Owls From The Sky
THEY PULLED UP TO A SMALL HOUSE SET BACK SLIGHTLY IN THE WOODS from the highway, in Cheboygan County. The ride was about an hour and a half, and by the time they got there Anders was edgy, fidgeting in his seat as he gripped the steering wheel. He parked out front and they both got out, slamming the doors.
"Now where are we?" he asked with annoyance.
"Mr. Rogers's neighborhood," Puck replied, as if he were very stupid to ask. Anders scowled to himself for even asking and followed him up the steps to the door, where he pushed the doorbell.
There was no answer for a while, so Puck tried again. This time they could hear footsteps within, and the door opened to reveal a man in a California Angels baseball cap, looking down at the two of them.
"Yes?" he asked simply.
"Hi, Mr. Goodwin," Puck said, and Anders suddenly remembered who Al Goodwin was. "You don't know me very well. I'm Matthew Benteen, and this is Anders Carlsson."
"Oh! The hacker, aren't you? And you're the student from Sweden. Come in." He held the door open for them as they entered, shutting it behind them. They stood there and looked around a moment before Al cleared his throat and they looked at him. He tilted his head, very much resembling Nipper from the old RCA record labels. Puck replied.
"We came here, Mr. Goodwin, to--"
"You can call me Al," Al interrupted, and for a brief ridiculous moment Anders was reminded of the Paul Simon song. As if reading his thoughts, Al turned to him and offered a smile.
"I get a lot of laughs out of that line," he said. "Everybody thinks I'm kidding them and starts to sing Paul Simon. It's rather funny." He turned back to Puck, leaving Anders feeling as if he'd just entered the Twilight Zone.
"Okay," Puck tried again, "we're here to talk to you about--I don't know, what would you call it?--alien abductions."
"Hey--" Anders started, his temper flaring.
"Be quiet and listen for a minute," Puck interrupted.
"I never said I'd agree to this!" Anders fumed. "I never even said I believed it."
"Do you?" Al asked.
Anders looked at him, expecting him to be mad; UFO nuts always were when they came face-to-face with a "skeptic." But Al just stared back, neutral as ever. There was something unsettling about his gaze, and Anders turned away.
"I don't know," he replied. "I'd have to see a UFO to believe it."
"Okay," Al said, and, as if that were the end of the conversation, turned away and walked off into the house. Puck followed him; Anders did so as well, feeling as if he were intruding. Al never had invited them in, had he? [Note--yes he had. Ha ha ha!! I think I meant, "He'd never invited them further into the house."]
"So, what do you want to know about alien abductions?" Al asked as he took a plant down from a shelf and looked its leaves over, then putting it back. [Note--ew--bad verb form there!]
"Symptoms," Puck replied. "Could you give us a brief rundown of them all?"
"All? That would be hard. Here goes." Al thought a moment, then began a rapid-fire speech. "Headaches, dizziness, disorientation, nausea, nightmares, scoop marks, loose teeth, radiation sickness, burns, rashes, eye problems, night terrors, missing time, nosebleeds--"
"Aha," Puck interrupted. "Nosebleeds?"
"Give me a break," Anders groaned.
"And what about them?" Al said, taking down another plant. It was as if he talked about this sort of thing every day, and Anders was beginning to think he did.
"They're a symptom? A major one?"
"Yes. Some proponents say that's because the aliens are implanting devices in the human brain by inserting them through the nose, breaking cartilage on the way up. A few abductees claim they heard something snap when this was happening, or felt as if something 'broke' inside their heads."
"If something broke, it most certainly wasn't the nose," Anders muttered as Puck crossed the room to come around on his other side.
"And what are these devices," Puck said, not asked--now Anders knew he'd brought him here to give him a speech on the intricacies of alien abduction. Puck knew all this already.
"Most say they're tracking devices. So the aliens can keep a tab on their subjects."
And then, as if out of nowhere, Anders's dream came back to him. Not the one at the old house in the woods; it was the first one, the one he'd had several days ago and couldn't remember. It all flooded back in a great rush, like a tidal wave, and Anders's vision went blurry. He felt a whoosh in his chest, along with the familiar gripping he'd felt in his house-in-the-woods dream, and fell forward.
Puck turned to see him apparently passing out, and jumped forward to catch him before he hit the floor. Al spun around to see what was going on just as Puck caught him and laid him on the floor. Anders was still awake, but blinking and looking around, as if unsure of where he was.
"Anders? Anders, can you hear me?" Puck asked, looking down into his face. Al joined him a moment, then left to get a damp cloth to put on his head. He returned as Anders sat up slowly, Puck helping him, and held the washcloth to Anders's forehead as the exchange student continued looking around, bewildered.
"I'm--yeah, I hear you," Anders said shakily.
"How many fingers am I holding up?"
"Three. I'm okay. It's just--maybe the heat--I think I'm seeing things--"
"What kind of things?"
"I--I don't know. Just a dream I had." He tried to stand up, only to find his leg had gone numb and nearly topple over again. [Note--ICK my verbs are bad!!] "What you were talking about--it reminded me. That's all."
"Dream?" Al asked.
Puck looked at him as he helped Anders to a chair. "Some people at the college have been having these recurring dreams. Now you can probably guess why I'm here."
"I thought it was just Gabriel," Al said, and even through his haze Anders was surprised to see he looked a little offended.
"No. A whole bunch. Me. Anders too, I believe." He glanced at Anders, who by now was clearing up, shaking his head and blinking to get rid of the fog in his head. "Now what did you see?"
"Like I told you, it was just a dream," Anders replied, not wishing to go into detail.
"About what?"
"Owls," Anders blurted out, to his own surprise and that of the other two standing in front of him. "Owls from the sky."
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