West of Farmingdale
Dick Jenson crushed a cigarette butt under the heel of his Italian leather shoe. Turning the corner onto his street, he discovered a second car parked in the driveway; a sombre-looking black Olds blocking in their two-tone Belair. He didn’t know anyone who drove an Oldsmobile.
His wife Trixie met him at the door, a martini in hand. The fragrant aroma of her pot roast wafted toward him from the kitchen. There was a hesitant look in Trix’s gray-green eyes. Dick knew he looked a sight. He had bloodshot eyes and a five o’clock shadow left over from last Tuesday. He hadn’t slept well in weeks, which made him act strangely. Out of focus at the best of times. Short-tempered at the worst.
He took the drink, giving his wife a peck on the cheek. Had he kissed her on the lips she would have known the last thing he needed was more alcohol.
“Who’s car is that?” he asked, nodding back to the driveway.
“Someone I’d like you to meet.”
She led him into the paneled living room where two men in uniform — USAF — rose to greet him. Lieutenant Collins and Sergeant Hill. The boy-faced lieutenant looked straight out of the academy.
“What can I do for the fine men of the Air Force today?” asked Dick. He had picked the wrong day to forgo showering by the look of things. These men were all business. Spit-and-polish head-to-toe.
Dick gestured with an open hand indicating everyone should sit. He took his easy chair and Trixie sat next to him. The airmen took the couch opposite.
Trix reached out, putting a hand on his. “I hope you don’t mind, dear. These men are specialists. I thought maybe they could help you out with, you know…”
“Beautiful home you have here, sir.” The lieutenant fidgeted with his hat, looking about. Appraising the place. “Your wife tells me you’re with an ad agency downtown.”
“That’s right. Senior copywriter at Goodman and Associates of Madison Avenue.” His chest puffed out a little, even though he hadn’t set foot in the office all week. Even though he didn’t know if he could ever show his face there again.
“You afford all this on a writer’s salary, huh?” The sergeant took a look around the room. The hi-fi cabinet. The fourteen-inch television. Trixie. “Looks like I should of paid more attention in English.”
“Quite.” Dick raised his glass before stopping himself. “I suppose you’re on duty? My wife makes a great martini.”
“Afraid we can’t join you,” the lieutenant said. “We’re with a special investigative unit known as Project Blue Book. Perhaps you’ve heard of it.”
“I actually have.” It was one of the more promising leads he had come across in his research. They were the people who coined the term unidentified flying object. A government agency all about investigating UFO phenomena. These men were serious.
“Your wife tells us you think you’ve had an… encounter.”
“I have. She has, too. She just can’t remember it.”
“Yes. She gave us her side of things already.” Sergeant Hill checked his notebook. “Single vehicle accident. Lost time. Waking up in the woods.”
“Now we want to hear your side of things,” added the lieutenant.
“My side of things?”
No one had wanted to hear Dick’s side of things for a while. Speaking of that night had only led to harsh laughter and looks of pity. Telling someone who wanted to listen might ease the burden he carried. He knew their main goal was to debunk his story, but there was no way what he saw was swamp gas or the planet Venus. In the end, they would at least have to give him that. Even if they only added what he said to some pile of unexplained cases, that would at least be something.
“Okay.” He sipped his martini and settled back in his chair. “Here goes.”
The incident happened as the Jensons drove home from a Fourth of July party that summer. Mr. Goodman — Dick’s boss — held the event at his estate near Farmingdale every year. He treated his senior staff to a night of barbecue, drinks, and fireworks. It was the Jensons’s first time at the gathering. Dick’s promotion had only come through in March.
At the party, Trixie declined to drink. Doctor’s orders. That’s when it became public knowledge the Jensons were expecting their first child. Dick’s co-workers pressed him with drinks, toasting his good fortune at every opportunity. All night long.
By the time the fireworks were over, Dick was plastered. He begged his wife to drive home using back roads with all the windows rolled down. Getting sick in the car was not an option.
What should have taken under an hour on the Southern State Parkway turned into an all-night ordeal. Driving flustered Trixie on a good day. She didn’t drive often, and she had never driven the back roads of Long Island. Let alone in the dark. Dick — three sheets to the wind and damn near comatose — was no use as a navigator. She got turned around, more than once. She would have pulled over, asking for directions, had they been any sign of someone to ask.
“Where are we? What’s that noise?” Dick was coming to, roused out of his stupor by a low rumble growing louder.
“I don’t know where we are and I don’t know what that noise is.” Her voice had a sharp edge to it.
“Stop the car. If it’s the engine making that sound we’re in big trouble.”
“It’s not the car.”
“Says you. Stop the — “
Just then, a figure — no more than four feet tall — appeared in the headlights. Maybe a child. Dick called for Trixie to hit the brakes again but she wouldn’t stop. They kept barreling down on the kid. That’s when Dick grabbed the wheel.
They awoke in a clearing in the woods. Rays of the rising sun broke through the trees, poking them in their eyeballs.
“What the hell?” Dick — extremely hungover — sat up and shook his wife’s shoulder. “How did we get here?”
Getting up, she looked as confused as he was. If not more.
“The kid. The road.” He grabbed her by the wrist, perhaps a little too rough. “I think we hit him.”
Using the sounds of occasional passing cars, they were able to find their way back to the road. They came out of the woods some fifty yards in front of their car. The dirt road rolled down between two hills at that point. The Belair was on the shoulder of the road, the passenger-side tires off the shoulder, on the hill. Skid marks traced the path of the car’s last few seconds in motion.
“You must have braked,” he said, pointing at the torn up gravel.
“You said brake and I braked.”
“And what happened then? After that?”
“Well… After that, I’m not quite sure.” She was defensive. Arms crossed. Looking at the front of the car. “No damage. I don’t think we hit anything.”
“Are you sure?” Dick came around the front, running his hands along the fender and the hood. Feeling for dents, he didn’t find any.
Grateful, he sank to his knees, one hand on the V-shaped hood ornament. Tears filled his eyes, his head felt ready to split, and his tongue felt like sandpaper.
“It’s okay, Dick.” Trixie put a gentle hand on his shoulder, crouching beside him. “Everything’s going to be all right now.”
The human mind has funny ways of rebuilding lost memories. In Dick’s case, his mind revisited the forgotten events of that night in his dreams. Small things first. Visions of slender hands. That low rumble. A sense of being spoken to, a voice heard while no lips moved.
By August the dreams had become so intense he hardly slept at all. Once awake, he tried his best to hold onto the dreams. Writing down every detail possible. Drawing sketches. A fragmented timeline.
“This is real, Trix. It really happened. To both of us.”
“I’m not saying it didn’t,” she said. “But if it did, why is it not a problem for me?”
“Maybe they did a better job wiping your memories.”
“The… aliens?”
“Yes. The aliens. I was pretty drunk at the time. Maybe that’s why it didn’t take as well with me. How else do you explain how we ended up in the woods?”
“Retroactive amnesia.”
Her ready, technical-sounding answer caught him off-guard. “Retro what now?”
“I read about it in Reader’s Digest last month. You hit your head hard enough, your memories become fuzzy, before and after the accident. We swerved off-road and bumped our heads. We most likely walked to the clearing trying to find help.” Trixie had hit her forehead on the steering wheel that night. She had worn a headscarf for most of July to cover up the bruise.
“Well, I guess you have it all figured out, then. But what about all this?” He tossed his notebook at her. “How do you explain all that?”
Trixie didn’t need to open the book. She’d seen enough of it already. “You have a brilliant imagination. It’s one of the things I love about you. Sets you apart from the herd.” She sat at the kitchen table, straightening the folds of her summer dress along the way. “You have questions and your mind is grasping for answers based on the input you give it. Those pulp stories you love. The more sensational news items of late. That cop in New Mexico. The interracial couple from New Hampshire.”
Dick took his book and got up to leave. Trixie reached out for his hand. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” she said. “Downright normal even.”
“I just don’t know how you can say that.” He dropped to one knee in front of her. “It’s as real to me as this right here. You were there. They led us out of the car. Into the woods. They talked to us, but in our heads. Their lips never moved. They were short. Naked, but no sex organs. Green-gray skin. Red eyes. Slit pupils, like cats. They took us somewhere. Split us up. I was on a table and I couldn’t move. I could hear you, but I couldn’t see you.” He searched her eyes for signs of recognition. “You were screaming. My god, the screams. You wouldn’t stop. And I couldn’t help. Is none of this ringing any bells for you?”
As Dick finished his story, Hill looked up from his notebook. “Is that about it?”
Dick nodded. “So what do you think?”
“I think it warrants further investigation, although we don’t have much to go on.” The young lieutenant glanced over the sergeant’s notes. “We have a date. That’s good. A dirt road in a wooded area of Long Island, though. That’s not too precise.”
“We were west of Farmingdale,” added Trixie with a nervous smile. “Does that narrow it down?”
“It might, ma’am.” The sergeant turned his attention back to Dick. “We’ll check with local police out on the island. See if they have anything out of the ordinary on the night in question. Something that might corroborate your story.”
“Because right now it sounds like delusional ravings,” said Dick, more statement than question.
“Sir, I’ll be honest with you. We’ve learned a lot over the last few years. Used to be a quarter of all UFO sightings went unsolved. Now we can explain over ninety-nine percent of our cases.”
“You’ve got a rumbling noise, a kid playing in traffic, then some lost time,” said the sergeant. “Could be you hit your heads swerving off the road. Happens all the time. You forget things.”
“Retrograde amnesia.” The officer smiled, perhaps proud of remembering the right term.
“Maybe there’s something more.” The sergeant made a move to shut his notebook.
“What about all the other stuff? You know… little green men,” said Dick.
“You’re the only one that remembers these… beings. Is that correct, Mr. Jenson?”
“Yes.”
“Creatures remembered in your dreams?”
“Yes, but — “
The sergeant closed the notebook and both airmen rose as one. “Maybe that’s all it is.”
“Just a bad dream?”
“Perhaps.”
“Maybe,” the lieutenant breaks in, “it was a prank. High school kids, influenced by UFO stories, out terrorizing strangers. It’s happened before.”
Dick looked him right in the eye. “Seriously? Look, I know what I saw, and I know it wasn’t human.”
As the airmen were on their way out, Sergeant Hill turned to Dick. “You want my advice, sir?”
“Not overly, if we’re being perfectly frank.”
“Good. Good. Appreciate your honesty. The way I see it, you’re letting your life fall apart because you can’t let go of what happened that night. Everyone’s moving forward, but you’re still stuck in that one moment. And you may never get the answer you’re looking for, even if you spend the rest of your life to it.
“But look around. You’ve got a great job. A beautiful wife.” He nods toward Trix’s growing belly. “You’re going to be a father soon. Life goes on. Maybe you should go along with it.”
With that, he put on his hat and followed the young officer out the door and down to their Oldsmobile.
He awoke the next morning in unfamiliar surroundings. Since the nightmares, he spent most of his nights in the kitchen scribbling in his notebook. An open bottle on the table. Just a little something for his nerves. He usually greeted the dawn passed out, drooling on the notebook serving as a pillow.
This morning, though, he found himself in the living room. Looking up at the ceiling. A thin blanket wrapped around him. The book he had started in the night waited on the coffee table. A bookmark held the place where Trixie must have found it lying open on his chest.
It came back to him then. Another nightmare jolting him awake just before two. Wandering the house without purpose. Trying to avoid the notebook and the bottle. The comforting distraction he found in the words of Dr. Spock.
A bustling came from the kitchen. The tantalizing aromas of warm French toast and fresh-brewed coffee called to him. He rose up stretching as if he had slept a hundred years. His belly growling, his mouth watering.
From that day on, Dick learned all he could about babies. If recent events had taught him anything, it was that he had an obsessive personality. If that was true, he reasoned, it was time for him to obsess about something that made him happy. And nothing made him happier than the thought of their unborn child.
Dick returned all his books about UFOs to the library. In their stead, he checked out books about pregnancy, birth, and child-rearing. Books that he devoured. He learned so much about babies that even Trixie’s obstetrician had a hard time keeping up with him.
“You certainly do keep abreast on the subject,” said Dr. Weatherby.
“Periodicals at our library carries the Gray Journal.” Dick had used the common name for The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology. “Fascinating stuff. I’m considering a subscription.”
The old doctor — who’d been delivering babies since the twenties — found Dick’s fascination odd yet amusing. But only in small doses. Most husbands never came to their wife’s OB appointments, but Dick was always there. Always enthusiastic. Always with a little notebook, each page a new list of questions for the doctor.
“You’re so involved with your wife’s pregnancy. Whatever will you do with yourself in the waiting room?” the doctor hinted.
“Waiting room? I won’t be in the delivery room. I’m Trixie’s birth coach. You’ve heard of the Lamaze method, of course.”
In early December, in the hospital delivery room, Trixie turned to Dick. “What does that light remind me of?”
The fixture in question had a long, jointed arm, allowing the doctor to shine it wherever he needed to. Dick had a clear memory of a similar light, but it had been months since he’d allow himself to dwell on such thoughts. “I’m not sure, sweetheart. The dentist, perhaps.”
Dr. Weatherby was between her legs, examining her. “Good. Ten centimeters. You’re almost ready to start pushing.”
The human mind has funny ways of rebuilding lost memories. It seemed to Dick that it took a response to visual stimuli to unlock all the horror buried away in Trixie’s mind. As the birth of her child progressed, Trixie’s mind let fly all her repressed memories. There were too many reminders in the room with her, each one a memento of that fateful night in July. Bright lights obscuring shadowy figures. Clinical, precise hands pressing between her legs. Pushing her knees apart.
“It was just like this,” she gasped between contractions.
“What was?” asked her husband.
“That night. After the accident.” Another contraction hit, the urge to push overwhelming her.
“Almost there,” said Weatherby. To one side a nurse readied a station for assessing the child’s Apgar score once it was out.
“It’s okay, Trix. We’ve got all the time in the world to sort that out,” said Dick. “Let’s focus on the baby now.”
A nurse inspected between Trixie’s legs. “I think I see the head. Dr. Weatherby, would you take a look at this?”
“I believe you now.” Trixie wrapped her hand around Dick’s. “I’m sorry if I didn’t before.”
“That’s okay.”
“No, it’s not. None of it is okay. They separated us. I kept calling for you.”
“I heard you, but I couldn’t come.”
“We’ll need an incubator, stat.” A nurse ran out of the room at Weatherby’s command.
“They did stuff to me,” Trixie wailed. “I screamed but they wouldn’t stop.”
“Oh god, honey.” Dick squeezed her hand tighter.
“They put a needle in me. Down there.”
“Focus, Trix. Focus on me, focus on the now. This moment. Focus on our baby.”
The nurse returned, pushing a long clear plastic box on wheels.
“Right up here,” said the doctor. “One last big push should do it, Mrs. Jenson.”
“What did they do?” Trixie screamed as she pushed. “What did they do to me? To my baby?”
“It’s okay, honey. Everything’s going to be all right now.” Dick looked over at the doctor to see him swaddling their crying newborn in a blanket. “What is it, doctor?”
“I… I’m not sure.” In Weatherby’s arms, a green-gray hand pushed out of the swaddling. The child looked upon its parents with tiny red eyes.
All the while Trixie kept screaming, “What did they do to my baby? What did they do to my baby?” She wouldn’t stop.
** First appeared in Unoriginal #3 **
