Episode 4- The Cover-Up

"New England," said Emily.  "That's all I'm going to tell you.  We followed up what Mr. Trainor wrote.  Tried to get hold of him but never could.  Knowing what I know now, he had good reason to keep to himself."

Her face was thin and  the dim light cast by the lamp in the far corner of the room gave her cheekbones a faint bluish tint.  She wore thick lenses that enlarged her eyes until they seemed to bulge.

"Can you tell me roughly where the city was located?"  I asked.  "It might be important."

She smoothed her dress flat on her thighs and seemed to be weighing her words carefully.

"Scrubbed clean," she said.

"Pardon?"

"I got a call a while back from the old man who helped us find the artifacts.  Told us never to come to that place again.  Said never to call him or anyone else in that city again.  He was scared.  Voice shaking real bad."

It was my second visit to Emily's farmhouse.  She'd ask me to come at night, like the last time.

"Scrubbed clean," I said.  "What does that mean, exactly?"

"Government came.  Cleared away every bit of evidence there was.  Then they started moving the people out- the ones that would cooperate."

"The whole town?"

Her sudden, manic laugh was so unexpected that I almost jumped out of my chair.

"Whole town was only eighteen or nineteen people," she said when she'd regained control of herself.

"They moved them all out?  Abandoned the whole town?"

The silence began to wear on my nerves.  As a person who's done his fair share of traveling, I can tell you that there are different types of silence.  Even in the bush, far removed from civilization, there are sounds.  Not as loud and garish as city sounds, but sounds nonetheless.  The sound of night predators moving through tall weeds, the sound of a restless wind stirring the trees and the flapping of unseen wings.  But in the old woman's farmhouse, I could hear nothing.

The room was void of the things that we in the city have grown used to- televisions, mp3 players and the ubiquitous computers that demand so much of our attention.

In her living room, I could hear only my own breathing.

"Moved out all but one," she said finally.

"How do you know all of this, Emily?  I mean, how do you know since I'm assuming you followed your friend's wishes and never contacted him."

"Now that's a good question, young man.  The answer is that my husband Edward was the kind of man that couldn't let a matter be.  He had to know what was going on in that town.  Couldn't stop thinking about it. He went there.  We had a hell of a row about it, but he just couldn't let it go."

"What did he find?"

"He found a town was dried up empty.  Food still on the table."

"And your friend?  The one who helped you find the artifacts?"

I leaned forward eagerly in my chair.

"Edward found him.  Had a marker on his grave at the church cemetery.  Gave the date he died as the day after we got the call from him."

*****

Our first test results on the alien artifacts given to us by Emily were so unusual that we have to run them again, which will delay the video release of the data until tomorrow night.

You can learn more by visiting our "Alien Diaries Translation Project" over at Kickstarter http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1078742786/the-alien-diaries-translation-project .

We're soliciting funds over there to be used in publishing the shocking findings in a fictional format so that they can't be suppressed.

Seriously.