Unusual Attention

by B. G. Thomas

  That was the paperback Shane had.

  He could see it in his mind’s eye, only the word “interrupted” visible.

  He saw the UFOs Caught on Film book as well, but after leafing through it, he found it made his stomach ache. It made him uncomfortable in a way even the Strieber book’s cover couldn’t—with its portrait of the alien face and its huge dark eyes.

  The pictures were… not right.

  It didn’t look like any of them. Not really.

  And even thinking those thoughts almost sent him running for the bathroom. He pushed them from his head.

  He grabbed The UFO Files by David Clarke and then as a lark added Never Again: Techniques to Avoid Being Abducted by Extraterrestrials by Mary Minden, because it had to be a joke, right? He looked at the index. It wasn’t real. Come on. Mental Defenses? Spiritual Defenses, Pray to God? Protective Foils and Crystals? (like the foil hats that Joaquin Phoenix and the kids wore in Signs?) Repellants? (Raid, perhaps? Or maybe Off mosquito spray?)

  Had to be a joke.

  He’d have to share it with Shane.

  Shane. God, Shane.

  Adam spent hours over the next week reading. Studying. Making notes on a yellow pad he’d gotten from the storeroom at work. He learned about famous so-called abductions. He learned that there was more than one kind of alien, not just the little gray men with huge heads and big slanted black eyes—the “Greys.”

  (And why were they called “Greys” when the color was spelled “gray” and apparently there were two accepted spellings of the color?)

  There were also these tall Norse-god-like beings with long blond hair and huge, beautiful pale blue eyes who spread a message that they wanted us to all live happily together and stop waging war—which all sounded very 1960s/hippy/too-much-LSD to him. “Venusians.” And how silly was that? Blond, blue-eyed aliens from a planet overwhelmed with deadly gases and sulfuric acid rain? Really?

  Then there were the insectoids, the reptoids (or reptiloids depending on the author), chameleons (reptilian aliens genetically bred to appear human), chupacabras (really? Chupacabras were aliens?), eva-borgs (this sent Adam into great peals of laughter—apparently they were cybernetic things controlled by aliens, and all Adam could think of was “resistance is futile!”), dwarves, dragonworms (too silly to even read about), Tau Cetians (who looked like tan-skinned humans except for slight differences like pointed ears—hey, maybe the aliens needed to sue Gene Roddenberry—it sounded like he had infringed on their copyrights with the ears and the Borg), the Anakims (the giants referred to in the Bible? “There were giants in the earth in those days”? It was to laugh), amphibians (why not? There were reptiles after all), and oh, it went on and on, but those were the most “common.”

  He read and read and read—and he wasn’t even sure why, because God, aliens?

  Really?

  But not after it got dark. He couldn’t read after dark. Couldn’t crack a cover. That’s when he got sick to his stomach.

  He made covers out of brown paper shopping bags for the books he took to work. No questions. He didn’t want any questions. There would be. Someone would tease him. That jerk Bobby Brubaker, the office manager, for sure.

  Adam had found a few used DVDs as well, including the one that had scared him as a kid—Fire in the Sky. He grabbed The Fourth Kind and Signs and Close Encounters of the Third Kind while he was at it. The prices were right. They didn’t have Communion or the TV movie based on The Interrupted Journey. He thought he might order it on Amazon. After all, James Earl Jones and Estelle Parsons were in it. Had to be good, right? Or at least decent?

  Fire in the Sky didn’t bother him nearly as much as he expected it to, but then he watched it at noon when the sun was shining brightly through his living room windows.

  The scene was wrong. It wasn’t like that. No slime. No gore. No dead bodies. Wrong. All wrong.

  When he considered those strange thoughts, he decided not to. Once more it was time to banish them. But Bradley Gregg, the guy who played Bobby Cogdill, was hot. Damned cute. He reminded Adam of Shane.

  He didn’t like the part in Signs where the alien was in the corn. Or on the roof.

  No. Not at all.

  That was when he knew that only Close Encounters of the Third Kind was safe enough to watch after dark.

  He read and made notes. He couldn’t stop. Even though he had nightmares.

  Nightmares of faces and blue light.

  The worst, though, was the guilt. Guilt because he hadn’t called Shane. He wanted to. But he couldn’t. He just couldn’t.

  20

  THE BOOK by Minden really was silly. Hilarious when he finally realized it was for real, at least as far as its author was concerned.

  Never Again: Techniques to Avoid Being Abducted by Extraterrestrials.

  The author claimed to have been studying unidentified flying objects since the fifties when she saw a UFO as a ten-year-old while camping.

  That caused a chill.

  Camping?

  Camping. Skinny-dipping. Rising moon. And then suddenly the moon high in the sky….

  Her bio went on to say that she was with an organization called the CSSU (Committee for Special Studies on UFOs) all through the late sixties and the early seventies, until the FBI and CIA infiltrated it and used immoral techniques to tear the organization apart (which didn’t sound the least bit paranoid, right?). It was while she was a member of this group that she met the renowned Ufologist Stephen Neary. Together they studied many cases of UFO sightings and abductions and even consulted on several movies until his death in the eighties from a stroke.

  In her career she wrote a half a dozen books but it was her book Never Again: Techniques to Avoid Being Abducted by Extraterrestrials that she was the most proud of. Which was pretty sad considering he’d thought it was a joke.

  Even the reviews on Amazon said so. Or a lot of them did. There were just as many from crazy people who said they’d used her techniques to keep them from being abducted and called her a savior.

  It was broken into sections with most of them being her so-called protection techniques.

  Physical Defenses

  Fight or Flight

  Mental Defenses

  Emotional 1 – Anger

  Emotional 2 – Self Love

  Emotional 3 – Radiant Love

  Emotional 4 – Family Love

  Spiritual Defenses

  Pray to God

  Pray to Other Spirit Guides

  Natural Repellents

  Protective Foils and Crystals

  Herbs, Spices, and Oils

  There were also a few chapters on theories of why people were being abducted and what we could learn from how other cultures view aliens. And of course there was the obligatory stuff on ancient astronauts and how mankind couldn’t have built the pyramids without extraterrestrial help.

  Poppycock.

  Adam found the Repellants section quite humorous. The author explained that oils derived from amaranth, pennyroyal, St. John’s Wort, and yarrow had been used for centuries for protection against evil spirits and creatures. She postulated that those evil spirits (and beings) could very well have been aliens and that ancient people wouldn’t have recognized them for what they really were. She said she had used various doses to prevent her abductions for years now.

  But be careful!

  Pennyroyal had been used to induce abortions.

  Thankfully he didn’t have to worry about that.

  Patchouli was good too. Especially used in the amounts that lesbians preferred. Knock you out at one hundred feet. He had added that part. The lesbian part. Mary Minden had only mentioned the oil.

  Oh! And salt! Apparently if he sprinkled salt around his house, it had been known to work in one or two cases. But then what had Shane said? That even in Buckman, aliens wouldn’t want to take him from his house. And Adam hardly thought he had to worry about being spirited from his fifth-floor apartment. It wasn’t like he was on the hig
hest floor either.

  Oh! And crucifixes had been known to help! He’d exploded into laughter over that one. Were they aliens or vampires?

  But magnets were what she really guaranteed would work. That had come from the chapter about foil beanies and magic crystals.

  One thing he could say about the woman. When he finally figured out the book wasn’t some spoof in the vein of Mad Magazine, the Onion, and the Daily Currant (or Fox News, maybe), he was able to see she was really being sincere. She believed her shit.

  Too bad it was shit. All shit.

  And surprise, surprise! OMG! She lived in Terra’s Gate, not forty-five minutes away. What kind of crazy co-inky-dink was that? It was to laugh!

  He took a step out on his balcony for some fresh air, a glass of freezer-cold Crown in hand. His back was hurting from the hours and hours of sitting. Between work and home study, he was on the edge of agony. The Crown was barely making a dent in the pain. He needed a massage. He should call his friend Ric. Ric gave great… massages.

  But that made him think of Shane.

  And that made him feel guilty.

  He didn’t like it.

  He didn’t do guilt.

  Adam sat down on the brick rail of the balcony, took a swallow rather than a sip of his whisky, and looked down. The evening streets were clear except for a jogger and a lady walking her Westie (he thought her name was Becky and that she lived on the third floor). No prostitutes. How nice. The one time his mother had visited him (she had been in town with some kind of Red Hat Lady’s thing), there had been prostitutes. One huge one had pulled out her breast. Thank God his mom had missed that part.

  Then Adam noticed something else.

  There was someone standing in the alley. He was wearing a black trench coat. A black fedora. He was holding his hands up in front of him.

  Like a praying mantis.

  Adam let out a muffled shriek, dropped his glass, and stumbled back, arms pin-wheeling for balance to keep him from falling on his ass.

  He was whimpering, jamming his hand in his mouth to keep from screaming.

  Oh God. Oh God oh God oh God!

  Insectoids.

  The word leapt clear and vivid in his mind.

  He lay on the cement floor of his balcony, shivering.

  And then he laughed.

  Oh God, indeed!

  He was buying this bullshit! He’d seen a man on the street in a black coat and immediately decided he was the insect version of Will Smith. Or the man in black from Shane’s stories!

  And if he lived in a tiny town in the middle of Bumfuck, Nowhere, with no reasonable company to talk to, no one sane, no one who didn’t think that country line dancing was a pretty good idea—mightn’t he start believing such bullshit as aliens as well?

  He laughed again and sat up. Luckily he remembered to watch for broken glass.

  God!

  He needed a break. And something besides UFO books to read. Porn even. Nifty Archives. Men on the Net.

  Anything.

  Hell, Twilight!

  He shook his head.

  Stood up.

  Looked out into the street.

  The man was still there.

  He was standing under a streetlight, looking directly up at Adam.

  His eyes were up and to the side of where his eyes should really go.

  Adam thought his heart just might explode in his chest.

  He fled into his apartment. He poured salt in front of his balcony door and the ledge of every window. He went to his neighbor Tiff’s door and asked to borrow patchouli. After shouting at him that just because she was a lesbian didn’t mean she owned any, she loaned it to him.

  Adam used it. He used a lot of it.

  Then he turned off all the lights in his apartment and went to his bathroom—the only room with a window he couldn’t look out of (and no one could look in). He checked his laptop.

  To his surprise he found what he was looking for fairly easily.

  21

  ADAM FOUND her apartment over a bakery called The Sweet Spot on Main Street in downtown Terra’s Gate. There was foil on the windows.

  He rang the bell next to the door that went into the shop. He rang it again.

  “Hello?” came a woman’s voice from a small speaker to the right of the door.”

  “Is this Mary Minden?” he asked.

  “Wh-who is it?”

  And what did he say? “I….” His throat seized up.

  “Who’s there?”

  Your name, stupid. Tell her your name. He coughed. Cleared his throat. “My name is Adam Brookhart. I read your book.”

  There was a pause.

  “Which one?”

  “Never Again: Techniques to Avoid Being Abducted by Aliens.”

  “Extraterrestrials,” the woman corrected.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Sorry.” To-may-to, to-mah-to.

  “I don’t sign autographs.”

  “I don’t want an autograph,” he said. “I—I….” God! He couldn’t say it. Fuck!

  There was a static click from the speaker and then nothing.

  “Hello?” he asked.

  Nothing.

  “Hello?”

  Nothing.

  He stabbed the buzzer button again. Then again. Then desperately several more times.

  “What do you want?” Her voice was all but shrill this time.

  “Please,” he cried. “I need your help. I saw….” Oh God. Say it! “I saw a man in black. He was outside my apartment. He was watching me. I think he might have taken me.” Then to his amazement a sob escaped his throat.

  A hundred years later he heard her say, “Come on up,” followed by a long whine from the buzzer.

  He snatched at the handle before the noise stopped. Pulled. Nothing. Realized he should push. Did it just in time.

  The door opened to a narrow and darkened stairwell.

  He was halfway up the stairs when he saw her, arms crossed, standing in the shadows, waiting for him.

  She was slim, with gray hair pulled back from her face. She was wearing a black top and a gray crocheted sweater. She stared at him with wide dark eyes.

  “Ms. Minden?”

  She was standing very straight. She nodded. “Yes. And you.” She wiped at her temple with a fist. “You’re Adam Brookhart. And you’ve seen a man in black.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She blinked at him and bobbed her head to the left. “Come in.” Then she turned and went the way of her head bob.

  When he reached the top of the stairs, he saw she’d gone through a bead curtain. Bead curtain? Who still uses…? Well she was almost certainly a teen in the sixties, wasn’t she? Why not?

  The apartment was nice, if a little old-fashioned. But a strange combination of old lady and hippie. Victorian furniture upholstered in burnt orange and lime green. Yuck.

  But it was also filled with the smell of baking things. Not overwhelmingly so, but hell, how could it be avoided? The apartment was over a bakery.

  That was when he noticed there was tin foil—or something like it—on the ceiling. Oh God. What am I doing here?

  Oh well, in for a penny…

  “Tea?” she asked.

  …in for a pound.

  “Anything but Earl Grey.”

  One eye twitched. She bobbed her head, which got her big huge wire hoop earrings trembling. “I hate Earl Grey,” she said and turned and left the room.

  That decided him. He would stay.

  He stood there a moment, not knowing whether he was supposed to follow her or sit down.

  Then he heard her voice from the other room. “So how… man… black….”

  That’s all Adam caught, and he decided she wanted him to follow. He went through another beaded curtain to find her in a small kitchen, filling a teapot with water from the sink.

  “I’m sorry?” Now it was his turn to cross his arms. His stomach was quite suddenly clenching. “Wh-what did you say?”

  Mary M
inden turned around, teapot in one hand, playing with a dark stone hanging from a thin gold chain around her neck. That one eye twitched again, and then she put the kettle on the antique stove. She turned on the gas. “I asked you how you knew he was a man in black. I mean, do you know what a man in black is?” She spoke very fast. “Some people say they’re from the government. Some people say—”

  “Your book says they’re aliens.” His voice froze up on the last word. He’d said it out loud. Aliens.

  I’m going crazy. Wackadoodle!

  “What do you think?” She turned to face him. Wiped at her temple with a fist. Fondled the stone with her other hand. That was when he saw they were swollen with arthritis.

  She was watching him carefully. Studying him. He felt like a bug. “I don’t know what to think,” he managed. “My boyfriend believes….”

  Boyfriend!

  And quite suddenly he knew he’d better do something quick if he still wanted Shane to be his boyfriend.

  That’s what I’m doing.

  “He thinks he’s been abducted.”

  She didn’t say a word. She just stood there. She crossed her arms. Studied him.

  “He thinks he’s been abducted lots of times.”

  Watching.

  “He thinks I’ve been abducted!” he blurted.

  Silence.

  Finally she said, “What do you think?”

  He shuddered.

  Flashed on a full moon high in the sky when it should have just been rising over the tree-lined horizon.

  On getting home late from Buckman and the missing time. The inexplicable missing time.

  On blue light. Faces.

  And a praying-mantis-like man in a black trench coat looking up at him. The man’s eyes were in the wrong place.

  He moaned.