by Blake Banner
I returned to stand in front of the fire. Almost simultaneously I felt a chill on my face and heard Don’s voice from above.
“Stone…”
He was standing at the railing in his pajamas, watching me. His wife was by his side in a flimsy white dressing gown. She had her eyes closed and she was swaying slightly. He said, “You should come and see this.”
He turned and started to walk toward the doors to the terrace. I snapped, “Dehan! Wake up!”
I ran for the stairs and as I went up them, I realized the cold air was coming from the open door. I swore under my breath and clambered to the landing. Now I could see Don and Jasmine on the terrace with their backs to me, staring at the moonlit forest. I was aware of Dehan below running for the stairs, and the bedroom doors opening behind me. I stepped out.
The night air at that altitude, even in June, was cold, and small clouds of condensation billowed from our mouths. Don turned to me and pointed at the vast black woodland that stretched away under the moonlight. “Look,” he said, “look over there.”
I approached and looked at Jasmine. Her eyes were still closed. I turned to where Don was pointing. Behind me I could hear Dehan’s boots, plus the rustle and shuffle of the others coming through the doors. I said, “I don’t see anything.”
“Keep watching.”
I looked back. Dehan was there, Stuart and May holding onto each other, the colonel, no sign of Paul. I turned to Don. “Where is Paul?”
“Look…”
I leaned over the terrace and stared down. It was possible, for an athlete like Paul, to have climbed down. I cursed myself for not having heard him, and gazed out toward where Don was pointing.
“Where is this meeting of paths, Don? We can’t let just him go to his death! Where is he going?”
Jasmine started to tremble. Her breath rasped in her throat and she fell to the floor, shaking as though she were in the throes of an epileptic fit. Don extended his arm, his face drawn and haggard, his eyes staring. “Look!”
There, a quarter of a mile away, a vast column of red light beamed down from the empty sky in among the trees.
I heard Dehan breathe, “Holy shit…!”
Then we were both running, scrambling down the stairs and across the cavernous room. She got there first and wrenched open the door. Then we were running across the clearing.
The colonel was behind us, shouting, “Wait! Don is coming! He knows the way!”
I glanced back. The colonel was waiting for Don, who was running toward us, calling over his shoulder, “Stuart! May! Come! Come!” And beyond him was Jasmine’s silhouette in the glowing doorway, pushing May, gesturing her to go. Then we were all running behind Don, who was gasping for breath, tall, lanky, and almost comical in his pajamas. He led us deep into the darkness of the forest. None of the brilliant moonlight penetrated the deep canopy of the trees. The only light came from a small flashlight which he held in his hand and waved erratically across the path as he ran, stumbling over the uneven ground.
It took us maybe four minutes in the dark, following Don’s staggering, gasping lead, but we finally came to a clearing, the meeting point of three paths through the woods. It was bathed in the eerie, translucent light of the moon. You could see it was about fifteen feet across and roughly circular. Two more paths, besides the one we were on, wound away from it, one to the right and down hill, the other up and to the left. There was nothing there. No body, no column of red light. I scanned the sky, walking around the clearing, gazing up. There was no trace of the pillar of fire from heaven. Nothing.
“Stone…”
I looked. It was Dehan.
“What diameter would you say that column of light had?”
I thought about it. “Three, four feet?”
I glanced at Hait. He nodded and we both looked at Dehan.
“That’s what I thought. What diameter would you say that has?” She pointed at the center of the clearing, where it was mainly dark moss and grass.
I frowned, trying to make out what she had seen.
She said, “Don’t get abducted. I’ll be right back,” and I heard her boots running back down the path.
Don started after her. “No! Detective! Where are you going?”
I said, “Relax. She’s gone to get a decent flashlight from the car. Give me yours a minute, will you?”
He handed me his thin pen-torch and I got on my knees. There was an area of singed grass which looked roughly circular. It was hard to make out in the poor light, but it seemed to be about four feet across, and everything inside it was burnt. It was not smoldering and it was not hot to the touch. I looked up at the four faces looking back at me. “Did any of you see smoke at any time since you’ve been here, rising from this area?”
They all shook their heads. Behind them, I saw the powerful glow of the flashlight I kept in the car. It made a bright halo around their four figures, turning them into smoky, looming silhouettes. Then I heard Dehan’s boots, pounding back up the path. She came past them and flooded the clearing with light. I stood. Now it was clear. A perfect four-foot circle burnt into the center of the clearing.
She looked over at me. “So where’s Paul?”
I nodded and looked over at Don. He, the colonel, May, and Stuart were all gazing up at the sky. I said, “Colonel, take these people back to the cabin and make sure Jasmine is OK, will you? We’ll join you in a minute.” I handed him the small flashlight.
He looked startled for a moment, then took it and nodded. “Yeah, sure…”
Don, Stuart, and May started back down the path. I said quietly, “Colonel?”
He stopped. “Yes, Stone?”
“Are you armed?”
“Why, yes. I have a license, obviously…”
“I have no doubt. Just keep your weapon with you at all times, will you?”
He looked uncomfortable, then nodded again. “Yes, of course.” He turned and hurried to catch up with the others.
I watched the small, dancing speck of light recede, thinking of the powerful glow of Dehan’s flashlight as she had approached, thinking of the powerful beam of light we had seen from the terrace, perfectly straight, not fanning, not spreading, not a cone, more like a giant laser.
Dehan brought me back from my thoughts. “Is he dead?”
“There are two possibilities. He has either done a runner, or he’s dead.”
She shook her head. She looked exasperated. “But he is the only person with a motive! What the hell was that thing? It just beamed down out of the sky! There was nothing there and suddenly, zap!”
Nearby an owl hooted and a small predator rustled in the underbrush. I nodded at Dehan and started pacing around the clearing, chewing my lip and going over the sequence of events as I remembered them. “I came out of the kitchen. I felt the cool air from the terrace. I had not felt it twenty seconds before when I went in. Don called me up, said I had to see something. I ran up. The terrace door was open and he and Jasmine were out, looking over this way, like they knew. I stepped out. He was telling me to look over where we were about to see the lights. He had obviously called everybody else because they all came out at the same time. Jasmine had her eyes closed throughout the whole thing. Then she started trembling. Next thing, she made that weird noise in her throat and fell. In that moment the light appeared… And we ran.” I shook my head. “There just wasn’t time, in the twenty seconds that I was in the kitchen, for all that to happen. I tested the bolts. They were stiff and squeaky. I didn’t open them because I didn’t want to wake you up.”
“So, in the time it took you to go into the kitchen and… do what?”
“Check the door.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
“Paul came out of his room, slid back the two deadbolts without making a noise, opened the door, clambered over the terrace, and shimmied down to the clearing, while also somehow alerting Don and Jasmine, the colonel, and Stuart and May.”
“It is not
physically possible. It can’t be done.”
“And when we get here there is no sign of him. So how did they know? How did they know to come out of their rooms?”
“We have been played,” I said. “We have been played, Dehan. We have been played good.”
She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”
“Paul never left his room.”
“Shit! We need to get back!”
“No, he won’t be there.”
“Where, then?”
I stared at her for a long moment, then I stared up at the few, distant, icy stars I could make out through the glow of the moon. “I have a feeling I know,” I said. “But you may find it hard to believe. Come with me…”
And I turned and headed up the path, winding like a narrow tunnel ever deeper into the impenetrable shadows of the forest.
TWENTY-ONE
We returned to the cabin about half an hour later, by way of the trunk of the Jag, from which I collected my laptop. We found them all seated about the fireplace drinking hot cocoa laced with whiskey. Stuart opened the door to us and let us in.
“Did you find anything?”
I shook my head and went to stand in front of the fire. Jasmine got to her feet and took hold of Dehan’s hands. “May I make you and Detective Stone some hot drink? Everybody’s having some. It is very comforting. This has all been such a shock.”
Dehan smiled. “Thank you, that would be great. Stone?” I glanced at her and nodded. Jasmine disappeared into the kitchen and I turned to look at Don. He was staring into the flames. He looked exhausted, wrecked. I examined May and Stuart, and the colonel. They all looked like Don, drawn, scared, depressed. There was nothing remarkable about any of them.
Don said suddenly, “I believe he will be returned to us. I believe that. This was not like Danny. Not like Danny! He didn’t disobey. He was not mutilated, incinerated...”
Stuart nodded. “I agree with you. It was just the singeing from the beam on the grass. He was clearly simply beamed aboard to receive whatever instruction he needs for the mission he has ahead of him…”
I stared at him for a moment, frowning.
Dehan shook her head in a gesture of disbelief, and for a moment I thought I could see her father in her, as she had described him to me. She was half smiling, half exasperated. “Clearly? Seriously? That is clearly what happened? Would you mind telling me exactly what evidence you have that makes that clear to you? Because, I have to tell you, I didn’t find a shred out there. All I found was a circle of burnt grass.”
Stuart sighed and groaned and rolled his eyes. “Detective! What is it going to take for you to open your eyes and see what is going on here? You cannot take an isolated incident on its own. It is cumulative! Everything is connected!”
She nodded and offered him a lopsided smile on the left side of her face, where it was more sarcastic than ironic. “Oh, sure! Cumulative. Like the cumulative evidence that proves the sun orbits around the Earth.” She pointed at him. “Is that what you think you have done? Opened your eyes? This, what you all are doing right here, this is an act of faith! Worse! It’s superstition! You, under the guidance of a man who claims to be a scientist, are constructing an entire belief system on an unfounded assumption! You have not got a single piece of objective proof! Not one! Nothing! You’re saying, ‘We don’t know how Danny was killed, therefore he must have been killed by aliens.’ And after that, everything and anything that you can’t explain gets explained the same way. Now, you even know that they operate training programs for their missions. Based on what? On a patch of burned grass!”
I watched at her and felt a warm glow of admiration.
May shook her head and muttered, “You couldn’t begin to understand.”
The kitchen door opened and Jasmine came out with two mugs of cocoa. She took them to the sideboard and smiled at Dehan. “Cognac or whiskey, Detective?”
I watched Dehan turn, and for a moment she seemed to move in slow motion. She reached behind her head and took hold of her long, black hair, tied it in a knot as she spoke, and as she did so, my mind raced and I understood everything. The whole thing became suddenly crystal clear. I seemed to snap out of a dream and heard Dehan say, “Whiskey, please, Jasmine.”
I watched Jasmine lace them generously and hand them to us, first to me, without making eye-contact, and then to Dehan, with another smile. After that, she left us and went to clear the table. Dehan raised the mug to sip from it. I pointed at the mug and said, “Be careful, you might burn your lips.”
She stared at me with the mug half-way to her mouth and a slightly incredulous smile. “What are you now, my mother?”
“Do me a favor, would you, Dehan? Just go up and have a look at Paul’s room. See if he packed a bag. See if his pajamas are there, or if the clothes he was wearing are there. Let’s see what he had on when he disappeared. You can leave your cocoa. It’ll still be there when you get back.”
I took it from her hands and placed it on the sideboard along with mine. As Dehan ran up the stairs, I turned to Kirkpatrick.
“I wonder, Don, if you could deliberately induce one of Jasmine’s trances.”
He looked slightly surprised. “What are you suggesting? That I somehow engineer these experiences? That is absurd!”
I shook my head. “No, that’s not it at all. I am trying to keep an open mind. I was thinking about what Detective Dehan said about the complete absence of proof. If these beings—assuming that they exist at all—but if what they are trying to do is communicate with us, then perhaps we could take the initiative and use Jasmine not just as a receiver, but as a transceiver and communicate to them the predicament they have put us in, and see if we can get some concrete proof of their existence, maybe even solve the mystery of the murders.” I looked around at the four astonished faces and laughed. “I’ve been trying to tell you from the start that I have an open mind. All I want is a reasonable standard of proof. If this can get it for us, we should try.”
Kirkpatrick stared past me at the dining area. I followed his gaze. Jasmine was standing by the table with a pile of plates in her hands, watching us. After a moment she nodded, then turned and made her way back to the kitchen. Kirkpatrick looked back at me. His eyes were penetrating. “What do you have in mind?”
I shrugged, spread my hands, “We simply create the conditions for the trance. We kill the lights, let her lie out on the sofa, and you speak to her. Tell her to relax, to open her mind to the Visitors, to call on them. You know the kind of stuff. I don’t need to tell you. I’m sure you’ve attended a few sessions of hypnotic regression in your time. I guess it would be pretty much the same thing.”
He nodded. “Yes, it is possible, we could do that.”
I went on. “Then, when we have contact, Detective Dehan will put the questions to them and explain our situation. Let’s see how they respond.”
Stuart had been frowning at me. Now he turned to Kirkpatrick. “I have to say I am surprised, Donald, but it does seem to make sense. It is at least worth a try.”
Kirkpatrick nodded. “Yes, I agree.” He turned to me. “What if they instruct you, as they did Paul, to go to the clearing?”
“Then I’ll go.”
“Very well.”
He stood and went into the kitchen. Dehan came out of Paul’s room and crossed the length of the galleried landing to the doors out to the terrace. I watched her unbolt them and step out. A moment later, Kirkpatrick and his wife came out of the kitchen and he led her to the sofa, where she lay down and got comfortable. Upstairs, Dehan came in from the terrace and I went up to meet her. We came down together and I explained to her what I had arranged with Don.
“You want to take care of the questions?”
She looked surprised. “Me? Why?”
I smiled. “I liked the way you expressed it earlier. You put my own thoughts into words very nicely.”
She raised an eyebrow at me. “Jeez, boss, thanks. It’s going to look great on my résum�
�. Next thing, I’ll get headhunted by the Alien Negotiation team at Langley.”
I laughed and as we approached the group, I said, “What were you doing on the terrace?”
Again, she looked surprised. “I was trying to see how he got down. I can’t figure it. His clothes are all in his room. He must have been wearing pajamas. It’s crazy.”
I nodded. “OK.” Dehan sat close to Jasmine’s head, where she could talk to her when the time came, and I addressed the group. “All right, we are going to see if we can get some answers to our questions. There is a lot that you guys take for granted, but we haven’t got that luxury. We need facts and we need proof, so that is what we are going to try and get. Detective Dehan will conduct the session once Don has induced a trance in Jasmine. Meanwhile, I am going to record it on my laptop. Just try to ignore me, and forget I am here. Detective Dehan is the person you need to be focusing on.”
I went and switched off the lamps from the main console. The only light now was from the fire, and from the moonlight filtering in through the windows. I set up the laptop on the dining table and sat behind it. When I was ready, I said, “Dehan…?”
She turned to look at me and held up her thumb, and I knew that from where they were, I was all but invisible behind the dim glow of the screen. I said, “Whenever you are ready, Don.”
A moment later, I heard a soft cough, and then the gentle murmur of his deep voice as he took her through a relaxation routine that told me he was no stranger to hypnosis.
“As you are listening to my voice, allow your mind to move inside you, and notice how you become aware of all those feelings that are telling you that you are becoming deeply, deeply relaxed… all the way down. That’s right… all the way down…”
Even without listening to the words, the rhythm was soporific. The deep, burnished light from the fire flickered over the group, causing long shadows to waver and dance across the room. Jasmine lay in a deep pool of darkness on the sofa, invisible to me where I sat. His voice droned on.