Episode 6- Emily's Secret

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?

*****

"Not everything is a government conspiracy,"  I said.

She looked away from me to stare at the oval portrait which hung  between twin strips of peeled and curling wallpaper strips.  Once again I puzzled at the gray-blue tint to her skin.  The lamp near the far wall did little to cheer the living room. Its stand was darkened brass, and the lamp cover looked like a worn doily stretched and sewn onto a wire cage.  I wondered if the bulb was from a time when five to ten watts was considered normal.

My own hands appeared sepia tinged  in the faint light.  Without knowing why, I shuddered.

I looked up again at Emily and was shocked by how fragile she looked.  She was past eighty, and her skin seemed not only pale-blue gray, but faintly translucent.  Old age is both a crime and its own punishment.  In that horrid lamplight, my skin looked older, but hers looked crinkled and clammy as used  wax paper.

"Why'd you come here?" she said.

"You implied that your friend was murdered by the government, but you can't know for sure unless there's something you haven't told me.  And I came here because you asked me, if you'll remember.  I didn't call you, you called me.  Look, I'm spending a small fortune testing your artifacts based on your claims that they're alien.  I'm not rich enough to spend money on projects like this unless I think they could turn out to be real.  Who's going to reimburse me for all that money if they're not real?  So when you claim the government moved an entire town to destroy any clue that these artifacts exist and even killed a man to shut him up, I'm just saying I need proof.  Or enough information to find my own truth.  Whatever you know, I want to know, Emily."

She jerked her head toward the front porch window when something crashed into the bushes beyond the porch.

"What was that?" I asked.  "A deer?"

Emily stared at the window, then stood up and took a step in its direction.

"I'll go with you," I said.

"Sit down," she said.  "I can't look after you and me at the same time."

From a cabinet near the front door she took out a pump shotgun and a box of shells.

I was about to repeat that I would go with her when she jacked some shells into the gun, then turned around and pointed the barrel at me.

"I said sit down," she said.

She kept her eyes locked on mine while I considered my options.  Sitting down was better than getting shot.

"I just want to help," I told her.

"Then do what I tell you."

I was about to protest, but right before I did, I closed my mouth and kept it shut.  The barrel of her gun was steady.  It was pointed right at the center of my body mass.  I finally sat down, but she made no attempt to open the door.  She stood there staring at it for eight or nine minutes.

"Aren't you going to go outside?" I finally said.

A flash of painfully bright light  flared outside the curtain.  I threw my hands up to my face and dropped to my knees.  The air was filled with a rushing, gritty noise like a butcher's saw ripping through bone.

"Emily, what is it?  What's out there?" I shouted.

She didn't answer me, but a few seconds later, I heard the first shotgun blast.

Alien Diaries Anthology- Episode 1

I started another project over at Kickstarter for an anthology titled "The Alien Diaries," which I'll soon put up over at White Cat.  This might lead you to think I'm going nuts, but I'm having fun!

They'll let me know if it goes through in a day or so.  Here's the project description:

*****

As a paranormal investigator, writer and amateur UFO-ologist, I receive a lot of strange calls.  But none as strange as the one I received early last year from an elderly woman I'll call only "Emily."

She'd read a copy of my alien werewolf book "Tainted Blood," heard that I lectured on Ghost Hunting Technology, and told me she thought I was just the person to solve the mystery of two alien artifacts that were left behind the night her husband was "taken."

If it weren't for the tone in her voice, I would have thought she was a crackpot.  Ninety nine times out of a hundred, when a total stranger tells you they have alien artifacts, they are in fact crackpots.  But Emily sounded different.  So I said yes. At the very least, I could come away with an interesting story.  

She lived on a small farm in the middle of nowhere, five hours driving time due south and east, according to my GPS.  The last twenty five miles or so were dirt roads twisting through fields, dense woods and a brutal thunderstorm.   By the time I reached her house, her long driveway was was more like a seldom used cattle trail and so muddy my car slid onto her lawn and stopped four feet short of crashing into her front porch.

I'll tell you more about that night with Emily in the weeks to come, but for now I'll tell you that Emily was telling the truth.  In her living room, in the light of a lamp that dimmed in and flared with each thunderous gust of wind, she sat across from me in a faded upholstered wing back chair and said, "If you can't keep a secret, you'd best leave now."

I assured her I could.

"Not a word of this until I'm dead and gone," she said.

I agreed.

She looked me over carefully, saw that I was sincere, and picked up an old, latched wooden box from next to her chair.  With a flick of her yellowed fingers, she flipped the latch and then lifted the lid.  Carefully, almost reverently, she withdrew a swatch of folded black velvet.  She held her breath for a second, then shook her head once as though she'd made up her mind.   A warning blast of air shook  the windows, but she ignored it as she unwrapped two iridescent purple-red metal plates the size of playing cards and laid them in front of me on the coffee table.

"What are they?"  I asked.

"I think they're record books.  If you look at them close, under a reading glass, you can see the markings and patterns."

"What do you want me to do with them?"

"Figure them out," she said.

"I'm going to need some help," I said.

And I would.  Lots of it.

"Same thing goes for them," she said.  "Not a word of this gets out until I'm gone."

"I'll put a team together," I said.

"Just don't any of you look at them too long in one sitting.  You'll start to hear voices and see things that aren't there."

                                                    *****

Like I said, I'll tell you more about Emily and what she told me that night in the coming weeks, but for now I'll tell you that my team and I have made significant progress in decoding the information contained in the Alien Diaries. But we need your help.

Using the latest in computer analytics and technology that's too complicated for anyone but our scientists to understand, we believe we've been able to decipher scattered words and phrases.  Problem is, we need imaginatively gifted people to help us string together the stories that will make the content come alive.

So we're asking your help to fund and participate in this project.  We'll make the fragments available (three to five words) each week, give you what geographical links and time coordinates if they're available, and ask the writing community to construct plausible scenarios to explain what they could mean.  We'll solicit artists of all ages and backgrounds to submit drawings to supplement the stories.

When we've accumulated and sorted through the stories and drawings, we'll collate them into an anthology which we hope will reveal for the first time the records of our Alien visitors and perhaps explain why they keep coming to our planet.  We want to answer important questions such as those raised by great thinkers throughout the centuries such as whether they are planning an invasion or just hanging out, whether their itineraries coincide with concert schedules and/or whether or not they are responsible for the evolution of our species. 

Those are just some of our thoughts.

And we'll need to pay the story contributors.  That's where your financial support will be available.

For too long we've been in the dark as to why they keep coming to our planet. We know they're here.  We've seen the lights in the sky, heard the abduction stories and watched world governments scramble to suppress the facts.

The truth isn't "out there," it's in the Alien Diaries.  Help us decode them, will you?  Who knows what we'll discover?

New Pro-Rate Anthology Call

Thought I'd let you know first that we're actively looking for stories for our new anthology, Airships & Automatons, edited by the always notable Charles P. Zaglanis.  Here are the guidelines as he wrote them up: 

*****

White Cat Publications, LLC. is pleased to presentthe submission guidelines for its first anthology, Airships & Automatons, edited by Charles P. Zaglanis.

Pay: .05 per word first publication/ .01 per word reprint plus a contributor copy of the book. If translations are made, writers will be paid .01 per word and 1 copy for each version.

Format: Trade paperback and eBook.

Deadline: Until filled.

Word count: 5,000 words (preferably).

Setting: We seek steampunk stories featuring strong characters, exciting plotlines, and automatons and/or airships. We don’t want the latter to be mentioned in passing; they should be central to the plot. We aren’t shooting for any particular mood with this book. Dystopian, humorous, pulp, Lovecraftian, upbeat or dark— all have a place here. Please don’t feel constrained to write in a Victorian setting.  It’s steampunk, push the boundaries. We’re looking for that certain flavor of writing that’s hard to explain, but obvious when it’s present.  Like most markets, we aren’t interested in erotica or unnecessary gore (I know, I know. I said push the boundaries, but I’m not cutting the checks).

Submit stories in standard manuscript format to charlespzaglanis@whitecatpublications.com. No snail-mail. No multiple submissions. Word or .rtf only, no .pdf, .wp, etc. Feel free to send another story after rejection. Please type A&A/Your Name in the subject line. I get a lot of email and this will help me keep track.

Best of luck and we’ll see you in the aether,

Chuck Zaglanis

Editor

White Cat Publications, LLC