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CHAPTER 21

When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our prayers.

- Oscar Wilde

George Renoldson squinted from the brightness of the interior light of the refrigerator, his eyes having grown accustomed to the near darkness of his small, sloppy kitchen. His brown irises contracted to compensate for the increased illumination he triggered by opening the icebox door. He scanned the nearly empty shelves within, trying to decide whether day old pizza, or two-day-old chicken chow mien, would make the better late night snack. Having no real preference, he settled for the chow mien, the ghost of his mother whispering in his ear. Eat up the older leftovers first, George, she would say, before they go bad.

Renoldson had grown up relatively poor. His parent's Iowa farm had failed when he was a child and his father had to find work as a mechanic. The job gave him chronic back pain and Renoldson's dad had spent most of his short life in anguish from it. While they were never in any real danger of starvation, they had to watch their pennies carefully. Renoldson went without many of the childhood frills that most American children of his generation enjoyed.

That, in part, was what had driven him to get an education. He wanted to escape the poverty of his youth at all costs. He used the military to pay for his college education, becoming first an aviation engineer for the navy, then later a civilian one, though still often working for the government as a contractor.

He opened the white, grease-stained carton and sniffed the chicken, his nose wrinkling at the odor. He decided it probably should smell that way and he overturned the container onto a dinner plate, the gelatinous contents retaining the trapezoid shape of the carton. He placed the dish in the microwave, which had the crust of hundreds of similar meals clinging to its walls. He slammed the door with no concern that it might dislodge the stalactites of dried food that clung tenaciously to the ceiling of the oven. He punched three minutes into the keypad and the quivering pyramid began to spin in a bath of microwave radiation.

Renoldson leaned back against the kitchen table, hypnotized by his rotating meal. The stack of meat and vegetables began to sag, as the chilled gravy that had glued them together began to revert to liquid form.

Mephistopheles, his mother's aging black cat, which came as a package deal with the house, rubbed back and forth against his legs, hoping to share in the repast. His mother had made him swear to care for the cat as long as it lived. Renoldson was not a big fan of cats, but he honored his mother's request and Mephistopheles never went hungry.

"I already fed you today, lard-butt," Renoldson teased the purring feline, "This stuff isn't good for you. You and I both know that if I give you some, you'll just barf it up." But Renoldson knew he would share a little of his meal with the animal. Mephistopheles knew it too.

How ironic it was that Renoldson had fought so hard in his early years to escape the rural plains of Iowa and now, slightly past forty, he found himself here again, living in the same shabby house he had grown up in. If he hadn't found faith in god in recent years, the tragedy of his life might be too much for him too bear.

After Renoldson appeared on television years ago, telling about the fire he witnessed and the... thing... he had seen, his career went into a tailspin. The government, for whom he had worked for years, would have nothing more to do with him. He sent his resume to every aviation company he could think of, but no one was interested in hiring a crackpot engineer who saw flying saucers and aliens. He became a brief hero in UFO circles, but in less than six months even they forgot about him. Popularity with saucer chasers did little to pay the rent anyway.

In the years afterwards, Renoldson often thought back on what he saw that day on the base. Though he tried not to consciously think about it, he felt very remorseful that he had not attempted to help the strange creature he saw strapped to the gurney. Renoldson was a large and powerful man, and there was a reasonable chance he might have been able to overcome the two slender men in lab coats who held it captive.

Of course, he would have had no idea what to do with it next, had he managed to liberate it. Try to smuggle the creature off the base? That would have been impossible. Bring it to the saucer, which he could only assume belonged to the alien? What would the creature do if he gave it control of the craft? He really had no idea if the consequences of his inaction that day were better or worse than the consequences of if he had done something. Still, that question did little to alleviate the pangs of guilt. The chow mien continued to spin. A dark slick began to spread out from the sides of the sagging tower of food, like oil from a floundering tanker.

In recent years, Renoldson tried hard not to think of the incident at all, making every effort to convince himself that the entire episode had been a grand hallucination. It was probably just the result of too much smoke inhaled from god-only-knows-what chemicals that were stored in that burning lab. Renoldson sometimes had nightmares about the incident, in which the green creature actually called out his name, in perfect English, begging him for help. Sometimes he saw his dying mother strapped to the gurney. He always woke up shaking from those dreams, in a terrible sweat. He thanked God the dreams were becoming less frequent in recent years.

When Renoldson had received word that his mother was stricken with cancer, he came back home to Iowa to care for her. His money and his luck having long run out, he had nowhere else to go anyway. It was a long fight for his mother and for almost a year she languished in agony before mercifully succumbing to the horrid disease. As is often so when death hovers near, Renoldson's mother became very devout in her final months, going to her church whenever she had the strength, almost always with her son to attend her.

During those months, Renoldson himself began to feel great comfort in the church, a place he had given little regard his entire life before then. The material world had failed him so miserably that he found it most comforting to tend to his newfound spiritual side. When he saw what joy it brought his mother, even when she was wracked by pain so great that she could not control her own bowels, he knew this was the way for him to go also.

After his mother's death, Renoldson not only continued to attend her church, he became very active in it, eventually taking over as its preacher when old pastor Wesley retired. The pay wasn't much, but he certainly wasn't in it for the money. He needed little income now anyway; other than to pay the modest taxes and upkeep on the house he inherited from his mother and to feed himself, of course.

The revolving pyramid of food had completely collapsed into a shapeless lump now, the brownish sauce beginning to bubble and sizzle at the edges.

Renoldson had always had a weight problem, but it had grown worse since he gave up smoking. He had quit at his mother's beseeching and also because of his horror at what a lifetime of the habit had done to her. He still craved a smoke now and then, but his recollection of the living corpse his mother had become in her final months, supplemented by pizza and prayer, kept him from going back. The sizzling plate of food stopped spinning as the oven emitted three short beeps. Chow time, he thought.

Renoldson pulled the plate from the oven, forgetfully using his bare hand as usual. He dropped the hot plate on the table, waving his hand in the air to cool his brazed fingers. He would repeat this act again tomorrow night, and the night after that, and so on. It was inevitable. Using a nearby dishtowel as insulation from the heated crockery, he grabbed a fork and scooped a small portion of the hot food into Mephistopheles' dish and the cat leapt in hungrily.

"Careful there, stupid," said Renoldson, as he headed for the living room with his meal, "Let it cool. You'll burn your tongue."

The living room was as much a disaster as the rest of the house. Renoldson was not a fastidious man and the place had not received any cleaning of note since his mother was alive and healthy enough to do it. The spirit of his mother infused the house still, personified by a musty blend of Salems and Chantilly, which clung tenaciously to the filthy, yellowed walls.

Renoldson plopped down in the old armchair that had been his father's, but the many small, round burns in the upholstery, testified that his mother had used it after her husband's death. Since he wore only an undershirt and boxer shorts, he used the dishtowel to protect his legs from the heat of the plate. With the dish of chow mien on his lap, a fork in one hand and his television remote control in the other, Renoldson had all the things left in the material world that still offered him some degree of joy. He popped the television on, realizing The Tonight Show would be starting in just a few minutes. For now, he watched the news, which was showing President Reagan giving a speech in Berlin, imploring Gorbachev to tear down the wall.

Renoldson was somewhat of a night person and he liked to watch Carson, though he rarely kept awake through the entire hour. Sometimes he actually managed to drag himself off to bed to sleep the night away, but many mornings he woke up still in the armchair, the TV droning on in front of him. When he did, his lower back complained about it for the rest of the day.

Forgetting all about the deadly sin of gluttony, Renoldson completely wolfed down the Chinese food by the time Carson was stepping out from behind his multicolored curtain on McMahon's traditional, enthusiastic cue. By the time Johnny finished his monolog and swung his invisible golf club, Renoldson was snoozing like a baby; Mephistopheles perched on his lap, licking the greasy remains from the dinner plate.

"George... Help me, George."

George stumbled through the burning, smoke clogged corridor, trying to follow the gurney ahead, which was barely visible in the acrid haze. He tracked it more by sound, following the occasional squeak of its wheels as it withdrew before him, always just a few steps out of reach. The blinding smoke stabbed at his eyeballs, which blinked and watered vainly to drive off the offensive smog. The flames licked against his skin, mixing the pungent stink of singed hair into the odious fog. His feet were sluggish, as if he walked in mud, keeping him from overtaking the gurney, which now receded away even faster.

"George... I need you..." It was his mother's voice.

Through the pall, George could see the bed's recumbent occupant struggle feebly to free itself from the straps that held it fast. It was masked beneath a sheet so white it blazed a halo in the opaque vapor. He watched in frustration as it rounded a corner and vanished from view.

"Please George... Help me..."

After what seemed an hour of heavy plodding, George caught up with the retreating corner. From around the corner's edge, he could see the soft aura from the sheet and his forearms flushed with goose bumps when he realized he had finally overtaken his quarry. His gut tightening in terrified curiosity about what he would find, Renoldson stepped around the corner and into the specter of the unearthly nimbus.

She stood there, pale as death, her eyes blank white orbs that gazed unblinkingly at him. The corpse of his mother was wrapped in the sheet, only the gawping death mask of her face visible above the colorless shroud. His body wracked itself with petrified spasms as he reached out to touch her with shaking hands.

"What the hell are you doing in here?" demanded a voice from behind.

A strong grip seized George and spun him around, where he found a man whose face was half hidden by bandages. The man grasped George's arm firmly with one hand.

"Why are you here?" the man growled.

George tried to speak, but found nothing where his voice should have been. He grabbed the man's arm and yanked hard in an attempt to free himself from the unyielding grip. To his shocked surprise, the man's arm separated at the shoulder, coming off with almost no effort. The man did not scream in pain, nor register any shock, but merely faded into the amorphous mist. George dropped the arm and it fell, engulfed by the swirling mist that snaked along the floor.

"George... help me... I need you."

His mother's voice was right behind him. He could feel a clammy breath prick up the hairs on the back of his neck. Trembling, he turned to face her.

His mother was gone. George was now facing the green alien, its cat-like eyes staring intently at him. Although he was unfamiliar with its mannerisms, George somehow understood its forlorn expression. It spoke wordlessly to George of unbearable pain and horror. It reached out to him. With a soundless scream, he tried to step backwards, but found he could not move his foot. He looked down to see that the disembodied arm had reached up out of the mist and held his ankle fast. The awful, clawed hands of the alien drew near his throat...

Renoldson woke up with start, his heart beating so hard it hurt. He found himself staring into the yellow eyes of Mephistopheles, who had been licking the remnants of dinner from his master's corpulent lips. The cat, startled by the man's sudden, convulsive awakening, leapt to the floor and bolted away.

Renoldson pulled the reclining armchair back into its upright position. With a quaking hand, he placed the dinner plate, which Mephistopheles had licked as clean as any dishwasher could manage, onto the nearby end table. The television was still on, but the picture was just white static. Using the remote, he popped through several channels, only to find the same hissing snowstorm on each. He turned off the TV.

Renoldson used the dishtowel to daub the sweat from his face. He hadn't had that nightmare in a while and he was disheartened at its return. He had no idea how long he had been asleep. The darkness at the windows testified it was still night. He looked at the digital clock on his VCR, but it was blinking steadily at twelve o'clock. There must have been a power outage while he slept and the clock needed to be reset.

Renoldson figured he would just drag himself to bed to try and get back to sleep. He was just about to summon the energy to lift himself up from the chair when he heard a strange sound coming from his left. It was a sound that alternately scrapped and clinked, like metal on crockery. For a moment, he was afraid to look, the fear of the dream still gripping him.

Finally, he slowly turned his head and in the darkness he saw the strangest thing. His fork, which he had left lying on his dinner plate, was now standing straight up, its tines pointing toward the ceiling. Not only was it pointing straight up, balanced on its handle, it was moving in a circle around the platter, the tip of its handle hopping and scrapping along the plate. No more late night Chinese, he thought, Should've eaten the pizza.

Overcoming his dread, Renoldson reached out and grabbed the fork. He found it gave no resistance to his grip. But as soon as he touched it, the room exploded with white light. He threw both his arms up to shield his eyes from the incredible glare, nicking his forearm with the fork as he did so. The radiance seemed to stream in from every window of the house. It was as if someone had placed a searchlight at each casement and switched them all on at once. It was like the flash bulb of a camera that did not end. At the same time, a powerful vibrating sound, that he felt as much as heard, seemed to come from everywhere. Doors starting opening and slamming as if driven by a great wind. But there was no wind.

"Stop it!" he shouted at the walls, "For god's sake, stop it!"

As quickly as it had started, the blinding light and deafening sound ceased and the silent darkness that remained behind seemed oppressive. Without realizing it, Renoldson was standing in the middle of his living room now, circling around, trying to readjust his eyes to the darkness. He couldn't explain it, but suddenly he felt like he wasn't alone in the house anymore.

Then he heard it. Another strange scraping sound, this time coming from the kitchen. Renoldson could see the shadow of something moving at the bottom edge of the kitchen door. He crept over to it as quietly as he could, listening to the odd sound within. He made a quick and silent prayer and then, summoning his courage, he threw open the kitchen door and slammed on the light.

The thing inside the kitchen jumped right toward him with a menacing growl, and Renoldson ducked to one side very quickly for so large a man. The dark creature flashed by him into the living room. He let out a shocked yelp and turned to face the intruder. As if he were wielding a dagger, Renoldson mindlessly brandished with his fork to drive the monster back.

"You stupid ass fur-ball!" he screamed when we recognized the phantom. Mephistopheles landed in the middle of the living room rug, its back arched in classic Halloween style. It seemed terrified. "You almost gave me a heart attack!" shouted his master.

Renoldson stepped toward the cat, but the creature seemed frightened. Edgy. It hissed at him, so explosively that he felt the spray of its spit hit him in the face. In a blur, the cat turned and bolted into the bedroom. What's eating him?, though Renoldson.

Then he heard something else behind him, back toward the kitchen. Something else was there, which is what had frightened Mephistopheles. There was only one cat in this house, so he turned slowly to face this new sound with trepidation.

At first Renoldson didn't see anything. The light in the kitchen was still on, which shined into the living room through the door like giant flashlight, casting long, eerie shadows from all the objects in the room. At first, everything looked normal. Then his eye caught something off to the side, near the bookshelf here in the living room with him. It was like a hint of movement at the very edge of his vision. But when he turned his full attention to the bookcase, nothing was there. But somehow, Renoldson knew he was not alone in the room anymore. He felt a presence. In the dead silence, he was sure he could hear the sound of something. Something breathing. It was close. Very close.

"I know you're here," he shouted around at the walls, "You might as well show yourself."

To his surprise, he actually got an answer back.

"There is no need for those weapons," came a voice from nowhere, "I mean you no harm."

Renoldson looked down at his hands. He still held the fork in one hand and his television remote in the other. Some weapons. He placed the items down on the table and placed his hands up, turning around to show his empty palms to the room.

"I mean you no harm either," said Renoldson, "This is a house of peace. Why don't you show yourself? Maybe I can help you. I am a man of God."

"I have come to seek your help," said the detached voice, which seemed to be moving around the room, "I require your guidance."

"My guidance?" asked Renoldson, confused, "In what?"

In answer, Renoldson's television came on by itself. At first it was static, but then the picture settled into something George had not seen in a very long time. It was a scene from his interview with Canter, from so many years ago.

"I'll never know for sure what she was tying to tell me that day, Mister Canter, but I'd bet my life that she was begging me to help her." That one line kept repeating over, and over, and over.

Renoldson picked up the remote and pushed the off button. To his surprise, the television responded and went dark.

"Are you related to the... being... I saw years ago?" asked Renoldson.

"You might say that," came the floating voice, "I am her husband."

Her husband! "Show yourself," asked Renoldson, "let me see you."

Suddenly, in one corner of the room, just inside of Renoldson's peripheral vision, the air began to shimmer and distort, as if by summer heat. The distortion quickly subsided to reveal a creature standing where nothing had stood a moment before. It was very much like the creature he had seen during the fire, years ago, except this one had gray skin instead of green. It was dressed completely in black and had all sorts of strange objects and gadgets strapped to an elaborate harness it wore. It also wore a strange set of black goggles over its large eyes. If he wasn't so amazed, Renoldson might have smiled, as the creature looked like some sort of alien ninja.

"What's your name?" Renoldson asked.

"My name translates most closely to Sarwin in your tongue," answered the alien. Renoldson noticed that the creature was not really speaking English, but was instead speaking its own strange chirping language into a tiny microphone near its mouth and one of the devices strapped to its body was converting it to English. A translator! He could see a line leading to the alien's tiny ear, which no doubt provided a translation to it of what Renoldson spoke.

"...and how can I help you, Sarwin?" he asked, "What guidance could someone as humble as I provide for someone so obviously advanced as you?"

"I have come to this planet to rescue my wife," answered Sarwin, "who is being held prisoner by your people, as you have witnessed. You are familiar with the facility in which they are holding her and I am not. Your assistance in helping me to find her there would be most appreciated."

"I see," said Renoldson. The last vestiges of fear he had felt from the alien had evaporated. "You understand that base is heavily protected. They aren't going to let us just walk through the front gate."

"I can get us inside," assured the alien, "just as I got inside this place. But I will need your help once we get there. Can you provide it?"

"You realize that was long ago and my knowledge is dated. Also, who can say if she is even there anymore?"

"Dated knowledge is better than no knowledge," answered the alien, "As far as her still being there, that is a chance I must take."

"You'll want the space ship back too, right?"

"Yes, that would be appreciated. I can provide compensation for your services, of course. I understand the element you call gold yet has value on this planet."

Renoldson shook his head. He had been wracked with guilt for years about not helping the creature before. Now he might have a second chance. God was, indeed, merciful.

"Keep your money," replied Renoldson, "Count me in. When can we leave?"

"Whenever you are ready," said the alien.

Renoldson walked over to the bookshelf and picked up his favorite travel bible. "I'm ready right now," he said, patting the small book, "this is all I need, right here."

The alien just stared at him, oddly, with its head half cocked, as a dog might stare when its master makes a strange sound. Renoldson glanced downward at his food-stained tee shirt and striped boxer shorts.

"...and maybe some pants," he added.

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