I told her I had a lot of schoolwork to do. That was true. Besides homework, I had to pull together a complicated article on the UFO Festival and local UFO sightings without looking like a conspiracy theory nut bag.
She said, “OK,” and stumbled into the kitchen to get an ash-less glass of wine.
I went into my bedroom and slammed the door. I have to admit I was starting to like my room. It was my own little refuge. I’d added some personal things to make it feel even more like my own private space: a couple of fairy posters on the wall, a framed photograph of me and Annie at a happier time in our lives, a travel calendar.
I sat down on my bed and opened up my laptop. I checked my email. There were already photos from Violet and Wolf Song. Jeez Louise, Wolf Song had pictures of Moonjava walking across the field with an assault rifle. He had close-up pictures of the mountain lion and the guy whipping the animal. He even had a close-up of Moonjava aiming the gun. I did not think I could ever in a million years put that in the article. I didn’t want to get Moonjava in trouble. Was it legal for someone Moonjava’s age to own a gun? Who was allowed to own that particular kind of gun? OK, I’d research that and think about it. I also didn’t want to insult my new friends. Part of the article would basically poke fun at the hoopla surrounding UFO beliefs. If I was an adult and a hard-hitting journalist, I might have to explore what kind of psychological state leads someone to bring an assault rifle to a UFO investigation, but my article was only for a high school newspaper. I figured I didn’t have a responsibility to explore every area of a story if I didn’t want to. Also, look at cable news. When was the last time they explored every angle, and they were professionals.
Ping! Ping! Ping! Within the next half hour, emails kept popping into my inbox. I got all sorts of photos from everyone in our group. The silly photos I got of the festival from both Wolf Song and Moonjava were clear and colorful and interesting. I realized Wolf Song was a really good photographer. He got great photos whether he was taking them of funny costumes or life-and-death situations. How he got photos of the confrontation between Moonjava and the circus act out in the desert without totally blurring them was beyond me. My hands would have shook so bad, I would have been lucky to have gotten anything better than those photographs and videos you always see of Bigfoot. Oh, look at those wavy lines that look like a streak of smeared paint! That’s totally Bigfoot!
I decided to go get a can of soda from the fridge. It was a good thing I did. My mom had apparently lit another cigarette, then fallen asleep on the couch mid-smoke. The cigarette had fallen on the floor. The tip was glowing red and it was burning a hole in the carpet! I only had socks on, so I couldn’t use my feet to put it out. I ran into the kitchen, poured water into a cup and threw it on the smoldering carpet. I felt like throwing it on my mom; but I just cleaned up her mess and put a blanket over her, so she could sleep it off. The living room stank of burnt carpet.
I grabbed my soda and went back to my room to pretend I was just a normal kid doing her schoolwork. I also ordered pizza because: a.) My mom obviously would not be making dinner that night and b.) Seriously, my mom would be a danger to herself and others if she did cook dinner that night.
By the time the pizza came, Science had sent me his article on UFOs and the physics required for aliens from outer space to find us and visit us.
I stared at the circular shapes of the pizza and pepperoni disks. They all looked like flying saucers. I pulled a triangular slice of sausage-pepperoni-olive-and-extra-cheese pizza from the pie. Now the mother ship had an open triangular-shaped hatch. I pictured little green men walking out of it. No, those aren’t olives. Those are visitors from outer space. Be nice to them. Nom Nom Nom.
My mind always wandered when I had a boatload of work to do.
I decided to start by writing the article, and then add photos where they fit best.
When I got to the serious part where we interviewed Bobby Huffman, I pored over the photographs I’d taken with my cell phone. Some of them were horrible: random shots of the floor and ceiling, a picture of Violet’s butt. I deleted those.
In the photos I’d managed to get of him, Bobby looked incredibly disturbed. I zoomed in on his eyes. Man, those were some seriously bloodshot eyes!
I zoomed in on the animal cages all around him, back against the tent walls. I studied the animals. I had just taken it for granted that they’d be inside a festival tent. Now that I thought about it, my mind must have automatically registered it as a circus tent when I stepped inside the murky interior. But it wasn’t a circus tent or a tent for anything that had anything at all to do with animals. It was a tent at a UFO Festival. What were cages of animals doing there?
Zooming in and viewing the animals at close range, I thought some of them looked really strange. They seemed off.
A raccoon had hands that looked human. It was washing its food in a bowl of water ... but its hands looked human ... and, oh my God, its nails or claws or whatever you call them were painted blue with green spots!
Horror flooded my mind. I shivered and wrapped my quilt around me. I was sure the camera was playing tricks on me. It was just my stupid cell phone, and I’d had to hide it and take pictures at weird angles. And then I remembered: there was a blue light and a green light on the desk where Bobby’s uncle was sitting. The colors from the lamps must have bounced around in a weird way and distorted the colors on the raccoon’s nails as I snapped pictures with my cheap, useless camera.
I put the picture into Photoshop and tried adjusting the colors. The color settings all suggested that the raccoon’s claws were indeed blue with green dots.
I couldn’t publish that, at least not without an explanation. I could make a joke and suggest that aliens had painted its claws. Or I could go all serious conspiracy theory and suggest the same thing in an ominous tone. Or, better yet, I could photoshop the picture into black and white. Of course, I could leave that picture out of the article entirely. I decided to wait until I’d finished writing the article to make up my mind about what to do with that and a few other photos.
It took me all night into the wee hours of the morning to finish writing the article and placing the photographs. In the end, I decided to include the picture of the weird raccoon, as well as the zoomed-in pictures of the animal cages. I thought it worked really well. In the whole first part of the article, I focused on the wild-and-crazy aspects of the festival. There, I just described the festival and added lots of zany pictures, mostly of people in costumes and the more outrageous props. (A UFO-shaped tree house that was built by a cabin company and had people in green skintight bodysuits and green face masks waving at the crowd from its deck definitely made my cut.) Toward the middle of the article, the tone got a little bit darker and more serious. The tent with the caged animals and Bobby served as the transition. I said that the caged animals fit in well with the circus atmosphere of the festival. I actually highlighted the painted claws of the raccoon, saying that it reminded me of animals under the big top, except here it was a much smaller animal under a much smaller top. Then I concentrated on Bobby. I explored how deeply many people living in and visiting the Roswell area believe that visitors from outer space have kidnapped people and beamed them up to their flying saucers. I then turned to facts, wrapping up my article by adding a section written by Science whose real name turned out to be Jack Carter. There was no way I was going to paraphrase Jack’s article. He wrote it in a way that the average science student could understand, but just barely. I didn’t plan to go messing with it, make a mistake and sound stupid in front of the entire school. I made sure to give him total credit for that section.
When I was done, I emailed the article to everyone on our team, to see if they were OK with it.
Half an hour later, my email pinged. It was 3:30 in the morning. I figured it was another night owl on the newspaper team, giving me feedback about the article. It turned out I had an email from Mrs. Green, Annie’s mom! I stared at the Subject line. I read it ove
r a number of times, scared to find out what it meant. It said: Annie’s Condition. Can You Help? My hands started shaking. My PTSD came flooding back, drowning me, suffocating me. It was a monster, always lurking in the shadows. It slinks off and hides when the sun is out; but the moment storm clouds loom on the horizon, it’s back, trying to kill me.
I hadn’t thought of cutting in a long time. Suddenly, the urge was upon me, telling me I could handle the email better if I first released some blood.
I went over to the tiny closet in my room where I had stashed a box labeled Shade’s Stuff. I ripped off the packing tape and rummaged around inside until I found the bowl and knife I once used for cutting. My ceremonial instruments, as though designed for making a blood sacrifice to the gods. Cradling them in both hands, I closed my eyes and imagined the sweet sensation of relief I’d feel after using them.
I fought the urge. I started closing the box. As I went to fold a flap down, I noticed a pulsing blue glow at the bottom of the box. I shoved everything aside to get to it. It was my amulet from Brandon!
I collapsed on the floor and wept. He was gone. I had shoved my feelings about his sudden disappearance deep down inside myself where I’d hoped they’d never resurface because there was nothing I could do about it. He was dead. He was a ghost and he needed to go to where he belonged in the afterlife.
But now the blue gemstone was glowing! What did that mean? Was he watching over me? (OK, that would be creepy. He better not be watching me all the time!) Did he put some kind of spell on the stone, so that it would glow—kind of like police lights—when I was getting ready to cut or harm myself in some other way, to warn me to stop?
I felt overwhelmed by mixed emotions. I grabbed the necklace and put it on. I felt comforted to own the amulet, but angry that Brandon might be trying to control me. I took it off, threw it back in the box. I pulled back the cardboard flaps and shoved the bowl and knife in. The amulet slipped down to the bottom of the box. It kept on glowing. Maybe it meant something else. Maybe Brandon was coming back to see me! I felt around the objects like a blind person until I found the necklace again. I pulled it up through a tangle of stuff and put it back on. It stopped glowing.
I dropped the gemstone down under my T-shirt because it was a bit gaudy for a trailer park. Nothing says Rob me! like a big fat gemstone. I figured I’d wear it, see if it comforted me and see if Brandon tried to contact me through it.
I got back on my computer and opened the email from Mrs. Green. Tears flowed down my face, falling onto the keyboard and darkening it. I read:
Dear Shade,
I got your email address from Annie’s computer. How are you? I hope you like your new home and your new school. We could use your help, if you feel up to it. I wish I had better news, but Annie isn’t doing well. She was so depressed, her anti-depressant medication stopped working and the psychiatrist we took her to recommended electroshock therapy. We had that done and afterward her depression lifted and we thought she was on the road to recovery. (The electroshock did temporarily interfere with her memories. She remembered her dad and me, but she forgot other people she hadn’t seen in a while. But we were told that side effect is usually temporary.) Just when we were beginning to feel optimistic about her recovery, Annie became catatonic. Thank goodness it only lasted three days. It was scary. After that ended, however, she once again became severely depressed. We took her to a new doctor, a psychologist who recommended a mental health spa out West. It’s located only about an hour away from you! Shade, could you visit her? I think seeing you would mean the world to her. You always cheered her up and she considered you her best friend. I’ve attached information on the spa and where it’s located.
P.S. I sent you a box of homemade cookies. I remember how much you enjoyed them. You should get them in a few days. I sent some to Annie, too. If you visit, will you make sure she eats some? I’m hoping they’ll bring back memories of better times and bring a smile to her face.
Sincerely,
Mrs. Green
I put my head in my hands and cried. I rocked back and forth, weeping till the floodgates opened and I sobbed like a wounded animal.
It’s hard to name just one thing that set me off. It was everything. Annie’s condition. Mrs. Green saying that I always cheered Annie up. No, I had wrecked her life! In that moment, I blamed myself for everything. If I had stayed with her on Halloween night, maybe she wouldn’t have gotten kidnapped. I waged a war inside myself. It was Annie’s decision to walk home alone. Neither one of us thought anything about it until she was kidnapped. I cried because Mrs. Green was so sweet and I didn’t think I deserved cookies. I felt upset because she wasn’t with Annie. I felt so incredibly sad for Annie that she was all alone. I felt devastated that she’d completely lost her memories of some people. My stomach tightened into knots at the thought that she might not remember me!
I stopped crying. I felt disgusted that I was only worried about me—my guilt, my sadness, my feelings. Me. Me. Me. I needed to think about Annie. I made up my mind: I’d visit her.
My computer pinged. Another email. This time, I didn’t bother guessing who it might be from. It could be anybody.
Turned out it was Kai! Finally, some good news! Kai was back in my life. She gave me her phone number and said I could email or call her.
I called right then and there. Sometimes I am so not cool. All the words came rushing out together real fast: “Kai! ... How are you!? ... I’ve been looking for you ... How are you? ... Did you go to the UFO Festival? ... I went and had a really good time ... We should go to one sometime ... I get the impression there are a lot of those around here.”
Kai didn’t return my level of mania. Quite the opposite. She just said, “Hey, you wanna do something tomorrow? I need to get away from here.”
I said, “Sure. I’d be happy to.” Then I told her about Annie. My voice shaking, I finally asked, “Would you like to go visit Annie with me?”
Kai’s voice had more enthusiasm than when she first called. She said, “Sure! I’d love to!”
I felt so relieved, it was like I’d been carrying a bag of bowling balls around my shoulders and Kai had lifted it off.
I asked her if she knew the best way to get to the spa. She said her mom had a truck she could use and it had a GPS. That was perfect! I had imagined us taking an uncomfortable bus ride or something.
When I got off the phone, I realized how happy I felt that Kai would be with me when I finally saw Annie again.
CHAPTER 7
I slept fitfully. I kept waking up with nightmares. In one, Annie had tubes coming out of her head and blood was being drained away by medical researchers. In another one, she grew fangs, leapt out of her hospital bed and attacked me. I hit her and punched and kicked, but she managed to sink her teeth into my neck and turn me into a zombie.
I clearly had issues about visiting her. I managed to get five horribly broken hours of sleep.
In the morning, I texted Kai. She was already up and ready to go. One hour later, I had gobbled down breakfast, taken a shower to wake up, and left my mom a note that I was spending the day with friends to work on homework. The last part wasn’t necessary and I hated lying to her; but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings, since she had wanted to spend the day with me. I really did have homework to do. The guilt of not seeing Annie for so long had just finally gotten to me, and I’d have to stay up late to get it done after I got back home.
I was curious to see Kai’s truck. I hadn’t seen one outside her house. Turned out it was in a parking lot for the trailer park. I didn’t even realize there was a lot. It was located all the way at the other end of our neighborhood.
It was kind of cool to see the whole neighborhood. I hadn’t done that before.
There were a lot of different kinds of people outside. Quite a few different races: white, Navajo, Latino, Asian. Groups of kids were outside playing and riding bikes. A few teenagers were shooting hoops. We passed by a family getting out of their car, a
ll dressed up in church clothing. The mom was wearing a fancy pink hat all decorated with pink satin flowers and white gauzy netting. Next door to them, a man wearing a sleeveless undershirt covered in black grease was swearing up a storm, working on his car. The lady in the hat stomped across her front yard to ask him to please not do that in front of her children, especially on a Sunday. He apologized, then went back to working on his car, slamming his tools around extra loud.
Ravens waddled around a front yard that was nothing more than desert dirt. The owner hadn’t even tried. No cacti, no garden statues, no nothing. Just dirt. Some of which had blown across the yard and covered half the trailer.
One block down, we saw the polar opposite: a yard that was complete sensory overload. Pinwheels in different colors spun around lazily in the desert breeze, making Click! Click! Click! sounds. Periodically, they sped up to announce, Click-Click!-Click!-Click!-Click!, like a tiny train coming down the tracks. Gnomes hid behind every cactus and tree. Orbs lined a stone path, sunbeams bouncing off their shiny round surfaces, working as weaponized arrows of light if you tried to look at them too closely. A United States flag hung from a holder next to the front door. Another flag attached to a metal pole in the front yard had pictures of brightly colored leaves and pumpkins and the message, Happy Fall! I’d never seen that before. I’d seen flags announcing Happy Easter! and Merry Christmas! and Happy Birthday!, even Happy Spring!, but never Happy Fall! Fall, after all, wasn’t that happy. School started then. Ugh. Not happy. Daylight ended sooner. It was still dark when high schoolers left to go to school. Of course, there was Halloween and that was fun, but it was also creepy.
Annie had gone missing on Halloween night. I felt dizzy. I had trouble breathing. An anxiety attack crushed me with the violence and suddenness of its approach.
Kai asked if I was OK.
I said, “Yeah ... Just feeling a little winded. I think it’s from the dry desert air.”
Shade and the Skinwalkers Page 7