The Dark Above

by Jeremy Finley

  Still, he double checked out the address on the printed-out email and compared it once again to the map. Hell, it was the same.

  The crowd confirmed he was at the right location, which stirred a sense of relief and dread. It had been a long day, and if this became the lead story at six o’clock, he’d have to stay out here until it was over, which meant driving all the way back to the station, droping off his gear, handing over his P2 cards with all this video, then another hour and a half commute home. The McDonald’s bag from lunch winked at him. See ya at dinner.

  He rolled down the window as two people walked past, signs under their arms. “Hey, is she here yet?”

  “Supposed to be any minute,” a woman responded.

  He pulled over the lumbering van. No need to raise the mast yet, the news release said this was where they were supposed to meet and then walk to the location. It better not be far. The LiveU, that enabled anyone to go live from any location, was as heavy as the old three-quarter-inch gear.

  Strapping it on his back and grabbing his camera and tripod, he saw people were already holding up their signs, like runners stretching out before a race. He grabbed a few establishing shots and then some tighter close-ups on the bold writing: “WE WANT THE TRUTH.” “THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE.” “THE WORLD DESERVES THE TRUTH.” “WHERE ARE OUR MISSING?”

  He made sure his lavalier mic was ready to go because he wanted to capture the natural sound when those freaks started chanting. Hell, they’d probably let him pin the mic to their shirts to get good, close sound. Whichever reporter was rushed down here would appreciate it.

  Better get close ups of the T-shirts, too. He saw more than one that were homemade, with the picture of that redhead dude who everybody thought got abducted by aliens when he was a kid. “BEAM ME UP, WILLIAM,” one shirt read. “TAKE ME TO YOUR WILLIAM,” read another.

  He saw the crowd begin to crane their necks as a car with tinted windows pulled up. One of the people, who he decided was clearly an organizer, based on her shaved head and her Stranger Things T-shirt, rushed over and talked to the driver.

  “OK!” the woman shouted out after a moment. “Follow the car to the meeting space!”

  It was only when the crowd began to walk that the photographer realized just how large it was, given that he’d been unaware of all the people who were now coming from a side street.

  Were there two hundred … no, three hundred people? Jesus.

  None of it will matter unless she shows.

  He kept pace, getting tight shots of the feet, medium shots of the walk. No one was chanting, so the mic stayed in his gear bag.

  The van stopped, and the crowd began to gather around it. He pushed to the front, seeing Jason from Channel 11 and Sarah from the Fox affiliate jockeying to do the same. Only photogs had been sent, no reporters, given that no one knew if this was just going to be a loony parade.

  As the crowd settled in, the passenger door opened, and a Birkenstock-clad foot extended. He could hear a few sighs of disappointment as an old woman with a head full of crazy hair stepped out, wearing a quilted vest over a denim shirt. She reached for the door to the back seat and pulled it open.

  The crowd let loose.

  “Shit,” he whispered as people stepped into his frame. He struggled to turn on the LiveU. He moved forward, zooming in as he scrambled to hold the phone up to his ear.

  “She’s here,” he blurted out to the assignment editor who answered. “I’m streaming. Get one of the reporters down here pronto.”

  The cheers and applause intensified as Lynn Roseworth made her way through the crowd. Jason had already begun to assemble a mic stand, with Sarah hurrying to attach her mic flag to it. He’d have to just stick the lav on it, which would make his news director pissed that his station wouldn’t have representation in the shot, but there wasn’t time.

  The streaming technology wasn’t always perfect, but the signal would be good enough to give the other stations that chose to ignore the cryptic news conference email a true case of the craps. Ever since the old broad had been found at that house in Maryland and her daughter claimed she was being held against her will by the government, Lynn Roseworth had been on the radar of every media outlet in the world.

  The email had hinted at her appearance for the protest in the warehouse district in DC. His assignment editor had just rolled her eyes and told him to check it out.

  And there she was. Freakin’ Lynn Roseworth.

  He hustled to get right up in front, and in the process accidentally bumped the shoulder of the other old woman who had stepped out of the car.

  “Watch it, jerk off,” she said.

  “Roxy,” he heard Lynn quietly chastise.

  “That lens nearly took me out!” the woman said. “We want you here, but don’t crawl up my ass.”

  Liking her already, he whispered an apology. To his delight, the woman moved up to the mics.

  “OK, listen up. Thanks, everybody, for coming. Lynn will be making a very brief statement—oh, looks like another friend in the media, make that two now, are coming on up, so while they’re getting ready to join us, I want you all to share this everywhere. Stream this on your phone. Put it on Snapchat or whatever crap you prefer. Hurry up with those cameras, guys. Alright, alright, don’t run people over. Just put that mic with the others. OK, you rolling? Alright, ladies and gentlemen, may I present Lynn Roseworth.”

  The crowd erupted again in cheers, and the photographer panned over. What did the email say again? What are they protesting, even? Something about government cover-ups or some other insanity.

  He turned away as Lynn stepped up to the mic. He clicked his camera onto his tripod, thankful that he’d hauled it along. These people were old, who knows how long it would take.

  When he focused on Lynn, he was surprised at the sharpness in her eyes, the grace of her approach.

  “Thank you all for coming on such short notice. I am not comfortable doing this, but I have no choice. Most of you know—from your interest in the unexplained disappearances of so many people around the world, to the many of you who I have corresponded with personally—that I have not made any public statements since the discovery of my grandson fifteen years ago.”

  She took a deep breath. “But that does not mean I have stopped in my pursuit of the truth. Many of you know this, as I recognize some faces.”

  “We love you Lynn!” one woman cried out.

  “And what I said, all those years ago, about there being a vast government conspiracy, is as true today as it was then. And it is now time for the people of the world to know that truth.”

  Lynn gestured behind her, pointing her finger down an alley to a darkened warehouse, barely visible. “It’s difficult to see, but in that building, just down that alley, is an agency that goes by the name of the SSA—the Sky Surveillance Agency. For decades, they have used taxpayer dollars to study the disappearance of people all over the world. People abducted by extraterrestrials.”

  He could hear the collective gasp by the people huddled around him.

  She then held up what looked like some sort of government document. “My late husband, Senator Tom Roseworth, joined me in my research later in life, and he was able to find proof of this organization buried deep in the appropriations for the FBI. He was also able to obtain internal emails referencing the rounding up of missing people who had been returned to earth.”

  “Jesus Christ,” a man in the crowd muttered.

  “These documents are now listed in an article published at this very moment on the website of my daughter, the journalist Stella Roseworth. Anyone, across the world, can see what we’ve found. Including how much the government has known and what it hasn’t told us.”

  A few people in the crowd began to boo. “I called you here today,” Lynn said, her voice elevating, “to protest. To let the government know that we demand these truths. That we demand to know more about what they’ve uncovered. If you will, go to them right now. Let them hear you. That
we want the truth. We demand the truth.”

  The old lady beside her began to yell out the chant, pointing down the alley. “Let them hear you! We want the truth! We demand the truth!”

  The crowd picked it up immediately, raising their signs as they began to pour down the alley towards the warehouse. The photographer unlocked his camera from the tripod, feeling the crowd almost push him over. Already, Lynn Roseworth and the other lady had slipped into the mayhem.

  * * *

  As the crowd spilled down the alley, a government car slowly made its way down a parallel street. Inside, the silver-haired representative from the great state of Texas rolled down his window and frowned.

  “What this hell is going on here?” Congressman Flip Smith asked. “Maybe this is a bad time to be doing this.”

  “It’s actually the perfect time. I want to know more about this agency before your government erases its existence,” said the man in the seat next to him.

  “Nothing is getting erased until I get some answers. I’m the chair of the Committee on Homeland Security, for Christ sake. What are those people yelling?”

  “Well, according to the news alerts now completely taking over my phone, it’s about just-now-released documents that this agency had knowledge of the abductions of people. What does it say, Flip, that I got a tip about this but you didn’t know?”

  “Apparently I’m so clueless I could fall up a tree. And I don’t like it. My people in Austin expect me to be in the know, not spanked cross-eyed. Which is why I so appreciated your call about this. Like I said before: Any time you call, about anything, I’m yours. Which is why I arranged for this. They’re expecting me, but they’re not going to like a civilian showing up too. They can’t deny my security clearance, though, and, like I said, you’re coming with me.”

  His companion just nodded.

  “Well, crap on a stick.” Flip craned his neck. “Those damn people are all over the front now.”

  “We can get you in, Congressman,” said the security detail from the front seat.

  “Well get out there, boys. Make us some room.”

  As soon as the Lincoln parked, the driver and the guard from the front seat hustled around to open the door for the congressman and his companion. Sandwiching the two between them, the men, both over six feet tall and weighing a combined five hundred pounds, parted the crowd with little effort. The attention of the growing masses was too fixated on chanting and streaming from their cell phones to pay much attention to who was trying to pass through them.

  The only entrance was a single metal door, and a pull on the handle proved it to be locked tight.

  Flip was already on his phone. “Yes, this is Congressman Smith, and I have an appointment right now. Yes, now. Yes, I am aware this might be a bad time for you, given the circus outside your building. But unless you want me to turn around and start talking to the press, which I can wave over at any moment, I’d open up the damned door.”

  After a few moments, the loud sound of multiple locks came from within the door, and the congressman’s guard yanked the handle. The door swung open.

  “Go over to that parking garage and wait for me, boys!” Flip said, making sure his companion slipped in before the last member of his detail shut the door. “It’s a good thing you wore that hat and those sunglasses; that crowd might recognize you.”

  “I’m usually not discreet. But I thought it was a good idea today.”

  The congressman walked over to the harried woman sitting behind a pane of glass, the phones around her ringing nonstop. “I assume you’re the one I was on the phone with just now?”

  “Sir, I’m sorry, but this is just a bad time. Can we reschedule—?”

  “This security clearance says no.” He pulled out his badge from inside his sports coat.

  The woman frantically looked down at her phone, which was lighting up with more calls coming in. She raised her hand to her upper chest, which was turning a bright shade of red.

  Flip pressed his badge against the glass between them. “If you can’t read this, I’ll bet I could call the head of Homeland Security down here to see if he can—”

  “Just one second. I’ll buzz you in, but you have to stay right by the door until I can get you an escort. And I don’t have the other gentleman on the list.”

  “He’s with me,” Flip said. “Open the damn door.”

  As she buzzed them through, she knocked on the glass. “Wait for the escort! And I need his name for our records!”

  The congressman was already through the door. His companion turned to her, flashing a smile. She stared back at him, tilting her head a bit, struggling to recall how she knew him.

  Quincy Martin knew the look well, and stepped through before she could put a name with the face.

  * * *

  Roxy swatted at the reporters who had been shouting questions at Lynn as they made their way to the car.

  “Thanks for coming, friends! Keeping speaking truth to power! But I told you Lynn wasn’t taking any questions!” Roxy called out, jabbing at one reporter. “Nice spray tan, by the way!”

  “There she is,” Lynn said, hurrying to the car. She opened the door for Roxy to climb in and followed, while camera lenses pressed up against the glass.

  “Drive, Stella!” Roxy yelled.

  But the car was already lurching forward, horn blaring to part the crowd.

  “Mom, look,” Stella said, handing a laptop back to Lynn.

  “Stella, focus on the road. Don’t hit anybody,” Lynn warned. “I know a lot of these people.”

  “I’m afraid the site might crash! It’s already had so many hits!” Stella said. “But for now, it’s still on. Mom, you did it. After all this time, you did it. Dad would be so proud. So will Anne. Once she sees this, she’ll understand why we couldn’t text or call her back.”

  “Anne would want us to find William, that’s all Anne would want,” Lynn said. “Did you see him, Stella? Did it work?”

  Stella held up her binoculars. “Like clockwork. Just like you planned, Mom. When the protest reached the front of the building, he had Congressman Smith drive him up. I watched them go in.”

  “I still just can’t believe it. That nut job Quincy Martin really does know William,” Roxy said.

  “I was really afraid that I misunderstood William. But he kept repeating his name. That he might be able to help. Thank God you were able to track him down, Stella.”

  “It wasn’t easy. Just like it isn’t easy driving through this crowd. Wow, Mom, you can really bring them in.”

  Lynn looked out the window. “I knew they would come.”

  “Well, I guess we all know now what you’ve been doing all this time,” Roxy said, not disguising her aggravation.

  “Obviously, I couldn’t let you or anyone know what Tom discovered about the SSA. If they knew what we found, they would have come for anyone who knew. But I promised myself that all those families that I found … all those people that I communicated with who had missing loved ones … that I’d tell them. I’d tell them everything.”

  “Quite the bomb you’ve dropped, sis.” Roxy patted her leg. “Now that we put the match to this bale of hay, what do we do to actually get him out?”

  Lynn looked back to the warehouse. “I don’t know. William hasn’t reached out to me again, and I can’t figure out how he did it.”

  “Don’t know why I’m having trouble believing that William could speak to you with his mind, given the events in my so-called golden years,” Roxy said.

  “Tell me again what Quincy said, Stella,” Lynn asked.

  “That he has a powerful congressman in his pocket that could get him in, and they would get William out. And now that I’ve seen Flip Smith here, he wasn’t exaggerating. There’s no one more connected. Mom, you remember that Dad and Flip were buddies, even if they were on other ends of the political spectrum. Quincy hopes that when Flip sees that the grandson of a US senator is being held against his will, he’ll use ever
y resource to get him out. And that Quincy intends to broadcast it all on social media from his phone if he has to.”

  Stella laid on the horn. “Move, people! OK, once we clear this, we’ve got to haul butt. Hang on ladies.”

  When the crowd thinned, Stella hustled down the alley. “Mom, get out my phone. I think we take a left here and that will get us to one of the avenues.”

  “Yes, take that left.”

  “The freeway shouldn’t be too far—”

  Stella slammed on the brakes at the sight of the black cars blocking the street and the men in suits waiting outside. She changed gears to back up, only to see a large black SUV pull up directly behind them.

  * * *

  Kate was horrified at the condition of the man. She’d only ever seen him in photographs and video of him being released from jail when the kidnapping and murder charges had been dropped. He was old fifteen years ago, but appeared in good health.

  She guessed Dr. Steven Richards was in his late eighties, and looked every bit of it. His breathing appeared labored, his clothes were disheveled, and he was in bad need of a shower.

  “My God.” She turned to Agent Hallow.

  “I told you, he won’t talk or cooperate. Hasn’t since they seized him in New Orleans. Won’t eat or do anything.”

  “Dr. Richards,” Kate said, walking across the room to where he sat slumped in a chair. “Dr. Richards, look at me. My name is Kate Roseworth. I’m Lynn’s middle daughter.”

  He raised his head, his eyes bloodshot. “Well, of course you are. You look just like her. You even have her hair.”

  Kate had never discussed the affair her mother had with the man in front of her. Or that he likely was the father of her sister Anne, making him the biological grandfather to her nephews, including William. There was no denying the resemblance.

  “Sir, I have a lot of questions for you about my nephew. But I’m very worried about your condition.”

  “That’s because I’m dying, ma’am.”