“Okay, now you’re getting into new territory. Except—I should warn you that now I’m expecting to hear something about an alien abduction.”
Cheryl hung her head over the bowl of chopped rhubarb. Martin held his breath, but she laughed and said, “Says the Waker with bated breath.”
“Don’t blame Lee Danvers,” said Martin. “Blame the Brixton rumor mill.”
“Hold that thought,” said Cheryl. She dug an ice tray from the freezer and cracked it over a towel. She wrapped up the cubes and pulverized them with the rolling pin. Then she shook the shards into a cup and topped it off with cold water.
“Is that a warning not to gossip about you?” asked Martin.
“Damn straight.” Cheryl dumped Crisco, flour, and salt into another large bowl. “I was four when my mother came home,” she said, mashing the ingredients together with a fork. “So I never knew her any different, but she suffered from a serious mental illness. I mean, I wouldn’t have called it that then. I really didn’t figure it out until later. She died when I was sixteen. Lung cancer. The woman smoked like a chimney.”
“I’m sorry,” said Martin.
Cheryl tossed a handful of flour on a clear bit of counter and spread it out. She poured the ice water into the bowl and mixed the dough with her hands. “Stewart tried to protect me from the worst of it. She’d have long spells. I remember her crying all day, screaming in the night. She’d go wandering on the roads alone.”
“Did she get help?”
“She’d go on meds for a while, then she’d stop. She had periods of lucidity, where I got to know her for real. That’s when she taught me how to make pie. It’s actually my grandmother’s recipe. My grandmother and mom used to bake it up at Herbert’s Corner, and truckers would drive hours out of their way for it. My grandmother taught her, and my mom wanted to teach me, even though Stewart would tell her it was a waste of time. I never knew my grandmother. She died in the late seventies. Lung cancer, too. You’d think Mom would have learned her lesson.”
Cheryl stretched the dough into two rough circles with short, deft strokes of her rolling pin. She draped the first gracefully into a pie plate, trimmed the edges, poured in the red and green filling, and then blanketed everything with the other crust. In seconds, the pie was vented, crimped, and vanished into the oven. Like a magic show, Martin was sure he’d missed some sleight of hand.
“You know, everyone told me you have no idea how to cook.” Martin handed her glass of wine over, and poured her a little more. “You’ve been holding out.”
“It’s easier to let everyone think what they want to think,” said Cheryl.
“Why don’t you bake for the diner?”
“One, screw the diner. Two, Stewart says my pie’s nothing like Mom’s. Three, he won’t let me work anywhere near Herbert’s Corner. Thinks I’ll wind up like her.”
She sipped her wine and stared at a cupboard. Martin sipped his own and tried desperately to produce a less prickly topic of conversation.
“Fine,” she said. “Yes, my mother claimed she was abducted by aliens. She had this elaborate story, all about how they poked and probed her. The tale got more vivid and ridiculous every time she told it. As a kid, it didn’t even occur to me that she was making it all up. Now, do I believe she was abducted? Absolutely not. But do I believe her? I do. I think she sincerely believed she’d gone through all those things.”
“I’m sorry,” said Martin.
“Now, fair’s fair. I want your most sordid family secret,” said Cheryl.
“What’s to tell? We’re a pretty normal bunch,” said Martin.
“Nope,” said Cheryl. “Start spilling.”
“Okay…before I was born, my dad totaled a brand-new car. So he went back to the dealership and bought another one. My mom still doesn’t know.”
“You can do better,” Cheryl said. “This pie’s going to be in the oven for forty-five minutes.”
By the time the timer beeped, Cheryl knew exactly why Martin’s family had been thrown out of SeaWorld. And she was now the only other person in the world who knew that it was Martin’s Welsh terrier who had torn up and fouled the First Lutheran nativity scene during that fateful December walk when he was eleven. Martin finished his last story as she returned to the oven.
“…what could I do? I waited by the back door with a shotgun. Dad took the front door. I don’t know what he was expecting. As if civilization would melt down instantly. Like, three…two…one…Happy Looting Zombies! My mom shouted Dick Clark’s countdown up from the den. Worst New Year’s Eve party ever.”
Cheryl brought a sweet scent from the kitchen as she set the pie on a hot pad on the table. Steam vented from the slits in the golden-brown crust.
“State fair. Blue ribbon. Right now,” said Martin.
“It’s got to cool a minute,” said Cheryl.
“Don’t you usually do that on a windowsill or something?” asked Martin.
“Only if you like bugs.”
Martin couldn’t believe Cheryl had created this pie for him, from scratch, with her bare hands. She hadn’t burned it, or burned anything down. Instead, she’d brought warmth and a sense of contentment to this little home. Martin felt as if she had set out the Brixton Inn breakfast for him alone. And yet, in his wonder at the moment, Martin felt like he deserved to be with her. There was no ego in it. He knew that he was the one who understood her, who understood that she didn’t want worship or pity, who understood that she didn’t need to be taken away from anything.
Martin prided himself for figuring all this out as a scoop of vanilla ice cream melted white into the thin syrup of the rhubarb filling. The first bite was hot and sour, but lingered as sweet. “I didn’t expect it to be so tart, but wow—just, wow,” he said. The tender crust gave him something to sink his teeth into. The rhubarb itself almost dissolved on his tongue.
“It’s not bad for such a quick job,” said Cheryl.
“If this isn’t as good as your mom’s pie, I don’t know if I’d even want to try hers,” said Martin. “It might ruin every other dessert for me forever.”
“Give me a break,” said Cheryl.
“Seriously. Your mom could have been the next Mrs. Fields.”
“Mrs. Fields bakes cookies,” Cheryl said.
“Your mom could have had a rhubarb pie empire.”
Cheryl wrinkled her nose. “Have you ever eaten a frozen pie?”
“Sure. That’s what we always had.”
“Chewing-gum crust. Waxy gelatin goo for filling. They’re all chemicals. Oh, and good luck finding a frozen rhubarb pie.”
“I like ’em okay.”
Cheryl shook her head. “Poor thing. Are you staying in town tonight?”
“No, I need to get back to Billings,” he said. He’d deliberately not booked a room, ninety-nine percent in case of an evening so disastrous that he could never eat breakfast at the Brixton Inn again, and one percent in case the evening went extremely well. Well, maybe ninety/ten. But by luck or instinct, he’d made exactly the right decision. Not needy, not expectant. Mature. Employed. “I have to work Bozeman tomorrow.”
Martin thanked her as she took away the empty plates. Her home felt different now. Cozy, not cramped, with a bit of the mystique—if one could use that word in a single-wide—peeled back.
At the door, she presented him with the leftover pie, foil-topped and on a dishtowel.
“I insist,” said Cheryl. “I don’t need to eat the whole thing. And if Stewart finds it, he will literally dump it in the trash. Take it. Bring the plate back next time you’re in town. Careful though, it’s still hot.”
“Thanks. For dinner, for this. Everything.”
“Thanks for bringing the wine. That was a treat. And, of course, the roadside assistance.”
“No problem,” said Martin.
On the first step down the porch, he turned and said, “I feel like I’ve got a second chance here, so I’m going to take it. I’d really like the chance to
get to know you better. I know you’ve got a lot going on, and I do, too. But who knows? This is Brixton, after all. Weirder things have happened.”
She sighed, but it sounded friendly, harmless. He steeled himself to be rejected again, and resolved to be okay with that.
“Hold on,” she said, and ducked inside. Martin shifted the pie on his scorched palms. She returned and set a little scrap of paper on top of the foil.
“Call me,” she said. “We’ll see.”
“Thanks. I will,” said Martin, maneuvering a thumb over the paper to keep it from blowing away. He crunched down the gravel drive, surprised with every footfall that his feet were touching the ground.
~ * * * ~
A few minutes later, as Martin filled a 54-ounce cup with Diet Mountain Dew out of the fountain at the Herbert’s Corner store, Lorie appeared, her eyebrows leaping off her forehead.
“Stewart at bingo. You two alone for almost two hours,” she said.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” said Martin. “I was a perfect gentleman, and that’s all I’m going to say.”
“Uh-huh,” she replied.
“Don’t you have some waitressing to do?” he asked, jamming a big straw through the lid. “Sorry, Lorie, but there may be some things you will never know.”
“You go on believing that,” she called after him as he headed to the register. He turned, threw his arms wide in triumph, and they both laughed.
Chapter 6
“…and paralyzed. I was conscious. I felt several presences in the room with me. I wanted to scream, to call for my husband, but I couldn’t make a sound.”
“That must have been terrifying.”
“At first, but then I not so much heard as felt a voice in my head, telling me that everything was going to be all right.”
“Can you describe the voice?”
“I remember it being masculine, but also soothing, almost motherly. I’m not sure that it spoke English, but I understood everything.”
“Now, you didn’t stay in the room.”
“All that first part, the lights, the waking, and the helplessness, was as if I was being prepared to be taken somewhere else. And then came a very bright light. I couldn’t close my eyes, and I remember the voice urging me to ignore the pain. It would be over very soon.”
“Your husband didn’t experience anything?”
“Nothing. They must have done something to keep him asleep, or he’s the heaviest sleeper in the world, Lee.”
“After the bright light, where were you? What did you see?”
“Someplace very cold, and hard. I felt naked, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t see my body. There were devices above me, like you might see at a dentist’s office, but none of them made any sense.”
“What about the presences? Did you still feel them?”
“I could. But more concrete, like they were in the room with me, not like spirit presences anymore. I don’t know how long I laid there until finally they looked down over me. They had gray skin. No hair. And their eyes were large, silvery things.”
“On the video of your session under hypnosis, it seemed like the fear returned at this moment.”
“It did. The voice told me that they had to do some tests, and that they were necessary. And the devices on the ceiling began to move toward me.”
“Could you communicate? Did the presence listen to your thoughts or sense your fear?”
“If it heard me, it did nothing to help me. I felt a pressure on the sides of my head, and I heard a very high-pitched sound, like a dentist’s drill. And I felt them doing things to various parts of my body.”
“Was any of it painful?”
“I sensed that it should have been, but I didn’t feel any actual pain. Still, I begged them to stop in my thoughts.”
“How long did this go on?”
“It’s impossible to say. Minutes? Hours? I remember feeling relief when the machines lifted away. And then I woke up in my own bed.”
“Now, you didn’t realize right away what had happened.”
“I woke up exhausted, but at first I had no memory of the event. Then I began to have nightmares, these terrible images in my head. These recurring feelings were so powerful that I was sure that something had happened to me.”
“And that’s when you discovered regressive-hypnosis therapy and Dr. Yeardley?”
“I’d never heard about it before, but I did some research online and called her. After only a few sessions, she helped me remember clearly what happened that night, and also to recall that I’d been taken many times, as young as eight years old.”
“Incredible. Incredible. When we come back we’ll hear more of Carrie’s story. And joining us later will be Dr. Marsha Yeardley, a psychotherapist and noted expert on alien abduction. And we’ll ask Carrie the question, ‘Why her?’ Stay tuned, Waker Nation. This is Lee Danvers. And you’re Beyond Insomnia.”
~ * * * ~
“Who’s this idiot?” Martin asked himself. A car was approaching in his lane, passing a semi, and rapidly running out of space on this two-lane road. Martin backed off the cruise control, but it wasn’t going to be enough. He hit the brakes. Too close for comfort, the car swerved back into its lane. A familiar Lincoln Town Car flashed by.
“Jeffrey,” Martin cursed. The semi roared by, clearly annoyed, if Martin cared to anthropomorphize.
Martin’s phone warbled. He let it ring as he got the cruise control back up to speed. “Nice driving, Candy Man,” he said when he finally answered.
“Don’t give me that. I moved over in plenty of time,” said Jeffrey. Martin pictured him, reclined, a single wrist on the steering wheel, his irritating Bluetooth glowing in his ear.
“What do you want?” Martin asked.
“Long time no see. How’s the job hunt going?”
“Poorly,” said Martin.
“Well’s dry, man. No one’s hiring. And no one’s quitting. Someone’s going to have to die for you to get an opening.”
“Keep driving like that and I can have your job,” said Martin.
“Funny. And speaking of funny, I heard something else hilarious,” said Jeffrey.
“What’s that?” Martin asked, bracing himself.
“Heard you got lucky in Brixton a couple weeks ago.”
“I did not ‘get lucky.’ And please don’t be spreading that around.”
“So what did happen?” asked Jeffrey.
“Her car broke down. I stopped to help. She had me over to dinner to thank me.”
“And that’s all? Everyone in Brixton’s got their own theory of the evening’s events,” said Jeffrey.
“That’s because they don’t have anything better to do,” said Martin.
“Everyone’s talking about the two hours you spent at her place without her stepfather around. Inquiring minds want to know,” said Jeffrey.
“We had dessert,” said Martin. “And we talked.”
“Uh-huh. What did you have for dessert?”
“She baked a rhubarb pie,” said Martin.
“She did what?”
“She baked a pie,” said Martin. “Everyone told me she’s a lousy cook, but it was really good.”
“I’m sure it was,” said Jeffrey. “You’re sticking with this rhubarb pie alibi?”
“I’m hanging up now,” said Martin. And he did.
~ * * * ~
“Now, Lee, we hear a lot about the physical evidence: the interlaced but undamaged stalks, the lack of tracks leading in and out of the sites, the magnetic resonance, as well as the frequent reports of aerial lights, but for me, the most compelling part is the obvious communication inherent in all crop circles. Each holds such precision, such insistence, such a lack of subtlety, that it’s impossible that they have no purpose.”
“Are there commonalities to suggest that all these occurrences are linked?”
“Many commonalities. I’ve studied hundreds of circles in dozens of countries. It appears that the physical process that cre
ates them is similar everywhere. And we see many recurring graphic motifs, if not nearly identical designs.”
“In your books and on your website, you come down firmly on the side of what you term ‘purposeful instigation,’ that they are made by an intelligence. How do you respond to those who suggest that crop circles have natural origins? Particularly Diderot’s equations that suggest localized crystallization of water vapor?”
“Diderot’s fractal weather theory is, in my opinion, deeply flawed. He based his theory off observation of early morning frost crystals at very few sites. It doesn’t hold up. I debated him about this issue a few months ago in Brisbane.”
“If there’s a video of that debate, we’ll get a link up on wakernation.com. Let’s take a call. Sarasota Springs, you’re Beyond Insomnia.”
“Oh, hi. Lee? This is Vern from Sarasota Springs.”
“Welcome, Vern. What’s your question for Tom Burlingame?”
“Yeah. These crop circles freak me out, man. I agree with you totally. I mean, they’re so clearly, I mean, aliens are totally trying to tell us something. Have you ever talked to anyone at the NSA where they got all them really smart code-breakers? Seems like they should stop listening to all our phone calls and figure out these messages instead. Sure be a better use of my tax dollars.”
“Thank you, Vern. Tom, what about using technology to decipher the circles?”
“It’s clearly the goal, but we’re still a few years away. I’ve been writing program algorithms to analyze the data. Many of these patterns are so complex that it’s going to take significant supercomputer time to sort it all out.”
“Best guess, Tom: Who is sending these messages, and what are they saying?”
“Who? Good question. But we can make a few observations. They are mathematically oriented, and communicative, but also very shy. The meaning of individual circles may be elusive, but the overall message is, I think, one of peace. The designs are so beautiful. The messengers certainly understand that we appreciate beauty. If the messages were warnings or threats, I think we could discern that from the context. Someone out there is not only saying hello, but telling us that we belong with a larger community.”
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