Trinity

by Kristin Dearborn

  False pregnancies are common, yes, but so are stories like Adrienne’s. I told her so, and her face lit up with a new light. It’s amazing the reaction when people discover they’re not alone.

  “I don’t know who the father was, either,” Adrienne said. “I had another strange experience right around the time the baby was conceived.”

  I nodded. “Think back further.” Abductions very frequently run in a family. I wanted to ask about that, but was afraid of leading her on.

  She chewed at her lip.

  “I had some dreams. When I was a kid.” She looked around. “And I got this scar. On my leg.” She uncrossed her legs and pulled back her dress to show two little dimpled scars. “I don’t know where they came from. I gotta go,” she said. “Do you think we can meet again?”

  “I’d like that very much, if you’d like to talk to me.”

  She said she would, and left, back to the rehab facility where she was staying.

  When she contacted me next, it was six months later, after I’d written her off as someone with a terribly interesting story I’d never get to hear.

  * * *

  One evening, Adrienne called me long distance. I keep my offices in New York, and she lives in New Mexico. It took me a moment to place her name.

  “It’s happened again. And I think they’re after my boy, my Cal.”

  I wracked my brain. The boy, as I recalled, was living in New England with relatives. We talked a while longer, and I decided I would make another trip to New Mexico, this time to the small town of Lott, where Adrienne lived.

  I pulled into her driveway late in the afternoon. Her trailer was small and not particularly neat. She lived in it alone, one of the rooms set aside for the boy to stay in, if he ever were to come home. With some pride, she told me she’d been clean since the last time we talked. I congratulated her.

  “I’d like to hypnotize you,” I said.

  Her expression darkened. Hypnosis isn’t like the movies make it out to be. It’s perfectly safe, a way to dig deeper into a person’s subconscious. It cannot correct for incorrect memories, nor can a person be made to do something they wouldn’t be willing to do under ordinary circumstances. It’s commonly used for phobias, for weight loss, all manner of things that people need a little help in doing. It also lets you remember. That first session, we established that Adrienne’s abductions had been ongoing since she was nine years old. She and her father lived in a trailer a lot like the one she now owns, on the far side of town in a trailer park. She told me what fun it used to be to play with the other kids. “The rest of the town called us white trash, but when you’re seven or so, you don’t know yet that you’re supposed to be ashamed of it. You’re tickled you got all these kids to pal around with. You have pity on those kids with the nice houses, all away from everything.” When she was nine, Adrienne stopped playing in her neighborhood, without warning. That was about the time, she told me, that the scars appeared on her leg.

  * * *

  “I don’t know what woke me up,” said Adrienne during our next session, her eyes looking less clear this afternoon than they had before. She told me she was clean, but I also noticed an abundance of alcohol bottles, and a sweet tell-tale scent on her breath. I wasn’t surprised. Abductees, before they can really admit what has happened, use a variety of coping skills, not all of them productive or healthy. She licked her lips and continued. “I woke up and I couldn’t fall back asleep. Dave—a guy I had over—was out like a light next to me. I kind of thrashed around in the hopes that he might wake up and we could do something, but he was out. I was thirsty, so I got up and went to the kitchen, and instead of getting a glass of water, I stared out the window over the sink.”

  Adrienne pointed, and I looked out the window. It overlooked the driveway, a shed, and some desert.

  “The moon was full that night, and it was bright as noon, but all silvery, you know? Is that too much detail? You want more? Less?” She kept looking at the cassette tape recorder I’d set up on her table.

  I assured her it was fine, and encouraged her to continue.

  “I went outside in my bare feet, wearing a pair of boxer shorts and a tank top. It was hot that day, but at night it was nice and cool. That was before we had AC, so inside was still hot from the sun.

  “I don’t know why, but I got in my car and turned it on. I didn’t even realize I’d taken my car keys. I drove really slowly. I was still a little buzzed from partying with Dave, and pulled off at the Olympus Mine. It shut down, like, ten years ago. They keep it gated off ‘cause it’s dangerous, so I parked next to the gate, and walked in, my feet were a mess the next morning, let me tell you.

  “And that’s all I remember.”

  She paused, staring at me.

  “I woke up in bed; car was in the driveway, in the exact spot where I’d parked it. The only reason I knew it wasn’t a dream is that my feet were filthy when I woke up. Dave really flipped.

  “I found out Dave and I was pregnant the next day. That was the baby I lost, not Cal”

  “Adrienne,” I said, keeping my voice as low and calm as I could. “I’d like to hypnotize you again. Perhaps we can discover what else happened that night.” I had some private doubts as to whether or not the hypnosis would work if she was drunk.

  “I don’t think so,” she said, immediately drawing in on herself. She crossed her arms over her chest and withdrew, like a threatened sea anemone.

  We talked about other things for a while, I asked her about Cal, and she told me he was starting kindergarten in Rhode Island; that he had a cousin very close to his own age and they had a wonderful time playing together. As she spoke of her son she became more animated.

  Finally, she withdrew again, re-crossed her arms on her chest, and said “Okay. You can do it.”

  What I present to you here is an actual transcript of our conversation.

  JG: The moon is full, and you have stepped out of your car. What happens next?

  AG: I walk. It isn’t far, and the dirt road hasn’t grown over much.

  JG: And then?

  AG: Then I see the opening of the mine.

  JG: What does it look like?

  AG: Like a cave…like a big, black gaping mouth. I wonder if bats will fly out at me.

  (fidgets, frowns.)

  JG: What next?

  AG: Light. Everywhere. White, brighter than the moon by a million times.

  JG: Is the light coming from one place? Do you see a ship?

  AG: A ship? No, it’s…there’s light, my whole world is light and I can’t move. I can’t move…why can’t I move?

  JG: Relax (I make my voice soothing here, trying to calm her. Sometimes they can forget that they’re safe and sound at home. I reminded her of this, and after a moment, her breathing returned to normal. When she spoke there was only a slight tremor in her voice.)

  AG: I started floating. Up. At least I think it was up. I couldn’t even move my eyes, and all I could see was white. And then there were men around me.

  JG: Men? What kind of men? What color was their skin?

  AG: They looked so normal except their eyes. There wasn’t any love in their eyes. No affection, no compassion. They were flat and dead.

  JG: The eyes, were they big and black? Almond shaped?

  AG: No…they were normal looking. At first.

  (This doesn’t fit with the standard abduction scenario. Abductees from all around the globe universally agree on what the visitors look like, and nine times out of ten they don’t look like humans. But sometimes I get reports that the visitors look like people. More on that later.)

  AG: I’m on an examining table. I’m naked. My clothes are gone, and I was freaking out before, but now I don’t care. I’m as placid and dead as the men around me. I feel like I’m at the doctor’s, there’s this one guy at the community health center who seems like he really doesn’t like being there, everything is clinical and impersonal. That’s what all these guys are like. Then the table breaks
apart under my legs and takes them with it…like the table becomes a Y shape, and now my legs are spread. Something inside me. (She squirms in her seat again.)

  JG: (I am starting to wonder if she isn’t misremembering a rape, or a crime committed by earth denizens.) Are you aroused?

  AG: No. (The corners of her mouth draw down into a frown. She isn’t faking. The people—usually women—who are faking will say yes, they’re aroused. Adrienne looks agitated with me, I take it to mean she’s telling the truth.)

  JG: Then what happened?

  AG: Like the doctor’s. They pulled it out and went about their business. Just ignored me. The table moved and my legs went back together. I tried to sit up but I couldn’t. Then I was in bed, with Dave.

  * * *

  The next day, Adrienne had terrible cramps, could feel something in her stomach, and on a whim, bought a pregnancy test. It came back positive. Dave refused to take a paternity test and left her, and she never found out whose baby it was. A month later, Adrienne was taken again. This time she describes the gray Visitors that most abductees experience. A clinical benevolence, red, orange and blue flashing lights, a saucer. This experience is much more in tune with the average abduction scenario. She described it as an average OB-GYN visit, they poked her and prodded her in all the same spots. They seemed more curious about her than the humanoid aliens did, once resting a cool gray hand on her forehead.

  “It was so cold up there. I was shivering. And it touched me. Really gently, stroked my forehead. It was nice, and I was still cold but I wasn’t afraid of it no more.”

  The next day she had an actual doctor’s appointment, and her physician, who would not be reached for comment, told her everything was progressing normally.

  “I wasn’t even drinking much then. I knew it was bad for the baby, so I was really trying to cut down. Then a few months later, right at three months, I woke up and I knew she was gone.”

  I interrupted her then—“She?” I asked.

  Adrienne nodded.

  “How do you know?”

  “I mean, I don’t, really. But I…I know it was a girl.”

  I asked her if I might hypnotize her again, and once more she looked reluctant. Finally she agreed, after getting up and pouring herself a glass of water.

  JG: You’ve gone to bed. Then what happened?

  AG: I woke up, and everything was white. I thought it was the next morning, but it wasn’t it was night, and once again I couldn’t move. There was a sound like a machine, and they were carrying me out, then we went up into something.

  JG: Something?

  AG: The ship, I think.

  (Adrienne described a visit similar to the first one. These were the humanoid creatures, not the friendly Visitors from last time. She sensed none of the compassion they had shown for her. They poked and prodded, but then she felt something happening inside her…)

  AG: It was like they were blowing me up like a balloon. It hurts so bad…my organs are puffing up and separating, it’s all stretching. (She writhes in her chair, a tear snakes from the corner of her eye, rolling down her cheek. She’s breathing hard, like Lamaze breathing.) It’s…ugh…and…then they have the baby and she’s so small, and all the air whooshes out of me, and I don’t think I was meant to see her. (She pauses for a long time here. I was about to ask her what happened next, when she spoke again.) And that was it. I don’t want to do this no more.

  * * *

  I didn’t speak to Adrienne again for eight months.

  6

  Sleep didn’t come back to Kate. She thought of her brother, her foster mother, this feud between Rich and Val. If she went to him, talked to him, a rational, grown-up conversation, without any macho posturing…then maybe she could get him to leave them alone. Rich wasn’t a morning person, but as she lay in bed, watching the hands on the glowing analog clock face, she thought maybe a crack of dawn visit would breathe some sense into him.

  She tried to move without disturbing Val. Gingerly pulling her arm out from under him, she flexed her hand. It tingled, all pins and needles. Short night. After his nocturnal wanderings it had taken him a long time to fall asleep.

  In what little gray light snuck around the drawn shade, she pulled on her panties and jeans then searched for her top.

  She and Val slept in his old bedroom, and Kate wondered if he would move into the master bedroom. She doubted it. She hoped they wouldn’t be here long enough to need to.

  She slipped out into the rosy pre-dawn light, closing the flimsy door behind her. A deer bolted from grazing in the yard as the door slammed, and Kate watched it go as she started her car. As she pulled out of the driveway, she looked over her shoulder at the trailer and the truck before heading toward Lott, towards her brother’s house.

  Kate didn’t get far.

  A half mile from the trailer she saw a mangled deer in the road.

  As her headlights washed over the crumpled mess, it began to dawn on her what she was seeing.

  The headlights also shone off something shiny in the ditch on the side of the road. A Suzuki dual-sport bike.

  “Fuck,” she whispered. She threw the car into park and opened the door, stepping onto the gravel, looking left and right, even up, to make sure she was alone. Maybe this wasn’t happening. Maybe she’d wake up soon.

  She knew from the checkered dirt bike jacket exactly who this was, but she rolled him over to be sure, maybe there was still a pulse, maybe she’d gotten here in time…and half of TJ’s face was missing. Missing to the degree she could see sliced skull edges, and something horrible and gray and soft, already seething with flies that took off at the disruption, buzzing and irritated until they could settle in again. He’d lain on his stomach and the blood had pooled in what was left of his face, the skin looked waxy and purplish. She let go of his shoulder and backed away.

  All that blood and sliced-open flesh and the smell and the buzzing of the flies made her head swim and her stomach bucked. She leaned on her open car door and brought up what was left of last night’s dinner. Bile with a slight taste of beer made her heave again. He didn’t lose his face in a bike accident. There were claw marks on him...or sword cuts. Maybe they looked like bear claw marks? She didn’t even know if there were bears in New Mexico. Black bears, but nothing that…large. A mountain lion? Still not big enough. This looked like a grizzly. A big one. Not that she knew anything about what a grizzly bear attack looked like, but she had seen those shows on Fox, where animals attack people and it’s caught on film. Her empty stomach churned again…this wasn’t television though, this was TJ. She breathed through her mouth until the next wave of nausea passed.

  Hoping, and starting to cry, she went back and dutifully felt for a pulse. If there’s no pulse I can do CPR, she thought, knowing no amount of CPR could fix what had been done. He doesn’t have a mouth anymore…how could I do CPR like that? As soon as she touched TJ’s skin, cold and plastic feeling, she gave up. She thought of his clumsy advances, and pushed thoughts of him from her mind.

  The hitching wheeze of her engine contrasted with peaceful bird calls. Breathing in through her mouth, she could smell something; sort of half rotten meat, half feces, but with a strange nauseating sweetness to it. She knew this guy. This guy who was last seen (to the best of her knowledge) leaving her boyfriend’s home after a violent dispute. The same boyfriend who not only was an ex-con, but had vanished in the middle of the night and come home with blood on his shorts. Had she fucked Val immediately before and after he’d hacked TJ to pieces with a machete?

  No. She hadn’t. Because Val wasn’t stupid. After high school and before jail he’d started his undergrad on the pre-law track. If he were to kill TJ, he would have showed some degree of cunning or subtlety. Though…he’d kind of had a lot to drink last night. And the business with the hum was troubling. And he didn’t have any kind of alibi. If he hadn’t conspicuously vanished during what seemed to be the precise time TJ was being sliced apart, she would have known he didn’t do i
t. But…this seemed like a damned big coincidence and Kate didn’t believe in coincidences.

  She pulled out her cell phone. Held it in her hand until it became warm, staring at the mess before her. Call the police? Call Val?

  Calling the police wasn’t an option. She couldn’t lose Val again. But…where had he gone in the night? She looked up at the sky. A few clouds floated there against the blue, pink with the edge of sunlight.

  She keyed in 911. Placed her thumb over the green send button, hovered there a moment, and noticed dirt under her fingernail, then scrolled down to Val’s mom’s number. She hoped it hadn’t changed.

  The ringing sounded a thousand miles away in her ear. Val answered; his voice thick with sleep.

  “I need your help,” she said.

  “Where are you?” He paused a moment. “What the fuck time is it?”

  “After five. TJ’s dead.”

  “What?” He sounded clearer now. “How do you know?”

  “I’m standing next to his body. He’s in the road, 719 towards town. Someone killed him.” Val said nothing, so Kate kept going. “You were one of the last people to see him. You just got out of jail. You know how Rich will spin this.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Get out here.”

  “Truck has a flat tire.”

  “You can walk.” God, why was he being difficult?

  “Okay.”

  He hung up. She put the phone in her pocket, and took a moment to breathe fresh air that didn’t smell like decay before going back to TJ.

  Exhaling through her mouth, she looked at the crumpled mess before her. This road didn’t see much traffic, clearly he’d been dead for a few hours, the blood around his throat and face was a tacky dark brown in the building light. The sun peeked over the top of the pines, tossing long striped shadows across his mangled torso. His left arm was gone. Shit. Did the killer take it with him? Maybe a sword could do this kind of damage, wielded in a sequential way to make it look like claws? Did the killer like trophies? Or was it a bear after all?