The Summer It Came for Us

by Rix, Dan

“It was making a hissing noise, I don’t know . . . I mean, what if it wasn’t just Vincent who got abducted? What if it was all of us? We don’t remember those eight hours either.” She looked up, her gaze haunted. “Remi, what if it did something really bad to us? What if it changed us?”

  I never got the chance to react.

  Just then, the doors burst open and in strode six men in black suits.

  They breezed past the front desk and marched straight down the hallway toward the interrogation room, ignoring the two cops on duty.

  “Whoa, whoa, hey, HEY!” Schapiro barked, scrambling after them. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The man in front turned and flashed a badge, and I recognized him from the crash site. “Special Agent Dean Meyer, DIA. We’re here to take your witness.”

  “The hell you are—”

  Agent Meyer stopped and rapped his knuckles on the interrogation room door. “He’s in here.”

  He stepped aside, and the two guys in the middle lifted a battering ram.

  “Whoa, whoa, cool it!” Schapiro yelled.

  “You have ten seconds to unlock this door before we break it down,” said Agent Meyer.

  “You with the FBI, the CIA, what?”

  “Department of Defense. You have five seconds.”

  “Jesus . . .” Schapiro fumbled with his keys and unlocked the door, and four of the men charged in.

  They emerged, dragging the homeless man with them, who shouted, “What did I do? Get off me!”

  I could only stare, slack-jawed, as they shoved him out the door and into a waiting black Ford Excursion.

  “You can’t just take my witness,” Schapiro cried, following them out. “I got a missing person case here, you got no right!”

  Special Agent Meyer paused in the doorway. “Then you’ll have to take that up with the Pentagon.”

  By the time Malcolm finally dropped us all off that evening, it was past dinnertime, and the only trace of sunset was the bronze smear over the ridge.

  Yet all the windows in my house were dark.

  A note waited on the kitchen table.

  Cocktail party at the Murdochs’. Be back late. Leftover lasagna in the fridge.

  I felt my lip curl.

  It was like they were punishing me for the note I left this morning.

  Like, Oh, if she’s not going to be here when we wake up, then we won’t be here when she gets back. See how she likes that.

  It sucked, because I would have stayed out later if I’d known they wouldn’t be here, and the only reason I came home anyway was because on Sundays, we always had dinner together as a family.

  Lame.

  Well, if they weren’t here . . .

  I threw a hopeful look out the window, but Malcolm’s headlights were long gone.

  They’d made plans without me, anyway.

  Jace’s family was going out to the Gray Pine Brewery for dinner, and they’d invited Malcolm and Zoe and me along, but I’d already declined.

  For no stinking reason.

  It would be rude to ask them to pick me back up now.

  So while they were all laughing and chowing down on juicy bacon avocado burgers, I would be moping here in this big, empty, dark house, eating day-old lasagna. Alone.

  Ugh, I hated being alone in dark houses.

  I went room to room, flipping on every light in the house.

  I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself anyway. Not with Vincent still missing, and no one to even talk to about it who wouldn’t think we were crazy. Jace’s parents didn’t remember him, my parents didn’t remember him, no one remembered him.

  No one except a homeless man.

  Who they took.

  All at once, my prior disappointment came rushing back.

  He could have told us about the one moment none of us remembered—what, exactly, happened at the bottom of that ravine.

  Sure, maybe he was crazy, but he’d witnessed it.

  Instead, the Pentagon had taken him in for their own questioning, leaving us high and dry.

  Still, I did have to admit, the fact that the Pentagon was involved was kind of reassuring. Whatever this was, whatever was out there in those woods, they were taking it seriously.

  I only hoped that Vincent’s disappearance was part of their investigation.

  But I didn’t know who to ask, I didn’t have a number to call. I’d googled Special Agent Dean Myers of the DIA and gotten nothing.

  DIA, apparently, stood for Defense Intelligence Agency, an organization similar to the CIA but more focused on the military defense against hostile foreign powers.

  Hmm.

  So that left us with no leads, and not much we could do.

  It was surreal, the four of us going about life like nothing had ever happened.

  Vincent was gone. He’d vanished off the face of the earth, and yet no one even knew there was an emergency.

  No one except us and the Pentagon, at least.

  I was still determined to find him.

  In each room, the fluorescent lights flickered to life behind me, chasing away the shadows.

  My parents liked to save energy, so they’d turn off every single light except for a dim lamp in the room they were in. The way I saw it, it was a quality-of-life issue. Gloomy, shadowy hallways and dark bedrooms depressed me, and I would gladly pay a dollar’s worth of electricity to feel a little less depressed.

  They could take it out of my allowance if they wanted to.

  Finally, I settled in the living room with a plate of lasagna, pulled a blanket over myself, and put on a Netflix movie.

  Midway through the opening credits, a faint click reached my ears.

  I stiffened, but didn’t move.

  It was probably nothing. Just the house settling for the night. Wood cooling after a hot day.

  Inch by inch, my body relaxed—

  Click.

  There it was again.

  I scrambled for the remote and hit pause, then listened, barely breathing.

  Silence.

  Slowly, I inched my thumb toward the play button.

  Then I did hear something.

  The faintest creaking noise, barely audible above my faltering breath. Coming from the hallway.

  My pulse made heavy thumps in my temples.

  Just start the movie, Remi. It’s nothing.

  But the moment I thought of ignoring it, Malcolm’s voice echoed in my head.

  Then you will always fear the unknown.

  He was right.

  I had to check.

  Prove to myself it was nothing.

  Grateful I’d turned on all the lights, I shuffled off my blanket and tiptoed toward the bright hallway, then peeked around the corner.

  The hallway was empty.

  See, nothing.

  I was about to retreat back to the couch when I caught sight of Trevor’s door, and froze.

  It was open a crack, exposing a sliver of darkness inside.

  I hadn’t opened it.

  I licked my dry lips, debating whether to approach.

  This happened in my house sometimes.

  Doors would open on their own.

  It freaked me the hell out when I first moved here, but now I understood it.

  Our house was built on a slope, so the ground under it had been raised to provide a level foundation. But the dirt they brought in was a little squishier than the surrounding hillside. It acted like a sponge during the rainy season, soaking up water and expanding by a few inches. During the summer—a.k.a., now—it dried out and the whole north side of the house dropped a couple inches. Around June and July, the tilt got so bad that half the doors wouldn’t even latch, which meant they could spontaneously unclasp and creak open.

  This was the first time Trevor’s had done that since his death.

  I should at least close it.

  Taking a shaky breath, I crept up the hall to his door and reached for the knob.

  My hand prickled with static electricity. I jerk
ed it back, startled.

  Huh?

  I reached forward again, and again, static electricity crept up my forearm, raising the hairs one by one. I tilted my arm, skin crawling at the sensation.

  It was all around his door, coming from the door itself—no, coming from the crack . . .

  Coming from inside his bedroom.

  My breath stilled.

  I could swear that sliver of darkness was giving off a vibe.

  There’s nothing in his room, Remi.

  It was a dry evening, and I was wearing socks; I’d probably built up a charge dragging my feet up the carpeted hallway.

  But I had to check.

  I had to check, or I would never sleep tonight.

  I swallowed the thick lump in my throat, and reached for the knob. A spark shocked my finger, making me jump.

  Before I could chicken out, I flung open the door and slapped the wall switch.

  The ceiling bulb glowed to life, fizzled, then popped and went dark, plunging the room in semi-darkness.

  “Are you serious?” I muttered, stomping forward to click on his bedside lamp. In my haste, I knocked a Polaroid camera off his nightstand.

  But at least, in the lamp’s weak light, I could see the room was empty.

  Nothing in his closet, nothing under his bed. Last night, I’d shut and locked the windows and drawn the blinds, so nothing creepy peering in.

  At last, I let myself relax.

  I picked up Trevor’s Polaroid camera. My mom had set it by his bed, along with his other favorite childhood toys.

  When they were younger, he and Vincent used to take tons of pictures on this thing. I asked them why they didn’t just use their smartphones, and they said they liked having something to touch, something physical.

  A digital photo got lost on a hard drive.

  Besides, analog film captured an elusive dimension of the physical world that digital cameras couldn’t see—its “X-shift,” they used to call it.

  I smiled at the memory, my heart strangely heavy. Those dorks.

  I turned the camera over, leaving finger smears in the dust, then turned it right-side-up to put back on the nightstand. As I did, I accidentally hit the shutter-release button.

  The flash blinded me, and the camera clicked in my hand.

  Ugh. Klutz.

  With a little electric whir, the Polaroid photo emerged out the top.

  Still had batteries, apparently.

  I leaned under his desk to toss the photo in the trash, but hesitated.

  I could at least look at it.

  Besides, film was like two dollars apiece for these cameras. I remembered, because I’d once gotten him a bunch for his birthday.

  Curious, I held the photo under the light. My white silhouette was already forming against a bleached yellow background. I waved it back and forth to speed up the chemical reaction, but I didn’t really have the patience.

  I left Trevor’s room, pulled his door shut behind me, and went back to my movie in the living room, setting the still-developing photo on the coffee table.

  It was only when I reached for my lasagna plate after the credits, the tomato sauce now dried into rockhard chips that would require a chisel to remove, that I glanced at it again.

  By now it was fully developed.

  I leaned back on the couch, studied my surprised face, my startled brown eyes, my dark brown hair framing my pale cheeks, and tried to decide if I was pretty or not.

  Actually, the photo wasn’t terrible. And that was saying something, because I took terrible photos. The one good thing about Polaroids was they washed out any blemishes.

  I chewed my lip, wondering what Malcolm would think of this photo.

  Would that be weird to give it to him? Like, something to remember me by when he left for Annapolis?

  Um . . . what?

  Disgusted with myself, I gripped the top to rip it in half—and that was when I noticed it.

  In the photo.

  Behind me.

  In the corner of Trevor’s bedroom.

  I jolted closer, my heart suddenly clanging in my ears.

  There was something in the corner of Trevor’s bedroom. It had been in the photo with me this entire time.

  I took one look and felt my blood turn to ice.

  Chapter 14

  Special Agent Dean Myers smiled and slung his arm over the shoulder of his interrogation subject—the homeless guy they’d picked up from the Trinity County Sheriff’s Department, Peter Gibbs—who was moaning as he bit into the sandwich they’d given him.

  “Yeah, you like that?”

  “Mhmm,” he said. “You want a bite? It’s damn good . . . a little lean on the mayo, maybe . . . but I ain’t fussing. It’s the day when Uncle Sam doesn’t fuck up something or other . . . even a turkey club.” He let out a gravelly laugh and took another bite.

  “Mr. Gibbs,” said Meyer, pouring him a glass of whiskey, “let’s go over what you saw on Thursday night again.”

  “My mama made a mean turkey club,” he said.

  “Right, about Thursday—”

  “She’d toast up some good white bread, slather on the mayonnaise real thick, never one to skimp on mayo, my mama, and oh, she’d fry that bacon juuust right.” He took another ravenous bite.

  Meyer cracked his neck and forced a smile, trying not to lose his patience.

  They’d injected Gibbs with the ultra-short acting barbiturate sodium thiopental, the closest thing the agency had to a truth serum, which could make people a bit too loose-lipped.

  Still, he’d get the truth out of him.

  There was no need for harsh lights or shouting threats or “roughing” him up, not with an easy subject like Gibbs.

  “Now, about what you saw—”

  “Nothing like a turkey club to make you thirsty.” Gibbs reached for the glass of whiskey.

  Meyer scooted it out of his reach. “Mr. Gibbs, we need to know what you saw out there.”

  Gibbs picked bacon bits out of his teeth. “Don’t know what all the production is, I ain’t trying to hide nothing. The kid hops out, right?—this little black boy—and he starts running, screaming his head off. Me, I’m fighting my sleeping bag, trying to get a better look at what’s chasing him, and next time I stick my neck out he’s gone. Still hear him screaming, though, getting fainter and fainter.”

  Meyer nodded, his lips pursed. “And the other four teenagers in the car? What happened to them?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you talk to them?”

  “But right now, I’m talking to you, Gibbs.”

  “Won’t be long now before the Glipper comes for them.”

  “Mm-hmm . . .” Meyer consulted his notes.

  He had all their files.

  Malcolm Malone, Remi Weaver, Zoe Caldwell, and Jace Johnson.

  Nothing notable, except the Malcolm kid who had a nomination from Congressman Jared Huffman.

  He was off to Navy in a few weeks.

  Meyer was still working on tracking down info on this Vincent Ferguson, the fifth teenager in the car, who, oddly enough, records showed as being dead.

  “Mr. Gibbs, the thing you saw on Thursday night . . . this, uh, Glipper as you call it, what’s it look like?”

  “If you could see it, your brain would explode.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Because it’s four-dimensional.”

  “I see . . . and how’s that?”

  “Your mind will explode.” Gibbs made a demonstration with his fingers.

  “Er, right . . . is it alive?”

  Gibbs considered his answer. “If by alive, you mean a self-replicating, self-sustaining chemical system that undergoes Darwinian evolution, then no, it’s not alive in the least.”

  Jesus, this guy was a crackpot.

  It was a testament to just how far in over their heads the DIA was that they were relying on this man’s extremely unreliable eyewitness account.

  Right now, they had an unknown entity up in
a tree emitting a powerful magnetic field—possibly a life form, if he was to trust the scientists’ hysteria.

  So far, it had showed no aggression.

  But that could change in an instant, and if it did, Meyer needed to know exactly what they were up against.

  Damnit, they were going to have to send someone up into that tree soon.

  Meyer closed his folder. “Mr. Gibbs, the next thing we’re going to do is put you under hypnosis and see if we can retrieve any repressed memories from that night. Then we’ll get you that hotel room we promised.”

  “Why you guys so interested in me?” Gibbs grumbled. “I’ve been telling you, talk to the kids, they were the ones.”

  “Hmm.” Meyer merely nodded, his lips tight.

  The trouble was, this type of interrogation wasn’t strictly legal.

  Technically, he’d been given unlimited authority to deal with this threat by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but discretion was the name of the game here.

  No one listened to a homeless guy spouting off antigovernment conspiracy theories, but once you started bringing in teenagers you opened up a real can of worms. He could easily find himself court-martialed for political reasons.

  Besides, he’d already read over their statements.

  From the moment they crashed to waking up later, the kids didn’t remember a thing. A complete memory lapse.

  How they were retrieved from their vehicle, and what happened to them in between, was a complete mystery.

  Gibbs, who might have been in a position to watch the whole thing, had cut tail and run, not even catching a glimpse of this Glipper he spoke of.

  He clapped his hands. “Well, I think that wraps it up—”

  “Special Agent, sir,” said Gibbs, “you need to talk to those kids.”

  “Don’t worry, Gibbs, we’re pursuing every lead.”

  “Do your goddamn tests on those kids,” he growled. “Not on me, you’re wasting your time on me.”

  Meyer hesitated. “I’ve already got their statements. What else could they tell me?”

  “Listen to me, you fool,” he spat, now rabid-eyed, “It’s the kids . . . you gotta deal with the kids.”

  Meyer studied him with narrowed eyes. “What are you talking about? They’re just kids.”

  “No, you don’t understand,” he said, now rocking forward and backward. “You gotta deal with them . . . it’s them that’s causing this.”