Mysterious Skin

by Scott Heim

  “My parents used to claim the word love was useless, that people say it too often.”

  Mrs. McCormick hadn’t heard me. “You think I’m drunk.” Something sour and oily covered her voice. “You think I’m drunk, but I’m not. I’m perfectly sober.” In the darkness, she had her son’s precise features: his full lips, his jagged bangs.

  Outside, a car sped past, its radio wailing a song from before I was born. I watched the dresser drawer as if it might fly open. “My parents are dead,” I said. Neil’s mom lay back on the bed and patted the space next to her, a signal she wanted me to join her. The thought of doing that terrified me. “I have to go,” I said, or perhaps I thought I said it. I stared at the figurine on Neil’s trophy, its repulsive grin beneath the gold cap. And then I left. Neil’s mom didn’t see me to the door.

  At home, I took my journal outside and sat in the damp garden grass. The trailer park gave off an eerie glow, as if it were the chosen setting for an upcoming miracle. Mosquitoes buzzed the air. Dead earthworms scattered the sidewalk like veins. “I’m in love more than ever with Neil,” I wrote. “My heart feels like a cartoon valentine card that some bratty kid’s balled in his fist until it’s become nothing but a ragged wad of paper, then thrown into churning, chopping depths of the trash compactor. If only he liked guys his age and not over-thirty-five men with more hair on their chests than heads. Where’s the razor when I need it?”

  I read what I’d just scribbled down. It all seemed so pathetic, I could do nothing but cross it out, blacking over everything with the pen. I kept picturing that look on Neil’s face, his satisfied smile as the john’s head moved toward his crotch.

  The wind shifted, rattling the trailer’s frail walls. Perhaps I should try writing another poem, I thought. I wanted to create something profound, something generations of people would read, nod, whisper, I know exactly what he felt. “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “Shit.” The words caught in my throat. I reopened the journal, squinted at the mess of ink, and tried to remember what I’d written.

  nine

  BRIAN LACKEY

  The dreams began two days after Avalyn’s appearance on “World of Mystery.” Generic at first, they harbored images of rubbery-armed spacemen with blue-gray skin and penetrating eyes that seemed equivalent to the Hollywood depictions I’d seen on TV. These aliens petrified me nonetheless.

  After the second dream, I telephoned my mother at work and told her how the memories had revealed themselves. She returned home that evening holding a spiral notebook decorated with an elaborate bow. “To record them in,” she said. “Whatever’s inside your head, let it come out.” I drew a crescent moon and stars on the notebook’s cover; beside that, a spaceship whizzing past a chunky cloud.

  I kept the journal at bedside, and during the following week I logged what I could from each alien scenario, sometimes sketching a face or hand or beam of light. In my half-sleep, I’d misspell words or stop midsentence. A typical entry:

  6/29/91—

  I get out of a station wagon, my little league uniform is on—I stand in the middle of a yard—crows are flying (indecipherable) getting darker. My hand is crammed into the baseball glove my father bought when (indecipherable)—in the trees a blue light, the color at the bottoms of swimming pools, I walk closer but it seems I’m running toward it then I see the spaceship and a light shoots out, the light tugging me forward—like a giant hand—the blue light (indecipherable)—really scared, and the hand starts to m (word trails into scribble off edge of page).

  The dream log aided my memory. But something else bolstered my ability to remember, something apart from the dreams, something I couldn’t explain to my mother. I began recalling other bits and pieces about my first abduction, images beyond those that took shape during sleep. I would be watching TV, eating lunch, or sunbathing on the side of the hill, when out of nowhere a scene would surface in my head. For instance, I suddenly remembered this: that halfway through my final Little League game, it had begun to rain. The rain became a downpour, and the umpire had officially canceled the game midinning. My teammates had abandoned me in the dugout, running hand in hand with parents to their family cars.

  Had that been the moment I’d initially been taken? Had the aliens witnessed me through the net of clouds as I’d lingered, alone, on the baseball field? I wasn’t yet certain. I had no idea why I remembered these pieces now. The more I remembered, the more alone I felt, as though some devious secret were just now being revealed, as if for ten years I’d been the butt of an enormous joke. Yet I knew the information that tangled like wire inside my head was all-important, clues that moved toward some destination.

  July commenced with a telephone call from Avalyn Friesen. Her voice sounded angelic, just as it had on the TV program I’d rewound to watch at least twenty times by then. She said she had received my letter—“my first and only piece of fan mail,” she called it—and wanted to meet me. “You said you think you’ve had similar experiences,” Avalyn said. “Well, Mr. Brian Lackey, your eagerness is usually the first step toward coming to grips with the truth.” She paused, and a dog yapped from somewhere on her end of the line. “I just hope you’re ready.”

  We talked for nearly an hour. I informed Avalyn of additional details beyond those I’d written in my letter. I mentioned my recent series of dreams, and she told me she’d been through a similar pattern. “Your memories are ready to make themselves known to you,” she said.

  We scheduled our meeting for July third, Avalyn’s day off from her job as secretary at Inman’s grain elevator. I dialed a couple of numbers to cancel my lawn-mowing appointments. Then I called the prison in Hutchinson. A receptionist directed the call to lookout tower number five, where my mother no doubt sat staring over the prison yard, her .38 in her side holster. She picked up, and I asked if I could borrow the car.

  “I’ll find another ride to work that day,” she said. “This is something you have to do.”

  On July third I dressed in my best khaki pants, a short-sleeved blue oxford, and a pair of oversize loafers I’d confiscated from a box of clothes my father had never returned to fetch. I slicked back my hair and touched a pair of zits with dabs of my mother’s flesh-colored makeup. I didn’t look half bad.

  The stretch of highway from Little River was one I’d passed hundreds of times, but on that afternoon it seemed utterly new. Midway between Little River and Hutchinson, I slowed for the turnoff toward Inman and glanced at the inside cover of my dream log. There, I’d jotted instructions for reaching Avalyn’s: “Go six miles east. Right after the sign advertising Kansas Beef, look for driveway with the blue mailbox….”

  The Friesen farm sat a quarter mile off the main road. Holstein cattle grazed in overgrown stretches of pasture. A lane of flesh-colored sand trailed toward the house, flanked by trees that appeared centuries old. The trees folded over themselves like clasped fingers, squirrels and birds darting between the branches. I drove under them, parked at the side of a boxy log cabin, and rechecked my reflection in the side mirror.

  I’ve never excelled at meeting people, but meeting Avalyn seemed inevitable. My nervousness was nowhere near as uncontrollable as I’d feared. I passed rows of zinnias beside the gravel path; before I reached the door, she opened it. When I saw her, I felt tingly, the way I imagined I’d feel glimpsing a celebrity. Avalyn wore silver teardrop earrings, a white housedress, and no shoes. Her hair gleamed, pulled into an oily bun that sat like a cinnamon roll on her head. “Brian,” she said, and it sounded more like Brine. She offered her hand, and I took it. The hand felt soft and feverish, as if I were holding a hummingbird. I released it, and she brought her fingers to her chest. “It’s good to meet you,” she said.

  Avalyn introduced me to her father, an ancient-looking man who slurped from a coffee mug. Beneath his red cap, his face was grooved with wrinkles. He had thick, tanned biceps that shone from his shirtsleeves. One arm revealed a tattoo, an eagle bearing a scroll that read LIBERTY. He smiled, tightened
a strap of his overalls, then coughed and cleared his throat. “Avalyn and I are all that are left in this family.” He spoke so slowly, cobwebs could have formed between his words.

  Avalyn’s father opened the refrigerator’s top compartment, unwrapped a green Popsicle, and gestured toward the back door with it. “I’ve got work to do in the field,” he said. He took off his hat. Hair fluttered from his head as if startled.

  After Mr. Friesen had gone, Avalyn led me toward a rocking chair, and I sat. I surveyed the simple room—the TV, a dusty wood-burning stove, a rolltop desk, her collection of stuffed animals. The wall displayed various pictures of an older woman, assumedly the late Mrs. Friesen, and a chubby young man with a crew cut who resembled a platypus in military garb. Avalyn saw me staring. She shrugged, stepped into the adjoining kitchen, and returned with a plate of Saltines and a bright red sardine tin. “I haven’t eaten lunch,” she said. She unsheathed the tin with three twists of the tiny key, then placed chunks of sardines on the crackers. They were the kind doused with mustard, and yellow blobs spilled onto the plate. “Help me with these,” Avalyn said. I bit down, cupping my hand to catch the crumbs.

  I began. “I videotaped your TV show. I’ve watched it over and over.”

  “It wasn’t bad,” she said. “A little showy for my tastes, and they left out some things I told them, but they managed to get across the right idea.”

  “You were playing with a dog.”

  “That’s Patches,” Avalyn said. She swiped the back of her hand across her lip’s mustard smudge. “He’s an outside dog. He follows Daddy into the fields to look after the cows.” She got up and padded back to the kitchen. She reached into a cracked pitcher, pulling out two sticks of incense. “Which do you prefer, frangipani or sandalwood?”

  Before I could answer, Avalyn touched a match to the tips of two sticks. She jammed the incense into the dirt of a potted plant in the kitchen window. Curlicues of smoke lifted around her head. “Let me give you a tour of my little home,” she said. “And I can show you around the farm if you want. And we’ll talk.”

  Her father’s bedroom was empty save for a small dresser and a double bed. The bed seemed to separate into two distinct hemispheres; the first had a rumpled pillow, the blanket’s corner pulled away to reveal the sheet underneath. The bed’s second half was immaculate, unwrinkled. The room smelled like an elderly spinster’s perfume. Avalyn switched off the light. “And now, my bedroom,” she said.

  She opened the door. Her room looked like a teenager’s: posters and triangular college banners covered the walls, and clothes, books, albums, and tapes scattered the floor. The room was messier than my own. “I cleaned,” she said, “just for you.” She laughed.

  Avalyn flopped on the bed. Her housedress lifted, revealing her thigh, as white as porcelain. I turned away and focused on the wall’s largest poster, where four scraggly-haired men in makeup stood on silver podiums. They pouted and scowled dramatically. “That’s my all-time favorite band,” Avalyn said. “They went by the name of Kiss. Are you old enough to remember?”

  “Vaguely,” I said. “I don’t know if I’ve heard their music.” I sat on the floor, next to an album by that very band. “I mostly listen to electronic stuff, music no one else listens to.”

  “I went through the same rebellion in high school,” Avalyn said. “But I’ve always liked the glitter rock, the heavy metal. Kids around here just listen to country-western twang and not much else. Things never much change.” She gestured toward the Kiss poster. “What a group they were,” she said. “So theatrical. You could get lost in them. The band members were each a specific character, hence the makeup. Every day was Halloween. They were the lover, the vampire, the kitty cat, and the spaceman. Guess which member I loved the most.” I scrutinized the spacey-looking-one’s outfit: shiny boots with spiked heels, metal plates crossing his chest and crotch, starbursts of silver makeup around his eyes.

  Avalyn leaned over and took the Kiss album between her fingers. She slid the record from the sleeve, lowered it onto her turntable, and clicked the stereo switch. A guitar riff filled the room. “Yes.” She lay back on her bed, directing her voice toward the ceiling. I looked there; saw glittery speckles in the dimpled surface.

  “As you’ve no doubt figured out by now,” Avalyn said, “there’s a reason for everything. Something as simple as me, in my teens, being attracted to the guy in the band that dressed and acted like a spaceman. Or me, throughout my life, reading all these books…” She pointed to a bookcase, and I noticed several titles from my own room’s shelves. “These are clues. For me, memories were buried there. The aliens don’t want us to remember, but we’re stronger than that. For you and I, nearly everything we do stems from our abduction experiences. You know what I mean, don’t you?”

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  “There’s so many of us. Not all of us realize it. Yet we have a drive to know what’s happened. What they’ve done to us.”

  On the record, the guitar solo started, and the singer howled in ecstasy. Avalyn sat up and tugged at sections of her dress to fan herself. “From what you’ve told me on the phone, I know you’re at a difficult position. I was there a few years ago. Things are starting to come back to you, and you’re curious. You want to know what’s going on.”

  “You’re exactly right,” I said. Her hand had fallen to the bed’s edge, motionless. I wanted to hold it. “Something happened to me that summer, that night I told you about. And maybe, later, on that Halloween night. I know it.”

  The music ended. In that empty groove of vinyl between the two songs by Avalyn’s favorite band, I heard sounds from outside: barn swallows twittering, cicadas humming. Somewhere, far away, a round of firecrackers popped and snapped.

  “There may be even more to it,” Avalyn told me. “Instances you don’t yet know about. Brian, it’s odd. People like you and me are in this for the duration of our lives. The first time they take us, we are tagged. They track us, and they come again and again. We’re part of their experiments.

  “Let me show you something,” she said. “Here’s one thing they left out of that foolish ‘World of Mystery.’” She lifted the frilly edge of her housedress, her white thigh cold and shocking against the dark bedspread. “Lean closer,” she said, her words coming in perfect synch with Kiss’s pounding bass.

  Avalyn thumbed a V-shaped scar on her thigh’s upper region. I felt a blush spread across my face as she traced it back and forth. “You can touch it,” she said, and the blush grew warmer. In the dim light, her eyes were the color of outdated pennies, the ones I used to collect in hopes of making a fortune. She reached out to take my hand, guiding it toward the scar. I touched it, then withdrew.

  She sighed, and I could smell the sardines on her breath. “When the aliens returned me to my grandparents’ car that first time, my leg was bleeding. We got home, and I remember my parents being furious, with the whole ‘what the hell happened to Avvie’s leg’ and so on. But none of us knew anything about it, not even me. The cut didn’t even hurt.

  “Through Ren’s hypnosis, I discovered that was where they’d put their tracking device. They’ve known where to find me, all these years, because they inserted something into my skin. It’s floating in here, somewhere, just as much a part of my blood as the food I eat and the water I drink. It’s filling them in on everything I do. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re up there watching us right now, taking notes.” She waited for my reaction, her eyebrow raised as if she knew what I’d say. Her finger returned to the scar. She caressed it as she might caress a pet salamander.

  “I think they tracked me too,” I said. “I might have told you this in my letter, but when my sister found me in the crawl space, my nose was bleeding. They must have put something there.”

  “Aha.” Avalyn nodded. “The old nose trick. Some have scars on the leg or the arm. But others, like you, get it right up the nose, where the scar can’t be seen.” She moved closer to my face, peering into my
nostrils, as though she might spy their miniature machinery. “Now we need to figure out how they’ve used you. It’s doubtful they would shove something into your brain without coming back to experiment further.”

  “I think they tried to take me again that same summer,” I said. “When my mother and sister and I saw the ship over our house. All my life I’ve connected that night with the crawl space night. Only now am I starting to understand why.”

  Avalyn lifted the needle from the record. She stared me right in the eye, letting me speak. It was the first time someone beyond my mother and sister had listened like this. I wanted to saturate the room with the complete story of my life.

  “I want to tell my mother what I’m slowly beginning to discover,” I said. “I need her to believe me.”

  “It’s not easy for those who aren’t like us. Remember that. But if you ever need someone, I’m here. And I know what it’s like.” Avalyn pushed herself from the bed and shuffled toward the door. I followed her lead. “As for me,” she said, “my father doesn’t believe a word I say. He refuses to support me. I pay for the trips to New York with my own cash, and Inman Grain isn’t exactly the world’s best-paying employer. Hypnosis sessions cost money, but I’m willing to pay, if only for the temporary peace of mind until they abduct me again.”

  Avalyn walked to the front room. She reached above the screen door, plucked a pair of clip-on sunglasses from a nail, and put the dark lenses over her own rhinestoned frames. She opened the door. The July heat tidal-waved into our bodies, and we stepped out. Avalyn’s father had dropped his Popsicle in the space of grass beside the front porch. It looked like a lemon-lime knife, melting in the sun. Somewhere in the distance, more fireworks exploded, echoes crackling across the dry fields.

  “This sun could kill me,” Avalyn said. “You now, with your towhead, undoubtedly tan at the drop of a hat. But feel this.” Once again, she took my hand and guided it toward her flesh. This time, she scrubbed my fingers over her shoulder, as if trying to erase an indelible smudge. “This skin is as soft, as cold, and as white as skin’s ever going to get.”