Close Encounters of the Strange Kind

by Michael Kerr

  She gulped a mouthful of air as she surfaced, just before a crushing, pinching pain bit into her neck. She thrashed, kicked and fought free, then twisted round to look up and almost pass out with fright. The figure reared up in front of her and she could smell the fetid stench of its fur, breath, or both. The creature’s eyes were luminous amber coals, and its lips were drawn back to reveal curved, tusk-like ivory-coloured canine teeth that any lion would have been proud to possess. It lunged forward, a blur of speed, and the long, pointed fangs scythed through her sweat top and raked her chest open: a hirsute Freddy Kruger!

  The pain released her from the fear-induced paralysis that the sight of the beast had generated. As teeth snapped shut less than an inch from her face, she threw herself backwards and swam away from the bank, praying that it would not, or could not follow.

  Out near the middle of the lake, she stopped and turned, just in time to see two grey shapes melt into the fog.

  Almost frozen, her teeth chattering, and numb from head to foot, Kate struck out for the far shore, reached it and dragged herself from the water, shaking with cold and from the aftershock of her near-death experience. She ran all the way home without seeing anyone, and once inside her flat, locked and bolted the door and stripped off her sodden track suit and trainers.

  Standing in the shower, she cried with both fear and relief as the hot water warmed her and sluiced the blood from the lacerations that striped her body. Her mother had had been right; being out alone at night was not safe. She would never go jogging after dark again. Her only dilemma now was what to tell the police. There was no way that she could describe the creatures that had attacked her without sounding as though she had been hallucinating, or high on something illegal, for they had been fur-clad monstrosities very similar to the beast in the movie An American Werewolf in London.

  Back in the kitchen, Kate poured herself a large brandy and switched on the TV to break the now oppressive silence. She stood transfixed as a newsreader’s voice made sense of the ordeal she had just been through.

  “...that the baboons were in transit to Regent’s Park Zoo when they escaped from the back of the vehicle. Be advised that they are extremely dangerous and...”

  Kate picked up the phone and called the police.

  5

  A NEW EVENTUALITY

  Charlie Taylor woke up feeling sick to the stomach and very weak, as though all his strength had leached out through his skin with the sour sweat that pumped from his aching body.

  Moaning softly, Charlie put a hand to his hot brow, to the seat of the pain he supposed was a result of drinking far too much Jack Daniel’s. The hangovers helped keep his mind distracted, though this morning was in some way different. He didn’t just feel wrecked, he felt an ominous foreboding, as if something bad was about to happen, or had already taken place. It was an oppressive dread, but of what he didn’t know.

  Shakily pushing up into a sitting position, Charlie looked about the room. The normality of his surroundings eased the tension a little. Everything was in the chaotic disorder that matched his mental state. Dirty clothes spilled from the top of a wicker laundry basket, and the build-up of dust and grime that coated every surface was undisturbed. Glancing at the ruby-red display of the clock on the night table, he was astonished to see that it was 10.00 A.M.

  The sunlight slanted through the window to paint a wide brushstroke of bright gold, which cut through the swirling motes and consumed the colour from the wallpaper and a large framed photograph of his wife and daughter. Charlie had not noticed before that both Nicola’s and Sarah’s mahogany tresses were faded, or that their peaches and cream complexions were becoming anaemic. Now, as he swung his feet out onto the cool, varnished floorboards and groaned at the effort involved, he turned to face the photograph.

  “Good morning my darlings,” he said aloud, blowing the image a kiss. “You’re both looking a little pale this morning. That sun’s burning off your tans.”

  Charlie still lived at the isolated farmhouse that was over a mile from the small community of Cleary. The property was all that remained of his former life; a solid reminder – as if he needed one – of happier times.

  The sweat cooled on his too-thin body. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but felt that something was wrong. A profound change had taken place. For the first time since the accident he had not been jerked from sleep before dawn, bereft, calling out his late wife’s and daughter’s names to the empty house.

  Pulling open the door of the cupboard next to the bed, Charlie reached in for the amber liquid comfort that came packaged in glass. His fingers trembled on the bottle. No! He didn’t want any more booze. A numbing alcoholic haze would not change anything, it never did. Blurring his pain temporarily was no longer the answer. Could the slide be over? Was it time to face up to life as it was, and give up trying to drink himself into oblivion? The memories of his lost loves were too precious to squander by drowning them in sour mash. He had to accept that what is, is, and get on with it.

  Standing up, knees popping, Charlie walked naked out onto the landing and into the bathroom. He hadn’t bathed or shaved for weeks. After switching on the shower he took a leak, then turned and gripped the rim of the wash basin and studied his gaunt reflection in the mirror. Christ! He was one hell of a mess. In under a year he had lost far more weight than he could afford to. He had never been heavy. The face that stared back at him was that of a stranger, reminding him of old TV footage that showed emaciated prisoners in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps. Looking into his own sunken, red-rimmed eyes, he surveyed the unhealthy grey hue of skin stretched drum-tight like parchment over the sharp planes of his skull. At thirty-six he looked sixty. And what the hell was that? He put his finger to a mark high up at the centre of his forehead, at the hairline. Jesus! It wasn’t a blemish or a bruise or a discolouration that could have been the onset of skin cancer. It was a bloody hole, literally; a perfectly round hole with the circumference of a penny. It looked like a bullet hole, but he doubted that he been shot in the head. And the wound seemed to be healing, even as he examined it. Maybe he had suffered an accident as he staggered home from the bar the night before. He walked to the Bear’s Claw in town every evening, where he would sit alone in a corner booth; now a pariah to the locals, who had at first rallied round, but now rejected him after he had spurned them. They had come to view him with a mixture of pity and disgust as he degenerated into a wretched shadow of his former self and turned his back on life.

  Charlie remembered leaving the bar, late, to stumble drunkenly out onto the lonely back road. And then, nothing. He could not recall reaching the house. That in itself was not unusual, and had happened often. Short term memory loss went hand in hand with being a drunk. There was an instant’s recall of a dazzling light in the darkness. No more. Had he fallen? Maybe a sharp stone had pierced his forehead. Whatever had gone down was lost to him; just another blank spot in a mind that he bombarded with alcohol to ease the torment.

  There was no closure. Time does not heal all wounds. Nicola had set off to take Sarah to school in the car and had been involved in a head-on collision with a truck. The local sheriff had knocked at the door as Charlie was getting ready for work, and had tried unsuccessfully to break the news gently. But dead is dead, right? And there’s no good way to tell someone that the most important people in their personal universe are gone forever; just turned off like fucking light switches.

  After standing under the hot needle spray for an unknown period of time, with eyes closed, head hung between his shoulders, and his hands against the tiles for support, Charlie stepped out of the bath, dried himself, then shaved off his beard, before dressing in clean T-shirt and jeans. He went down to the kitchen and switched on the coffeemaker, which had been a wedding present from Nicola’s kid brother, Donny, back when the world was young and Charlie’s optimism had known no bounds.

  Opening the back door, he stepped outside onto the weed-riddled patio and stood nursing the Disney mug that
had belonged to Sarah. He stared off to the forest that filled his view to the south, absently reaching up to touch the wound on his forehead. He frowned. The skin under his fingertip was smooth and unbroken. Rushing back into the kitchen, cursing as he spilled steaming black coffee on the back of his hand, he dumped the mug on a countertop and picked up a small swivel mirror. The hole had completely vanished. It was impossible, yet true. There was no mark, scar or even telltale bruising, and that could not be. The mirror fell from his trembling fingers. NO, his mind screamed as it plummeted to the floor, and as if it were a faithful dog obeying its master’s command, the mirror stopped its mid-air descent, to hover unsupported just inches from the quarry tile flooring. Charlie stooped, plucked it from where it hung in space and replaced it next to his mug.

  What in God’s name was happening? If this was being sober, then he would resume normal service and get as drunk as a skunk. Wounds didn’t miraculously heal up so quickly, and mirrors couldn’t levitate.

  Sitting down on a ladder-backed kitchen chair, Charlie fired-up a cigarette and took another mouthful of the stewed coffee, which had been re-heated until it had the consistency of hot tar. He scowled and made the effort to go and empty the coffeemaker and make a fresh pot.

  The day eventually passed. It had been one of intense introspection. He felt hollow, of no substance, and sobbed with the unrestricted abandon of a young child as he faced the realisation that he would never be able to consolidate his loss and dispel the all-consuming loneliness he felt. Life had become totally meaningless without Nicola and Sarah. He wished for release; to take one last deep breath, expel it, and drift away into total unawareness with a final exhalation. He was an empty vessel with no philosophy, religion, politics, or interest in anything beyond his own intimate world of grief. All he desired was beyond restoration.

  As darkness fell, Charlie found himself out in the back garden, looking up to where a soft, green glow hung like a haze, lighting up a small patch of the forest. He was drawn like a moth to a flame, compelled to investigate the extraordinary spectacle. He had heard of will-o’-the-wisp, which was supposedly phosphorescent light; a combustion of methane from marshy ground. But there was no bog or marsh on the thickly-wooded hillside.

  With wonderment, not fear, Charlie approached the strange light that filtered through the trees in fractured beams of eerie luminescence. He felt pain blossom in his head, which made him grit his teeth against the sensation of wild horses galloping around the inside of his skull, their hooves tearing up brain tissue as though it was lush meadow turf. A low and almost subliminal thrum drew him in; a fish on a line, and he half-remembered the previous night. He had been to this place and…and had lain on a table with clamps restraining him. A pulsing, living probe had descended from the gloom and entered his head. And now he was back, standing on the edge of a clearing and staring in awe and fascination at the giant disc that floated barely a foot above the ground.

  Forget Star Trek, all the Sci-Fi pulp that was written, Area 51, and little grey men with black, almond-shaped eyes. This was the real McCoy. Charlie was in the presence of an authentic, bona fide alien spaceship. He had been chosen, summoned, and now stood before it, as excited as he’d been as a kid waking up on Christmas mornings and bounding down the stairs to where the brightly-wrapped gifts were heaped around the tree. The unknown was a sure-fire attention-getter.

  The hull of the ship was as smooth as silk, with no apparent means to gain entry. He stepped forward, raised his hands and pressed his palms on to what was a surprisingly warm, yielding surface, which rippled under his touch and then opened like an iris.

  Withdrawing his hands, Charlie stared at the circular hatch that had magically appeared before him. It was make-your-mind-up time. He had the presentiment that if he went on board, then there would be no turning back. He would never set foot on terra firma again. There was no decision to make. All he would miss was cigarettes and Jack Daniel’s.

  “Let’s do it,” he said aloud, using the last words that Gary Gilmore had allegedly spoken on that long gone day in Utah, when the convicted murderer had braced himself to meet the hot lead of the firing squad.

  Stepping up and into the unknown, Charlie paused as the hatch ‘healed up’ behind him, in the same manner as the hole in his forehead had done. A soft blue light replaced the green glow, illuminating a wide, high-ceilinged corridor. There was a low humming, and he could feel a gentle vibration emanating up from the grid flooring beneath his feet.

  The corridor spiralled ever inwards and upwards, and hatches seemingly melted open to allow him passage through a chambered structure that reminded him of a giant fossil ammonite.

  After what seemed a small eternity, he reached what he knew to be the bridge, flight deck, or whatever the hell the still unseen aliens might call it.

  The circular room was ringed by a 360° viewing screen that looked out on the surrounding forest. In the centre was a single recliner seat of proportions befitting its giant occupant. Charlie came to a stop in front of the desiccated remains of a humanoid form that he estimated would be at least twelve feet high if standing erect. He walked around it, as though it was an exhibit; the mummified corpse of a long dead pharaoh. Below its huge, domed head and heavy brows, black, multifaceted insect eyes bulged in sightless indifference. The relic was suited in a silver one-piece tunic, with only its elongated, scaly, two-fingered hands protruding from tight cuffs to rest on the chair’s arms.

  Charlie knew that he had been chosen, and led to the ship for a reason. But what was he supposed to do? As if in answer, there was a loud popping sound, as though a blown up paper bag had been exploded between hands. Six feet in front of him, the flickering three-dimensional images of Nicola and Sarah blinked into existence.

  “You’re supposed to take it home, Charlie,” the facsimile of his late wife said, solidifying and walking over to him, to hold him in her arms, closely followed by Sarah.

  “You’re not real,” Charlie said with an anguished and haunted quality to his voice as he tried to deny the familiar scent of Nicola’s hair and the sight of the small mole that graced her right cheek.

  “Reality as you know it took the day off the second you came on board, Charlie,” Nicola said, drawing back and smiling at him. “This is an alternate reality, which is as valid as you want it to be.”

  “That’s right, Dad,” Sarah said, stretching up to kiss his cheek. “We’re back together, now.”

  Charlie thought that he would faint, but didn’t. “How? Why? You were both...both killed in a car crash.”

  Nicola shrugged. “That was one eventuality, sweetheart, and this is another.”

  “I still don’t understand. God, I need a cigarette!”

  Nicola passed him a pack of Marlboro and his Zippo lighter, that he knew he had left on the kitchen table, back at the house. “You will understand, soon,” she said as he fired up. “Now use the power of your mind to take us to a new life in another place and time.”

  Charlie suspended all former beliefs and gave himself up willingly to the impossible. Without knowing how, he let his mind take control of the marooned vessel, which had been deep under the forest floor for millennia, only breaking through the surface when the power of Charlie’s raw emotions had somehow tuned-in to the same wavelength as the ship’s biological core. The craft had summoned him the previous night, assessed his capabilities, and had now recalled him, to give him the task of using his mental power to fuel the automatic sensors of the crippled spacecraft. Charlie’s will could kick-start the defective drive source and return the Karzonian research ship through a wormhole, back to its home planet.

  “Take us home,” Charlie said, having no idea where that might be.

  The giant saucer trembled and then slowly rose up above the canopy of the forest, above the clouds and out of the Earth’s atmosphere, to soon thereafter wink out of one existence and into another.

  It was two days later when a lone backpacker came across a body lying next to
a large circular excavation in the forest.

  One of many Charlie Taylors’ had ceased to physically be. And yet his consciousness had survived and was now adjusting to a new state of actuality with Nicola and Sarah, in a parallel universe that was so near, yet so far away.

  6

  A SPECIAL MISSION

  “For someone just six centimetres tall in stocking-clad feet, you sure have an attitude, Figwort,” King Ambrose said.

  Figwort took a deep breath, reined in his temper – which was of the short-fused variety – and counted to ten, his anger manifesting itself in a quivering of wings, and a fat vein that throbbed at his temple.

  “I appreciate that you’re the king of the fairies, Ambrose,” Figwort said through gritted teeth. “I respect your position, but you’re still my nephew, and still two hundred years my junior, so how about you showing a little respect for your elders, huh?”

  “Okay, point taken. But it’s still King Ambrose to you, or Your Majesty. Familiarity breeds contempt, and you really are the most contemptible old fairy in the forest,” Ambrose replied, flexing his wings and drumming his fingers on the arms of his throne, apprehensive at the prospect of giving his curmudgeonly uncle a task to carry out.

  “So,” Figwort snapped, causing the king to flutter off his throne in surprise. “Why the royal summons to the oak palace? I was all set to fly off for a few days, to rest my wings and get a tan.”

  Ambrose adjusted his crown, pushing it down on his bright green hair, only for it to spring up again at a jaunty angle, to cover one eye. “Well, Figwort,” he began. “I have a special mission for you. It’s an important job, and you fit the bill.”

  Figwort bit his bottom lip as a weight like that of a windblown apple crushed his spirit. He had been this route before. The last assignment that his upstart nephew had given him – just two decades ago – had been a disaster. As he recalled, he had been ordered to go and cheer up a seven-year-old human girl, whose puppy had been squished by a car. He had thought it would be a piece of cake, but one should never assume anything. The kid had been Eva Braun incarnate; sprayed him with fly-killer when he had flown in and introduced himself, and then swatted him with a Barbie doll, which had given him a force ten headache that lasted for twenty-four hours, in fairy time. He had got his own back, though; put a spell on the brat that gave her zits as big as acorns, to plague and embarrass her till she was sixteen.