A New Beginning r-5

by Kevin Ryan

  "You sure you want a couple of old farts intruding?" Bell asked.

  "Don't be silly, just sit," Liz said.

  Bell nodded and said, "Kids, this is my husband, Sam. Sam, these are Liz and Maria's friends.”

  Sam gave them a short nod as the older couple sat down to eat.

  "So what are you kids doing on the road in that van of yours?" Bell asked.

  For a second, no one spoke, and Liz glanced at Max. She saw that the others were doing the same.

  Max didn't hesitate further. "We all just graduated from high school. We wanted to see the country and to stay together for a while," he said.

  Liz was relieved. It was a good story. It was also true… as far as it went.

  Bell turned to Sam and said, "We should have done something like that when we were kids.”

  Sam gave a snort but didn't look up from his food.

  Turning to the group, she smiled and said, "Sam is not the adventurous type. But I'm glad to see you kids doing what you want. You'll have plenty of time later to settle down into jobs and a normal life.”

  Will we? Liz wondered. Will we ever? She watched as Bell reached her fork onto Sam's plate and ate something from it. There was something very familiar and warm about the gesture. Liz was sure that the two did have something together.

  Something good. Something normal.

  Something that was impossible for the six of them now. Something that was impossible for her; even if she did somehow sever her connection to her half-alien boyfriend, could she find a normal life for herself? In that last three years she had spent countless hours hoping for that normality, but she had been changed by her experience. Even if she could somehow forget every- thing that had happened in the last three years, she was no longer the girl she once was. In fact, she was no longer completely human.

  She was no longer normal.

  When the changes in her body first showed themselves, she had been scared. Now with her new abilities even more pronounced, she was still scared, but there was something else. She was determined not to let the fear rule her life. Determined that she would do something other than suffer as…

  Max's codependant girlfriend, as she had once said to Maria.

  She was going to do something to make a difference with the new part of herself. And she was going to start right now.

  "Bell, what do you think is going on with the disap- pearances?" Liz asked.

  Liz watched a cloud cross Bell's face. She didn't speak for a long moment, and then said, "I really don't know.”

  Then she paused again and said, "There have been about a dozen in the last three months.”

  "About?" Liz asked. "Doesn't anybody know exactly how many?”

  "Well, people don't need a reason to leave this town, a hole-in-the-wall with few jobs anymore. And a lot of people have taken off in the middle of the night over the years. Sometimes they're in trouble, running from the law or their beau. Sometimes they're looking for something that they won't find in Stonewall. And sometimes they don't leave a forwarding address.”

  "So some are missing and some are escapees?' Maria asked.

  Bell gave them a thin smile and said, "Probably.”

  That didn't explain all of it, though, Liz knew. And it definitely didn't explain her vision of Jimmy's future.

  "In the last three months, how many of the people who have 'left town' have been guys?" Liz asked.

  "None," Bell admitted.

  "What do the police say?" Max asked. Liz could sense that Max didn't approve of her interest in the town's strange business, but she was glad that he was helping.

  There was silence from Bell for a moment, and then she said, "The sheriff was one of the first ones gone. She disap- peared, and no one has heard from her since.”

  A chill ran down Liz's spine as she remembered the room that wasn't a room and the screams. She was sud- denly sure that no one would be hearing from the sheriff ever again.

  "The state police don't believe what they're hearing. They think the girls just ran off," Bell said.

  "Jimmy said that a few girls turned up later," Liz said.

  Bell nodded. "Three more that we thought were miss- ing turned up five days later. They were pretty shook up and didn't remember anything about where they had been. The doctors couldn't find anything wrong with any of them.”

  Liz didn't want to ask her next question, but she couldn't back down now. "How long has Jimmy's sister been gone?" she asked anxiously.

  "Seven days today," Bell said.

  The entire table was silent. To Liz's surprise, it was Sam who broke the silence. "She was a nice girl," he said, and then went back to his food.

  Bell nodded. "Actually, she had some wild years, but she always took care of Jimmy. Their parents died when they were young, and they were living with an aunt who doesn't much care about either of them. Jimmy still lives there.”

  "Jimmy said she was planning to move to Pueblo with him," Liz said.

  Bell nodded. "Yes, she had gotten into a hairdressing school. They were supposed to leave in a few weeks.”

  The table went silent for the rest of the meal. Liz found she wasn't hungry, but forced herself to eat. As she did, she found the new thing inside her asserting itself more strongly, pushing aside the fear that she had felt for so long.

  And she realized that she knew that new thing's name. It was determination.

  13

  Liz and her friends walked back to Johnny's Garage in silence. They automatically headed for the studio apart- ment in the back of the garage.

  "So what do you guys want to do tonight?" Michael asked.

  "Well, Space Boy, those of us who have worked all day are looking forward to sleeping," Maria asked.

  "We'll have to work out sleeping arrangements," Max said. Gesturing to himself, Michael, and Kyle, he added, "We can sleep in the van.”

  As the group came around to the side of the garage, Liz shook her head and said, "We'll squeeze in. The floor will be better than another night in the van seats.”

  They reached the apartment door and found a pile of blankets and sleeping bags next to it. "The locals are a simple and friendly people who offer travelers oatmeal, blankets, and diner food," Maria said with a smile.

  "That's really nice," Liz said, examining the pile. They were all old but clean. She grabbed up what she could and stepped inside, the others close behind her.

  "What happened in here?" she asked. The room looked different, like it had been painted. There were some other changes as well.

  "Don't get us started," Michael said. "Isabel, our alien- redecorator.”

  They took a few minutes to figure out how to fit every- one. There were three sleeping bags, some blankets, four regular pillows, and two couch pillows. The guys insisted that the girls take the sleeping bags and pillows, while they made do with the blankets, the one pillow, and the two couch pillows.

  Max and Liz would sleep next to each other, taking the first turn on the bed. Maria and Michael would share a blanket on the floor, though Liz could see that things were strained between them. At least, she could see the strain on Maria's face. Michael, on the other hand, seemed unusually relaxed. That meant that Kyle and Isabel would be next to each other. Kyle looked uncomfortable, but Isabel seemed oblivious. Well, there was a little room. They wouldn't be on top of each other.

  The way things looked for the near future, Liz figured they had all better get used to being close together.

  Back in Roswell, she had dreamed about the day after she and Max had left home and they could spend the night together without worrying about parents. Well, she was get- ting her wish, but none of those dreams included four other people in the room. And Liz found that, at the moment, Max was not the most important thing on her mind.

  By now, everyone was sitting in his or her respective sleeping area. Liz stood up and said, "I want to talk to you all about something.”

  The room immediately fell silent. Everyone was looking at her. From the
look in Max's eyes, Liz knew that he already knew what this was about and he was not pleased.

  Max didn't wait for her to go on. "Liz, we all feel for Jimmy, but this is a police matter. We can't get involved, not right now," he insisted.

  "Max, in case you weren't paying attention, the police are among the missing," Liz replied.

  "Liz, we just can't. We're less than five hundred miles from Roswell. We can't do anything to call attention to ourselves," Max said. He paused and said seriously, "I'm sorry, Liz, but I can't allow it.”

  Liz felt the blood rising to her face. "I'm not asking your permission." She saw the surprise on Max's face. And hurt, too. Liz hated to see him look like that, but this was too important. "As you said, you aren't making all the decisions for this group," Liz said. She softened her tone. "I'm not talking about sending up a huge alien-flare to the Special Unit, but maybe we can help… find something out and place a call to the state police. That's it," she said.

  "It makes me uncomfortable," Max said.

  "Everything makes you uncomfortable," Isabel chimed in, surprising Liz. She had barely spoken since they'd left Roswell. "If we never wanted to make you uncomfortable, we wouldn't have left the house since we climbed out of our pods," she added.

  Smiles broke out in the room at that. To Liz's surprise, one of them on was on Max's face.

  "There's something else," Liz said. "I know for a fact that if we don't do something, Jimmy's sister Jessica is going to die.”

  "Did you have a…," Max asked.

  "I saw it when I touched him. I saw him at her funeral. I also saw her…”

  She tried to describe the room that wasn't a room and the screams, but she knew they wouldn't understand unless they saw that place, heard those screams, and felt the menace that she had felt. "Whoever has her is very dangerous," she said simply.

  Michael was the first to speak. "I'm in," he said. That once might have surprised her, but less than two days ago Michael had been the one to insist they help the air force pilot's daughter she had believed was still alive and the victim of a government conspiracy.

  "I don't like bullies," Kyle said. "I'm in.”

  "I'll help," Isabel said.

  Liz looked at Maria, who shrugged and said, "What? You already have a majority. Okay, I'll help. My grand waitressing powers are at your disposal.”

  Liz looked at Max last.

  "That's the problem with democracy, not everybody gets what they want," he said, a tight smile on his lips. "Okay, I'm in. What's your plan?" he asked.

  When she didn't respond, he prodded questioningly: "You do have a plan?”

  "Well, I assumed we would come up with something together," Liz explained.

  It was true; she had been so focused on convincing the group that she hadn't thought about the next step. Reach- ing into her pocket, she pulled out one of Jimmy's flyers. She had taken it from the diner as a reminder. Now she thought of a more practical use for it. "Isabel?" she said, holding out the flyer with the picture of Jessica on it.

  "I'll do it," Isabel said. "But it's a long shot. Since I don't know her, she'll have to be asleep for it to even have a chance of working. And she'll have to be dreaming some- thing useful about her surroundings, something that will tell us about where she is or who has taken her.”

  Liz nodded. "A long shot it is. We know what will hap- pen if we do nothing.”

  Isabel tried to clear her mind. She found that most of the usual petty thoughts and distractions weren't there. They had been replaced by a single thought, by a single pain.

  Jesse.

  Leaving him had pushed aside a lot of things. Cleared out the cobwebs. Now, he seemed to have taken up resi- dence in her brain as well as her stomach as a large, heavy ball. By force of will, she loosened the knot and was relieved when it began to disappear. Flashes of her pain reared up from time to time. She let them come and then bubble away.

  When her mind was finally clear enough, she opened her eyes and focused on the picture. She saw a girl of some- where between sixteen and eighteen years old. She was pretty, and the picture looked posed, like a school picture.

  Jessica was smiling. Isabel concentrated on that smile.

  Images of Jesse and other feelings that were surpris- ingly strong rose up. The knot started to form in her stom- ach again. Isabel didn't fight it. Instead, she concentrated harder on the picture, the smile.

  Jessica.

  Then Isabel began to feel the girl.

  There was no better word to explain what dreamwalk- ing was like. She simply concentrated until she was able to feel people. The closest analogy she could make was the feeling she had about people that lingered after she had dreamed about them when she slept herself. Dreamwalk- ing was like that feeling, but instead of dissipating as she woke up, it grew stronger and stronger until she was with them in their dream.

  With certain people, the feeling lingered long after the dreamwalk. She still had flashes of Max from the time that she had dreamwalked him while he was in the Special Unit's White Room. He had been so scared and vulnerable. She had felt it all; she had also felt him more clearly than she ever had before while they were growing up.

  Then there was Alex. Isabel had dreamwalked him a number of times. At first it was just to find out if he was a threat to their secret, but even then the dreamwalks had left her feeling closer to him, connected to him in a way that she had had no words for at the time.

  Eventually she was able to give that closeness a name. For a very short time around the night of the dance when she and Alex had held each other and she had called the closeness by its proper name… in her head if not to him.

  Then Alex was dead.

  Oddly enough, thinking of Alex did not distract Isabel. It focused her concentration and her energy. It had hap- pened before, and she liked to think that he was somehow helping her. Isabel began to feel Jessica more keenly, though the girl remained just out of sight, as if she was dancing on the edge of Isabel's peripheral vision. There was a cloud between them. Isabel had no trouble giving that cloud a name. It was fear. Wherever she was, Jessica was very afraid, even while she was sleeping.

  Isabel concentrated again and suddenly found herself in a bedroom. Looking at the decorations on the wall, she realized it was a little girl's bedroom. On the bed she saw a dark-haired girl of perhaps nine or ten sleeping fitfully.

  It was Jessica, Isabel realized. And she was dreaming about her herself as a little girl, sleeping in her room. The room felt very familiar to Isabel, but she knew that was only because it was familiar to Jessica. There was some- thing else, too, a sense of deja vu, as if Jessica had not only been here before, but had had this dream before.

  Suddenly, Isabel was sure that Jessica was in the middle of a dream she had had since she was a little girl. That made the dream less helpful for Isabel. A recurring child- hood dream wouldn't have the kind of detail that Isabel and the others would need to find Jessica in the real world. There was a noise from inside the closet on the other side of the room, and the girl on the bed opened her eyes. Isabel could see fear in young Jessica's eyes.

  Jessica glanced with recognition as if remembering this dream. Whatever was in that closet scared her badly. Isabel considered interfering, but decided to let the dream run its course. Perhaps it would show her something helpful.

  Jessica got out of bed and walked toward the closet. She did so almost unwillingly, as if she knew what was inside and was being forced by some twisted dream logic to seek it out.

  Isabel felt a swell of sympathy for the scared little girl in front of her in a long white nightgown and the scared young woman out there somewhere. She wanted to stop the girl from opening the closet door, but Isabel forced herself to keep out of it. Jessicas life would likely depend on what Isabel could learn here.

  The girl padded across her room and reluctantly put her hand on the closets doorknob. Slowly she turned it and started to pull at the door.

  An instant later, the door practically explod
ed open, throwing the girl backward and onto the floor in front of her bed.

  What happened next, happened quickly. The first thing that Isabel noticed was the noise: A loud roar sounded from the closet.

  It wasn't an animal sound that Isabel had ever heard, nor did she recognize it as anything from any movie or tel- evision show she had ever seen. It was a high-pitched and piercing series of clicks and tones that Isabel could feel in her chest.

  Isabel was sure of one thing, though: It was terrifying Jessica. Feeling her panic rise, Isabel realized that there was something unnatural in that sound. Reflexively, Isabel found herself raising up her hand to defend herself as Jessica backed away from the closet as she sat on the ground. Then the creature that made the sound took a step from the darkness of the closet into the light of the room.

  It was hideous. Isabel couldn't believe that it had come from a child's imagination. The creature had roughly the shape of a person, but that was where the resemblance ended.

  Covered in a scaly brownish-yellow skin, it had a large head that came to a point in the back of its skull. Its eyes were a bright yellow, and it had a wide mouth that jutted out from its face and was full of long teeth.

  It was a monster, and Isabel felt her blood run cold just looking at it.

  A scream sounded from behind her, and Isabel turned to see Jessica cowering against her bed. The creature looked down at Jessica, and then it seemed to notice Isabel.

  The monster began to make its sound, which was even louder now that it was free of the closet. When it lurched forward, Isabel instinctively raised her hand and sum- moned her energy. Before the monster could take a step, Isabel released her power and hit it full force in the chest.

  The creature betrayed a moment of surprise as it sailed backward into the darkness of the closet. As Isabel caught her breath, she sensed motion next to her. Then she turned to watch Jessica getting up and heading for the closet.

  "Wait," Isabel said.

  But before Isabel could act, the girl grabbed the closet door and slammed it shut.

  Then Jessica looked up at her and said, "We should go.”