Unidentified

by Mikel J. Wisler

  Evans chuckled. Get a grip, he told himself. You have a bad enough reputation as it is. Don’t become one of those shrinks that actually thinks his patients are communing with beings from another world.

  No, missing time was actually connected to other psychological disorders. People who suffered seizures might not be able to account for several minutes or an hour, especially people suffering from psychomotor epilepsy. In those cases, seizures manifest in various forms of random behavior that people couldn’t always account for and often had no recollection of. The amount of time that lapsed during a seizure seemed missing to them. People who suffered a traumatic event often could not recall such an event or even the time around it. Evans had treated a patient about four years prior who had witnessed a horrible accident that involved his daughter. The shock was too great and he’d repressed the memories surrounding the event. The problem was, he struggled to accept the loss of his daughter. His mind became stuck in a loop of denial, unable to accept the reality of her loss and move on. Evans wondered if Stephanie had witnessed something traumatic that she was repressing. Clearly, her lack of memory of her abductions seemed like repression of memories. But could she really be repressing memories from multiple abductions? It seemed almost too neat, too … engineered.

  That is, if she was being abducted at all, by aliens or persons.

  Turning back to this laptop, he pulled up a search engine and typed in “signs of alien abduction.” He wondered what other details he might be overlooking as far as common occurrences in relation to alien abduction cases. Of course, the Internet was filled with all kinds of pseudo-information when it came to anything paranormal. But even pseudo-information generally found its inception in some tiny bit of misunderstood reality. He browsed through the results for a moment, clicking a few and then abandoning the pages quickly when it seemed clear to him that they were too kooky. For some people, when it came to anything related to UFOs, confirmation bias was so strong that anything, no matter how remote and unlikely, counted as evidence and any counter evidence, no matter how strong, was automatically disqualified. It bothered him that so much of the folklore surrounding UFOs was so easily explained away with rudimentary understanding of science. Yet, facts didn’t seem to matter to such folks.

  At last, he found a rather extensive list of “symptoms” people who claim to have been abducted seemed to experience. First on the list was missing time. Second were marks on the body the person could not account for. Third was the sense of constantly being watched. Stephanie had definitely described all three. Fourth was hearing tapping or humming sounds. He paused and read that one more closely. Apparently many people experiencing UFO or abduction related events reported hearing such sounds around bed time or at night. These were the sounds unassociated with their living environment and did not occur on a regular basis. But when they were heard, that meant some kind of event would follow that night, ranging from UFO sightings to abductions.

  This went on and included things like waking up in a state of fear or panic for no discernible reason, a sense of being special, a fear or aversion to seeing pictures or drawings of grey aliens with large black eyes, waking with soreness in genitals without any explanation, electronics malfunctioning randomly, and so forth. Evans skimmed through the list, quickly noting that many of these symptoms could easily be accounted for by many other psychological disorders, emotional issues, or far more mundane reasons. Further down the list, one symptom caught his eye. He smiled with amusement. It read: “being afraid of closets or doors.” He read through the description for it. Apparently, some people experiencing close encounters or abductions developed a specific fear of bathrooms and closets and hallways, or really of any door that might be left open. Doors needed to be closed at all times for a sense of safety, particularly at night. Such people found it impossible to sleep with a closet or bathroom door open in their room. In fact, apparently this obsession could apply to all doors in a person’s living space, leading to a need for double and triple checking that all doors were locked or closed before going to bed. Sounds like OCD tendencies getting mixed into this UFO mess, Evans thought.

  But of all the symptoms, missing time remained the intriguing one to him. Here was a rather serious lapse in awareness or consciousness. It could be caused by many things, but it seemed indicative to him of rather deep troubles. This wasn’t like other odd symptoms like hearing humming or tapping sounds that could probably be explained by any number of logical means. He was about to reach out to his computer to close the browser when loud knocking made him jump.

  He closed his eyes and smiled, feeling incredibly foolish. Opting to simply close the screen on his laptop, he walked over to the door and reached for the lock. Something stopped him. Maybe it was all this reading about paranoia and fear that was getting to him. Logically, he was sure he could safely open the door and simply find out who was standing out there and what they needed. In all likelihood, it was just Nicole.

  Agent Mitchell, he corrected himself. She’s not your patient anymore.

  In spite of the protests from the logical hemisphere of his brain, he peered through the peephole on the door. Sure enough. He saw Mitchell standing there. Without further hesitation, he unlocked his door and opened it. The moment the door opened, Mitchell began to speak.

  “Hey. I wanted to apologize if I pressured you earlier on the whole hypnosis thing. I brought a piece offering.”

  She held up a six pack of beer from the local brewery. But as she did so, her expression changed as she looked at Evans.

  “You alright? she said.

  “Yeah,” Evans nodded. "You just surprised me. I was working and …” He waved his hand in the air, unsure of what he was even going to say next.

  “Gets under your skin, doesn’t it?” she said, softly.

  He looked at her, sensing sympathy from her. “Yeah. Maybe a little.”

  “Then let’s take a break,” she said, holding up the beers again.

  ***

  “So this idiot says to me, ‘Oh, shit, I thought you were a cop,’” Mitchell said, smiling. “So I held my badge up again and said, ‘What the hell do you think the FBI is?’ And he looks at me honestly dumbfounded and says, ‘Wait, the FBIs are cops too?’”

  They both laughed. Mitchell took another swig of her beer. A slow and steady rain fell outside now. The continuous patter against the roof and window droned on as they spoke.

  “All of a sudden,” she continued the story, “the meth lab in his basement was totally not his.”

  “The FBIs,” Evans grinned, his eyes a little glassy. “I’m going to have to remember that.”

  They chuckled, looking towards the window. They sat on the floor, their backs to the bed. The room wasn’t particularly big. There was only one uncomfortable chair in the corner. And sitting on the bed and drinking had not seemed appropriate, so here they were. Mitchell took anther drink, feeling the buzz for sure now.

  “You really think Stephanie’s father is a suspect?” Evans asked.

  She thought for a moment about steering the conversation away from work. But she caved. “I don’t know for sure. But I can’t dismiss it. And you brought it up first.”

  “I was mostly just presenting an alternative theory for consideration,” he said.

  “But he could be involved,” she pressed.

  “Sure. I guess. But what about her mother?”

  “You’ve seen her,” Mitchell rolled her eyes. “She defers to her husband on just about everything.”

  “And there’s Pastor Diego,” Evans pointed out. “To listen to him, you’d think all this alien stuff is down right chthonian.”

  Mitchell paused, running the last word through her head a couple of times. Was she that drunk that she couldn’t understand him? Was he that drunk he couldn’t talk straight anymore? No, he was barely drinking.

  “What now?” she said.

  He smiled and said, “Chthonian. It’s from classical mythology. Has to do with gods and sp
irits from the underworld. Sorry. When I get tipsy, I become a bit of a wordsmith.”

  “Oh my god, nerd alert!” Mitchell spat out, laughing. She looked over at the one empty bottle next to him and the one in his hand. “You’ve had one and a half. I’m way ahead of you.”

  She threw back the bottle and finished the little that was left in it.

  “After my fiancé left me,” Evans said softly. “I decided to cut back on drinking.”

  Mitchell looked over at him, suddenly feeling guilty about this whole situation. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Is this okay?”

  “I’m not an alcoholic,” he said, looking at her. “I just thought, preemptively, I’d avoid numbing my pain with alcohol.”

  She’d never seen him in this light before. He’d had a fiancé. She’d left him. All the time she’d spent in his office talking about herself, she’d known that of course he was a person with his own story, his own history. But she never knew any of it. Now that she was beginning to see just a hint of this history, she could feel her perception of him changing. She could see the pain in his eyes. It was obvious he didn’t drink much. The one and half beers he’d had gave his eyes a softer look, as if the careful clinical detachment he normally had about him was only another layer of clothing. And now, with the aid of some alcohol, that layer had slowly fallen off. He’d had a fiancé. She left him. It had been painful. So painful he had to consciously chosen not to numb it with alcohol. There was some kind of fear around that, she felt sure.

  Feeling the heaviness that had suddenly taken over the conversation, she said the first thing that came to her mind: “Hm. So what? You numbed it with a dictionary?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. And work.”

  Mitchell smiled, nodding. “I know something about that.”

  “Is that what this is?” he asked, looking at her. “Your drive to solve this case?”

  “It’s my drive to solve every case,” she said, looking down at the empty bottle in her hand. She began to pick at the label.

  “Even before your partner was killed?”

  She kept picking at the label.

  “Nicole,” Evans said, leaning a little closer, “let me ask you—as a friend—what’s back there? What’s behind this certainty of yours that there’s a person doing all of this?”

  She sighed as a corner of the label on her beer bottle ripped off. “Remember how Pastor Diego said he looked into the eyes of evil?” she said after a moment.

  Evans nodded.

  “So did I,” Mitchell said, willing herself to look up at him. “Only the difference was, I was looking into my own eyes.”

  Evans frowned ever so slightly, clearly unsure of what she meant by this, but he remained where he was, waiting for more.

  “Before I joined the FBI,” Mitchell reluctantly embarked on the story, unsure of how to even tell it, “I was in the Army. I did two tours of duty in Iraq. I was young and eager to follow orders.”

  She looked back down at the beer bottle in her hands, thinking. How to put into words what was going through her head, what she had experienced, what she had done?

  “You remember Abu Ghraib” she heard herself say. Part of her was self-aware enough to know that her guard was down. Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the fact that she’d gotten used to telling this man her secrets and fears, or maybe it was the sudden new vulnerability she felt coming from him. But she’d just opened a wound she wasn’t sure she was ready to deal with here. Either way, it was too late now.

  “The prison with all the human right’s violations?” Evans asked. “You were there?”

  “No,” she shook her head. “But we were detaining insurgents. These fuckers had trapped us on a desert road where they’d planted IEDs. When they blew up the front Humvee, we had to stop. The insurgents were on the surrounding hills, raining lead on us. We lost three men, four more injured.”

  Without giving it much thought, she reached down and tugged her dress shirt on the right side of her stomach and untucked it. She pulled the shirt up to just under her bra, revealing a long raised scar that ran down her ribs to her right hip.

  Evans looked at the scar with shock.

  “Shrapnel from one of the IEDs,” she explained. “Just a glancing blow.” She lowered her shirt, not bothering to tuck it in. “Anyway, we called in two Blackhawks and took them down. Killed most of them on the spot, but captured four. We took them back in for interrogation. Over the next weeks, we got orders to do whatever it took to get these guys to talk.”

  At this, Evans looked off. She imagined he was making the connections now, starting to see why she’d brought up Abu Ghraib. She recalled the men’s bodies, naked and bruised. She recalled the awful gasping for air, the sputtering of water from their mouths. Muslim men stripped as she stood there, a woman. This was a precise measure of humiliation and she’d known it. She remembered helping hold one of the men as they poured water over his face as he was leaned back in a chair, a rag stuffed in his mouth. The memories washed over her with the same chill as the cold water they’d used to waterboard those men. She could smell the sweat and piss of the dank dry room. Officially, they had never done any of these things, but that didn’t matter. Officially or not, these were the images that greeted her mind at night when she finally closed her eyes.

  She looked up at Evans, hardly able to believe she was saying this, “There are no pictures. No evidence. Not like Abu Ghraib. But we humiliated those men. Stripped them naked and made them crawl like dogs. We did … horrible things.”

  She stopped, taking in a deep breath as she tried to will tears to remain locked inside her eyes. “I try to tell myself that I was young and stupid and just following orders. But … I wanted those assholes to suffer. We lost Greg, Eric, and Dante. Three good men. And I wanted those … I wanted them to pay for it.”

  In spite of her best efforts, a tear slipped down her cheek. She wiped it away immediately then forced a smile as she glanced at Evans and said, “Bet you wish I would have told you this during one of our sessions.”

  Evans swallowed, then said simply, “Have you told anyone else?”

  “We should have been court-martialed. But we didn’t make the news, so we got away with it. And that, right there … that’s the world we live in. The real world. I wish there was more to this life. But I don’t think there is. There’s just us, people. And we’re capable of doing truly awful things.”

  She made no effort to hide the self-loathing and bitterness in her voice. What was the point of that? At any rate, there was the answer to his question.

  “We’re also capable of doing some amazing things,” he said softly.

  Anger boiled inside her as she shook her head and said, “But there’s no justice. My partner was a good man. A good husband and father. Hell, he went to church every damn week. We called him Agent Saint Dale. But some suspected home-grown terrorist, just a stupid kid we were chasing, pulls a gun and does Dale in.”

  She glared at Evans, suddenly angry at him for her vulnerability. “I should have died that day. If there was any justice, if there was anyone watching out for us like Dale always tried to tell me … I would have died … not Dale.”

  She meant it. How many times had she wished it? Seen it playing out in her mind? Had she just been a yard ahead of Dale instead of a yard behind him … She pictured again the bullet hitting her chest instead of Dale’s. That’s how it should have been.

  Evans reached out to her, taking her hand. She felt the touch of his hand on hers. When was the last time someone had held her hand?

  “Hey,” he said. “You can’t think that way. We all make mistakes.”

  “I’ve made more than mistakes,” she spat back. But she didn’t pull her hand away. Instead, she stared down at their touching hands. Taking in a deep breath, she then added, “All I’m saying is, yeah, there is evil in this world. And it’s us.”

  Another tear slipped out of her left eye, but she made no move to hide it or wipe it away. It was followe
d by a tear in her right eye. Evans reached out slowly and with his free hand wiped away first one, then the other tear. As he did so, she looked into his eyes. He was close now. She could feel her heart beating faster. In that moment, she felt more naked than she’d ever been in her life. They sat there fully clothed, but she had just exposed the dark cloud that hung over her at all times. Evans didn’t move away from her. He wasn’t appalled or angry or repulsed. He was touching her! She hadn’t expected this.

  Maybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the act of emotionally disrobing before this man, but the room spun around her. She closed her eyes to steady herself, feeling his hand on her cheek, the other hand holding hers. Some part of her mind still capable of a semblance of objectivity in this state recognized what she did next as some sort of mix of instinct and choice.

  She leaned in and kissed Evans.

  CHAPTER TEN

  She drew in a sharp breath. Her heart raced. Her eyes opened, trying to lock on anything familiar. It took her a second to recall where she was. Stephanie sat up in her bed in her room at St. Jerome. Only a dim yellow light from one of the outside lamp posts leaked through the window. Rain drops rolled down the glass, casting indistinct moving shadows on the wall by her bed. Her eyes darted to each corner of the room quickly. She was alone.

  She wasn’t even sure she’d had a dream. She’d just woken up suddenly as if a nightmare had simply intended to visit her, leaned down by her bed, and whispered in her ear. It had been enough. The familiar but always unwelcome feeling of being watched washed over her. She twisted around in bed, again checking every corner from where she sat. Her whole body ached as if her muscles had been all strained or overexerted somehow. But she had been nowhere.