Whitley Strieber - The Grays

Marcie Cotton also heard the cries, and an expressionless voice repeating again and again, “What can we do to help you stop screaming?” Only when she felt herself suck breath, and realized that the narrow, black cot from which she could not rise was not her bed, did she connect with the fact that the screaming was coming from her. She thought: nightmare . And then she screamed again.

THERE WERE FOUR FAMILIES LIVING at the end of Oak Road, all Bell College faculty. The last house on the dead end was occupied by the Jefferses, Nancy and Chris, and their baby daughter. Beside them were the Callaghans, next the Warners, Harley and Maggie, Paulie and Amy. The house closest to the beginning of Oak Road belonged to the Keltons, two parents and two teenage sons.

At the Kelton house, Manrico, the family dog, sat up and snorted, then stood and commenced barking. The two teenagers leaped out of bed and started pulling on their pants.

Nancy Jeffers also screamed, and Chris, the youthful head of the physics department, jumped up as if there was a snake in the bed. Out the bedroom window, he saw a glow through the woods. “Dear God there’s a fire,” he shouted, pulling on a pair of rubber overshoes and an overcoat.

THE TRIAD HAD BEEN COMMANDED to bring Marcie Cotton to Dan Callaghan. The collective wanted them to bond her to him, so that she would do anything to make sure his tenure bid succeeded. There must be no chance that the Callaghans would leave Wilton, where every street, alley, basement, attic, and mind was known to the collective. An attack on the Callaghans was inevitable, and the collective’s plan to defend them had been constructed around their staying in the town.

Important work, certainly, but not all that they intended to do on this night. There was a reason this particular triad called themselves the Three Thieves… which was their imperfect ability to handle temptation. And Marcie was such very strong temptation.

PAULIE WARNER RAN INTO HIS parents’ room, shouting that the Keltons’ house was on fire. Harley Warner said to his wife, “My God, they might be trapped.”

Maggie went to the window. “Is that a fire? It’s very steady.”

“Somebody’s really screaming,” Amy said, coming in behind her brother.

“Let’s get over there,” Paulie said.

Harley was pulling on his jeans. “Not you kids.”

“Aw, Dad!”

“Paulie, not until I know what’s going on out there.” He did not want his children exposed to whatever might be happening over there, not given the agony he was hearing in those screams.

THE MORE MARCIE SCREAMED, THE more excited the Three Thieves became. They knew they were too low, they knew they should quiet her, they knew there was a dog nearby, and they could not control dogs. But they also knew that they could reach into her and taste of her emotions, and the taste would fill them with a delicious fire that their kind did not possess, the fire of strong feeling. Man might not be intelligent enough to save himself from the environmental imbalance overpopulation had caused on his planet, but his emotional genius was beyond compare.

They dug into her gushing terror like wolves digging into the flowing guts of a deer… and the collective at first reacted with surprise. Then it raged.

Conner thought the female voice was his mother screaming, and she thought that it was him. They met in the living room, and threw their arms around each other. Then Dan said, “There’s a light in the field.” From their perspective on their rear deck, it was clear that none of the houses were involved.

Conner and Katelyn stayed behind while Dan, wearing slippers and a robe, went out onto the deck and down into the backyard. He carried a flashlight.

Their scraggly yard was quiet. The toys of summer—the slide, the swing set, the empty aboveground pool—were sentinels in the stark light of the setting moon. He moved toward the glow, which was in the field beyond the end of the yard, past a stand of narrow third- or fourth-growth pines.

Katelyn and Conner came out on the deck.

“I think it’s a fire in the field,” he said.

“Are you serious?”

“Oh, God, somebody help me! Somebody help me!”

Katelyn clutched her son. “Conner, we’re going back in.”

Conner broke away from her and went racing down the deck stairs. “Look at that,” he yelled.

As he and Dan crossed the yard, hurrying toward the thin woods, a huge light loomed up from below the tree line. They stopped, stunned by this second moon rising.

Katelyn arrived beside them. “Conner, put this on.”

“Thanks, Mom!” He dug his arms into a jacket. “You know what that is?”

“No.”

Dan walked closer to the edge of the woods. “Can we help you?” he shouted.

“Don’t go too close, Dad.”

The thing seemed to wobble, then rise.

“It’s moving this way, Dan!”

It hung above the woods. Not a sound, now.

“I think it’s a balloon,” Katelyn said.

Then more screams whipped out, shrill to cracking.

“A balloon is on fire!” Katelyn shouted.

The three of them ran again, fumbling in the brush, guided by the light.

“Who in the world would be up in a hot-air balloon at night?” Conner asked. “And that’s not fire, that’s a piezoelectric effect of some kind. Look at it shimmer.”

“It’s a student,” Katelyn said. “Something’s gone wrong with some prank.”

It wasn’t anything to do with hazing, not in February, but it could indeed be a prank. Every house that backed onto the field was occupied by a Bell College professor.

THE THREE THIEVES LOOKED OUT across the electromagnetic haze that flowed off the wires with which humans surrounded their shelters. Sharp eyes watched Conner and Dan.

DAN PAUSED IN THE WOODS. “Maybe nothing’s gone wrong. Maybe the screaming is the prank.”

“I hope so,” Katelyn said, calmer now, embracing this most reasonable of probabilities.

“Come on,” Conner said.

Before them, as they left the woods, they saw people running toward the object from various directions, Harley Warner, but not Paulie or his mother or sister, Chris and Nancy Jeffers, and the entire Kelton family, robes flying, Manrico barking furiously, but hanging well back. Jimbo Kelton was using a video camera, and Nancy Jeffers held her cell phone out like some kind of shield, no doubt taking pictures with it.

Another scream pealed out.

Dan shouted, “DO YOU NEED HELP?” He hoped it was just a prank because Bell did not need adverse publicity, not with the sort of enrollment problems faced by a small college located at the burnt-out end of a bus line that only served what the college brochure gamely called “the sophisticated little city of Wilton.” What sophistication there might be in a row of closed stores and a grain elevator was anybody’s guess.

“Oh, God, God!”

The words seemed to ring in the trees, to leave their narrow trunks trembling.

“Can’t you see that she’s in real trouble?” Conner yelled. He took off toward the object.

THE ONE WATCHED CONNER, WHILE the Two and the Three regarded Marcie with the reverent cunning of boys in a candy store. The Two drew closer, now pressing his face into her churning aura. Angry static bounced around the tiny space—the collective was furious that they were not performing as directed.

Which made little difference. The thousand grays who were here were spread all over the planet, feeding in Brazil and Britain and China, mining gravitite in the iron deposits of New York, extracting Helium 3 fuel on the moon. They were linked to the great collective, yes, but it was moving toward Earth far more slowly than the lead group, so what could it actually do? Nothing, and they would carry out its orders… eventually.