Episode 31- The Door to Hell

In my unconscious state, I dreamed uneasy dreams.  I dreamed a door of stretched alien skin.  It permeated the air with the smell of burnt sulfur and bubbling green blood.

Whisperings.

Strange whisperings crawled up my back and into my brain. 

In my fever, I walked through that door as though it were not there.  Sissy was terrified of what waited deep below the tunnels and caves of Townsend Mountain.  It was an instinctive fear magnified by a dark, subconscious knowledge.  I felt it too as my wandering consciousness stepped through that membranous door.  Something disturbingly alien lay hidden behind it.

I stepped into a giant cavern where the air itself was alive with a pale neon blue light.  I saw rows and rows of automatons topped with the glass domes Sissy had described.  Red brass mechanical men stiff and upright with arms veined by cables and jointed fingers that shone like infrared fire.  They were connected by a network of glassine tubes that pulsed with an eerie white energy.  They stood at attention, connected by these tubules to a monstrosity that hung at the sheer rock face at the back of the cavern.  It was suspended twenty feet in the air like a giant spider between two metal pylons by the web of glassine tubules that were affixed to each soldier.

There was no defense against my inner compulsion to comprehend this mystery.  I had to see it.  Had to stare into the face of madness itself.

The air in the cavern, though itself alive with energy that fluoresced the vast empty space with light, seemed undisturbed by any presence for a very long time.  There was no noise in the room save for a soft electrical buzz.  Suddenly the back wall began to glow faintly with a viridian light, which quickly darkened into a purple-black incarnadine emittance so repulsive I felt the desire to turn and bolt for my life.

But my body lay unconscious on the rock floor of a dark tunnel somewhere else.

In my inchoate dream, I instead moved forward, walking through the rows of hulking automatonic soldiers, too anxious to look upward to see the dead souls twisting beneath their crystal domes. The sheer number of these mechanisms filled me with trepidation.  The unreasoning fear that one of them might come to life and recognize me as an intruder, then wake the others.

I kept my eyes on their metal feet, walking up the rows, getting closer to the thing in the center of this evil architecture.  I could not think of who built this army.  The age of their construction was indeterminate.  The fact of these hideous mechanical soldiers was chilling.  But it was the strange creature in the web of tubular light that pushed me too close to the edge of sanity.

Closer.

A moment of weakness.

I looked up at an automaton.  Saw the crystal dome and the fluid wisps that moved beneath it like lost aethyric spirits searching for surcease.  A translucent face, then another writhing within the domes as though twisted by invisible fingers.  Eyes glazed in gauzy effulgence peering back at me.

I screamed.  I ran.

I felt the floor tremor.  Saw the back wall flash raging scarlet  then subside.

I stopped and looked up.  I was only twenty feet from the suspended monstrosity.

It was a lifeless man with a ragged beard down to his chest and wild, frayed hair that hung past his shoulder.   He wore a disintegrating Confederate Civil War uniform of rock washed gray.

His head lolled to one side.  His eyelids closed as though he had been forever asleep.

To my horror, I saw that his legs had been cut off at the knees and both his arms severed at the elbows.  The pulsing glassine tubules attached  to these stumps as though his suspended form was the hideous heart of this network of glassine arteries and veins connecting the mechanical soldiers.

How long his mutilated body had hung there I cannot say.  Who had done this to him and how long ago they had so savagely murdered him I would never know.

I could not imagine his agonizing death, but hoped for his sake it had been mercilessly quick.

My nerves had reached their limit.  It was time to leave.

At just that moment his eyelids popped open and I saw that his eyes were silver slits of bright metal, as though someone long ago had dug them out and replaced them with platinum silver crescents.

He opened his mouth and screamed shattering fusillades of fury.

Episode 30- Death by Disintegration

It was the only smart thing I did that night.

I ran with my hand along the side of the tunnel to keep from smashing into rock when we came to a bend.  That's what I say now.  But I know better.  I needed to touch something that night to steady me against the black chaos of the pursuit as we went further down into the underground abyss.  We were running for our lives.  The sound of the creature's roars of rage echoed around us as the tunnel narrowed.

My lungs were hot with pain.  My legs were numb with exhaustion.

The fear of death drove me like a whip.

The monster bellowed.  It was farther back than I expected, but I ran harder.  When it bellowed again, I could sense its helpless hatred.  The sound was much further behind us.

I could hear its frothing frustration as it continued.  Further and further back still.

"Sissy," I shouted.

From somewhere up ahead, she yelled for me to shut up and keep running.

The monster's screams were getting farther and farther behind us.

"I think it's stuck," I said.

We both slowed down and then reluctantly stopped.  I leaned over with my hands on my knees.  The creature continued to bellow its frustration and rage while I tried to catch my breath.  I felt Sissy's hand on my shoulder and it startled me.  But enveloped in total blackness with a terrifying creature somewhere behind us bent on ripping us to pieces, her touch was the best thing that could have happened to me.

"You think it's really stuck?" she said.

"Maybe,"  I said.

"I hope so," she said.

It howled with manic frenzy.  I could imagine it writhing in a narrow passage, insane with the desire to break free of the rock walls that trapped it.

"It's sounds pissed off,"  I said.

"Good," she said.  "I hope it gets so mad it blows itself up."

"Not likely,"  I said.

At that moment, from far back the way we had come, a bright blue-white starburst of light exploded like an overheated transformer.  The pressure wave knocked us both backward and I caught a brief glimpse of Sissy tumbling head over heels before I hit my head on the rock floor and blacked out.

Episode 25- Woman with a Gun

I stepped back and jerked my good hand up to protect my eyes.  But before the bright light clocked my pupils, I'd seen the rifle pointing my way.

"Nice and slow, Homer," said the woman.

My eyes adjusted to the brighter light after a few painful blinks.  I couldn't see much except the gun barrel.  She was standing in front of a bank of lights, so it was difficult to see much except her silhouette and the rifle.  She kept the gun steady.

"Who are you?" I asked.


"Brandy says you're good to go, but I like to see things for myself."

"Brandy?"

"The AI."

"AI?"

"The computer system that runs this place," she said.

She had a young voice.  As my eyes became still more adjusted to the light, I could see that she wore a wide brimmed floppy hunter's hat.  Caramel colored hair stuck out from beneath it.  She seemed pretty, but the steel circle at the end of the rifle seemed more important at that moment.

"I've got to sit down before I fall,"  I said.

"Yeah, you look like shit.  Come on, follow me."

She jerked her rifle to tell me to get walking.

"Who are you?"  I asked again.  "Do you know Mark?"

I could see her more clearly by then.  She couldn't have been more than eighteen or nineteen.

"He's my dad.  He said to wait for you here and if you didn't show up to go looking for you.  You being from the city and all we figured you'd find some way to get lost."

"Everything's on fire out there,"  I said.  "Government helicopters circling.  A ship crashed."

There are moments of clarity, even in total exhaustion.  I had one at that moment and realized I was on the edge of babbling.  I was in an underground bunker with a teen-aged girl still pointing a rifle at me.  The world outside was burning.  The government was on the scene, no doubt looking for the crashed UFO and would be more than happy to lock me up and weld the cell door shut during the process. 

"I know I sound crazy," I said, "but I'm not.  And could you point that rifle somewhere else?  I'm not dangerous."

"Mister, you don't look like you can stand up long enough to be dangerous.  And you might need a change of clothes before you go on TV."

"What?"

She lowered the rifle.

"Come on," she said.  "Follow me and stay close.  We got a place you can bunk til this is over.  We don't get a lot of visitors down here."

"What's your name?"  I asked as I followed her down a long tunnel that twisted and turned like an underground Mobius strip.

"Sissy," she said.

"I'm-"

"Garret.  I know.  Daddy already told me and I don't forget names.  Not too much farther to go."

"I don't think I can make it much farther, Sissy.  I'm not used to all this activity.  I'm a writer.  Usually I sit down a lot."

The air was cool and the tunnel dimly lit by overhead bulbs housed in thick glad domes.  I'd lost track of whether we were going upward or downward.  I just wanted to go to sleep.

"For a writer," she said, "you sure know how to stir things up.  I've been watching things from the control room.  Not too often we see UFOs, monsters, forest fires and the Feds coming down on this mountain all in one night."

We came to a metal door inset into rock.  She waved her hand in front of something I couldn't see and the metal door pulled back to reveal what looked like a combination high school chemistry lab and an armory.

"Wow," I said.

"This ain't nothing," she said.  "Wait til you see the rest."

"Wait a minute.  Did you say something back there about me going on television?"

She smiled and I knew things were about to get a lot worse.

Episode 23- Secrets

Outside the cave, the entire forest seemed to be in flames.  I could not understand how the fire had spread so quickly through the rain-soaked woods unless it was caused by the extreme heat generated by the alien ship's destruction.

Smoke rolled through the night.  Acrid, smoldering fumes floated into the cave.

There was nowhere else to go.

When  the  back wall of the cave slide to one side with a soft, grating noise, I stepped into the opening.  Seconds, later, it closed behind me, sealing me in.  I was alone in the dark in a four foot by four foot cube.  The screen of my hand held locating device faded to a soft green glow.

I aimed in different directions, hoping to see a tunnel leading to safety, but all I could see were four walls and a rock ceiling.

"Hello?" I called.

Someone had to have activated the rock door.  I knew better, but it was important to feel like I wasn't alone.  It made more sense that the locating device caused the wall to slide open and close after I entered.

"Anybody there?"

I leaned against the rock wall and waited.

Only two nights ago I'd been sitting in Emily's living room, talking to the old woman about the alien artifacts.  I remembered feeling as though I was balanced on the edge of a great mystery, where a sudden move could plunge me into depths of darkness beyond what I could imagine.  Now, leaning against the wall of a solid rock cage, I realized that I was trapped.  If I died where I stood, no one would ever know.

Somewhere outside, the forest fire raged and the United States military was closing in on the alien crash site.  The flames and scourging heat were burning any evidence I'd been there to charred embers.  Even if I wanted them to find me, there would be no trace.  With the military scouring the area, chances of Mark getting through to me were virtually zero.  And they could be examining the forest for weeks, months, maybe even years.  An alien craft had crashed there, so the prize was worth it.  If any part of the ship survived the fire, the burned out forest would turn into the most important square mile in Kentucky.

"Can you hear me?" I yelled.

If anyone did hear me, they ignored me.

I needed sleep, I needed food and water, clean clothes and most of all I needed the hell out of there.

Using the fading light of the locating device, I scanned the walls for secret levers, buttons or handles but couldn't find any.  Who built sliding doors in a cave, anyway?  Why would anyone do that?  I couldn't imagine Mark doing it.  Maybe I could, but it would take a lot of money and contractors to do the work and he couldn't live with that unless he killed them after the job was done to keep the secret.

Dead men tell no tales, I thought.  Pirates of Kentucky.

I knew I was losing it, but it wasn't like I didn't have good reason.

The only thing I was sure of was that it couldn't get any weirder or worse.

I changed my mind when a skull and crossbones symbol flared on the back wall of the rock cage and a section of it began to swing inward like a door.

Episode 21- Fire

I got to my feet, still clutching the locating device and nursing my right hand.   My clothes were covered with sloppy, wet mud.  The crashed ship's glow began to fade.  Electrical charges spidered across its surface.  A swath of trees lay cut down behind it.  The night was filled with a soft buzzing sound.  If it had a pilot, it must have died in the crash.  The gargoyle-like creature was buried beneath the mud and rock.  There was no sign of the beast that had hobbled away.

Using my thumb, I swiped away as much mud as I could from the screen of the locating device and saw the green dot still blinking.  I would have to walk past the crashed ship to get to my destination.

Alone in the middle of nowhere on a rainy night, I couldn't see another choice.  I had no supplies and the only way Mark could find me was if I made it to the cave.  The rain came down a little harder.  I could feel the mud washing away from my face and hands.  I looked at the ship.  No way anything inside could have survived that impact, so I started walking.

You'd think as a writer I would have noticed the details, but I walked past the ship without so much as a second look.  I listened for noises, like a hatch opening or something mechanical coming to life.  My only interest was getting to the cave alive.  Five ships in two days was five too many to see.

I was twenty feet past it when I heard the sound.  White noise so loud I could hear it above the rain.  I stopped and looked over my shoulder.  The ship was surrounded by a faint green light.  It grew brighter and I started walking again.  Faster this time.  I didn't know what was going on, but I didn't want to be there to find out.

The sound grew louder, more frantic.  I looked back again and saw that the ship's glow was a painfully bright yellow.  I began to panic.  Green.  Yellow.  I knew what was coming next and began to run for my life, holding the locating device before me to keep on track and to keep a branch from sticking me in the eye.

Even though I knew I shouldn't, I risked a glance over my shoulder again and saw a bright red.  I ran faster, slipping and sliding but somehow not falling.

The night roared and flared about me like an angry god who knocked me flat with a concussive blast of air.  I scrambled and slid to my feet.   This time a new terror drove me maniacally forward.

The woods were on fire.

Episode 20- To the Death

The night exploded with sound and light.

From the bizarre twisting luminescence, the gargoyle creature leaped out and onto the other's back.  I could see its hideous teeth snapping at the dark ape's head.  Its claws ripped at the beast's shoulders and I heard an enraged howl as they tore away strips of flesh.  The awful purple and green light transformed the attack into a violent nightmare.

I stood transfixed as though bolted to the forest floor.

The gargoyle's tongue slapped back and forth while its elongated jaws kept snapping at the ape-creature's head.  Its back claws cut the earth and its front claws dug frantically at the beast's flesh.

The snarling beast jerked its body to one side and slammed the gargoyle ferociously against a tree trunk.  A shower of wet leaves shook loose from the tree and came down like an angry colony of bats.  Both creatures snarled and hissed at each other.  The inside of the gargoyle's mouth glowed a hideous frothy yellow as it tried to bite off chunks of the beast's face.  In a mind bending Hulk Hogan parallel I saw the infuriated dark ape respond by swinging its arms upward in a double hammer fist and then slam them down onto the gargoyle's head, knocking it down so hard I thought its flailing legs would break.

The gargoyle regained its footing and hissed at the beast.  Drops of its saliva sprayed out and I saw smoke rise from where it landed on the ape's long hair.  It howled in pain and leaped at the gargoyle again. The two rolled back and forth across the forest floor like monstrous wrestlers in a death match.

I forgot that I was on the run from the government.  I forgot Emily and her alien artifacts.  I forgot I'd been dumped in the middle of nowhere with no food or water.

The greatest story of my life was playing out before my eyes in those brooding Kentucky hills.  Standing in a primeval fight ring of mud and monsters, I was witnessing something no writer had ever before been gifted to see.  It dawned on me in the midst of my horror that I could only write the story if I survived the night.

Suddenly the gargoyle creature reared back and opened its jaws. The struggle was almost over.

But something astonishing changed that.

From overhead, a haunting, high-pitched sound so sharp it hurt my ears to listen caused me to look up in terror.  It was a familiar whirling silver disk hurtling directly at us.  I looked back at the raging battle in time to see the ape-creature claw its way onto the gargoyle's back and try to snap its neck.  But the gargoyle dug its claws into the beast's leg, causing it to howl in pain and let go.

But instead of attacking the beast at that critical moment, the gargoyle looked up to the sky and saw the careening silver disc coming right at us.  The beast saw it and quickly backed away.  I started running,  but kept glancing over my shoulder.  The trees lit up with as unearthly white light, that entirely washed away the purple-green rift that the creature had burst through.

The gargoyle seemed mesmerized by it.  The craft wasn't just descending, it was out of control hurtling at us like an incoming missile.

Too close, so close I dropped to the ground and covered my head with my forearms.  Trees snapped one after the other like machine gun fire as it mowed down the forest and slammed into the ground.

The impact rumbled the forest floor like an earthquake and showers of light shot skyward.

It crashed into the exact spot where the gargoyle had stood looking skyward.

Crackling, hissing, arcing sounds took the place of the former monstrous howls.  I slithered behind the thickest tree trunk I could find.  The ground was so wet and muddy from the continuing rain that it slathered my pants and chest.  I clutched the locating device Mark had given me in my one good hand.

I held up my injured hand like a cap visor to protect my eyes from the rain.  Smoldering fumes came from the spacecraft. The smell of curdled milk and burning chrome filled my nostrils.

Nothing.

No sign of movement or life.

I'd forgotten momentarily about the dark ape creature.  Then I saw it limping away from the crashed saucer as fast as its injuries allowed.

Episode 19- The Creature

I started to run.  My heart was beating so fast I thought it would rupture.

The rain came down harder.  Branches slapped my face and chest.  Vines tangled my arms and feet and I pitched forward.  As I hit the ground something sharp cut through my palm.  I swore and grabbed it with the other.  The sharp end of a pointed stick protruded a half inch through the top of my hand.  I could feel blood running down my wrist mixed with  rain.  From somewhere off to my left I heard a high pitched rough chatter like that of an angry monkey.

I clenched my teeth together hard and pulled on the long end of the stick with my good hand and the other direction with the other.  I saw bursts of white light from the pain and vomited.

A series of sharp wood knocks closer than before.  I wiped my mouth with my coat sleeve.  The smell was nauseating but I had to get moving.

It was then I realized I'd dropped the small device that told me which way to go.

My hand throbbed with pain and I cursed Mark.  He'd left me alone to die.  I swore I'd strangle him if I ever saw him again.

I reached out with my good hand and began feeling around for the device.  My fingers touched wet grass, clumps of mud and branches, but nothing else.  Something wet and slimy slid along my palm and I knew I'd stuck my hand in my own puke.

A sudden wind rushed through the woods.  I shivered and manically wiped my hand over wet leaves.  I almost ignored it when I felt something the size of a cell phone beneath my fingers.  My hand was shaking so badly when I picked it up I almost dropped it again, but fear tightened my grip.  A little red light flashed on the dirty screen.  I stood up, took a step first to my left and then to my right.  The light finally turned green and I started walking.

I wanted to run as fast as I could to get away from whatever had made the angry chattering noises, but I forced myself to walk so that I wouldn't fall again.  One hand held out before me, the other stuffed deep in my pocket.  The pain grew worse but I kept my mind on following the green dot.

The wind kicked up again as I was trying to remember how long Mark said it would take to get to the cave. A few hours?  A few days.  A fresh burst of lightning splintered the darkness.   Thunder cracked like a whip against sheet metal.

I prayed while I walked.  I didn't know exactly for what, but I kept walking and kept praying.

Kept following the green dot.

It was impossible to say where I was or what direction I was going.  All I could do was follow the green dot.  If it turned orange or red I adjusted my course.  For the last twenty steps I'd been moving in a straight line.

Stay on the line, I thought.

Another flash of lightning.

I looked up to see where I was going.

That's when I saw it.

A gigantic dark shape.  Easily twice my height.

I stopped.  I was frozen where I stood.  Rain coming down hard enough I could feel it squish between my toes.

Behind the creature, the woods suddenly came alive with a purple-green light that seemed to blur and twist the air.  Something hideous burst from that awful radiance and shot toward the thing in front of me.

I watched in mute horror at what happened next.

Episode 18- Dark Noises

ed

Mark was driving.  I'd worn out five miles after we hit the Ohio border.  The stress was too much.  I'd slept until the last good road, which ran out just after dusk.  By the time a cup of coffee cleared up my brain, we were deep into hill country with its sloping, twisting roads and cool night air.

Thermal vision lit the windshield as the night was replaced with heat signatures so we could drive without headlights.  It occurred to me that either Mark had a hell of a lot of money of his own or someone was paying his bills.

"How much further?" I asked.

"You ever wonder what they think you know that they want?" he said.

"I'm so stressed out I have a hard time thinking about it.  And I don't really know that much for them to be coming after me like this.  Maybe they want to know what Emily told me.  Maybe there's something in that letter taped to the picture.  Maybe they think I'm somebody else."

"Might be."

"You going to tell me how much further?"

"You sound like a kid," he said.

I wanted to know what was in the letter he'd found taped to the back of the picture.  One tiny alien floating in blue fluid like it was a biology specimen.  Or a Photoshop freak show clipped off the Internet and turned into a Polaroid photo by a Web Warrior who didn't want to clean his or her room.

"Ever since Emily gave me the alien artifacts my life has turned to shit," I said.  "I'm on the run one day and I'm already so tired of it I could punch myself in the head.  I hate this.  I'm glad you saved my ass by coming to get me, but I feel like I need to be doing something other than running.  And I want to know what's in that letter.  It will give me something to think about.  Something to analyze so I can figure out what to do next."

The van slowed and finally stopped.

"We're here," he said.

His stubbled face glowed orange-green in the light from the windshield.

"I don't see anything," I said.

"That's the plan," said Mark, and he reached inside his jacket and pulled out a gun.

"Why are you pointing that at me?" I asked.

"Time for you to get out?"  he said.

"You're kidding, right?"

"No hillbilly humor tonight, friend.  I'm dead serious.  I'll send somebody for you when I know it's safe.  I got a wife to think of before I worry about you.  Now open the glove box and grab the thing that looks like a cellphone."

"Why are you doing this?" I asked.

"Told you already.  I've got a wife to protect.  She'd do the same for me.  So you just push the button on that thing and turn it on.  You see that little green light near the top of the screen?  You start walking that direction.  Whichever way that dot moves on the screen, that's the way you go.  Long as you do that you'll be alive come morning."

We parked somewhere in the middle of the Kentucky hill country on a moonless night and he was dumping me there.

"What am I supposed to do for food and water?"

Mark raised the gun a little higher.

"Get out now or I'll shoot you and leave you for the bobcats to eat."

I didn't move.

"Last warning," he said.

I opened the van door and noticed the dome light didn't come on.  I realized then he'd planned all along to dump me in the middle of nowhere.  It was so dark outside that I could hardly see the ground.  Something wet hit my cheek.  Then another.  High overhead, the night rumbled.

"It's starting to rain.  You can't leave me out here in the rain."

"Go where the green dot takes you.  Shouldn't take you more than two or three hours to get to the cave.  Keep your hands up and in front of you so branches don't poke your eyes out."

"You're an asshole."

"But I'm an asshole with a gun and you're a federal fugitive.  Now get going and close the door."

I closed the door like he said and he drove away.  He said he'd send someone for me in three days.  I wondered if anyone would show up.

Standing on the middle of a dark highway was a bad idea.  I walked to the side of the road and heard a soft, annoying beep.  The green dot on the screen of the cellphone thing was now angry red.  When I walked toward the other side of the road, it turned a friendly shade of green.

The rain was coming down quicker.  I needed to find shelter.  So I walked the direction that made the locator device happy.  Wet weeds slapped against my pants and I could feel but not see things crunching under my feet.

From somewhere to my left, I heard the solid impact of wood against wood.

A streak of lightning lit the dark sky and turned the forest an electric neon blue-white. I saw that I was surrounded by trees and vines so thick they looked like zoo snakes.  As the  light faded, a dark shape moved across the edge of my vision.

The night closed in.

Episode 12- Alien Body Drop

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

When I turned onto Jefferson Avenue, I risked a glance in the rear view mirror and saw the alien tracker was getting closer.  Two more hours until daylight.  Ten more minutes to the dark waterfront downstream from Zug Island.  I pressed the pedal down and cranked out some speed.  I couldn't tell if the tracker was gaining or staying even and I didn't care.  I just wanted the E.T.'s body out of the trunk before I died of a heart attack.

The streets were shiny and slick like it rained while I was inside selling my soul to Adele for fifteen thousand.  I needed the run money.  I drove by boarded up buildings and broken sidewalks that huddled in  darkness by the side of the road.  Roving gangs stripped the wires out of the streetlights to sell the copper.

Not a good neighborhood for a flat tire.

But I couldn't worry about that.  The alien tracker was after the E.T. in the trunk and me along with it.  Getting rid of the E.T.'s corpse was job one and only. I just had to get past Zug Island so I could dump the body in the river before its owner sucked me up into the sky along with the dead alien.

Maybe I'd get lucky, but I couldn't count on it.  Homeland Security was always at Zug because of the steel mill.   Maybe they'd notice the spinning light moving through Detroit air space.  They had firepower on the island, serious firepower.  Maybe they could shoot it down.  Probably not.  I was on my own.

Downstream of Zug, nobody was on the alert for anything except not getting their ass shot before the sun came up.  That's where I'd pull over and dump the body.  Let the river carry it away to wherever it was its polluted waters flowed.

At night  fiery plumes of sparks shot into the air above the giant ovens at Zug and made the island look like a lunatic's version of twenty-first century Oz.  Night people lurked in the shadows playing dead men's games.  No better place to toss an alien corpse into a river in the whole damned state.

Eleven minutes later I turned left onto a gravel road that headed toward the waterfront.  The windshield was fogging because I was hyperventilating fear.  I pushed a button and the driver's side window growled and rolled down into its slot.  I stuck my head out to see where I was going while the wipers smeared the windshield.

A bottle broke beneath the tires.  Another and then two more while I kept my eyes on the road in front of me for twisted metal frames or piles of fractured cement blocks or anything else large enough break my car.

Five feet from the railing, I turned of the lights and pushed the trunk button.  When I heard it pop, I opened the door and ran to the back of the car without even turning off the engine.  I stepped on a pile of something that squealed like a pack of rats.  I jumped back and looked frantically around.  Pit bulls were terrified of Detroit rats and so was I.  I waited.  Nothing moved.  I thought I saw tiny red eyes staring at me from beneath the bumper.

Suddenly I remembered what I was running from and looked back at the sky.

The alien tracker was close enough that I could see electrical waves rippling along its metal skin.

I went to the trunk, moved the blanket aside and pulled out the garbage bag containing the dead alien.  Before I could take my first step toward the river, I heard a voice from somewhere behind me say, "Hey, bitch, what you got in that bag?"

Episode 11- Alien Bloodhound

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

"Sorry.  I think I have the wrong house,"  I said.

"You got that right."

I know exactly what he said, but it still sounded like I'm going to kick your ass.

"I'll be going," I said.

I had the right address. It really just never occurred to me she'd have another guy over for the night.  Maybe if I'd called her sometime during the last week or two I would have known better.

The red-bearded guy slammed the door in my face, but I thought he called me a dumb ass when he did.  It wasn't what he said, really, it was the inflection in his voice that pissed me off.

But it would be bad to have it out with him.  The neighbors might remember that when the police or Homeland Security came looking for me.  I was sure they'd get around to Adele eventually.  They'd be talking to everybody I knew.  So I knew it was better to duck out.  Especially with a dead E.T. stuffed in the  garbage bag in my trunk.

Instead I pounded on the door and then waited.

His face was red as his beard when he opened the door.  It might have been just the porch light or the fact that I was tired, but he looked a lot angrier than when he last opened the door.

"Adele home?"  I said.  "I just remembered I got the right place."

"Why don't you just get lost?" he said.

"I'm a friend of Adele's.  Her regular friend.  I need to talk to her."

"We're sleeping," he said.

Big bang as the door slammed shut again.

We're sleeping?  He could have said I'm sleeping or she's sleeping, but he had to say we're sleeping.  I hammered on the door three more times.  A part of my brain knew she had a doorbell, but another part knew with absolute certainty that I should be pounding on something.

The door opened again.  This time the red bearded guy held his fist up, squeezed tightly shut to show me he knew how to do it.

"You're starting to piss me off," he said.

"Is she here?  I really need to talk to her."

"It's three o'clock in the morning, asshole."

"We're both writers.  We're up all hours of the night.  We talk a lot.  She writes stuff for my magazines."

"She never said anything about you," he said.

He could punch my ticket.  I knew that.  He knew that.  He had a weightlifter's arms and chest.  Thick neck like a football player.  I weigh about one sixty.  Each of his legs looked to weigh that.  But he was starting to look more confused than angry.

"What's it about?"

"Writer stuff," I said.  "I'm her publisher."

"You're her boss?"

"Yeah, like that."

"Shit," he said.

We both heard her muffled footsteps coming down the hallway behind him at the same time.  He turned his head.  Stepped off to the side a little as Adele pushed her way between him and the door jam.

Some women look great when you wake them up in the middle of the night.  Some look like they've been run over.  I'd hate to know what they say about men.  Adele was in the "looks even better when she crawls out of bed than when she lays down in the first place" category.  Mid-thirties.  Short blond hair tinged blue.  Wearing a fluffy white robe with a monogram from the hotel we stole it from.  Kind of tacky and maybe it came with the room, but I like to think it was the diamond thief in me showing through.

"You could have called first," she said.  "This is a little awkward."

"It's important.  Really, it is.  Private business," I said jerking my chin toward the red bearded guy.

"I don't think so," he said.

Adele turned on the serious porch light.  The halogen one.  The one that almost blinded me.  The one they turn on you when you're caught making a prison break.

"What's in it for me?"  she asked.

"I need somebody to take over the company.  Got a lead on a story that I'm going track down.  Iffy but spectacular if I can pull it off.  But I can't run the company and follow the story at the same time."

"You want me to take over the company?  What do I get out of that except more work?"

She pushed past red beard, came at me eye-to-eye.  Hands on her hips.

"That's between us,"  I said.  "We work it out just the two of us or we don't do it.  I need to do this quickly or find someone else."

The other guy wasn't happy and he wasn't poetic.

"Bullshit," he said.  "We don't have to listen this."

"You don't have to listen to this," she told him.  "Pack up and go home.  My career is calling."

"That's bullshit, too.  This guy shows up in the middle of the night and you're throwing me out for him?  I thought we had something going on?"

Adele didn't like the fact I'd show'd up without calling.  Wasn't happy about that at all.  But I could tell by her thin smile that she was getting into the idea of tossing the other guy out.

"We did," she said.  "But it's time for me to get back to work.  Maybe I'll call you when I'm done."

"Maybe?  Maybe?  This is bullshit, Adele, and you know it."

As loudly as he stomped down the hallway, I just knew he'd been practicing it since childhood.

"Men are such whiners," she said as she let me in and steered me to the kitchen .

"Where'd you meet this guy?"

"Used to be married to him."

"You're kidding, right?"

"How much do I get paid for taking over the company?" she asked.

"Much as you want to pay yourself.  I want you to buy the company, not promote you.  Not some of the stock- all of the stock.  You'll be both the owner and publisher.  You'll finally be totally  in charge."

She thought about it for awhile.  Pulled her robe tighter and fired up her coffee maker.  The only light in the kitchen was one she'd turned on over the sink.  It was like a movie image.  Like the cameraman had asked for the light to be right over her so the audience could see  how it lit her hair and transformed it from blond to gold.

"How much?  What's the price.  And Leonard?"

The last part, the and Leonard part, she shouted.

"What?" came his answer from a few feet down the hallway.

"Don't eavesdrop.  It's rude.  I want to hear the door slam on your way out and don't try slamming from the inside or I'll have my publisher shoot you."

Silence for a moment, then, "This is bullshit.  I mean it."

The front door slammed shut thirty seconds later.

"How much?" she asked again.

"I don't carry a gun.  You know that."

"How much?  And he doesn't know that."

"Much cash as you can get me tonight.  Minimum fifteen grand."

Her eyes got bigger.  She turned and poured each of us a cup of coffee.

"I don't have that much cash lying around."

"Bullshit," I said.  "You've got twenty in that urn in your living room.  You know, the one where you keep your dad's ashes.  Money's folded up in a sandwich bag with the ashes on top to hide it."

We both sat down at the kitchen table with our coffee.  We were quiet.  She was thinking, I was hoping.

"How'd you know about that?"  she said.

"You shouldn't drink and play strip poker."

"I told you about it when I was drunk?"

"Yes, you did."

"What else did I say?"

"Let's get  back to how much you're going to pay me."

Finally, she said, "You're in big trouble, aren't you?"

"Yes.  I'm in big trouble."

"How big?"

"I've got a dead alien in my trunk, Adele."

"Cool."

"I'm serious."

"For real?" she asked.

"For real," I said.

She blew across the top of the hot liquid for a few seconds, then took a long sip.

"The only way I'll buy the publishing company is if we write it up now with you having no interest or say so or any association with the company the second we ink the deal and I give you the check."

"Cash," I said.

"You are in deep, aren't you?"

"I really am serious, Adele.  I've got a dead alien in my trunk and I watched three UFO's shoot down three Air Force planes in a little over five to ten seconds after they noticed them."

"Where'd you get the alien?" she asked.

"I ran into him or her or whatever it is with the car."

"Of course," she said.

"It was foggy."

She ran her finger along the edge of her coffee cup.

"I don't want to know you after we do this," she said.

"You won't," I said.

It's the wrong thing to say to a woman you wake up at three in the morning.

I was still thinking about that when I was walking to my car.  It really didn't seem important anymore when I looked down the street and something hovering over the rooftops four or five intersections down from where I was standing.  Iridescent gray.  Smaller than the three ships I'd seen earlier.  Spinning like  an extraterrestrial gyroscope.

It's tracking the thing in my trunk, I thought.

Episode 8- First Contact

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

Head craned forward, peering through the windshield as the wipers fought back against the ghostly fog.  A yellow-white glow from the fog lamps penetrated three feet into the mist then disappeared.  Visibility was so bad I couldn't see the trees.  Twice I found myself driving on grassy weeds and pulled the wheel frantically to find the driveway again.

The flames from Emily's burning house were twisting, fiery smudges in my rear-view mirror.  I clenched my teeth and kept driving.  Somewhere up ahead the gravel driveway would turn onto a dirt road.  From there I could make a paved road in an hour or so.

I remembered pouring lamp oil over Emily the way she told me to, smashing the burning lamp onto the floor and running toward the door.  The image of her dress catching fire played over and again against the theater screen of fog.  I remembered her eyes popping open and me screaming.

Don't let me die one of them, she'd said.

I did what she told me to do.  If she was right, maybe I'd done a good thing.  If she was crazy, I was going to hell.

Something was suddenly standing in front of my car.

I slammed on the brakes and said, "Oh shit, shit, oh shit."

Too late, I knocked it over and under the car.  I felt a horrible, squishy slide as it went under the tires and then the car stopped moving.

The drainage ditch on the far side of the road was just behind the front hood.

Sweat slid down my scalp and onto my cheeks.

What had I done?

What had I killed?

My hands trembled on the steering wheel.

I didn't want to open the car door and go see what I'd done.  Didn't want to feel the touch of the clammy moist air against my skin.  Didn't want to see who or what I'd hit.

The flashlight was in a compartment beneath the mid-seat arm rest.  I took it out, flipped the switch and the car interior lit up in a cone of white light.  I saw the Bible and the photo laying on the floor where they had landed.

Stones crunched under my feet as I stepped out onto the road.  The night was filled with a sense of ominous presence.  I aimed the beam at the fog and it lit up but revealed nothing.  I listened for sounds.  A voice begging for help.  A twisted moan.  A dying gasp.  But the night was silent as if the murky miasma surrounding me had absorbed everything.

I took a deep breath, then aimed the light at the front of the car.

A mangled blue arm stuck out from beneath the tire.

Episode 7- Emily's Secret, Part Two

If you have the cash to spare to help us out with the Alien Diaries Anthology, head on over to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project and donate will you?

*****

She was lying sprawled across the threshold.  Beyond the yellow glow of the porch light, the lawn was covered by a low hanging gray fog.  The air was thick and moist. It smelled of gunpowder and burned flesh.

"Can you hear me?" I asked.

Bending down close to her, I could see that a section of her right side was missing.  The massive wound was sealed over with hardened black ooze.  Her dress seemed to have melted right into it.

I didn't want to move her, but I didn't want to leave her where she was.  My cellphone still had no reception.  I ran to her house phone and lifted it from the receiver.  No dial tone.

Nothing in her medicine cabinet except pills, hydrogen peroxide, bandages and a bottle of cotton swabs.  I shuffled through the contents of the bathroom closet and found a roll of wrap-around gauze bandage and a tube of antibacterial ointment that was nearly empty.

When I returned to the living room empty handed, she stared up at me through half-open eyes.

"Get me to the couch," she said.

Her voice was harsh with pain.

"I don't know if I should move you," I said.

But I did it anyway.

She weighed less than a big laundry basket.  I held her as best I could without touching the place where her side was missing.  When I lay her down on the couch, she gave a little cry and I thought I'd killed her.

"Emily?" I said.

"Gun.  Close the door.  Lock it."

Each word came out as painfully as if it was her last.

Looking at her side made me want to throw up.

I locked the door after taking a quick look outside.  The fog prevented me from seeing anything except my projected fears.  I picked the shotgun up, and immediately felt better even though it was the first gun I'd ever held.

"Do you think they're gone?" I asked as I knelt down next to her and laid the gun on the hardwood floor.

It didn't occur to me to wonder who "they" were.

"Light the lamp," she said, looking at the oil lamp on the small, round table next to the couch.

Badly injured people went into shock and could die.  I didn't know how to tell if she was in shock.  I didn't know what to do if she was.

I found matches in the drawer, removed the glass cone from the lamp and tried to light the wick.  My hands were shaking so badly it took me three tries.

She appeared worse in the flickering light.  Her skin, I realized, actually was light blue.  Earlier I'd thought it was a trick of the lamp light, but one look at her face confirmed the truth.

"Take the Bible with you," she said, "page five hundred seventeen."

It took almost a full minute for her to finish that sentence.

I saw her worn leather covered Bible on the end table next to the oil lamp.  King James Version.  I don't know why I noticed that.  It just jumped out at me.

"Don't talk," I said.  "I can carry you to the car and we'll find a doctor."

Her head rolled to one side, then her eyes snapped open and she said,  "No doctor.  I'm dying. Do what I tell you.  Take the lamp oil under the table, pour some on me and on the floor. Break the lamp on the floor and set fire to this place."

She was in such pain as she spoke that her jaw shuddered and I had to lean down to understand what she was saying.

"I can't.  I can't start a fire.  You'll burn to death."

"If I wasn't dying I'd kill you," she said.

"I'll take you to a doctor.  Don't talk anymore, please.  You need to be in a hospital."

"Too late.  Don't let me die one of them."

Her eyes closed and I felt for a pulse.  I couldn't find one but I didn't really know how to find a pulse anyway.

Don't let me die one of them, she'd said.

I must have gone into shock, too.  I got the small bottle of oil and did it exactly as she said.  I reasoned she was dead and I was fulfilling her last wishes.  She seemed like she wouldn't make it much longer if she was just unconscious.  But I could hardly think.  What was that bright flash of light?  Who or what had she been shooting at?

Running on auto-pilot, I picked up the Bible in one hand and the lamp in the other.

She looked dead.

I threw the lamp down on the wooden floor and ran back to the door.  Flames rose like dancing demons and  the worn fabric couch caught fire.

I saw her eyes pop open when her dress caught on fire and I screamed her name.

Fire engulfed the shotgun, and I turned and ran, carrying the Bible clasped tightly under one arm.  Foggy tendrils clutched at me as I hunted for the car.  Smoke suffused the suffocating mist.  My mind was crowded with guilt and terror and I could not think.  If not for the garish orange-red light of the burning house, I would not have found my car at all.

It started with the first turn of the key. Feeling it come to life while watching flames consume Emily's house and her with it was too much for my mind to handle.  How could I have left her there dying or dead?  What kind of a man was I?

Don't let me die one of them, she'd said.

I hope to God you're right, old woman.

The Bible lay next to me on the front seat where I'd dropped it.  It was open, and I saw an envelope had fallen out.  Saw the page number was five seventeen.

I found a color picture inside the envelope, wrapped in cellophane.  When I saw what it was, I dropped it back on the seat, turned the dome light off, then put the car in reverse and drove down her driveway as fast as I could with the fog lights on.  I was squeezing the steering wheel so tightly that my hands hurt.

It was a photo of a strange creature with large black eyes floating in a jar of bright blue liquid.