The Grays

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