by Allie Marell
“I will hear them. My audible implants will pick up any sound outside the house.”
Andra shakes her head. As if she’s stopped questioning his strange pronouncements. And what he said? Not strictly true right now. Fatigue added to damage from the crash will have impaired hearing and sight, rendering him merely human, like her.
“Get some sleep. I’ll show you to your room.”
Though smaller than her own, the bed is twice the width of his barracks bunk and easily big enough for a man of his stature. Neat and tidy, he translates the colours, the furniture and fittings in his head.
A blue and white striped quilt-like covering, a storage chest with drawers, much like the old one he saw in the barn. A rug beside the bed, the flooring of stripped wood. The room welcomes him inside. Sitting on the edge of the bed, it’s all he can do to pull off his boots and kick them aside.
Then he stretches out on the bed and allows himself the bliss of oblivion and healing sleep.
Chapter 8
Andra poured the last dregs of the wine into her glass, rinsed out the bottle and placed it carefully in the recycling bin. Losing herself in the mundane details of her usually uneventful life.
This time last month she was a crime writer on the rise, an ex-university lecturer living a quiet life on the remote Lancashire moors. Today, with the hospital visits and her unexpected visitor, her life was starting to resemble one of her plots. Though her heroine never had to deal with confused soldiers who thought they came from outer space.
She wandered to the sitting room, finding Jess at the foot of the stairs.
“Go on,” she said. “You know you want to. But don’t wake him up. He’s had a hard day.”
The dog gave her hand a grateful lick before climbing stiffly up the stairs and turning right for the spare room. She went on into the sitting room, determined to write. She couldn’t afford to let this modest literary success slide.
It was no good. The laptop awoke on the YouTube page with the grieving parents pleading for the return of their missing son. Was there a resemblance to the man sleeping in her spare room? Impossible to tell from the old, grainy footage.
How could it be him? Whatever he thought, he was definitely not a pensioner. But she understood his need to grasp at straws, to fit events to his own life in order to make sense of it all.
Working through the open tabs, her heart clenched in sympathy for the poor man who’d lost his family and needed to find out why. Where were they now? Studying the black and white photo of the missing William Chapman, a shiver raced over her skin. Like someone walked over her grave. Or his. Too early in time to be a victim of the infamous Moors Murderers, something happened to this poor lad. She found no evidence of his safe return.
His parents never saw him again. The Christmas presents they kept for him were never opened.
How sad was that?
The clock on the mantelpiece chimed the hour. Eight o’clock and she’d yet to write that promised chapter. Crossing the room to the window, she gazed out into the quiet, dark night, remembering why she bought this place. Peace and space to work. To breathe and sort out her life. She’d always felt safe here and now with a resentful glower she was searching the front garden, peering into the shadows beyond for intruders flitting along the wall.
“Go away,” she murmured, and rattled the curtains closed on their metal rail. Steeling herself, she returned to the laptop, opened her writing program and blocked out everything but village murders and little old ladies with an uncanny eye for nailing the suspect.
She wrote until her fingers ached and sat back, rubbing her gritty eyes. Two chapters under her belt and she was ready for a hot chocolate and a good book.
But her racing mind had other ideas. Maybe one more look. Mr and Mrs Chapman were real, not some figment of the imagination. And local to this area in the late fifties. They must have left a trail, given their terrible moment of fame.
With five minutes, she’d found them.
Major Richard Chapman, of the Royal Engineers Regiment, was killed defusing an IRA bomb in 1976. She found one reference to Mrs Chapman becoming something of a recluse after the abduction of their only son, but no record of her death.
Which meant she could still be alive somewhere and in her late eighties.
Wow. Santar would find this information, if he hadn’t already done so. And what then? Andra wandered into the quiet kitchen to make herself a hot drink. Maybe she’d add a shot of whisky. It was all so hard to take in.
She stood with her back to the sink, drinking her hot chocolate, going over the past couple of days’ events in her mind. She’d fully expected a Christmas Day on a hospital ward with doctors dressed as Santa and overexcited children determined to celebrate come what may.
Now she had a would-be alien asleep in the spare room, shady looking men in black after a kid’s toy and an eighty-something woman who may be about to be reunited with her missing son.
She laughed softly. And she wondered why she picked crime and suspense for her stab at indie author fame? To her mystery loving mind, it almost all made perfect sense.
Tam the cat sauntered by, sparing her barely a glance before pushing her furry bulk through the cat door for a night of prowling and hunting. Andra watched her slink along the wall to the barn, dragging her feet through the banked up drifts. The snow had stopped falling, the clouds breaking up to reveal patches of dark blue lit by pinpricks of stars.
With less light pollution out here on the dark moors, they literally did twinkle and sparkle as she blinked and focussed. So beautiful. And so far away.
Which one was Santar from? She always meant to learn the constellations and could just about pick out the plough, the constellation they called the big dipper in the States. She tried to imagine Santar hurtling towards Earth in some transport that started its journey way up there, but her tired mind only cycled back to the logical explanations for his delusional state.
Battle trauma, amnesia maybe? From the state of him, he’d been living on the streets, just getting by.
Definitely not a Starman from outer space.
With one last look to check for lurking men in black, she made her way up the stairs, pausing at the top to listen.
He’d left the bedroom door slightly ajar and she could see his shadowy form lying flat out on the bed, his chest rising and falling in deep sleep. A pair of tall boots lay discarded on the rag rug.
Jess raised his head from his vigil beside the bed, whining softly. Andra lifted a hand, signalling for him to stay so Santar awoke to something familiar in the morning. In her own room, she went through her night time ritual aware that in the course of barely a day, everything had changed.
Yesterday she had only Emma and Oliver to worry about. With no brothers or sisters and both their parents long dead, they’d planned a Christmas together in the cosy cottage on the moors. She’d made an extra effort with the tree. Bought a flashing Santa stops here sign for Oliver. A reindeer headband for the dog.
Now her mind was spinning, like those stars lighting up the sky.
She heard Santar in the night, padding to the bathroom in the dark. Thought she heard someone moaning and talking in rapid bursts of words that made no sense.
Come the morning light, she lay awake for a long time wondering if she’d dreamed him up. The spare bed linens were rumpled, the quilt on the floor when she tiptoed along the landing to check his room.
So someone slept there last night. No sign of the dog.
Downstairs the kettle was warm, the scent of coffee in the air. She found Santar in the sitting room, standing in front of the flashing tree lights, his hands raised as if warming himself on the bulbs.
He shook his head, like a dog shedding water and then pressed a flat palm to the side of his neck. With a frustrated huff, he turned around. A half-drunk cup of coffee sat gently steaming on a side table.
She bit back the lecture on heat marks and antique pine. And maybe she’d have a word about dri
nking his coffee so scalding hot it must be burning his insides. Not that he seemed to notice.
The laptop was booted up, the page open on her last search on Mrs Nora Chapman, apparently not yet deceased. Damn, should have deleted her search history. Not that it would have stopped him finding her. Crossing the room, she slid a coaster under his mug, and stood beside him. Keep him chatting and maybe they’d make progress.
“Do you like my Christmas tree?” She snagged a foil covered chocolate treat from a branch and held it out to him. “Normally I wouldn’t have bothered, but I’d already bought it thinking Emma and Oliver were joining me for Christmas. And then...”
She coughed away the tightness in her throat, still finding it hard to say the words, to think about that awful phone call saying they didn’t expect Emma to pull through. She’d rallied against all the odds, in body anyway.
Santar furrowed his brow, turning the treat over in his large hand. He brushed away the hair hanging into his eyes and ran a finger over the foil.
“I remember a tree like this.” His voice was slow and measured, as if bringing together the threads in his mind. “It had a... A...” he gestured to the top of the tree, at a loss for the word.
“Star at the top?” Hers boasted a glittery star that flashed in time with the lights.
“No, not a star. It had wings.”
“An angel?” She nodded her encouragement. “People use those too.”
“Yes, an angel. Like you.”
He pinned her with his pale grey eyes and her cheeks heated. Even with the livid graze marring his forehead, the older scars, he really was a very handsome guy who likely knew exactly what that focussed gaze did to a woman. The flattery wasn’t doing too bad a job of it either.
“I’m no angel.”
“You are to me,” he said quietly.
“It’s Christmas. I couldn’t leave you out in the snow.”
For a long moment, the words hung between them. A silence heavy with meaning. Behind her, the door creaked and she heard the tap of Jess’s claws on the polished wooden boards. The dog pushed between them, sniffing hopefully for the chocolate.
Santar raised his eyes to her. Challenging now. “Even though I stole your precious toy?”
“You had no choice,” she said and knew she spoke the truth. Then it was her turn to challenge. “But you’ll give it back. Do the right thing. Won’t you?”
She took the chocolate treat from him before the dog snaffled it. Peeled away the foil and held it out. With most men, it would have disappeared in a single bite in three seconds flat. He seemed to have no idea what lay beneath the foil.
“It’s chocolate.” She managed a wobbly grin, feeling unexpected tears prick her eyes. “It wouldn’t be Christmas without chocolate.”
Santar took the melting square. Sniffed it then touched it to his tongue. His eyes flared. In delight? Recognition? What was going through that head of his?
He savoured the taste, closing his eyes as it sat on his tongue. Andra waited, almost afraid to breathe in case she broke the spell.
How sad to have to wait this long for the Christmas of your dreams. He chewed, swallowed and then opened his eyes.
“You are correct. Christmas would not be Christmas without chocolate.”
“Plenty more where that came from.” A crazy idea popped into her head. Crazy was her new normal, apparently. “I’ll be spending Christmas Day at the hospital with Oliver. If you’ve nowhere to go, you’d be very welcome to tag along.”
A week to fill before Christmas. Had she just invited him to stay ‘till then?
When he didn’t answer straight away, she left him to think it over and went in search of breakfast in the kitchen lit by a sun casting blinding light on pristine snow. Imprints of footsteps crisscrossed the rear lawn, the hidden path to the barn.
Were they new, or left yesterday by Santar and her unwanted visitors? She resisted opening the back door to check if men in black were lurking outside. Of course they weren’t. After the confrontation with Santar, they’d be a lot more subtle than that.
A line of small holes showed the cat’s path to the rear wall and the moors beyond. And Jess had ventured only a few steps to do his business before scurrying back inside, shaking muddy snow all over her kitchen cabinet doors.
All so beautiful with the sharp winter light etching the rolling moors against the flawless blue of the sky. The lone buzzard wheeling over the old stone tower perched on the highest ridge, built by grateful Victorians to honour a local dignitary.
This is why she came here.
Tearing herself away, she made a mental list for the day ahead. An early visit to Oliver today to clear the day for writing enough words to award herself a full two weeks off over Christmas and the new year. Though with her unexpected visitor and the temporary loss of General Jo, that plan had little chance of succeeding. A standby toy was becoming a priority since she had no guarantee Santar would actually give it back.
He’d commandeered her laptop again, the broken sound of an old newsreel cut through the silence. They needed to talk about Mrs Nora Chapman before he went off by himself to shock the poor old woman by claiming to be her lost son.
Andra found a half pack of croissants and lined them up on a baking tray to heat in the oven, her mind set on one thing. Santar was coming with her to the hospital today if she had to drag him there. Let him see for himself how much Oliver had riding on that toy.
Not even a broken soldier hardened by war could resist that earnest little face.
Could he?
She wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
Chapter 9
The morning light brings the dreaded certainty that they’re onto him. His tracker activated several times in the night, dragging him from dreams of war, of cold staring eyes and even colder hearts.
Santar grunts out a laugh, savouring the lingering taste of the creamy chocolate on his tongue. Centrum Command has no heart and for too long, he thought the same of himself.
But watching the grainy video over and over, the tight-lipped soldier holding the weeping woman, he feels his heart might burst. The tracker blips again, weaker this time. Annoying it was not disabled as he requested, but he’s in no immediate danger of capture. There’s a procedure for retrieving soldiers from behind the lines, the lost and the injured. As long as he fails to send in the code for them to hone in on him, he’s safe for a few more Earth days.
Ironic his tracker remains working while his alpha core chip buzzes in and out. But not surprising. The tracker is designed to withstand exposure and explosive brute force, its only nemesis is a strong magnetic field, usually repelled by use of a cloaking helmet. A piece of headwear not required in dress uniform worn on safe ground.
He can hear Andra clattering about in her kitchen almost deliberately making noise. Maybe she’s asserting ownership over this her domain. A peaceful place invaded by a man she believes to be missing most of his wits.
Running the video again, he zooms in, frustrated by the lack of definition on the primitive footage. Mrs Chapman is wearing dark gloves. Her furred collar is turned up high obscuring the bottom half of her face. Her husband is easier to read. Neat in his military camouflage, a folded cap threaded into his shoulder lapel. Hair cut close to the skull, his stance solid in the face of losing his only son.
Santar wipes a hand over his tired eyes, touching the gritty graze of his injured temple. He wants to feel something, a connection to these people begging for the return of their boy.
He wants to be that boy, but Andra’s caution lurks at the back of his mind. Is he fitting events to the story already in his head? She was searching too last night, looking for the couple. He knows the male died many years back. That the female may still be alive somewhere, perhaps no longer in full possession of her right mind.
The search history shows that Andra found the short piece originally posted in an obscure esoteric publication claiming William Chapman had been abducted by aliens after telling
his school friends they were coming for him. No one believed his story and one day he disappeared leaving only an unmade bed, an open bedroom window and curtains wafting in a frigid wind.
It all fit. Maybe all too neatly. Santar minimises the screens, leaving the open tabs for Andra to find. If she is to believe even half of his story, she must know it all.
The dog pushes up one leg at a time, lifting its nose to sniff the wafting scent of something cooking in the kitchen. Looking around the small sitting room, Santar is aware that Andra is not a woman of great means and his imposition on her charity will put her to an expense she may not easily be able to bear.
He will find a way to pay her back. His gaze strays to the silver spangled tree taking up most of the sitting room window. There are parcels beneath he knows from his memories to be gifts, wrapped in seasonal paper, ribbons and bows. One was for her acquaintance Emma, who lay in a stupor in a hospital bed.
It pains him that he has no means to repay Andra’s generosity with a gift of his own. Nothing to sell, nothing to trade but his own labour. How easy is it on this planet to obtain paid labour off the grid? He has no permits, no ID that will work in this place.
“Breakfast’s ready if you want some.”
Andra’s voice floats from the kitchen and the dog takes off with an alacrity belying its advanced years. Santar rises from the chair, feeling more ancient than the hound this morning. Pain jars his left leg but he’ll never let that show on his face. His shoulder aches and a myriad of other pains stab and pummel his abused body.
A body that will heal without the intervention of a medic or medication, given the right food and rest. He thanks the god of battle and war his body was hardened enough to withstand the impact within the cocooning pod that was supposed to deliver him to his new life.
This is his new life. As long as he finds a way to disable the tracker and his being here does not contravene any illegal residency laws. Some planets take a very dim view of beings crashing without permits to die on their soil. On Veton Vector they’d have found him by his heat signature alone.