Max Collins - Majic Man

Though his participation had come to an end, Kaufmann understood that Hangar 84 at the airfield became the base of operations, housing both the corpses-and the survivor-and the captured crashed craft. Then the craft went on the back of a truck under a tarp to Wright Airfield in Ohio; the bodies-and presumably the survivor-on a flight, first to Andrews Air Force Base at Washington, D.C., then to Wright.

“Why the stop in D.C.?” I asked. Roswell was up ahead.

“Rumor has it, top-ranking Army and Air Force personnel requested a look at the bodies. Also, Truman and Army Chief of Staff Eisenhower … oh, and the Defense Secretary.”

“Forrestal?”

“Yeah. Isn’t he the guy that had the nervous breakdown? I read about that in Drew Pearson.”

“Mental problems can afflict the best of us, Frank.”

Kaufmann grinned at me. “Is that your way of sayin’ maybe I’m nuts? Maybe I am.”

“Maybe you’re still working intelligence and are feeding me … what’s the word? Disinformation?”

“Why would I do that?”

“You wouldn’t. But maybe Blanchard would. To throw me off the scent.”

“The scent of what?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it? You got any proof, Frank? Any pieces of indestructible tinfoil? Photo of a dead spaceman, maybe? One of their silver suits?”

As I’d requested, he was rolling up to a stop at the parking lot where I was keeping my car. “We weren’t allowed to keep anything, Nate. Not any piece of information or evidence, not a thing. Any report we made got quickly turned over to an intelligence officer.”

“Who, Jesse Marcel?”

“No-those CIC guys.”

Counterintelligence Corps.

“Like that guy Cavitt, you mean, who went out to the Brazel spread with Marcel? What became of him?”

Kaufmann shrugged, leaning on the wheel of the idling jeep. “Transferred. I don’t know where.”

“So where does that leave us, Frank?”

“Leaves you here in this parking lot. I leveled with you, Nate-and you’re free to use any of that yarn, as long as you don’t use my name. If you do, I’ll deny it on a stack of Bibles.”

“That’s comforting.”

“It’s like Mr. Ripley says-believe it or not.”

I stepped out of the jeep, gave him a little wave, and he gave me a big old grin and big old wave and rumbled off.

I was about to get in the rental, to go driving in search of an interesting restaurant, when I said to hell with it, locked my spiral pad in the glove box and walked back to the hotel.

Bone-tired, I stumbled into the hotel, found my way to the dining room, where I consumed a rare steak and all the trimmings and a couple bottles of Blatz, which seemed to be the local favorite-I wondered if the little men in silver suits liked it better out of the bottle or from the tap. My room was on the third floor, a small clean cubicle that could have been in any hotel, except for the framed print of a desert landscape over the single bed. Caked with dust, frazzled by bizarre information, I showered, standing in the tub, letting the needles try to pound sense into me.

No smarter, but cleaner anyway, I toweled off, and strode naked from the bathroom, wondering whether I should take in the show at the Chief Theater down the street, or just collapse into bed, where I figured it would take me maybe three seconds to lose consciousness, in which case I might not wake up to take advantage of the back-door date at ten p.m. I had at Maria Selff’s place, when she got off work at the base hospital.

Instead, a powerful arm slipped around from behind me, an uninvited guest tucked against the wall outside the bathroom door, a gloved hand settling a chloroformed cloth over my face, changing my plans for the evening.

At least I was right about how long losing consciousness would take.

The dreams were vivid and they were strange and they were compelling but they were also comforting and I not only remembered them upon awaking, I can remember them today, so many years later, as if they were a movie I watched yesterday.

The usual for me, as I suspect is the case for most people, is that I lose my dreams upon awakening, sometimes instantly, sometimes grasping slippery fragments that slide away even as I try to hold on to them, with only the mood of them, their ambience, hanging on, particularly the unpleasant dreams, lingering like a bad taste in the brain, though nice dreams could, on rare occasions, wake you with a smile.

In this dream, I saw someone or something hovering over me, haloed in light, fuzzy and yet distinct, appearing from utter darkness, a small pale person with a big head and big eyes and a silver suit, his features childlike, his mouth tiny but smiling, his speech precise and strangely accented, his words soothing, though later the words were the one thing I could not recall, only that the man-I thought of him as a man, not a monster (or, for that matter, a woman)-was a kind presence, a friendly presence, an unthreatening presence, a real presence, not an imagined one, not some mortician’s dream, not my nurse’s nightmare, not a disgruntled soon-to-be-ex-employee’s wild yarn, and yet at the same time it was all of those, and when that strange thumbless hand with the suction-cup fingertips touched my brow, it was as if a cool cloth had caressed my skin….

When I awoke with a smile, in a bed, in cool sheets, in a cool, dark room, my first thoughts were of this dream, of the strange kind creature and its comforting presence, and I lay staring at the ceiling, fully awake and yet not really aware, luxuriating in the dream’s afterglow, like the moments after sex, or a junkie coming slowly down.

And when the thought, the memory, finally broke through- they fucking kidnapped me! -I bolted upright, sheets falling to my waist-I was naked but for boxer shorts-the dream still with me but shoved back now, the smile reversing itself, and I sat there for long moments, eyes searching the darkness.

Head clear, body sluggish, my mouth thick with sleep and a brackish medicinal aftertaste-from the chloroform?-I made my way to a window where a fan was whirring … not just a fan, but the boxy structure of an evaporation-type air cooler taking up the lower half of the bedroom’s only window. Above it were blinds, which I drew open, and the night sky revealed itself. Stars and a full moon, too, the latter joining with outdoor electric lighting to illuminate the landscape of what was obviously a part of Walker Air Force Base.

My bare feet were on pile carpeting, and the moonlight revealed the shape of furnishings, a dresser, a few chairs, the bed, of course-and night-stand, with phone and lamp….

I switched the lamp on; its blue parchment shade suffused the room with a gentle pastel glow. As for the phone, it was deader than Roosevelt. Despite that ominous note, I seemed to be in a nicely if modestly appointed bedroom, and the man in the mirror over the dresser seemed to be me, in shorts, looking confused but none the worse for wear. The walls were pale plaster, decorated here and there with framed prints of Southwestern vistas-not unlike the one in the hotel room I’d been snatched from.

This bedroom was, in fact, like a hotel or motel room; if I was a captive, this was an oddly benign prison cell, with any number of objects presenting themselves as the makings of makeshift weapons-mirror-shard knives, chair-leg billy clubs, phone-receiver sap, torn-bedsheet garrotes …

Was I in a deluxe jail cell? The window above the air-conditioner unit was fixed in place, unopenable; but that might have been a function of the unit’s installation, not an attempt to keep me in. This left me with the room’s three doors to try….

The first one led to an empty closet; the second to a bathroom, which had a ventilation fan in the ceiling but no window, and no sign of toiletries on the sink, the cabinet over which was empty. But I did suddenly realize I had to pee, so I took the time to do that, and ponder my situation.