Taken

Chapter One

Charlie lay naked on the bed, his body glistening with sweat. Or was it sweat? In the dream he’d been suspended in a tank of translucent liquid, floating upside down, his arms spread. Through the thick liquid he’d seen figures scurrying about, slender, with elongated arms, their pear-shaped heads and almond eyes continually glancing toward him.

He sat up and stared around the room, his gaze moving over the vast amount of testimony he’d gathered over the years, tapes and transcripts, printouts from alien abduction sites he’d found on the Internet. None of that seemed as real as the dream, however, none of it actual proof of what had happened to him, or that it had ever happened to anyone else, proof that he wasn’t crazy, proof that he was not alone.

Allie knew that they came to her because they sensed that she could calm them, give them direction, Denny and Milo and even Nina. Her eyes moved silently from one face to the next, all of them in a circle around her. There was something about them that made her think of the fairy tales her mother had read to her. People were like characters in those tales. They were abandoned in the woods. They were locked in towers. They couldn’t reach each other. They went after things they thought were valuable or important or would last, but they couldn’t be sure that the things they went after had any of those qualities. Half the time they seemed lost and desperate, as if some horrible monster were chasing them, and they were growing tired, and it was closing in.

“You guys want to get enlightenment, or you want to play some rock and roll?” Lisa asked as she came into the room.

Denny and Milo got to their feet and headed for their guitars. Allie took her place near Denny, who’d told her that his rhythm improved when she was near him. She wasn’t sure this was true, but during her nine short years of life, she’d gotten used to people saying strange things to her, expecting strange things from her. She had a power, people said, and she knew that this was true.

She recalled the time, three years before, when her mother had taken her to see the dolphins, how she’d stood before the tank, lifted her arms without knowing why, then stood, oddly unsurprised, as the dolphins had turned and drifted toward her, their many faces finally near hers, their noses nearly touching the glass, suspended there, as if waiting for instructions. She had a power, yes, but all she really wanted was just to be a little girl.

The video showed a soccer field, kids frantically at play, Allie in the forefront, pursuing the ball.

“That’s Lisa Clarke’s daughter, and yes, she can block a shot on goal,” Eric said. “But other than that, she hasn’t demonstrated anything like the kind of power we were expecting. Which is good, because once she demonstrates, we might not be able to pick her up.” Eric held his eyes on the video, Allie now closing in on the ball. “Lisa has joined some kind of therapy group for people who claim they’ve been taken. We’ve placed an agent in that same group.” He shrugged. “Just a way of keeping an eye on things.”

Wakeman and Mary continued to watch the video until it froze with Allie still on the soccer field, her eyes sparkling with competitive drive.

“She’s still a little kid,” Wakeman said. “Give her time.”

“Chet’s right,” Mary said. She gave Wakeman a curiously charged glance. “A lot of genetic traits don’t demonstrate until right before adolescence. Schizophrenia, for example.”

She smiled at Wakeman, and Eric caught a glimmer in her eyes. It was no longer the look of a little girl who admired her “uncle,” he realized, but of a woman flirting with a man.

“Well, we can’t pick her up anyway,” Eric said with a shrug. “They’ll just take her back, like they did when we tried for Lisa.”

Wakeman returned Mary’s flirtatious smile, then turned to Eric.

“That used to be the case,” he said.

“Used to be the case?” Eric asked.

Wakeman could hardly contain his billowing self-confidence. “Want to see what we can do?” He pressed his hand at Mary’s back and gently urged her over to a small microwave oven attached to a computer.

“Microwave radiation,” he said as Eric joined them at the oven. “Part of the light spectrum.” Wakeman stared at the small hamster that scurried about inside the oven. “In the case of the oven, twelve point five centimeters to be exact.” He hit the oven’s switch. “Don’t worry, my dear,” Wakeman added with a laugh. “We’re not going to fry our furry little friend.” He smiled. “At least… not yet.”

Eric watched as the hamster continued to move about inside the oven, ears up, whiskers twitching, large round eyes peering back at him from the other side of the glass.

“When we block that wavelength, our little friend is on easy street,” Wakeman said. He reached down and tapped a command on the computer keyboard beside the oven.

Instantly, the hamster exploded, its hair and entrails slammed against the glass in a gooey, red mass.

“In meditation we learn the oneness of all things,” Wakeman said, his gaze on the bloody pulp that was all that remained of the hamster. “The harmony that flows through nature. These are the same ideas, only stripped of the comforting notion of divinity that we get from science, and more specifically, from mathematics.” He took a pad from the desk, scribbled a few numbers and handed the pad to Mary.

“The Fibonacci sequence,” Mary said. “Each number added to the one before it makes the next number in the sequence.” She looked at her father, she now the teacher, he the student. “The Fibonacci sequence gives us the golden mean,” she told him. “They’re everywhere, these numbers. Shells. Nebulae. The spiral of a pinecone. Beehives. DNA.”

“Is this going somewhere?” Eric asked impatiently.

Wakeman turned to him. “Their crafts hold five,” he explained. “The number of confirmed sightings in Mexico last year was 1,597. They have three fingers and one thumb.”

“The number of breeding pairs you charted when you were figuring out who Allie was, 55.1… 3, 5… 55… 1,597,” Mary said. “They’re all Fibonacci numbers.”

“And it goes on,” Wakeman said, winking at Mary. “How many lights on board? Forty-six thousand, three hundred and sixty-seven, and with our little friend, Allie…” He wrote the number on the pad and turned the pad toward Eric. “46,368. The twenty-fourth Fibonacci.”

“So,” Mary said grandly. “How do you take our revelation and use it to make an effective block so that we can grab little Forty-six thousand, three hundred and sixty-eight, our little Allie?” She looked at Wakeman, turning the narrative over to him now.

Wakeman gestured toward a young man who lay unconscious on a gurney. “That’s Peter Miller. Mr. Miller has been taken thirteen times.” He smiled. “Don’t worry, Eric, I’m not going to splatter dear Peter all over the room. Janitorial would never forgive me.”

He pointed to the huge tracking board that covered the opposite wall, a enormous map of the United States, its surface scattered with colored lights.

“Mr. Miller has an implant,” he said. “We’re monitoring that implant. You can see by that light on the map that Mr. Miller is currently residing right here in the lovely, peaceful fishing village of Ellsworth, Maine.”

Wakeman took a five-sided device from the table and placed it like a hangman’s hood over Miller’s head. “The implants broadcast on a spread spectrum. They’re all based on the hydrogen hyperfine transition line. The most fundamental wavelength in the universe.” He took a studied, theatrical pause, then said, “Fibonacci again.” He smiled. “We block those frequencies in a way that will ensure that… shall we say… the ‘hamster’ doesn’t splatter.” He pointed to the map. “As you can see. Mr. Miller’s light is no longer shining. That means that his implant isn’t registering, and that means that we can pick someone up without having them grabbed right back.”

Eric stared at Peter Miller. “Will this work on the girl?”

“Allie doesn’t have an implant, remember?” Wakeman said. “Just that neutron spiral, if you recall. The one she no doubt inherited from her mother.”

“So we can’t…”

“Yes, we can, Eric,” Wakeman said. “Because the same principle applies. We can block her frequency, too.”

Charlie moved around the room, his camera pausing at each face. Dale Adler, a middle-aged man whose grief lay upon him like a black veil; Ray Morrison; a married couple, Ben and Nora; a tough-looking young woman named Cynthia; Dorothy, who claimed to have twelve cats; and an older man named Adams.

“Contrails are messages,” Ray said. “When they appeared in the sky above St. Paul, the incidence of severe upper respiratory infections quadrupled.”

“What are contrails?” Dorothy asked.

“Those white trails jets leave behind,” Adams said.

“Messages,” Dale repeated. “I think we’re reaching here.”

“We’re not here to judge,” Harriet cautioned. “Just to listen.”

“There is a base,” Ray went on adamantly. “A landing strip at the bottom of Lake Superior. I was taken to this landing strip on my third abduction.”

“How come you didn’t drown?” Nora asked.

“They did something to me that made me able to breathe under water,” Ray answered.

Dale gave a doubtful shrug.

Ray glared at him. “But I’m supposed to believe your story about seeing your dead son in a spaceship, right?” he demanded. “So why is it that you can…”

“Could you share the story of your son with us, Dale,” Harriet said, cutting Ray off.

“We lost our boy, Luke,” Dale began. “In the Gulf War. It was about six months later when they came for me. One night, I woke up and there were these five young men standing by my bed. Soldiers, like Luke was. They asked me would I like to see Luke. Then there was this big light, and Luke was there and we talked. And after that, they’d come for me every night, these same soldiers, and there’d be Luke, and we’d talk, and then he’d be gone.” He shook his head. “It was like they wanted to make me grieve for him all over again.”

Ray shook his head. “You’re just having bad dreams, Dale.”

Dale leaped to his feet, his eyes flaring. “Does this look like dreams to you?” he asked as he pulled down the collar of his shirt, revealing several slender red lines on his neck, each knotted with what appeared to be joints.

Ray looked at the marks on Dale’s neck. “That could have happened any way at all. You could have done that to yourself.”

“Please now,” Harriet said. “You’re all here because you believe you’ve experienced something. This is hard work. Painful work.”

The door opened and Charlie saw a slender, dark-haired young woman enter the room. “Sorry I’m late,” she said, glancing at Charlie.

“Lisa, we have a guest today,” Harriet explained. “This is Charlie. He’s taping the session for a documentary he’s doing. Charlie has spent years talking to people who’ve had experiences like yours. The others have agreed to being taped but if you’re not comfortable…”

“No, I’m not,” Lisa interrupted. She looked Charlie dead in the eye. “I like to keep my private life private,” she said.

Charlie lowered the camera. “Sorry,” he said. “I understand.”

Throughout the rest of the session, Charlie noticed that Lisa continually drew her eyes toward him. They were knowing eyes, and what they knew was something fierce and dreadful, that a human being could vanish into a white light, then reemerge hours later in a completely different place, be taken again and again in sudden, nightmarish seizures, never told why you’d been chosen or if they would ever leave you alone.

Later that afternoon, as they sat together in a coffee shop, Lisa made no effort to conceal what had happened to her, or what she knew had happened to Charlie.

“How long have they been taking you?” Lisa asked.

“Since I was a kid,” Charlie answered.

“Me, too.”

“But they don’t take me anymore,” Charlie added. “Not in nine years. Since then, I’ve been trying to prove that it really happened. I want to know why they did it and why they stopped.”

Lisa considered this briefly, then said, “Did you like your abductions?”

“Like them?” Charlie asked, astonished.

“Yeah,” Lisa answered. “As in enjoy them. Look forward to them. I used to get this energy thing. This buzz. It felt great. I believe this whole abduction deal is going to turn out to be a positive event. Right now, people think we’re whacked, we’re fringe-dwellers, but that’s going to change. We’ve been chosen for something.”

“For me, it was never a buzz,” Charlie said. “I didn’t know what was happening to me… and I fought back as hard as I could.”

For a moment they peered at each other silently, then Lisa began to gather up her things. “I have to get home,” she said. “I have a daughter.”

Neither of them stood up. They just stared at each other, neither of them able to shake the eerie feeling that they’d already met.

Charlie reached for his wallet, and as he did so a picture fell onto the table between them. “That’s my dad,” he said when he noticed Lisa staring at it.

“The carny,” she whispered, her eyes lifting slowly toward Charlie. She seemed almost to shiver. “Things just got a lot more weird,” she said. “We need to talk to Dr. Penzler.”

Minutes later Charlie sat a few feet away as Penzler prepared to do what she called a regression. Lisa lay on a sofa, her eyes watching him, so strangely familiar, he felt they’d watched him all his life.

“Are you ready?” Dr. Penzler asked.

“Ready,” Lisa said.

And suddenly the walls of Dr. Penzler’s office dissolved into panels of radiant light, and she felt her body lift and turn and float upward toward the top of a huge glass canister. Revolving slowly, she saw small creatures with almond-shaped eyes. Then another canister came into view. Inside the canister, a naked man floated in the same thick liquid. Suddenly both canisters began to close in upon each, getting nearer and nearer until, in a moment of radiant energy, they touched, held briefly, then drew apart, each turning more rapidly now, the velocity building steadily, until she felt herself spinning wildly, everything a passing blur as if she were being shot through a tunnel of light at terrific speed, away and away, back to something far below, something added to her from the journey, a thrilling spark of life.

“Lisa!”

She opened her eyes and saw Charlie standing over her, Dr. Penzler at his side.

“What did you see?” Charlie asked.

“It wasn’t quite my ‘new age’ dream,” Lisa answered quietly.

“What was it then?”

Lisa looked at him softly. “It was about you and me.”

“What about us?”

Lisa shook her head.

Charlie stared at her urgently. “What was it?” he asked insistently.

Lisa’s eyes fled toward the window, held briefly, then returned to him.

He could see how oddly shaken she was, how reluctant to reveal what she’d seen.

“I’m not ready,” was all she said.

Charlie met Allie an hour later, a little nine-year-old girl with large, penetrating eyes who seemed to reside in an otherworldly calm. They sat in the small living room of Lisa’s apartment, Allie framed by her mother’s poster of “I Married a Monster From Outer Space.”

“You’re in the fourth grade, right?” Charlie asked.

Allie nodded.

“I taught fourth grade,” Charlie added. “You’re doing state history, reading Sarah, Plain and Tall, and this is the ‘big ideas’ year in science. Electricity and magnetism.”

“We read Sarah, Plain and Tall, last year,” Allie said, her voice spirited and energetic, a little girl so eager to learn that time itself seemed her only obstacle. “This year it’s Island of the Blue Dolphins.”

“Good one,” Charlie said with a quick smile.

Allie’s expression grew oddly serious. “So this is the year I find out how everything works? The ‘big ideas?’ ”

“Pretty much,” Charlie answered.

“So then what happens, they all forget?”

Charlie laughed. “I never thought of it that way,” he admitted.

Nina arrived before Charlie could ask another question, and he saw that she was surprised to find a stranger in the house.

“Who are you?” she asked.

Lisa laughed. “We’ve been trying to figure that out all afternoon.”

Nina’s eyes remained on Charlie. “I can’t hang around to find out more,” she said, “But it looks to me like I’ll be seeing you around.” She rushed over and gave Allie a kiss. “Gotta run. Bye sweetheart.”

At dinner, Allie paused a moment, as if considering the right approach, then said, “You’ve been on spaceships too.”

It was not a question, Charlie recognized, but a statement of fact. “Yes… I have,” he said.

“Was it scary?”

“Kind of.”

“Did it make you mean?” Allie asked.

“I don’t think so,” Charlie answered. “How come?”

“My mom didn’t get mean either,” Allie told him. “But some of the people she knows did… I think people get mean when they’re scared.”

Charlie recognized himself in her words, recalling the ferocity of his battle, how he had swung at them, kicked, screamed, all of it done in the grip of terror.

Allie smiled. “I have a journal,” she said. “I write down things I think of and stuff.”

“That’s a good idea,” Charlie told her. “I always wish I’d done that.”

“Maybe some time, I could read you mine,” Allie said.

Charlie smiled. “That would be great.” He turned toward Lisa, and saw that she was watching him somberly.

“You’re up next, you know. With Harriet. Your regression. You’ve never done it before, have you?”

Charlie shook his head.

“Sometimes it can be… there can be a lot of information.”

“Okay,” Charlie said softly.

Lisa seemed hesitant to continue, but determined to do it. “During the regression, I saw us,” she said.

“Us?”

Lisa glanced toward Allie, then back to him. “Us, yes,” she said significantly.

Charlie’s gaze swept over to Allie, and he knew that she was his and Lisa’s, conceived in a tunnel of light, a kind of star child, yet an earthling too, precious beyond measure, rare beyond imagining, and so a creature others were surely hunting down.

Mary strolled with Wakeman along the dock in the early morning light, water lapping softly on the wooden pylons. She’d never seen this particular look on his face, oddly dreamy, and somewhat pensive, a man in love, she thought, but also a man who seemed to be taken by a sudden insight.

“Maybe they want to make us better,” Wakeman said after a moment. “Enable us to move to the next rung of the ladder. And in doing that, they’ll better themselves as well.”

Mary shook her head. “I have a different idea. Say it began as a research project… a project on a scale totally beyond our comprehension. A detailed accounting of our entire planet.”

Wakeman smiled. “I like it.”

“Now, imagine this,” Mary continued. “While doing the research, they inadvertently come across an incredible insight. Something that utterly rearranges the way they see the universe.”

“And that’s what Allie is,” Wakeman asked. “The result of this insight?”

“Evolution comes at a cost, Chet,” Mary said. “Every choice is the death of all other possibilities. Maybe something was lost along the way.”

Wakeman nodded. “Probably something very simple.” He thought a moment, then added, “All I’ve ever wanted was to understand them… not even understand, just catch a glimpse, see through their eyes.” He glanced up toward the heavens. “We’re getting close, Mary. We’ll have the girl. Through her, we’ll be able to talk to them.” His eyes glistened. “I’ve been waiting for this moment all my life.” He drew Mary into his arms. “What I never knew was that I’d find someone to share the moment with me.” He started to kiss her, but the ring of Mary’s cell phone stopped him.

“Yes,” Mary answered. “Dr. Penzler. Hello.” She looked at Wakeman significantly. “Thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you again soon.” She smiled. “Yes, it is unexpected… but that’s one of life’s happy accidents.” She closed the phone and returned it to her pocket. “There’s a new wrinkle,” she said gravely. “Allie’s dad just showed up.”

Charlie and Lisa sat together, the others in Dr. Penzler’s group seated around them, Dr. Penzler near the center, her notebook open, pencil at the ready.

“I just can’t stand this feeling that my life is out of control,” Adams said.

Ray waved his hand. “Welcome to my world,” he scoffed.

“They’re more advanced,” Ben complained. “But that doesn’t make them God.”

Adams seemed hardly to hear Ben. “What makes me furious is that the government has cut a deal with them,” he said. “They know about this, but they cover it up.”

“You people make me sick,” Ray blurted out. He glared at the others. “You’re all victims. It’s time someone took charge.”

The others stared at him motionlessly.

“They come into our homes,” Ray cried angrily. “They… do things to us. And we just sit there and take it.”

“You talk like there’s something we could do,” Ben said.

“There is,” Ray shouted, his temper flaring. “We can fight back.”

Dr. Penzler shifted uneasily in her seat. “Have you ever fought back, Ray?”

Ray shot a piercing look over to Dr. Penzler. “I’ve… yeah, I’d like to think I have. But that’s not what I’m talking about. There’s us, here in this room. Fine. But the people out there in the world, they treat us like we’re crazy.” He glanced from face to face among the group. “If we’re all alone, there’s no fighting back. But if we were believed… if there was proof…”

Dr. Penzler turned toward Charlie. “That was your idea, too, wasn’t it, Charlie? To get proof?”

Charlie shifted nervously, suddenly on the spot. “It was… yeah.”

“Not anymore?” Dr. Penzler asked.

Charlie looked at Lisa, smiled quietly, then turned to Dr. Penzler. “Some things have come up that kind of… rearranged my priorities,” he said.

“This is so romantic,” Ray scoffed. “Charlie and Lisa. Soul mates. Destined to find each other in the stars. It’s enough to make me puke.”

Charlie felt his anger rise. “Why don’t you lighten up, buddy?” he warned.

“Why don’t I lighten up?” Ray snarled. “Maybe because I’m tired of all this cosmic whining.”

“You know what, Ray?” Cynthia said. “All you ever do is shout down everyone else’s story. So, what’s your story?”

Ray glared at her. “You want my story?” He jerked a pistol from behind his back. “Here’s my story,” he said.

Charlie stepped forward. “Give me that gun, Ray.”

“Not the whole thing,” Ray said quietly. “Just a piece of it.”

Then he fired.

Mary rubbed a smudge from the windshield for a clearer view, then sat back, her hands on the wheel. In the soccer field beyond a line of trees she could see Allie darting along, kicking at the ball. She glanced at her watch. Three-thirty.

“They should be here by now.”

“Don’t worry, these guys are very punctual.” Wake-man smiled, his gaze following Allie as she moved across the field. “Pretty little girl,” he said.

Mary nodded as a dark car pulled up near the goalpost, two men in sweatshirts in the front seat. “There they are,” she said.

Wakeman watched a third man move along the edge of the field, a jogger in a sweatshirt. “And the rest of the team, right on time.”

“Yes,” Mary said. She opened the door and looked at Wakeman. “Ready, Chet?”

“Ready.”

Wakeman pulled himself from the car and joined Mary, the two of them now heading across the field to where Allie continued to chase the ball until she abruptly stopped, peered at them intently for a moment, then whirled around and began to run.

“Let’s go!” Mary cried as she bounded forward, running with all her strength, joined by the others, all of them converging as Allie fled into the adjoining woods.

Mary could see her racing toward a break in the trees and into the speeding traffic beyond the woods where… the air suddenly congealed and she felt as if she were moving through a thick invisible gelatin, Wakeman lurching ponderously at her side, encased in the suffocating air, everything slowing as if some mysterious force had been drained from the earth, leaving nothing free to move save the little girl she could still see darting deerlike and unencumbered through the otherwise numb and exhausted realm of earth.

Charlie lay on the sofa in Dr. Penzler’s office, grimacing in pain as Lisa applied the tourniquet. He stared at the others herded together around him, pale with fright, watching as Ray paced back and forth before them.

“He needs a hospital,” Lisa said.

Ray shook his head. “I need to talk to the FBI.” He picked a cell phone from one of the pile he’d taken from the group and tossed it to Dr. Penzler. “Call the FBI. Tell them that I’m armed and that I’m going to have to start shooting people if my demands aren’t met.”

“What are your demands?” Dr. Penzler asked.

“Tell them that I want to speak to someone in charge,” Ray answered. “The extraterrestrial project. I want to talk to whoever’s in charge of that. I want him here, in this room, so I can look in his eyes.”

Dr. Penzler opened the phone.

Suddenly the door burst open and all eyes turned toward where a little girl stood breathlessly.

“Allie,” Lisa said.

Ray moved the pistol, directing Allie to join the others. Then he looked at Dr. Penzler. “Make the call,” he said.

Dr. Penzler dialed a number, then said. “This is Harriet Penzler. I’m a psychologist in Seattle, Washington. Yes. Yes. This is very urgent. I have a patient who… well… who has to speak to whomever is in charge of the extraterrestrial project. Yes, that’s what I said. Yes, and this is no joke.” Dr. Penzler waited a moment, then returned to the phone. “And there are hostages,” she said, her voice now very grave. “Seven adults.” Her eyes swept over to Allie, settled upon her a moment, then returned to the phone. “And… one… little girl.” She returned her gaze to Allie as she listened. “Yes,” she said. “That’s right… exactly.”

“All right, I’m here,” Mary said as she stepped into Dr. Penzler’s office a few minutes later. She lifted her arms to show that she was unarmed. “Are you the one who asked for the FBI?” she asked, her eyes locked on Ray.

“Yeah,” Ray said.

“I’m here. You can talk to me.”

“Did anyone explain to you what this was all about?” Ray asked.

“Man in therapist’s office holding eight hostages… demands FBI agent.”

“I asked for someone from the FBI extraterrestrial project.”

“You mean like X-Files?” Mary asked. She smiled. “I’m the person you want to see.”

Ray glared at her. “I want the FBI to go public,” he said. “I want the FBI to tell us everything it knows about…”

“I’m sure everyone here would agree,” Mary said. “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to… go public.” She glanced at the other hostages one by one until her gaze finally settled on Allie. “Give me the little girl and I’ll do what I can for you.”

Allie looked at Mary closely. “She was in the park,” she said to Lisa. “She tried to grab me.”

Mary’s eyes swept back to Ray. “Let the little girl come with me,” she said.

Ray strode across the room, yanked Allie from Lisa’s grasp and put the pistol to the child’s head. “I’ve got something you want, don’t I?” he said to Mary. His eyes narrowed menacingly. “Well, you’ll never get her,” he added as he drew the gun away and let Allie go. “She’s staying with her mother.” He smiled. “Now get out!”

Mary eased herself from the room, then quickly made her way across the street to where she found her father, the building’s blueprints spread out on a table in front of him.

“What’s the situation?” Eric asked.

“He’s going to kill the girl if we don’t tell the whole world that we’re not alone.”

“You two were going to pick her up. This was supposed to be easy.”

Mary ignored the accusatory tone in her father’s voice. “We have to make sure that little girl doesn’t get hurt.” She glanced over to where a gas company truck rested at the curb, the snipers she’d already put into position now taking aim, awaiting her signal.

“No one’s getting killed here today,” Eric warned her, his eyes now on the same snipers.

Mary nodded, and suddenly, the snipers fired, smashing through the windows of Dr. Penzler’s office.

For a moment, there was silence, then the phone rang, and Mary quickly picked it up.

“WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING!”

It was Ray, and he was screaming.

“It was a miscommunication,” Mary told him urgently. “It won’t happen again.”

“YOU’RE DAMNED RIGHT IT WON’T! NEXT TIME ANYTHING LIKE THAT HAPPENS, THE LITTLE GIRL IS COMING OUT THE WINDOW WITH A BULLET IN HER HEAD!”

Mary put down the phone, and stared at the window of Dr. Penzler’s office, where Ray now stood, Allie held like a body shield in front of him, angrily repeating his demands.

“He’s going to kill her,” Mary said. “The proof. We can’t let that happen.”

“I will not be a party to any more killing,” Eric said firmly. “I’m done with that.”

“I don’t think you are, Dad,” Mary said darkly. “You know who’s in there, right? Besides the little girl, I mean. Her mother… and her father. That means he knows. That’s a lot of information in the hands of two people who have had some very bad experiences with us over the years.” She returned her gaze to the shattered window. “They have to go. And Dr. Penzler, too. I can’t risk a leak. Allie’s too important.” She shook her head. “None of the others matter anymore. It’s all about Allie.”

“You are not in charge here, Mary,” Eric reminded her. “I am. Take a step. Calm down.”

Mary smiled, but her eyes remained cold. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re right.”

Eric stared at her warily. “On your way out, tell your personal gunmen that their services will no longer be required.”

Mary stiffened like a soldier called to attention. “Yes, Dad,” she said as she left the room.

Allie looked softly into Ray’s tormented eyes.

“It’s easier, isn’t it, Mr. Morrison,” she asked. “Blaming it on them.”

Ray sucked in an exhausted breath. “What?”

“It’s easier to say that ‘they’ did it to you,” Allie answered. “That ‘they’ came down and took you.”

Ray’s fingers tightened around the pistol grip. “Shut up.”

“It’s a whole lot scarier when the monsters are us,” Allie continued.

“I told you to shut up,” Ray said.

“Nothing you do is going to change what happened, Mr. Morrison.”

“And what was that?” Ray challenged her.

“That man in the woods when you were eight,” Allie answered. “The one who took you in the shed. He wasn’t from another planet. He was just mean and crazy.”

Ray leaped to his feet. “Shut up!”

“You’re just going to hurt a lot more people, that’s all.”

Ray lowered the pistol, his hand shaking, but his face curiously serene, as if he’d lived the life of one condemned, but whose death sentence had suddenly been lifted. He looked at Allie without fear or malice. “What should I do now?” he asked.

Allie smiled quietly. “I think you already know.”

Mary eased back behind the gas truck as the door to Dr. Penzler’s building opened.

“They’re coming out,” she said. “The girl said she’d come with us.”

The sniper nodded.

“Remember what I told you.”

“Good as done,” the sniper assured her.

Mary edged back to the rear of the truck. She could see Allie in the lead, the others behind her, all walking slowly, keeping their pace with hers. One, two, three, she began, counting the seconds for the moment, five, six…

She stopped as her father abruptly appeared, striding across the street, waving his arms, his voice higher and more desperate than she’d ever heard it.

“Get away!” he cried. “Take your little girl! Run!”

She nodded to the sniper.

He promptly took aim and fired.

The sound of the blast seemed to shear away the night. In the distance, Eric spun around as the bullet pierced him, then fell heavily to the ground.

Mary stepped out from behind the truck, her gaze lethally fixed on Allie. The proof, she thought, watching as Allie stood in place, her gaze focused no less intently on Mary.

Wakeman took his place beside her, and together they moved forward, intently… then strangely… then impossibly as the street and buildings dissolved and they found themselves in a broad green field where nothing stood around them but a happily grazing cow.

“I’m ready to go with you.”

The pasture vanished and Allie stood before them, the street deserted now, the hostages departed, nothing but the eerie silence that follows a violent storm.

“Screening,” Wakeman said, his voice filled with awe.

“What?” Mary asked.

“She threw up a screen, and everyone escaped while she kept us behind it,” Wakeman said, his gaze resting quietly on Allie. He smiled. “Little girl,” he said gently, “I love the way your mind works.”