Halloween and Other Seasons

window when the incident occurred. “It was like somebody yanked him out of the air,” Mr. Milestone said.

This reporter was on hand and participated in the massive hour-long search, which was mounted immediately after young Milestone vanished. No explanation has been offered for the youth’s disappearance and subsequent reappearance.

~ * ~

Halpern called in the Milestone piece on Monday afternoon over Bill Greener’s loud protestations. All the rest of the day he double- and triple-checked his calculations, readying himself for the next day’s sighting. He rented a car and was on the road before nightfall, munching periodically on a bucket of fried chicken as he drove. Before leaving he sent a cable to Greener which read: I WAS RIGHT, YOU SUCKER. HAVE REACHED END OF SEARCH. WILL KNOW ALL TOMORROW. BRACE FOR BIG STORY.

He drove for four hours, pulling to a halt well before dawn at his calculated site. There was no moon and the visibility was bad, but he seemed to be on a road at the edge of a vast, rolling valley in the middle of nowhere. He shrugged and went to sleep for a couple of hours, awakening just as dawn broke. When he looked out the window, his eyes widened.

“My God,” he gasped, “I was right.”

There, a scant fifty yards off the dusty road, sat a machine. It looked like nothing so much as an airship, a dirigible-like structure with a long cabin slung underneath. It bore no identifiable markings.

As Halpern drew closer, he saw that his first impression had been a bit mistaken; the thing was not quite as rickety as it had first appeared. It was smoothly metallic and resembled a conventional cigar-shaped flying saucer.

And as he crept even closer, he saw that there was a doorway in the cabin underneath, and a figure leaning against it with his arms folded. Just as Halpern reached the ship, the figure waved languidly and turned away, disappearing inside. Cautiously Halpern poked his head through the opening—and heard someone say, in an even tone, “Please come in, Mr. Halpern.”

He entered the craft, stepping as if he were walking on eggs.

Inside, the cabin was a cluttered mess; stacks of papers and charts lay everywhere. A man was at the front of the structure, bending over a control panel composed of antique knobs and a huge bronze steering wheel. Two globes, one celestial and one terrestrial, were mounted on either side.

The man turned, and Halpern at once thought he looked vaguely familiar. He was strongly built, taller than average, and bore a slight resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt, with a bushy moustache and curling hair parted a bit left of center. He wore a pince-nez, and Halpern was at once taken with the calmness of the gray eyes behind it. He also wore a three-piece woolen suit with a watch-chain and fob attached.

“Please sit down, sir,” the man said, indicating a camp stool off to the right. “I’ll be with you in a moment.” He turned to the control panel, and Halpern spun around to see the door to the craft closing with a smooth hiss. Moments later there was a nearly undetectable bump. They were airborne.

With a sigh the man turned from the control board and confronted Halpern with those calm gray eyes.

~ * ~

“I must congratulate you,” he said, “on your perseverance. I was happy to see you’d found my little pattern. And that you were clever enough to notice that the last little x in my grid of x’s would be completed today.” The corners of his eyes wrinkled upward—in mirth or perhaps something else. “Very resourceful. You thought there might be something at the end of my rainbow of crisscrosses, eh?”

Halpern nodded cautiously.

The stranger suddenly thrust out his hand. “Well, you were right, of course. My name is Charles Fort, sir.”

The man paused a moment to watch Halpern’s jaw drop, then went on: “You’ve become something of a pest these last few weeks, you know. But I must say you’ve been an interesting pest.” Once again his eyes seemed to twinkle.

“You can’t be Charles Fort,” said Halpern. “Fort died fifty years ago.”

The other’s eyebrows went up. “Did he? I suppose you need a bit of explanation, eh?”

Halpern said nothing.

“First of all,” the man said, “I really am Charles Fort. Or was, anyway, for a time. Actually, you might call me a kind of ‘overseer.’ I was sent here to Earth a very long time ago, Mr. Halpern. My life here as Charles Fort, from 1874 to 1932, was an enjoyable sidelight to my real task, and so to amuse myself I decided to document some of my own doings.”

Halpern’s eyes widened. “You mean you made all the strange things happen? The trees flying around, the puppies—all that?”

Fort smiled modestly. “That’s right. Beautifully ironic, isn’t it? That Charles Fort not only documented all sorts of bizarre phenomena, but actually caused them all!” Laughing, he gestured toward the controls. “I do it all with these little knobs. Flying frogs, double suns, night for day, day for night, invisibility—all the silly stuff.”

“I can’t believe it!” said Halpern. “Why?”

Fort’s laughter ended in a sigh. “Well,” he said, “I’ve been here a very long time. Doing a job.” He yawned, then glanced behind him out of the port windows, pushing at the rudder wheel a fraction. “Not a very exciting one, I’m afraid. Let’s just say my job was to start things rolling on this planet, as far as civilization was concerned, and then to—” A hint of a smile touched his lips. “—help things along, so to speak. Not to interfere,” he added hastily, “but rather to keep you moving, evolving, keep you on your toes. We’re not allowed to interfere directly, you know.” He smiled dreamily, fingering his lapel. “I always liked the clothes from the turn of this century best.”

Halpern was getting impatient. “But why did you invent Charles Fort?”

“Boredom, Mr. Halpern. Flying around in this ship all the time, causing mischief here and there—it all gets exceedingly tiring. So I decided to live among you for a while. I made up a being named Charles Fort. Gave him birth records, a family history, everything he needed. Granted, I was bending the rules a bit. But if all I did was chronicle my own doings, I wasn’t directly interfering, was I? And my job at the same time—doubly so, since I was not only perpetrating all those ‘unexplained phenomena,’ but bringing them to your attention at the same time. As I said, beautifully ironic.”

“But what’s all this ‘overseer’ stuff? You mean to say you came here just to play tricks on us?”

Fort sighed heavily. “For better or for worse, Mr. Halpern, somebody a long time ago decided that this was the way to bring young civilizations along. The object is, quite simply, to make you think. To make you look at the world as a strange and beautiful place with mysteries still not fathomed—which, of course, it is.” He gave the rudder another touch. “And the more you wonder about what’s behind this weird, wonderful universe you live in, sooner or later you’ll begin to realize that everything is rather neatly tied together—that it’s all a unity. And the sooner you come to understand that unity, the sooner you can, well, join the club, so to speak. While I was Charles Fort down below I cheated a little by sneaking some of that monistic philosophy into my books. But what’s a little cheating in a good cause, eh?” He smiled. “So you see, all my hijinks are really just a teaching tool.” Suddenly he came over to Halpern and put his arm around his shoulder. “I bet you can’t wait to get back and tell your story, eh?”

“Yes…” said Halpern cautiously.

“Well, you must let me show you a few of my little tricks first, and then we’ll get you back to your office, safe and sound. You see, I know what it’s like to be a newspaperman.”

Once more the limpid gray pools of Fort’s eyes sparkled as he led Halpern toward the back of the airship.

“I have a little confession to make,” he said, smiling paternally. “You’re the first human being I ever let catch me in the act. That’s really bending the rules, isn’t it? But since I’m getting you back to your office, I guess I’m not interfering all that much.”

“Sure, why not?” said Halpern, suddenly buoyant, thoughts straying once again to Woodward and Bernstein. He laughed. “That really was a clever line of yours, by the way. ‘I think we’re all property.’ Very clever.”

“It was at that, wasn’t it?” Fort smiled.

~ * ~