The Grays

What can we do to help you stop screaming?

He’s not screaming, you fool, he’s running!

He ran faster, his legs pumping. “Dad! Mom! Help me! Help me!”

The creatures buzzed around him like giant flies. The one with the earbud buzzed along ahead of him, face to face, holding out the earbud.

The house was farther away than he thought. It was hard to make progress in the snow.

Then the creature made a sort of thrust at his head. Sorry! Sorrrysorry!

The earbud was in again and he was all of a sudden running in midair. He yanked it out and hit the ground and got up and ran again, his feet crunching in the snow.

He got to the front walk, vaulted the gate, landed in the snow, fell and got up, then slipped on the icy stones and fell harder, rolling off into the drift-choked front yard. He went slipping and sliding up the walk, his feet stinging from the cold. He reached the door, pulled on the handle.

Locked. He rattled it. “Mom! Dad!” He dragged at it. “Oh, please, please…” He saw the doorbell under its little light, and moved to press it.

We have to!

We can’t!

Conner, come on!

Go in him, you idiot! NOW!

Conner then felt something that few human beings have ever felt. He experienced the sense of something moving inside his own body, slithering up from his gut as if alive.

OF COURSE, THE THREE THIEVES could have turned him off with a little whiff of gas, and taken him wherever they cared to take him, but that was not what this was about. The collective had known that Conner would need to be tamed.

HORRIFIED AT WHAT HE WAS feeling, Conner looked down at himself. His chest and belly were visible, his pajama top having blown open in the wind. Something glowed through his skin, and it was coming up from his chest toward his head. Bright light shone out of his body in the shape of the thing, a snake that twisted and turned inside.

He cried out, he clutched at his chest—and the thing shot into his head and the cry was stifled. His head glowed for an instant so brightly that the whole front yard was lit up. The icicles on the windows reflected blue light brighter than a flashbulb.

Then it was dark. Real dark. Because Conner was not anywhere anymore. He was not looking out of his eyes, it didn’t feel like. What it felt like was so odd that he could hardly believe it, but the truth was that he seemed to have been swallowed by his body, as if he’d gone down into his own stomach.

This was all so totally new that he could not even think about it, let alone explain it. In truth, he was being affected by a simple electromagnetic field that was being applied with great care to about two million specific neurons in his brain. It wasn’t magic. There is no magic. There is only the unknown—in this case, a very old and experienced science possessed of a great knowledge of how bodies and brains work.

Objectively, he recognized that it must be some sort of illusion. Even so, the fear was a claw clutching his heart.

He felt his body turn and begin to move away from the house. No amount of effort would get him back into his head or enable him to regain control of his movements.

He tried to call to Dad, then, in his rising panic, to the police. Nothing worked. He could not make his voice turn on. Despairing now, he thought of how very, very sad his parents were going to be, never knowing what happened to him like this.

Somebody help me. Please, somebody!

We are helping you.

He felt himself turn, felt his feet dip into the snow, felt it blow against his chest.

Now I will remove myself from you, the voice said. Do not run again.

In a moment, he began to go up through his body. In another moment, he was seeing through his eyes again.

The wind blew, the pines moaned, snow flew. He had been taken deep into Lost Land, so deep that there was nothing around them but pines. No lights, no houses, just the pale glow of the snow.

We’re the Three Thieves but we didn’t steal you.

Yes we did.

Shut up!

“Okay… I hear you.”

Nobody moved.

He was well aware of the mystery he was facing. Remarkable, indeed. Then he saw movement in the woods, and a fourth gray appeared. He was not squat and kludgy like these three. He strode on long legs and his head was more in proportion. Coming through the snow, he was as graceful as a dancer.

He stopped behind the three and raised a long, thin arm, sort of like an Indian chief or something. Conner noted: no muscles. Therefore the skin itself must contain millions of micromuscles.

He took a step toward him. Conner took a step back. He came closer.

Conner yelled as loud as he could: “Get away! Get away from me!” Then he clapped his hands over his mouth, actually surprised at himself. But there was more than one Conner in here, and the other one, the little child alone in the woods, was still really, really scared and did not care about the fact that this was contact, it was historical and damn awesome that it was him doing it or any of that.

The other Conner took over and ran, he just ran, he didn’t care where, deeper into Lost Land, past the great, frowning trees, into the tangled places where nobody ever went.

The more he ran, the more the panicked Conner replaced the curious Conner, and the wilder and more frantic his flight became.

Soon he began to feel his feet burning. He was getting cold. When he wasn’t around the grays, he needed more than just pajamas out in this blizzard. Something they did had been keeping him warm. Curious Conner thought, Heat without radiance or forced air or anything. I wonder how they do that?

And he slowed down a little. Now his breath was coming out in huge puffs and his feet were really burning and it was meat-locker cold.

Sobbing like an infant, he stumbled to a halt. He forced the tears down, and finally stood trembling from the cold, rubbing his shoulders.

The wind roared in the trees, and a big gust stung him head to toe with snow. Cold this cold felt just like being burned and he screamed into its howl, but his loudest cry was so small against it that he could hardly hear it himself.

This was idiotic. He was here to think, not cry like some idiot. So okay, he turned around and around, trying to get his bearings.

No bearings.

He hopped from foot to foot to keep the agony down. But it didn’t work, he was barefoot in the snow in the middle of a blizzard and wearing cotton pajamas. He was quite familiar with the dangers of hypothermia. If he’d known the temperature, he could probably have calculated to the second just how long before he lost so much reason that he could no longer hope to survive.

He had never thought much about dying before, but he thought about it now because it appeared that it was going to happen to him. He was already getting numb and that was a really bad sign, it was a sign of death coming, he knew that. The next step was the final sleep.

“Dad! Mom! Hey, I’m lost out here! Hey, HEY!”

Ridiculous, meaningless effort.

“Grays! Hey, I’m here! I’m willing to negotiate! HEY!”

Nothing.