by Angela Hunt
“Listen to this entry about black-eyed children,” I said, interrupting Tank’s story about a toddler who could throw a football for fifty yards. “According to an urban legend, unusual children with completely black eyes have been spotted in various neighborhoods around the world. These children—called BEKs—reportedly knock on strangers’ doors, usually at night, and ask to be let in. Most people report feeling an unusual sense of dread or fear in the presence of these children, and evil is supposed to befall the hapless person who falls for their disguise and let them in.”
“Disguise?” Brenda interrupted. “If they’re not kids, what are they?”
I held up a finger and kept reading. “Explanations of these and other strange appearances go back through the ages. In China and Japan, folklore reveals stories of vengeful ghosts, hungry apparitions that appear and demand to be fed. Those who do not submit to the ghosts’ demands meet with bad luck or illness. Europe compares them to vampires, tales from the Middle East offer stories of the Djinn, supernaturally empowered beings from which we get the word genie. Some say the BEKs are manifestations of dark thoughts; in the middle ages, they might have been considered changelings, soulless children substituted for real children by the fairies. Stories of these black-eyed children, who seem poorly adapted to contemporary social situations and skills, have been around since the 1990s.”
“Urban legend, huh?” Tank smiled a humorless smile. “That means the story’s not true, right?”
“Sometimes,” I answered, “but sometimes not. Sometimes people label stories as urban legends just because there doesn’t appear to be a logical explanation for the story’s events. But sometimes the answers to those stories lies beyond our current understanding.”
“Some people,” the professor inserted, “believe that aliens seek human babies in order to create hybrids that are half-human, half-alien. Others say that the culprits are human beings—government types who are using alien DNA to create hybrids for military purposes.”
“Sounds like something the Gate would be interested in,” I said. “Human-alien hybrids to colonize another planet—”
“Or live under the sea,” the professor added. “Who knows what they’re planning?”
“That makes no sense,” Brenda said. “Why would anyone want to mix our races?”
“Our species,” I corrected. “Our races are already mixed—people on this planet have become so mingled that we’re all human mutts. If you’re talking about mingling humans and aliens, you’d be talking about two different species.”
“Still.” She shook her head. “If aliens are so superior, why don’t they just wipe us out and take over the planet? That’s what they want in all those science fiction movies.”
“Hang on a minute.” Tank’s eyes had taken on a deeply thoughtful look. “I know I usually don’t add much to these conversations, but bear with me, okay? I don’t believe in aliens—not from outer space, anyway. I mean, if alien beings lived on Mars or even the moon, don’t you think we would have seen some evidence of their existence? We’ve sent cameras up there. We’ve filled the galaxy with space junk—if there were other civilized species in space, don’t you think we would have seen some of their space junk floating around? Something? We’ve sent cameras pretty doggone far into space, and they haven’t been able to prove that anything’s out there.”
“A lot of people have seen UFOs,” Brenda pointed out. “And a lot of other people claim to have been abducted by aliens. They can’t all be crazy.”
“I don’t think they’re crazy,” Tank said. “I think maybe these creatures, whatever they are, aren’t from other planets. Maybe they’re coming from other dimensions, or other worlds—like Helga or the monsters in the fog. We know the other worlds exist, and we know they can come through certain portals. So maybe these other things are plenty real, they’re just not what we think they are.”
Brenda crossed her arms. “That still doesn’t answer the question about why they’d want a hybrid species.”
Tank shifted his weight and sighed heavily. “I thought of something,” he said slowly, “but I’m not sure I want to tell you. Might be like casting pearls before swine.”
Brenda stiffened. “Are you calling us pigs?”
Tank’s face went the color of a tomato. “No, no—it’s just an expression. But I’ve got an uncle who’s a preacher, and he says that the devil has always been trying to thwart God’s plan to redeem the human race. So back in the old days, he sent demons to make babies with human women—it’s in the Bible. Those babies grew up to be giants, and they were around even after Noah’s flood. Some of them had six fingers and six toes, so I guess you could say they were hybrids.”
I blinked. Being Jewish, I’d heard Torah stories all my life, but I’d never heard anything about demonic hybrids. “Where in the Bible?” I asked, staring hard at Tank. “That sounds crazy.”
“Genesis,” Tank answered. “The story of the Nephilim.”
“That story,” the professor said in a soothing voice, “has been interpreted in various ways. Some say those who fathered the giants were merely exalted men, not spiritual beings like angels or demons. I would cast my vote in that direction.”
Tank shrugged, leaving the professor with the last word, but I wasn’t convinced the professor was right. Since leaving the priesthood, he had a tendency to automatically reject any explanation that had to do with God, but his explanation of the Nephilim did not explain how “exalted men” could create a race of giants.
“Maybe we don’t have to know all the answers—at least not yet,” I said. “Seems to me the most important thing is helping Mrs. Diaz find her baby.”
“If the kid has been whisked into another dimension,” Brenda said, frowning, “good luck with that.”
Chapter Seven
Later that night I sat at the desk in the study, searching the Internet for stories of fetal abductions. Rain had been falling since before sunrise, so none of us were in the mood to go outside and sunbathing was out of the question. I kept looking out the window at the Diaz house, hoping to see Mr. Diaz bringing his wife home, but apparently they were still at the hospital.
I looked up when I heard a soft cough from the hallway. The professor was standing in the doorway, looking at me with a strange look on his face.
“Andi,” he said, his face blanketed by a peaceful expression I rarely saw him wear, “if I take a picture on my phone, can you print it for me?”
“Sure.” I gestured toward the machine in the corner. “That printer does a pretty good job with photos. How big do you want it?”
“Small. Pocket-size.” He flashed a smile, then tilted his head toward the den. “Join me in the other room, will you?”
Curious, I followed him to the family room, where Daniel was playing a video game, Brenda was sitting on the carpeted floor and looking at magazines, and Tank was snoring on the sofa. The professor stood in the center of the room and cleared his throat. When Tank didn’t stop snoring, Brenda punched his shoe.
“If I may have your attention,” the professor said, casting his gaze around the room, “I’d like to commemorate this occasion with a group photo. You’ll all have to gather around and squeeze in tightly for this selfie to work.”
Brenda frowned. “You want a picture now? I don’t have my eyelashes on.”
“Just something to remember this little trip,” the professor answered. “I’m not expecting white tie and full makeup.”
Tank threw me a questioning look, and so did Brenda. I shrugged, not having the faintest clue what the professor was up to. He wasn’t sentimental, and this trip wasn’t exactly worth commemorating, in my view. But if he wanted to do something to remember this trip, why not humor him?
“Come on,” I said, stepping to the professor’s side. “You too, Daniel. You’re gonna have to leave your game for a minute.”
Feeling awkward and clumsy, we all gathered around the professor and smiled at the phone in his hand. He, of cours
e, didn’t smile, but carefully adjusted the phone until we were all visible on the screen, then he pressed the button. The phone responded by playing the sound of a shutter click, then the professor nodded. “Resume whatever you were doing,” he said, stepping out of the huddle. “Andi, can you print this image for me?”
I led the way back to my grandfather’s study. “What’s this about?” I asked, glancing at the professor. “Are you doing some kind of experiment, or getting sentimental in your old age?”
“Neither.” He gave me a tight-lipped smile and pressed keys on his phone. “I’ve just sent the image to your email account, so if you could print it . . .”
“Pocket-sized?”
“Correct. Just slip it beneath my door after you’ve trimmed it. Thank you.”
He turned toward his room, but before leaving he caught my shoulder, stepped closer, and planted a kiss on my forehead. “Dear Andi,” he whispered, his voice growing rough. “You are the daughter I might have had . . . if I’d made different choices along the way.”
I blinked, my thoughts stuttering in surprise, while he released me and returned to his room, closing the door behind him.
Chapter Eight
The next morning I rose early and made waffles—my grandmother’s recipe, complete with the secret ingredient of almond extract, which filled the kitchen with a scrumptious aroma. I wanted the team to be in a good mood because I hoped to enlist them in my search for Mrs. Diaz’s missing baby.
The scents of waffles and sizzling bacon did the trick. Tank came into the kitchen right after I’d finished cooking, and Daniel and Brenda followed soon after. Brenda went outside and brought in the newspaper, then we all sat down to eat. The professor’s seat, however, remained empty, and I kept glancing at it, wondering if he was working or had decided to sleep late.
“Look at these shoes,” Brenda said, holding up the front of the Lifestyles section. “Ten inch platforms. I’d need a ladder to climb into those things.”
“I don’t think they’re meant to be walked in.” I shrugged. “Aren’t those things just for fashion shows?”
“The Reds traded for a new first baseman,” Tank announced, as if anybody at the table cared. “They have several good players on their farm teams. Wonder why they didn’t just move them up?”
I blew out a breath, not knowing how to respond to Tank because I knew next to nothing about baseball. I looked at Daniel, who had put down his handheld video game and allowed his gaze to drift over the abandoned local news section on the table. Then he put his finger on the paper and slid it over, across the table, until it rested in front of me. “Read,” he said, not meeting my gaze.
I picked up the paper and scanned the largest headline: Local Youth Contracts Mysterious Illness. My pulse skittered.
With increasing alarm, I read the story. According to the newspaper article, Georgia Hanson had run into a mini market while her son Jax waited in the family van. When she returned, another child was sitting in the van with her son. Alarmed, she opened the back door to see who the child was. She asked for his name, but he kept his head down and didn’t answer. Instead Jax said, “He wanted to come in, so I let him.”
Alarmed, Mrs. Hanson ordered the unknown boy out of the car. He obeyed, not speaking, but when he left the car, he looked directly at her, and that’s when she panicked—the boy appeared unusually pale and wan. She instinctively glanced at her son, who was still sitting in the back seat, and when she shifted to look again at the strange boy, he had vanished.
Almost immediately, Jax doubled over in pain, then passed out. Mrs. Hanson drove him to the emergency room, where the doctors examined him and could find nothing wrong. But Jax remained unconscious, and would remain in the hospital until he came out of his coma.
“Guys, listen to this.” With a quaver in my voice, I read the news story to Brenda, Daniel, and Tank, pausing only long enough to look at the professor’s empty seat and wish he’d hurry out to join us. I could sense a pattern in the odd events apparently precipitated by the black-eyed children, but I was too close to the story to see it. What did it all mean?
“Daniel,” I said, lowering the newspaper, “would you go knock on the professor’s door? Tell him we need him.”
Daniel tilted his head and gave me a strange little smile. “He’s gone.”
“Gone?” Brenda blinked. “Gone where?”
Daniel held up his hand, pointed upward, and then rotated his hand as if he were pointing in all directions.
“This isn’t a good time for guessing games,” Brenda said, an edge to her voice. “If this is a joke, Daniel—”
I sincerely hoped it was. I left the table and walked down the hallway that led to the bedrooms, trying my best to ignore the ominous feeling in my gut.
I knocked on the professor’s door and heard no answer. Gathering my courage, I turned the doorknob . . . and realized that Daniel was right. The professor was gone, but he couldn’t have gone far because his briefcase, his glasses, his laptop, and his current notebooks were still on the desk. But what I couldn’t find, even when I searched the desktop and opened the lid of his suitcase, was the small photograph I had printed for him last night.
Abby, who had followed me into the room, sniffed the floor around the desk, then sniffed the professor’s pajamas. Then she sat politely and tilted her head as if asking, “Well? Where’d he go?”
“I wish I knew, Abs.”
Brenda came into the room as I was opening the professor’s laptop. “Do you think he went out for coffee or something?”
I shook my head. “I was up early this morning, so I would have heard the alarm beep if anyone opened a door.”
“Have you tried calling his cell phone?”
“Yeah. And I found his phone right over there, on the nightstand.”
Brenda leaned against the doorframe. “Have you searched the house? Maybe he wanted a quiet place to think . . . or maybe he wanted to walk along the beach.”
I gave her a you’ve got to be kidding look. “Have you ever known him to willingly walk on the beach?”
“Well . . . there’s a first time for everything, right?”
“Yeah . . . but something tells me that this is a far bigger first time than we realize.” I sank to the edge of the bed, where the blankets and pillow were neat and unrumpled. “Didn’t his behavior yesterday strike you as odd?”
Brenda smirked. “The professor’s always odd.”
“But he’s never asked for a group picture before. And there’s more—last night, before he went into his room he kissed my forehead. It was . . . almost like he was saying goodbye.”
Brenda’s brow creased, then she shrugged. “I’ll admit that he’s seemed really preoccupied the last couple of days. But he’d be lost without you, Andi, so I hardly think he’d take off without telling you where he was going. And where would he go? Unless—” Her frown deepened. “You . . . you don’t think he was thinkin’ of offin’ himself, do you?”
“No—no, definitely not. He wouldn’t want a printed photo of our group if he was suicidal. He kept saying he wanted a pocket-sized copy of that image—”
“Maybe he wanted the cops to know who to contact . . . in case his body was mangled in a car crash or something.”
“A list of names and phone number would be more helpful than a photo. Still, something’s not right. I’m going to call the police.”
Brenda sighed, then turned toward the hallway. “Honestly? The man’s too stubborn to kill himself. But if you call the police, you’re gonna feel really stupid when he comes in and yells at you for involving the cops.”
“That’s okay.” I stood and moved toward the phone on the desk. “If I’m wrong, he can be as mad as he wants to be.”
The police showed up within an hour of my call. Because I’d heard the cops tell Mr. Diaz that they couldn’t file a missing persons report until twenty-four hours had passed, I was careful not to say that we wanted to report a missing person. Instead I told them
that we’d awakened this morning and suspected that something had happened to the professor—foul play, perhaps. So could they please investigate, especially since something had also happened to the woman who lived next door . . .
My thoughts kept returning to the creepy kids. What if they had managed to get into the house? What if they’d met the professor?
The young cop leading the investigation—Officer Chad Edwards—suddenly stopped writing on his notepad and looked at me. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
I felt an unwelcome blush creep onto my cheeks. “At the hospital, I think. I was there to see Mrs. Diaz. I saw you in the hallway.”
“Yours is an easy face to remember.” He smiled. “And what is your relationship to Dr. McKinney?”
“I’m his assistant. And before you ask, our relationship is strictly professional.”
“Good to know.” His smile deepened as he made a note on his pad.
From the sofa, Tank glowered at the cop. “Don’t you want to dust for fingerprints or something? If someone broke in and kidnapped him—”
“No sign of forced entry,” Edwards said. “And there’s nothing missing or out of place, so an abduction is unlikely.”
“Maybe,” Brenda said. “But we’re only guests here, so how would we know if something was missing?”
Officer Edwards ignored Brenda and smiled at me again. “Why don’t you show me around and point out anything that seems odd to you?”
Brenda sighed dramatically and Tank stood, pulling himself upright and thrusting his sizable chest forward. I’d studied enough zoology to recognize male dominance behavior when I saw it, so more than anything I wanted Tank to calm down and behave himself. But if the professor was with those black-eyed kids, he might be sick or dying or in serious trouble . . .
I led the way to the bedroom the professor had been using. Everything was just as I’d left it—the laptop and notebooks on the table, his watch and phone on the nightstand, his pajamas still folded on the bed.