her—”

  “Anoił,” Daniel interrupted.

  “—and keep her safe from the evil one.”

  “Duch,” Daniel said.

  “Daniel,” I asked, following a sudden whim, “look around outside. Do you see . . . anyone or anything we should know about?”

  Though Daniel can sometimes adopt autistic behaviors when it comes to interaction with others, he seemed to understand what I meant. He moved closer to the window, pressed his hands to the glass, and peered out at the Diaz house, even tilting his head to look upward in case any unseen entities hovered nearby.

  Finally he shook his head, and Brenda drew him closer in a protective embrace. “Good to know,” she said simply. “Your neighbor probably went out for coffee.”

  “Would you go out for coffee and leave your purse behind?” I asked.

  Brenda shrugged. “Sure would. If my friend was paying.”

  I wanted to believe her, but a dark foreboding had settled into my gut and refused to go away. One by one, the others left the window—the professor went back to his room, Brenda and Daniel went into the kitchen, and Tank curled up for a nap on the sofa with Abby.

  But I couldn’t rest while Mrs. Diaz was missing. I went outside and sat on the steps of the front porch, watching quietly as the police went into my neighbor’s house with Mr. Diaz. When they came out a few minutes later, I overh
eard their parting remarks. “We can’t file an official missing persons report until she has been missing twenty-four hours,” the older officer said. “But given her condition and your neighbor’s observation of those kids, we’ll issue a bulletin to the officers on patrol. If they see her, they’ll radio in.”

  Mr. Diaz thanked them, then waited on the porch, his hands in his pockets, while the officers drove away.

  Before he went into the house, Mr. Diaz lifted his head and caught my gaze. His eyes, so filled with despair and anxiety, sent a wave of melancholy rushing over me, and in that moment I wished I felt free to pray aloud like Tank often did. He summoned supernatural help in a voice that reassured and comforted, whereas my prayer would sound more like a whimper.

  Mr. Diaz turned and went into his house, and from where I sat I heard the click of his deadbolt.

  But I didn’t think a deadbolt could thwart the sort of evil we were about to encounter.

  After dinner, Brenda came over and dropped her sketchbook into my lap. “No idea what this means,” she said, folding her arms. “But I saw it clear as day, which means it’s probably gonna happen.”

  I picked up the paper and stared at an image of myself. I was standing in the center of what looked like a crop circle, and I was staring up at the sky as I held a bundle in my arms. My eyes were wide and my lips parted—as if I’d just seen something that scared me spitless.

  “Any idea where that could be?” Brenda asked.

  I shook my head. “This is the coast—no one grows crops around here.”

  “Then I guess you’d better get ready to take a trip.”

  I glanced across the room, where Tank was watching with concern in his eyes. “Are you in danger, Andi?”

  “I don’t see how.” I shrugged. “Maybe we’re all just a little confused.”

  “Yeah, right.” Brenda snorted, then went back to the jigsaw puzzle she and Daniel were working on. I tried to pick up my book and resume reading, but the image of that sketch keep floating across my mind.

  CHAPTER

  6

  A shrill ringing blasted me from bed at 7:00 a.m. I reached for the house phone on a tide of dread, afraid something had happened to one of my grandparents, but Mr. Diaz was on the line, his words coming at double-speed and mixing with Spanish. “They found Maria. She’s at Suncoast Hospital, though they won’t tell me anything else. Can you come? The police will be there, and they want to ask more questions about los niños.”

  “They want to ask me questions?” I shook my head to clear away the fog of sleep. “About those kids?”

  “Por favor, Andi, ¿puede venir?”

  “I’ll come,” I promised. “As soon as I get dressed, I’ll meet you at the hospital. Oh—and I’m glad they found your wife.”

  I hung up before fully considering the implication of Mr. Diaz’s words—his wife was in the hospital and the police had questions to ask. So Maria Diaz had definitely not slipped out for coffee with a friend.

  Maybe I should have headed out quietly, but by the time I’d dressed and left my room, Tank, Brenda, Daniel, and the professor were munching on cereal and Pop-Tarts at the breakfast table. I explained that I was going to the hospital to see Mrs. Diaz, and, either out of curiosity or esprit de corps, everyone else decided to come along.

  When we arrived at the hospital, we found Mr. Diaz in the waiting room outside the elevator. To my surprise, he appeared nearly as upset as he had been yesterday.

  “Your wife,” I said, grasping his clenched hand when he stood to greet us. “She’s okay, right?”

  His eyes filled with tears. “She is fine. But the baby—our baby is missing.”

  I blinked. “What?”

  Words spilled from his mouth. “The police are in there now with the doctor. The baby is gone, but the doctors say Maria did not give birth. There are no marks of surgery, no tearing, no evidence the baby was born. The doctors say the—what is the word?—placenta? It is still in place. They will have to go in and remove it or Maria could get sick.”

  “That’s impossible,” Brenda said, her voice flat. “If the baby’s been born, the placenta should be gone, too.”

  “That’s what the doctors say.” Mr. Diaz’s wide eyes met Brenda’s. “But the baby is gone! It has been stolen from her—”

  “Wait a minute, let’s remain in the realm of actual realities.” The professor put a steadying arm on Mr. Diaz’s shoulder. “Where was your wife found?”

  “In a field, just off the main road, lying in the grass like cast-off garbage.” Mr. Diaz sank into a chair as his voice trembled. “An officer called for an ambulance, and they brought her here, to the hospital. The doctors examined her and right away, they said they could not hear a heartbeat. And then they discovered that the baby was gone. But they do not know who took it, or even how they took it, and she will not wake up to tell us anything—”

  He buried his face in his hands, silently shutting us out. I looked at the others, who appeared as confused and bewildered as I felt.

  “She’s not waking up?” The professor arched a brow. “She must have been drugged.”

  “With what?” I asked. “If she has, surely something would show up in a blood test.”

  The professor glanced at his watch. “They probably haven’t had time to run a tox screen. Maybe we’ll get an answer to that question later.”

  “We’re missing something obvious here,” Brenda insisted. “Babies don’t just disappear from the womb. Someone’s missing evidence that ought to be clearly visible—”

  I held my finger across my lips, then gestured to Mr. Diaz, who didn’t need to hear our wild speculations. “Let’s go to the cafeteria and talk. I can do some Internet searches to see if anything like this has ever happened before. But before we go, I need to know something.”

  I knelt in front of Mr. Diaz and squeezed his arm. “Mr. Diaz, did the police tell you anything about those strange kids?”

  Mr. Diaz blinked as if my question didn’t register, then he shook his head. With his baby missing and his wife unresponsive, those kids were the furthest thing from his mind.

  I released his arm and stood, then followed the others to the elevator.

  Because the cafeteria was crowded, we gathered in a small group of chairs near the snack machines. Brenda fished quarters out of her purse to buy Daniel a carton of juice while I sank into a chair and pulled out my phone to do some Googling. Tank sat next to me, his hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable and completely out of his element. I think he’d been ready to bolt ever since Brenda uttered the word placenta.

  “Pregnant woman’s baby disappears,” I murmured as I typed the phrase into the search engine. I pressed the search key, then caught my breath. “Yikes! Several links here.”

  “I’ll bet most of them are associated with conspiracy websites,” Brenda said, sitting across from me. “Seems like I saw something like that in a movie—or am I thinking of the monster who laid its eggs inside the woman’s belly?”

  I clicked on a link and skimmed the article. “This report is purely scientific. According to this, a woman pregnant with twins might find that one of the twins has been absorbed into the other. Apparently that’s rare, but it happens.”

  “But your neighbor wasn’t carrying twins,” Tank pointed out. “And she was huge.”

  “She was far along in her pregnancy,” I said, amending his statement because no woman, especially a pregnant one, wants to be called huge. “And yeah, Brenda, you’re right—I see several pages about unborn babies being stolen by aliens.”

  “Told you,” Brenda said. “Kooks rule the Internet.”

  “But we’ve seen unbelievable things, and we’re not kooks,” I reminded her. “I mean, we’ve seen houses that disappear and reappear, happy nuns that escort us from one universe to another, monsters in fog, killer slime—”

  “Daniel and I came here for a vacation,” Brenda said, practically glaring at me. “This wasn’t supposed to be another romp in the
twilight zone.”

  Tank grinned at her. “Can we help it if the twilight zone keeps drawing us in?” He nudged me with his elbow. “What about those alien reports? Anything that sounds like your neighbor’s story?”

  I skimmed several posts on an electronic bulletin board. “Okay, here’s a guy who says a woman he knows lost her baby when aliens abducted her. She was found the next day, but she wasn’t pregnant anymore. And doctors couldn’t tell how the baby was removed.”

  “Bingo,” Tank said.

  I was about to argue, but my mouth went dry when someone down the hall released a bloodcurdling scream.

  Brenda started toward the sound. “Isn’t that near—”

  Drawn by the horrific wail, we stood and walked toward the commotion, which proved to be coming from Maria Diaz’s room. A couple of cops waited outside the open door, and they looked helpless. I peered around the doorframe and saw that Maria had regained consciousness, but she was flailing and screaming, her eyes wide with terror. “No, no!” she screamed. “¡No me toquen! ¡No vienen cerca de mí!”

  The nurse was trying to wrap Maria’s arms in restraints, but she was no match for the panicked woman. The doctor kept barking the name of some drug, but the nurse had her hands full with the restraints—

  Another nurse and an orderly ran past us and attempted to help. But while a nurse injected a drug into the IV line, Maria’s gaze fell on her husband and her chin trembled. “Tomaron nuestro bebé,” she said, her voice breaking. “They said they were going to take the baby.”

  “¿Quien?” Mr. Diaz stroked his wife’s hair. “Honey, who are you talking about?”

  “Los monstruos,” she said, her eyelids drooping as the drug took effect. “Los grises. The ones . . . the chicos . . . esos chicos me llevaron a ellos.” Her eyes closed and she stopped speaking.