Whitley Strieber - The Grays

“Dan, we’ll get by. Something good will happen.”

Staring at her as if she was insane, he slowly shook his head. Then he bared his teeth and rocked back in silent, agonized laughter.

“I got promised tenure by Marcie Cotton.”

She thrust her hands at him, connected with his chest. “Go on! You did not!”

He nodded.

“And you won’t be getting drunk again, so it’s forgiven. Now, Marcie told you? She actually told you this?”

He nodded.

“You’re going to get a yes on tenure! Oh. My. God.”

He stared at her, his eyes hollow, his lips hanging slightly open—an expression that said that this wasn’t the whole story.

“If I needed punishment, how would you go about it?”

What an extremely strange question. “Excuse me?”

“If I’d… done something wrong?”

“What have you done? You’ve gotten tenure, that’s hardly a matter for punishment. Is she sure?”

“Oh, yes.” He closed his eyes, shook his head.

She realized, then, that he was trying to say that he had done something with Marcie Cotton. Or no, it couldn’t be possible. You didn’t go to bed for tenure, not even in this sinkhole.

“Dan, are you telling me—what? I’m not getting it.”

“You’re getting it.”

“Damn you!”

The front door opened and Conner called, “I’m home, people,” and Dan said, “I’m so damn sorry, baby. I’m so damn sorry!”

Conner breezed in. “Hi, Mom, hi, Dad. I have just been at an amazing editing session. The Keltons have an awesome video and they’re bringing it over, and Paulie and his parents are coming, and there’s a chance that—” He stopped, looked from one of them to the other. “Hello?”

Katelyn drew breath, drew it hard, trying mightily to contain the rage, the hurt that shuddered through her.

“Mom?”

She went to him. “I want you to go downstairs for just a little while.”

“They got video of the UFO. Everybody’s coming over to watch it on the big-screen TV.”

She did not exactly want a convention just now, but obviously she couldn’t prevent it. “You go down, and we’ll make popcorn when they come.”

“You sound strange.”

She took him to the stairs and closed the door behind him. Then she went back to Dan, who was now slumped on the couch with his face in his hands. “You asshole,” she said quietly.

“Hit me.”

“Dan, I’m not physical. But what I would very much like is for you to go upstairs and gather your belongings and take them with you, and get the hell out of my house.” She curtsied. “If you would be so kind.”

“I don’t know what happened! I don’t know how to explain it.”

“You screwed her for your tenure.”

“I did no such thing!”

“And I find that grotesque. And equally grotesque that you confessed it. What happened to you, you’re not this drunk blubbering jerk I see here! I sure as hell didn’t marry him.”

“Look, I want to ask forgiveness.”

“It’s that easy, you get drunk and you cry and what happens, I kick you around and yell a little and this violation of your sacred trust is forgotten? And if you go to go creeping off to sleep with her in the forenoon from now on, then what do I do? Just bear everyone in this miserable fishbowl knowing my—what’s the word—shame, I suppose. My shame.”

“It left me… vulnerable. Somehow, it affected me.”

“What did?”

“That incident!”

“Something weird happens and therefore you go make love to Marcie Cotton?”

He shook his head, waved his hand at her. “I—it made me… want her. I don’t know why, but it did. I relate the two things.”

“What in hell are you saying?”

“I don’t know!”

“Dan, I’m an orphan to the violence in my family, and you to the neglect in yours and, Dan, nobody but another orphan can heal either of us, this is why we’re together. But you—you’ve taken something from us, and it is profound, Dan, because trust has a different meaning for people who suffered from betrayed childhoods.”

“It wasn’t over the tenure. It was—” He shook his head. “Oh, my love, it was like some demon flew in and sweated us with his fire. I think, being so tired, so surprised and relieved—I just suddenly found myself in her arms.”

“Don’t tell me about it! For God’s sake, Danny, have some mercy!”

He slumped yet deeper into the couch. He looked so tired, so sunken, nothing at all like the rippling, robust husband she adored. Had adored. He looked like somebody who’d fallen victim to a vampire, shadowy about the eyes, gray of skin.

Her stomach had grown tight and sour with fear, her own skin was so cold she shuddered. This had been her rock, this marriage, in its honesty and the richly sensual capsule of its love. But how could she let him touch her now? How could she bear it?

“Momma, what, exactly, is wrong?”

“Conner!”

“Because something is and I need to know.”

“Conner, please.”

He came into the room. “You two are fighting and I want to know why.”

Figures appeared on the deck, looming up out of the dark, flashlights bobbing.

Conner went to the door. “This is a chance for me. Don’t wreck this.”

Dan got up, started to kiss Katelyn on the cheek, wisely thought better of it, and greeted the Keltons.

“You need to see this, folks,” affable John said. “It really is genuinely odd.”

“It’s not what it seems,” Dan said. “It’s explainable, trust me.”

“Dad, it’s not,” Conner said. “That’s the whole point!”

Dan went into the kitchen and picked up the phone. Chris answered on the third ring. “Have I woken you up at nine-fifteen, old man?”

“We were out with the ’scope. It’s a good night for the Crab Nebula.”

“Speaking of nebulas, the Kelton clan has arrived with what’s probably a pretty nebulous video of that prank.”

“Prank?”

“The affair of the fiery balloon.”

“That could be historic footage.”

“How so?”

“You saw somebody in the field, buddy. And then you didn’t. I think that somebody was an alien.”

He had indeed seen somebody. It was also further support for the prank theory, but they could get to that later. “When you come, you might think about bringing some spirits. Mon femme has stripped our bar.” He hung up the phone, then returned to the living room where the crowd had surrounded the gigantic TV. “We gather round the campfire,” he said, “and see shapes in the sparks. And thus the mythologizing begins.” He sat down. “The Jeffers will be here directly.”

Paulie Warner burst in from the kitchen, followed by his parents and then Chris and Nancy. The energy in the room exploded as the two boys excitedly traded speculations. “It’s the grays,” Conner yelled, “they’re doing an operation right here at Bell!”

“Okay, Conner, sure,” Paulie said.

Terry said, “What we actually have is some unexplained video.”

“Edited,” Dan added. “Most carefully, I’m sure.”

“Not really,” John Kelton said, his voice sharp with annoyance. “It’s actually just pulled out of the camera. Not edited at all. There’s no reason to edit it.”

“We copied it onto a DVD,” Terry said as he dropped the gleaming disk into the player’s open tray. “Beyond that, you’re seeing what the camera saw.”

The player absorbed the disk. This was followed by blackness, then a couple of flashes.

“Fascinating,” Dan said.

“Just wait,” John snapped.

There was a sound of gasping, then crunching. “That’s us running,” Conner said.

“You were really there?”