They sang in their chains, the grays, as they felt, each of them, a taste of hope that they had not experienced since they day they left their planet and began this long dark journey through the nowheres of the sky.
Simply because they were there, water in the vast desert of his heart, the first tears Adam had ever shed—and his last—were tears of joy.
IMAGES FLASHED ON THE WALLS of Conner’s mind, of the long and improbable histories of man and the grays, dancers in a secret dance whose steps were measured in eons. He saw that we, as a species, had lived before, that we’d had another civilization and another science that had worked by different laws, in a time when the light of the human mind had been brighter. He saw the tragic, lingering evening that we have named history, and heard along it the forlorn chanting of the Egyptians as they built boats that would never reach the sky, and the grim, rising roar of human voices that signaled the onset of the modern world, and the ignorant hordes that now marched the Earth, sucking every green blade and morsel. As this vision swept through him, he listened to the booming drums of time.
And so it was done; Adam, ancient in his days, fulfilled a destiny that was also a tragedy: he died. The last light of the wraith flickered in the air above Conner’s bed.
Then it was dark.
FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE, this phase of the grays’ mission was complete. They searched for memories in Conner’s mind that would shield him from the huge thoughts that now lay hidden within him. Time would be needed before he could bring them forth and put them to work.
Looking through the house, they saw where he had put most of his effort, into his splendid trains. They planted his consciousness in one of his own superbly painted plastic figures. This would give him an unforgettably vivid dream.
CONNER FOUND HIMSELF IN HIS own toy railroad town, under his own streetlights, and everybody else was horrible and plastic, staring at him with painted stares. The sidewalk under his feet was plastic, the trees made of foam. A shrieking rose, and his own train screamed past, impossibly immense, electric fire roaring under its wheels.
He was right in the middle of the street and he couldn’t move. The plastic faces of the people around him stared, expressionless. Then he saw a huge, glaring giant looming back in the shadows of the sky, saw his own hand, now gigantic, come down. He heard a length of track screech as it came loose.
He was trapped in his own train wreck, somehow part of one of the plastic people, as stiff and still as they were. He wanted to run, he was desperate to get off this street because he knew what would happen. But he could not run. He watched in fixed horror as the train’s headlight flickered among the trees to the left, as it came roaring around the bend, and with a curious grace leaped off the track and sped toward him, its wheels churning, the headlight a cyclops eye.
Then a warm hand was on his forehead.
Mom was there.
“Hey, mister,” she said, “you’re gonna wake everybody on Oak Road if you don’t stop running that train.”
“I—oh, wow, I dreamed I was in the train set during the wreck!”
“In the train set?”
“I’d become one of my figures. I couldn’t move and the train came right at me!”
She hugged him. “Oh my love,” she said, “Mom and Dad are always here for nightmares.”
He felt the depth of her love, then, with a power that he never had before. He adored his mom, she was the most beautiful, the smartest, the nicest—she was like Dad, very much the best.
Unseen now, the Three Thieves guided his mind back to a memory of a certain spring day long ago, when the lilacs were bobbing on the lawn and the leaves all were new, and he had come from glory, a tiny, secret spark, and gone gliding down into the house and saw her sleeping, her belly big, and gone closer, and entered into her, and lay, then, in the cradle of her womb.
“I love you, too,” he said. It felt so good to hug her, it felt like floating halfway to heaven.
DAN ALSO REMAINED AWAKE ON this restless, uneasy night. He was determined to prevent the aliens from abducting his son. As he listened to Katelyn speaking softly to Conner, he felt an isolation that made him sad. She had been trying to forgive him, he knew, but there was a coolness in her now that even his most tender efforts—kissing her, speaking to her of love—could not seem to cure. He loved them, both of them. And yet, he did not feel free to join them across the hall, when they were in such intimate communion.
To avoid dealing with his couple crisis in the middle of the night, he turned his mind to what the Air Force people had said. Strange, strange stuff. Lies, of course, on some level.
He would protect Conner from them until they told him the truth. There were dark corners in this world, and Conner was not going to fall into one, not as long as his dad had anything to say about it.
Too bad Katelyn couldn’t handle the idea of being an abductee. What of it, it happened to all kinds of people, just read the books. The notion that people only remembered their encounters after being hypnotized by UFO researchers was, he had discovered, a lie, and a sinister one at that.
And yet, she had a point. No matter that he now believed it, because these two officials had confirmed it, how could anything like this be real?
He closed his eyes, but sleep did not come. Sleep was far away.
His mind returned to Katelyn. She had said that she was past it, that she understood. They had made love again, and it had been sweet, but not as sweet as ever. There was a thin sheen of emotional ice that just would not melt, and he thought now, at this vulnerable hour, that maybe it was the beginning of saying good-bye.
Too bad he hadn’t been able to keep these thoughts away. He opened his eyes again. She was singing in there now, in her high, haunting voice, a lullaby. It was better than the one he had sung, and he was sure that it was helping Conner more.
Did she secretly want separation, perhaps even divorce? No—and yet, maybe yes. Maybe she hadn’t articulated it to herself, not thus far. But she would. He feared that she would. She was the best person he had ever known. How had he ever busted this up? You were not going to find another Katelyn, mister, not in this lifetime. And Conner—how could he live without Conner? Conner claimed a huge part of him, would of any father. He couldn’t give that up. Fatherhood and husbandhood had become his meaning.
He heard her stirring out of Conner’s room. Rather than confront her now, he feigned sleep. He heard her come close, felt her sit on her side of the bed, and heard her sigh. Then she slid in beside him. She turned her back. He lay in silence for a time, then reached over and touched her shoulder.
She didn’t offer any sign that she was even aware of his touch. The night drifted on. In a little while, though, he was aware of movement in the room. When he opened his eyes, he was surprised to see Conner.
Silently, his son came to the bedside. He looked down at them. Dan had seen him before as a child made of stars, but he was ordinary enough now.
“Conner?”
The boy smiled a little, said nothing.
Katelyn stirred. “What’s going on?”
Conner reached over and took her hand, and then took Dan’s hand, and held their hands together. They remained like that, silent in the deep night, a family sailing the ocean of the unknown.
PART EIGHT
SECRET SOLDIERS
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
ECCLESIASTES 12:6-7
TWENTY-SIX
CONNER HUNG AT THE EDGE of the playground, as far from the other kids as he could get. He’d left message after message at home and on Mom and Dad’s cells, but they hadn’t responded yet and the bell was about to ring and he’d have to go back near the other kids, and he could not bear that.
If he got close to the kids, like, three feet away, he could
hear extra voices that were extremely disturbing, because he knew the voices were the kids thinking. What was worse, they hated him, a lot of them, and that hurt his soul.
He remembered last night perfectly well. He’d had something done to him by the grays, using a science so high that he couldn’t even begin to touch its meaning. They had changed him, though, and he was marked, and would forever be marked, by the greatness of that hour.
Will had said as Conner came out onto the playground: “Hey, Conner, how’s it hangin’,” smooth and easy, but his inner voice had screamed, I’d like to get a knife and cut your heart out, you stupid asshole!
Look at them playing around now, laughing, horsing around . . . and glancing at him from time to time, sly glances from Will and Kevin and David Roland, from Lannie Freer—even sweet Lannie Freer—who had imagined, that she was going to come up behind him and tap him on the shoulder and spit in his face when he turned around.
She’d done it, too, she’d tapped him on the shoulder and he had run, it had been like a nightmare knowing what she was planning.
Not all the kids had those thoughts. Paulie didn’t, thank God for little blessings. He was only thinking how scared he was of Conner. He was thinking how to convince his parents to move, and feeling sick inside every time he so much as glanced Conner’s way. Then he’d smiled and said, “Hey, pal, I ditched the busters, okay? They’re gone.” He’d snapped his fingers and said, “Poof!” and his mind had said, Get away from me, you’re a monster, get away!
Then a familiar car appeared at the end of the street. It turned, came this way. Conner tore through the gate and down the middle of the street. The moment Mom stopped, he jumped in.
“Honey, what’s the matter? Do you have fever?” He doesn’t look sick, he looks terrified. If they’ve been hassling him, that damn Paulie, my poor little guy, he’s too damn small for eleven, the baby . . .
He looked at her. Most of the time, her mouth hadn’t moved. He pushed up against the door, but it wasn’t good enough, he could still hear that sorrowing voice and he didn’t want it to be that way, he wanted his mother to see him as strong and confident.
“Conner?” What’s the matter now? Oh I’m so tired, the damn kid . . . “Honey, what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”
Her face smiled but that was no smile, he knew the truth of it, he knew that his mom wasn’t close to being as happy and contented and full of energy like she wanted him to think. She was terribly upset and so tired that last night she’d dreamed about her own funeral.
“You won’t have a funeral!” he shouted.
“What? What funeral? Conner, what’s the matter with you? Why do you want to go home in the middle of the day?”
“Mom,” he whispered, “I love you so.”
“Oh, honey, I love you so, too! What happened, honey, why do you want to leave school?” Why can’t he get along, oh but I do love you, I do love you my gray eyes.
How could he tell her that the kids wanted to kill him? The thoughts came back to him, the ones imagining that they would shoot him, the ones imagining that they would kick him to death, knife him, choke him, but smiling, always smiling. How could he tell her about that?
Mom pulled the car over and stopped and turned toward him. “Honey,” she said, reaching out her hand, “honey, now, what’s the trouble? Why do you need to go home, what happened? What happened at school, Conner? Did Paulie and his friends give you a hard time? Because if that damned kid—”
The angry thoughts that accompanied these words were like brands burning into his skull as she talked. She wanted to slap Paulie, to shake Maggie Warner until she broke her neck, to wade into the class slashing with a sword.
“Mom! No, Mom! It’s not that, it’s not Paulie. Paulie was okay to me today. It was better than it has been, actually.”
“Then why aren’t you on your way into English Lit? Why did you tell me it was an emergency, Conner? You terrified me! I adjourned my seminar and came over here as fast as I could. But you’re not sick and you’re not hurt and you’re not in trouble with the kids. So why am I here, Conner? Please tell me.”
He tried not to listen to her thoughts, but he did listen, and she was thinking what is wrong with my child? and that thought was making her scared.
“Mom, I need to be home.”
“Then it’s not an emergency? You’re just—”
“I need to be home!”
She sighed, then put the car in gear. Then she turned around, heading back toward the school.
“It’s an emergency!”
“All right, tell me what the emergency is.”
He could not tell her he could hear thoughts, hers included. How could he? He said, “I’m afraid I’ll go insane on you, unless I can go home and get some private space.”
She took a sharp breath. Then she stopped the car again and sat there for a moment in silence. Look at his face! He looks insane! Oh, God, he looks like his great-gran. Could it be that he’s schizophrenic, too, will we be cursed now with that? Help him, help him God.
He smiled a glaring, hollow smile.
“Come on,” she said, “whatever, you can take the rest of the day off. Let’s go home and game together. Would you like to game with me?”
They played a lot of Myst: Uru together but he didn’t want to. “You never told me we had schizophrenia in the family.”
She was silent for some time. When she talked, her voice lilted like it did when she was trying to hide something. “What makes you ask that?”
He had to watch her lips to see if they were moving, or he was going to keep giving himself away. If Mom knew he could hear her thoughts, she was going to withdraw from him. Not right away, but over time. Anybody would, because of the invasion of privacy. He hunched close to the door, stared out.
“What makes you ask that particular question right now?”
“Uh, it was in science.”
“They were talking about schizophrenia in science? Why was that?”
“Abnormal-psych module.”
“Dan would be fascinated.” Oh, my Dan, I need you now.
Conner clapped his hands to his ears and forced the scream that urged to get out to become a hiss through his teeth, ssssss!
Mom’s neck flushed, she gripped the steering wheel, she glared straight ahead. Then she sort of shook it off. She started the car and they continued home.
“Mom, it’s not Dad’s fault.”
“What isn’t Dad’s fault?”
“Mom . . . you know. It’s not his fault.”
She almost ran the car off the road. Then she looked at him with her eyes bugging out and her face bright red. What is this? Her hand came out and she grabbed his shoulder and she turned him to her. “What did you say?”
“Nothing. I’m sorry.”
She stared at the road, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Conner, I think I know why you’re feeling so bad. You’re feeling so bad because you know about Marcie.”
He did not exactly know, not the name. But now he did, because the instant she uttered the word Marcie, a huge complex of thoughts and feelings had poured out of her. They were frightening adult thoughts about sex and things he knew little about, and they made him feel like he was prying into his mother’s deepest privacy, and he didn’t want to but could not help it.
“Conner, has she been at the house? Has she been there when I was gone?”
He shook his head. She’d turned onto Starnes, which meant that they would be home soon and he could get away into his room and get out of this hell of thoughts.
“She has, hasn’t she, Conner? You answer me!” He better not lie because if he lies, he’s not my son, not anymore!
“Oh, Mom, no! NO! I’m not lying and I am your son, I love you so much, Mom, you have no idea!”
She looked toward him. Her eyes were full of tears, now. “You’re reading my mind.”
He could not lie to her, he would not do that to his mother. But he wanted to, he wanted d
esperately to. He remained silent.
“You know what I’m thinking!”
He still did not answer.
In her face there were suddenly other faces, flowing one and another to the front with the lazy assurance of carp drifting up from the shadows of a pond. She was a shimmering mass of changing eyes and lips and shapes and hair. She whispered in a voice quite different from her ordinary voice, that he recognized as her soul’s voice, her real voice, “I know what you’re doing and we don’t do it, Conner, we hide this. This is a secret of the soul.”
Just then they turned onto Oak and then into the driveway, and Conner was very, very glad to open the car door and get out of there, and run downstairs and get some space and not have to listen to thoughts.
“Conner?”
“Gotta go to the bathroom, Mom!”
He raced into the kitchen from the garage, then headed across the family room toward the door to the basement. He took the stairs three at a time and dashed across to the bathroom and shut the door.
His mother followed him. “Conner, are you okay?” If this is locked . . .
“Fine, Mom!”
He is not. “I’m coming in.”
“Mom, I’m on the pot!”
“Oh, for goodness sake, I’m your mother.”
The handle turned, and in the gleaming of the brass he saw people moving in bright rooms. His vision focused and then he was in one of the rooms. The Keltons were there and they were in a state of rage, fighting and screaming and pushing each other around like battling animals. Pictures were falling off the walls and their dog was all contorted trying to bite itself—and then Mom came in and she came down to the floor where he had fallen, and he saw a boy walking away down a lane lined with flowering trees and dappled by golden sunlight. He knew, then, what had thrown him to the floor, what agony. That was the lane that led to the land of the dead.