SKY WOMAN OF GROOM LAKE

by Charlie Peart

  “Zapped?” Tom made a grimace.

  “Yes, she has been known to put the whammy on people to protect herself. It wouldn’t hurt you, but it could put you out of it for a short while. So try to prevent problems for both her and you by yelling out your purpose a head of time, as you enter the house.”

  “Oh, Dad, what have you gotten into?” Tom rolled his eyes. He had suddenly begun to harbor doubts about this adventure he was becoming involved with.

  Ignoring his son’s concern, Nick continued to explain, as they walked far down the beach and found themselves totally alone, standing ankle deep in the surf as it lapped onto the sand. “Make sure Amie realizes that I couldn’t come because I am being followed, and it wouldn’t be safe for her if I did. Then tell her what you want her to do. Remember that she is a highly intelligent being from an advanced society. She will understand you perfectly well but, because you’re not ready for telepathic mind-speak, she will have a hard time talking to you.”

  “Telepathic mind-speak?”

  “Yes, when she talks with her little mouth and tongue she almost sounds like she is deaf. Speaking is not natural for her. They do not use their vocal cords in her world. It is considered something from their primitive past. Everything is communicated telepathically.

  “So you speak with her that way?”

  “Yes. Actually it took me a while to master the technique. So you probably won’t be able to catch onto it right away. Amie will try to talk with you, but it is not one of her strengths and her speaking will be limited.”

  “This is all so unreal, Dad! I mean, I can’t believe we are talking about this crazy stuff so casually.”

  “Well, it’s a real nightmare for me. I think I’ve lost my clearance over it. Hopefully, that’s all I’ll lose. With your help, we’ll send her back to her world and be done with it.”

  The two men discussed further every detail of the plan for Amie’s escape. When all of Tom’s questions seemed to finally be answered, Nick stooped and picked a particularly beautiful spiral shell off of the sand. He studied it intently. “So you’re all set to go tomorrow then?” he asked his son.

  “As far as I know. Doug is making all the arrangements. He called and said our boat trip is on for tomorrow morning. Weather’s expected to be fine, small waves. We’re leaving around 8am.”

  “He didn’t mention the word ‘Bahamas’ or anything like that did he?”

  “No, he knows someone might be listening. As far as anyone would know, we’re just going for a routine outing in his boat.”

  “Well, I sure wish I could go with you. But I don’t think it would be safe for me to try to chance it,” Nick stated ruefully.

  “I still don’t get what your E.T. lady will do exactly when we get there,” Tom said.

  “Neither do I, exactly. But that is one of the many mysteries these people represent. Amie didn’t really explain much to me. You will just have to wait and see.”

  Nick looked at his son, standing in his bathing trunks on the beach, looking rugged, healthy, and capable. Tom was taller than he, possessing Nick’s dark hair and olive skin, but with his mother’s fine features. He was a handsome young man. Looking at him now, so willing to help out, brought tears to Nick’s eyes and he reached over and gave Tom a big bear hug. Nick voiced his deep gratitude to his son and wished him the best, telling him that, although he had lost his religious faith over the years, he would still be praying for Tom’s success. The men then turned and walked back along the beach towards Laura, sitting peacefully, book in hand, enjoying the warm beach and ocean breeze.

  Later, on the boardwalk, Nick bought them ice cream cones at the little take-out restaurant. They sat down on one of the picnic table benches and licked their cones, laughing together over sundry chitchat, while they watched the surf roll in. “Here we are acting like all the normal people with everyday concerns,” Tom thought to himself. “But tomorrow we will be rescuing an alien from another planet.”

  The previous day had been rainy, but today the sky was bright blue and it was already warm and humid by mid-morning. Amie had slept well and, for some reason, felt more optimistic than she had in several days. She was staring out of her bedroom window at the neighbor’s backyard. Since catching sight of the pool man at work, she had been intrigued by the thought of the neighbor’s pool. She decided that she would be adventurous today and stroll over to the neighbor’s screened patio and take a peep in at the pool.

  Trying the patio enclosure door, Amie discovered that the pool man had not locked the door behind him upon leaving a few days back. Tentatively she entered the patio, noticing several lawn chairs where she would be able to recline in comfort in the sunshine. The pool was quite large, with steps at the shallow end and a shelf at the deeper end. The water was an enticing light blue color. This patio seemed to Amie a very appealing place.

  “It is quite lovely. What an entrancing place. No one is around; no one can see me back here. I might as well enjoy myself and relax,” Amie told herself.

  Plopping herself in one of the lounge chairs, Amie stretched out comfortably and meditated for a brief while. It was pleasant. The wind rustled through the trees, the birds chirped. Amie almost felt herself drifting off for a nap. The cawing of a large bird aroused her from her reverie.

  Amie stared at the inviting water. She began thinking of her ill-fated kayak ride from a few days before, and how her little boat had almost capsized into the murky, deep waters of the river. She did not know how to swim. Amie had never swum. But now her curiosity was aroused. She wondered if she could swim. Why not? She was very capable at doing most of the human things. Here was the pool, looking so aqua-blue and beckoning to her on this hot day. Perhaps she should find out if she was able to at least float in this water.

  Impulsively, she pulled off her wig and stripped off her t-shirt and shorts. Underneath she had only her vest and special alien underwear. These she kept on, as she waded into the shallow end of the pool. The water was somewhat cool, but she quickly adjusted to it and, by the time she was waste deep, she was finding that it felt quite pleasant to be in this pool.

  When she was neck deep in the water, she practiced the sort of dog-paddle motion she had seen swimmers do on TV. She did not sink. Encouraged she then practiced a side-stroke, kicking with her feet and stroking with her arms and finding herself moving effortlessly through the water, back and forth in the pool. “I am very good at this,” Amie thought to herself. Eventually she flipped over onto her back and tried a backstroke. With little body fat to offer buoyancy, she found this was more difficult at first but, if she kept her head back, it became easier, although she didn’t like the effect of the water seeping into her ear canals. She finished her self-taught swimming lesson by learning to float on her back, again taking some time to adjust to the water in her ears.

  Amie sat for a while, on the pool shelf, kicking and splashing her feet wildly in the water. Then she decided to see if she could hold her breath under water. She slipped down to the pool bottom and popped up again several times and even tried swimming underwater the length of the long pool.

  There was one more thing for Amie to try. She climbed out and stood at the edge of the deep end, and finished her swimming lessons with a couple of cannonball hops into the pool, sending water cascading in all directions. Amie considered swimming an act she had now easily mastered, and her positive vibrations were pinging as her confidence level had risen. The challenge had been met and turned out to be great fun. Her mouth turned up in a smile of satisfaction.

  Amie had spent about an hour in the pool before getting out and drip-drying herself off, lounging once again on the patio furniture. Then she dressed and strolled back to her house next door, shutting the screen door behind her, and vowing she would try this activity again the next day, if the weather were good. She could not know that, by this enjoyable act, she had now set in motion a new, substantial problem for herself and her would-be rescuers.

  Ed Coburn was having hi
s second cup of coffee that morning at his home in Pennsylvania, surfing the latest news on the Internet. Routinely, Ed brought up the live video feed from his security cameras around his vacation home.

  Two years back Ed had purchased a winter retreat, in preparation for his soon-to-be retirement, and he and his wife, Helen, tried to get down to the place a few times a year with the longer stay during the winter. It was a two-bedroom ranch on the Port Saint Lucie River near Idabelle Island, and Ed’s only concern was that vandals might mess with his “snowbird” home while he was away. To ease his mind, Ed had a security company install a rather expensive system around his home interior and the pool and lanai area out back.

  “Hey Helen, come here a second, quick!” Ed was looking at a live feed from his pool cam. “What the hell?” he shouted out. “Who or what is that in our pool?”

  Helen shuffled into the room in her housedress and slippers. “What is it, Ed? What’s so important? You sound like you’re ready to have a heart attack.”

  “You gotta see this. What is that? Is that a man or a woman?”

  “Is this our pool?” Immediately Helen shared her husband’s concern. “God, it looks like some kind of freak or something is using our pool. What happened to ADT?”

  “The pool area isn’t wired up. So the pool guy can go in and out,” Ed explained to her.

  “Well call the cops then, for God’s sake! They need to get over there right now.”

  Dialing 911, Ed explained his dilemma to his local police department, who then passed the call down to the St. Lucie County Sheriff’s Department. It came across as a potential prank call, with the victim describing an intruder resembling a “visitor from Mars”. The dispatcher added it to a busy deputy’s response calls.

  Helen and Ed continued to monitor the live feed, watching in astonishment, as the creature seemed to be enjoying their pool. “I can’t believe it. We’ve got to save this tape for those UFO TV shows. It looks just like those extraterrestrials you see in the movies,” Helen exclaimed.

  That gave Ed an idea. He re-dialed his local police department, this time offering to send them his video. They gave him their web address, assured him that the Florida sheriff’s office had been notified to investigate, and that someone would be over soon to look around.

  Upon receiving the second complaint call, the Florida dispatcher radioed the deputy once again. The dispatcher laughed to the co-worker seated beside her, “It’s soon Halloween.”

  The co-worker responded, “Probably some homeless person living around there, came to take a bath. Happens all the time, but they gotta check it out anyway. In the meantime, I’ll put out a description on our net plus a couple of still pictures from this man’s video, when we get it.”

  The Pennsylvania couple continued to watch their security camera feed. The being finished its swim and sat sunning on their patio, eventually donning a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and a long, brunette wig and sauntering out their patio door.

  “It wears clothes, and a wig,” Ed cried out in amazement.

  “I guess it was a female,” was Helen’s comment, as the space creature disappeared from view.

  “Without this video recording no one would ever believe us. I still can’t believe it,” said Ed, as he re-ran the tape.

  A few minutes later, Ed sent a copy of the video to the web address, along with a description of the suspect’s clothing. About forty minutes after Ed’s first panicked 911 call, a county sheriff’s car pulled into the driveway of his White City home.

  Upon driving up the lonely road, the deputy had scanned for anyone lurking nearby that might fit the description given to him. He was looking for a bald headed woman, almost childlike in size, with abnormally large eyes, small mouth, no ears, and no clothes. The woman apparently looked much like E.T. in the old movie, which all sounded rather ridiculous to him, but he was used to it. “Probably a kid fooling around,” he thought.

  Nonetheless, the cop treated the call seriously just like he had been trained to do. He didn’t see anyone in the front of the house, as he knocked on the door, and then cautiously he walked around back to the pool area. No one was present there either. However, he could see small puddles of water lying in an area around the pool and around the patio furniture. Obviously someone had recently been using the pool. He noted the camera in the corner and gave a brief wave. “Let the homeowner know we’re here,” the cop figured.

  All the windows were covered with hurricane shutters so it was impossible for anyone to come out the slider or windows facing the enclosure. After hanging around the property for several minutes, the deputy decided whoever had taken a swim had left the area. But to be thorough, he decided to knock on the next-door neighbor’s door to find out if anyone there had noticed or heard anything unusual.

  Amie was coming out of the shower when she heard the sound of a car motor, followed by a slamming door, outside her bedroom. She peeped cautiously through the blinds and was dismayed to see that a police car had pulled up in the driveway of the house next-door. As she continued watching, she noticed the cop walking back to the pool area where she had just been enjoying herself.

  Quickly Amie flew to the front and back doors of her house, making sure they were locked. Then she rushed to her bedroom closet and pulled the door shut, scrunching down in a corner, hugging her body and rocking back and forth in fear. “What had she done? Had someone seen her using the neighbor’s pool? Had someone been watching her through the trees or on the river?”

  When the sheriff rang the doorbell and then pounded on her front door, Amie began to panic. She began making a “th, th, th” sound in her mind, an organic response she couldn’t help, as all of her species did this when they felt terrified and needed to boost their energy for flight or defense. The deputy did not feel an effect from the mental vibration, as Amie was not wearing her special vest, he was standing far from her, and he did not stay very long at the door.

  The deputy soon gave up, went to his car, and radioed the station that he had finished his inspection and found no one. But Amie remained in a frightened huddle in her bedroom closet for several more hours.

  After the beach, Tom and Laura returned with Nick to his home. They were already prepared for the trip in the morning and, unless Doug called it off, Tom and Laura would meet him around 8am at his dock.

  It was cocktail hour in Margaritaville, and the three of them sat on the pool patio drinking beer. Dom came over again, when he saw Nick in the pool, and said hello. They exchanged pleasantries and Dom reiterated his offer of help if he needed anything. Nick ignored Laura’s snickering as Dom walked back. “He’s a good guy, just a little cautious, that’s all.”

  Nick suggested they go out to the Jensen Ale House for dinner that night. “It’s on me,” he offered.

  That evening, the NSA key word search computer algorithm picked up the sheriff’s department alert over the net concerning the references to “long brunette wig on a tiny, bald-headed woman”, as well as the rest of the description of the person in the photo and the location last seen. Because it closely matched the description of the alien Amie, the lead analyst sent off a priority message to the department responsible for investigating the alien, alerting them to the possible match. As soon as the analyst determined the source of the originating information, a complete report, with photographs, followed the first message.

  Within a few hours, a security team composed of highly cleared and trained personnel with vehicles was assembled and flown from Washington in a C-130 Hercules to West Palm International in the early morning hours on Monday.

  Chapter 24

  Nick, Tom and Laura got up before dawn Monday and Nick offered to prepare a special breakfast for them. Both politely declined his offer, afraid that the forthcoming voyage to the Bahamas might produce seasickness. Neither had experienced the ocean in a small boat and they were anxious about it. The day before, Tom bought Dramamine at a nearby CVS. Nick bought a big bag of red, seedless grapes which he told Tom
were for Amie to munch on during the boat ride.

  Nick hugged the couple, wishing them well, when they departed his house for the half-hour drive to Doug’s home in Port Saint Lucie. On the way out the door, he whispered in an emotionally laden voice, “I wish I was going with you guys. Please be careful.”

  Tom and Laura arrived at Doug’s home just before 8am. Doug and Terri greeted them at the door and both seemed to be revved up and ready for the trip. “He’s been cleaning the boat and getting it set to go all day yesterday,” Terri announced.

  “The weather is near perfect for the next four days, folks. It should be a piece of cake,” Doug exclaimed confidently, as they walked through the house towards the rear slider.

  Tom and Laura asked if they could use the Peyton’s bathroom before they left, and Terri, sensing Doug’s impatience, told Doug to go on down to the boat. She would take care of locking up the house.

  Doug departed and a few minutes later the rest of the crew appeared. His boat, “Running Free”, was a little dew laden on this hot and humid morning, and Doug was busy toweling off the windscreen and the vinyl seats for everyone. Terri helped the couple to board and then took their carry-on bag containing the medallion, Nick’s photograph, light jackets, swimsuits, a change of clothes, a few toiletries, including the Dramamine, and sunscreen, and stowed it in the cabin.

  Terri cast off the dock lines as Doug started “Running Free” and the team of four began the slow trek up the North Fork of the St. Lucie River. Doug explained that the journey upriver to Amie’s hideaway would take them about 30 minutes, mostly due to the speed limits imposed on various parts of the river. There were two areas they would cross that were manatee zones and the boat had to slow to a “no wake” speed. For his boat, that meant no more than 6 mph at times, as they navigated these particular zones.