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Tales of Wonder
I thought everyone'd forgotten the Boys from Stormville. Until you showed up, with your pile of clippings, and your goddamned youthful curiousity ...it isn't easy to forget about something like that; it's nice to have someone to tell about it. Someone a bit special...
I was one of the first to report the thing, you know. Didn't have that tidbit in your file, did you? I felt like a fool, too, when those cops laughed me off the phone — that was way before the papers had started to headline the "mysterious boomerang UFO," and I was the only call they'd had around here.
I'm also the only one left who knows the truth: all that press about hotshot pilots in Cessnas faking UFO's over Ellenville wasn't anything like the whole story.
It wasn't over Ellenville, either, at least not when I first saw it; it was cruising big and slow and silent over Nyack, limping up the river. That was during the summer of the bad drought — 1978 or 9, I think — and I was out driving one night trying to get some air. I should have been able to hear engines — the windows were wide open and I killed the motor when I pulled over — but all I heard was the whine of trucks and cars along 9W. I ‘d spent a lot of time with pilots even then, so I'd learned to tell how high the cloud cover was just by looking up; this thing was only about fifteen hundred feet, not high enough to be that quiet.
Now I don't claim to know how big a football field would look if it were flying over Nyack at that height, but I'm pretty sure what I saw was bigger by several orders of magnitude. Shaped like a huge boomerang with white lights around the edge enclosing nothing — total, starless blackness — and absolutely silent. I watched it till it disappeared, slowly, behind the Hook — Hook Mountain — and then went straight home to call the police.
Like I said, they just laughed at me. And I didn't hear anything more about it for a while, till I guess some smart reporter managed to come up with a story for the papers ...but it wasn't the real one, and I knew it.
I hadn't forgotten about the boomerang when a friend of mine who lives upstate — Grahamsville, it was — wrote me about it. Whatever he'd seen sounded a whole lot like the craft I spotted over Nyack, except that it was coming closer, and hovering, and taking off straight up. Silently. He told me the local sherriff had put the blame on some pranksters from Stormville Airport, and closed the book; he wanted to know more. So did I. Like I said, I knew a little about planes, even then, and it didn't sound to me like the kind of maneuver a Cessna could handle. I still remembered the way the cops treated me, too. It rankled.
But it took a while to get any further. And it lost me my job — no, I wasn't always a backwater flight instructor, wiseass. I got that idea after three months of poker-faced pilots in plaid jackets and hats with ear flaps telling me that, sure, they were doing impossible things with small planes but they wanted to keep it quiet. I finally figured out that I needed some first-hand education, and I started to take a few lessons. I got pretty well hooked on flying.
And the ride. I guess it was really the ride that did it.
All the time I was hanging out at Stormville, trying to worm the real story out of somebody, there was only one guy who treated me like a person, who actually talked to me. He wasn't tall — a little below average height, in fact — but it hadn't made him belligerent like it does some guys, just intense. He was wiry; even his hair, a black ponytail with touches of grey, was wiry and wild. The first thing I'd noticed, though, was his eyes; they were almost black, and he had a way of drawing his thick dark eyebrows down and looking at you like he knew exactly what you wanted, and figured he could probably get it for you if the price was right. Anything for a challenge, and the thrill of flying. He was an ace pilot, and a good instructor — I watched him fly a lot, and I heard stories about some of his stunts. The other pilots up there might not have liked him, but they damned sure respected him.
I actually had the idea, for a while, that if anyone really was doing the kind of flying the newspapers kept talking about, like lights-out gliding in formation, he'd turn out to be the mastermind. So I stuck to him like glue, except when he told me to scram, and then I just watched from a safe distance. He did do a lot of night flying — they all did — but then, there were plenty of explanations for that which had nothing to do with UFO's.
And he never acted like he had anything to hide. I mean, he even let me in on the gas-tank modifications he'd made so he could fly non-stop from Jamaica when he had to. He didn't give me the feeling, the way the other pilots up there did, that they were just repeating something someone told them to say — over and over. Nobody told this guy what to say. He just didn't say much about the UFO's, was all. But you could tell it bothered him to hear about them, and one day when one of the other guys had really ticked him off he offered to take me up to see it. That night.
This guy — Wheeler, his name was — didn't do the usual methodical run-up and checklist at the runway approach. That should have worried me, but it didn't; when Wheeler got into the pilot's seat, the whole plane seemed to wrap around him like he was part of it, and I got the feeling there was an understanding between him and his plane that made those little details meaningless. Since there wasn't a tower to clear takeoff with, and no traffic — we heard some squawking from over Newburgh, I think, but nothing nearer — he just checked the windsock and taxiied out.
We were off the ground before we hit the halfway mark, and it was a short runway. Wheeler hadn't said a word, besides "get in," till we were banking out over the trees. Then he started to talk.
"Listen, Mike. I know those jerks have been feeding you one hell of a long line about their stunts, even if they're pretending not to want to talk about it. But there isn't one of them who could really do the things people've been seeing lately. Not even me. There used to be someone around who could've..." he trailed off.
I started to say something about his modesty but he shsshed me quick — still scanning the instruments, he flicked off the landing lights and continued quietly. "Maybe nobody else cares to remember Laney, maybe by keeping quiet they feel like they're doing their Duties as Citizens, and maybe that helps them sleep at night, but I've had enough of this garbage and I don't appreciate people trying to tell me who I can and can't talk to, and about what." His voice was a mean monotone, and by the dim red interior lights his profile looked pretty tense.
"So there is something else going on up here!" I'd figured that out by then, but I wanted to make sure Wheeler didn't cool down too quick and get sensible, so I acted dumb. I knew it would irritate him.
"Of course there is, pea-brain. Just like Laney told me when he took me up here three years ago; there sure as hell still is. We're going to see an example pretty soon, so hold on." We banked again, slipped — I felt my stomach hanging somewhere up to the left of my head, and kept swallowing till it got back where it belonged and we levelled out over a long valley. The moon had come up — the ground picked up a little detail, trees and low hills. I knew there was some water, because I caught the moon's reflection twice, but there was no other light coming from below.
"Hey," Wheeler said, "stop looking at the ground. No wonder you can't figure it out — you're still looking in the wrong place."
"Sorry." I raised my head and looked out through the scratched plastic of the windshield, seeing nothing but blurred stars and a few streaks of cloud, or smog, way off to the south. We cruised along for a while, the engine droning, the wings cutting through smooth air, till I started to feel like we weren't even moving, just shaking in place.
At first I thought the vibration was getting to me when one cluster of stars suddenly seemed to be shifting — then the lights changed color and I knew they weren't stars. Wheeler pointed, and began a wide turn to bring us parallel to the thing. Sometime during the turn I realized I was terrified.
Wheeler must have seen it in my face. "Relax," he laughed, "I've been studying this baby for months, ever since I figured out its holding pattern. It'll never even notice us." And he proceeded to shut off all the lights, and every damned instrument in the cockpit.
Some kind of machismo kept me from screaming. I even managed to unlock my fingers before they ripped the vinyl armrest from its bracket. And finally admitted to myself that it seemed to be true — we were pacing a black boomerang that had to be about five times the size of a 747, with no indication that it knew we existed. No death rays, no spotlights...I leaned back in my seat and looked over at Wheeler.
"This is it? So what is it?" All I could see inside the rim of lights — some white, and some flashing colors — was flat, empty blackness. I had expected maybe a glint of metal, rivets, or an "unearthly" sheen, but instead it seemed like a perfect black-body radiator. The only motor I could hear was our own engine, and the air in the cabin felt strange when we got near the thing — tingly, sort of. Like there was a whole lot of loose electricity nearby.
Wheeler laughed again. "Yeah, this is it, all right. You think you're ready for the rest?"
"I'm here, aren't I?" I was getting impatient — he was positively enjoying himself. "So? Let's hear it."
"I'll do better than that, I'll show you. And don't worry, I'm not going to get carried away like Laney did. Hell, I'm not that crazy! Just remember; hold on, and keep quiet."
Before I could react — god knows what I could've done, anyway — we were up over the lights and diving into the midddle of the blackness.
I guess I'll never know if he planned what happened next. I didn't get a chance to ask him, because right away things started to go haywire. It felt like we were spinning, and I could hear whispered curses as Wheeler fought with the stick and the flaps. He kept saying "let go, you crazy little buggers, let go," under his breath.
The moon was gone; I couldn't see six inches in front of my face. Figuring I was about to die anyway, a strange calm came over me...all I wanted, right then, was a glimpse of whatever was taking us down. I pressed my nose to the cold side window and peered out, into the leering face of a gargoyle. And then, so help me, I did scream.
"Shut the hell up!" Wheeler took his right hand off the stick long enough to bash me in the shoulder, and hissed "you're only going to make it worse. They don't like noise."
I shut up.
After a few seconds the spinning seemed to be slowing down, and I tried a whisper. "Who don't like noise?"
"The Boys," he answered shortly, still concentrating on getting control of the Cessna. I thought it was probably better not to bother him any more, and put my nose back to the window. Squinting hard, I made out three, maybe four of "the Boys"; not gargoyles, exactly, but like they gave the stonecarvers their ideas. Beyond them, maybe even through them, there were some foggy mechanical-looking structures that gave off little bursts of white lightning now and again. For some reason the song "Riders on the Storm", by The Doors, started playing in my head.
"Wheeler," I whispered — the engine had stopped, I noticed belatedly — "Where are we? Who are those guys?"
"The way Laney told it, they're just hallucinations, something your mind makes up when it can't cope with the nothingness. He said the reason we both see pretty much the same thing has to do with the electrical field. But I kind of like to think of them as the crew of this thing, Mike — this is one mother of a big craft." I heard admiration, almost longing, in his voice. "And then there's the thunder, wind, rain — all that stuff. Laney called it something like 'field effects,' but you know me, I don't believe anything I can't see or feel. The way I look at it, these guys are the manpower."
I didn't bother to say I thought the "man" part was slightly inaccurate. "What does this thing have to do with the weather, Wheeler? I mean, all the stories, the sightings; I've never heard of any connection with weather conditions. Just lights, impossible maneuvers, eerie silence...." I'd decided by then that he was probably crazy, but what did that make me?
"Well, yeah, you're half right there. But it wasn't always like that," he said. "Laney managed to get things under control for a while, and then something went wrong. Probably those goddamned government meddlers — they had their own ideas about what to use the boomerang for. Anyway, the way I figure it, there's no goddam pilot now. And these monkeys don't know what they're doing; they're not even real. Hell, they don't even know enough to shut off the landing lights at altitude!"
"And now the government bozos can hardly cope with keeping the whole mess quiet, for chrissakes. They'd rather be using this thing to spy on the Russians, if they had a pilot who didn't go soft at the sight of our friends out there. Laney used to laugh about that — something about structured minds and forced hallucinations not being compatible. But I guess he's not laughing any more, and all Uncle Sam can think of to do is pay those sorry excuses for pilots to confuse the issue by flying half-assed imitations of this thing ...meanwhile more people are starving in Ethiopia, snow is falling in Dallas, drought in New York. Typical government mentality!" He was real worked up, and the ends of his hair were kind of crackling. "Somebody's got to fly the thing, dammit!"
Wheeler paused for a second, checked the gages, and took a few deep breaths. "That's why I have to do this," he said, unbuckling his safety belt and swinging the stick over to me. "You can handle her, can't you? The runway lights are on — just tell 'em Wheeler sent you. And Laney"
I held her pretty steady, too, while he squeezed out onto the strut. I was too surprised to do anything else. But then Wheeler started trying to shout some last words through the crack of the door, over the whistling air, and the Boys got irate again; the plane started to rock and spin at the same time, and I never got a chance to find out what he was trying to tell me about the ailerons because my head hit the windshield.
When I came to, there were pieces of the Cessna all around me in the shallow water. It wasn't a cold night, and by the time I dragged myself out onto the mud there were truck lights approaching. A farmer from the next valley'd seen the crash — he rushed right over, thinking it was the UFO. I guess he was disappointed; right then, I didn't much care.
He radioed in to the sheriff, and wrapped me in a blanket. I kept trying to tell him we should be looking for Wheeler, and he kept saying he didn't see much point in it till they came with some lights — that went on about an hour. Then there were troopers, and the sheriff, and some more locals, and it seemed like the whole valley was lit up but there wasn't a trace of Wheeler anywhere.
The guy from the National Transportation Safety Board came out the next day with some sharp-faced young assistant while they were dragging the pond. He asked me a lot of questions. I'd started to tell the sheriff about being inside the UFO, but I got the idea that if the NTSB investigator hadn't been so keen to wrap up his work they would have taken me straight to the nuthouse, or somewhere else, so I downplayed that angle. Like I'd had a shock, and I was coming to my senses.
I kept hearing Wheeler's voice, saying "Somebody's got to fly this thing." I knew by then that they weren't going to find him, and I figured it was up to me to stay away from the government types for long enough to make sure his scheme was working. So I just told the investigator about the take-off, and said I was having my first night flying lesson and I guessed I'd blown it somehow. I left out the gargoyles,too.
It took me a while to convince the government guys that I didn't know anything, but I figure the sheriff felt sorry for me or something, because he never mentioned the UFO. It was kind of funny trying to fool the FBI types without letting on that I knew what they were looking for, and them asking these roundabout questions so I wouldn't figure it out if I didn't already know. I don't think they were amused, but finally they gave up. The official finding was that Wheeler was negligent in not doing a complete run-up, which would have told him his pressure was low. They say the engine blew; that I didn't have the skill to fly under those conditions, so I'd gone into a spin instead of gliding to a forced landing. I was lucky, they said, to be alive. They didn't even take away my pilot's license, just set my training back a few months. I finally made instructor, and I've been at it ever since. Didn't think I'd ever want to do anything else.
Your Aunt Sue was one of my first students, after I got certified. She had your looks, back then, dark and wild. I was trying hard to get to know her during lessons, but it wasn't till I signed the paperwork for her license that I finally put together what Wheeler'd been telling me about Laney and the "UFO" with the name on the paper: Susan Laney. She was too young to have been his wife, so I guessed Laney was her father...Dr. Laney, she told me when I asked her; "the late, eccentric Dr. Ferris Laney, inventor extrodinaire."
You probably know more about that part of the story than I do, being in the family — marriage doesn't count in things like this. It took me months to get Sue talking about her father's work, even after the wedding; she never did tell me everything about his disappearance. I had to piece all that together from little things she let slip, and what I remembered of that last crazy conversation with Wheeler. So feel free to correct me anywhere I go wrong, but keep your voice down — we're getting close. See those blue lights?
What it comes down to, anyway, is that your grandfather was a pretty ingenious guy. He figured that since humans and their technology had done such a number on the world — the whole global environment — it was our responsibility, or his, to start fixing it up again. So he invented the boomerang.
Unfortunately, besides being a good way to influence weather patterns, it's silent and pretty near invisible when the lights are off. That got the feds real greedy. Greedy and nervous. Your grandfather was a little naive at first — he thought they'd want to help the whole world, and not just our corner of it. But when they tried to take it away from him he woke up quick, and did about the only thing he could; destroyed the plans and hijacked the boomerang.
'Course, one drawback seems to be that there's no way to dismount, so to speak...and the operating life of the pilot seems to be pretty short, though it is getting longer — Dr. Laney only lasted for about three years, but Wheeler's been up there for a good ten already. Relax...they're just hallucinations. Ugly little buggers, aren't they?
I still have no idea what makes it work. But I know it does; I've followed the improvements since Wheeler took over, and I've gone through the weather data from the time of Dr. Laney's disappearance till then. It looks like we're coming into another bad spell, though, and I'm very much afraid that old Wheeler's no longer at the helm.
Hey, don't worry, I'm not crazy. Wheeler, yeah, and Laney too, for all I know — but not me. See, I figure there's a set of plans in the cockpit, and I've been reading your grandfather's books. I think there may be a way to make radio contact, maybe even land the thing.
Meanwhile, somebody's got to fly it ...don't look at me like that. I for one am not ready to let the whole world go to hell for lack of a few good pilots. You can handle a Cessna, can't you? Here's the stick. Tell your Aunt Sue to keep the channel open. And listen, kid, whatever happens, keep flying — sorry, didn't mean to raise my voice. We may need you in a few years.
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Of course, that's forgetting that I got my master's in fiction while nursing child number two – but none of it is work I'm happy with (though I don't honestly know if that's the fault of the kids or the stodgy, stiflingly conventional Columbia atmosphere). In any case it all felt forced, squeezed from a dry well. At the time I blamed my lack of inspiration on exhaustion, and the hormonal changes of motherhood. I don't think that's entirely wrong...but in the last few years, as the children have gotten less demanding and more self-sufficient – and I'm years past breast-feeding – there's been time, certainly, to begin writing again. Yet I haven't, except for occasional feverish bursts of irate essay (Clarence Thomas and "Just say No" were some real triggers), or a few days of dutiful (boring) journal entries here and there.
More recently, I've been blaming it on lack of mental space. There are schedules to mind, homework to help with, and everyone's business but my own to be attended to. Doesn't help that I'm working, in a congenial but, to be honest, fairly dull office. So I've been telling myself, and my writing friends, that I have no experiences of my own, and no speculation time, none of that space in which to draw fibers of idea into the full thread of story. And it's true.
But last week, lying awake at four-thirty in the morning, I came upon another excuse. This one may be the real thing.
Something woke me. Maybe the donkeys, braying at the fox as it stole away with another chicken. Maybe it was the peacocks (ours is a peculiar suburb). In any case, I was awake. It was just beginning to get light; that early pearl-grey where you can't tell yet if the sky is clear or cloud-covered. I lay there and started to worry. First about money, and what we'll have to do if my husband doesn't find a new job soon. That went round for a while until I managed to distract myself by making lists of what I'd need to pack for the kids' upcoming trip to the Cape with their grandparents. Somehow that turned into a conviction that they were going to be eaten by sharks while swimming in our little bay. I got myself off that just in time to switch back to worrying about Fred – this time about the headaches he'd been having all week. Maybe lyme disease? He did have a tick on his leg last week. Or maybe, cleaning up after the racoon that tips over and scatters our garbage every Monday and Thursday night, maybe he'd contracted rabies.
I knew I was over the edge then. I've been (briefly) convinced I had rabies before, so I've read up; I know the symptoms, the incubation time. A headache isn't rabies. I knew I was in the throes of full-blown, over-the-top neurotic worry.
It happens every now and then. Last summer I lay awake for most of one long night with a six-foot staff in one hand, certain that there was a psychotic intruder in the house (which was chock-full of sleeping relatives), afraid to doze and wondering how in hell I was going to use the stick, the only weapon I had, in a room barely five feet wide and hardly longer then the bunk bed I was lying in (to put this in perspective, it was after reading an article about a paroled killer, and then staying up very late to finish a murder mystery).
And there have been other times. When I thought I had rabies, for instance. We had taken in a starving, dehydrated baby chipmunk whose mother had been killed by a cat. I fed it peanut butter mixed with milk round the clock for a couple of days and it made a great recovery. Thinking it was ready for solid food I tried some grass seed – suddenly it was sick again, sluggish and glassy-eyed, and so was I. A normal person might have attributed this to exhaustion on my part, and blamed the fungicide on the grass seed for the chipmunk's relapse, but not me. First thing I think of, lying feverish in my bed Sunday morning (why is it always Sunday?) is rabies. That moment of heart-stopping cold sweat panic, the certainty that you're dying... and then a glimmer of reason. I hauled out the family medical guide and read over the details, carefully avoiding other topics that might lead me to believe I had renal failure or some rare form of thyroid problem. The guy at the County Health Department was reassuring, too; he said it's almost unheard of for the small rodents to carry rabies (then hung up the phone and laughed himself sick, no doubt).
I once spent two days covering everything in bleach because of the threat of racoon roundworm. It's like regular roundworm, but if it's not treated, can eventually get into your brain. We'd adopted a lost baby racoon (is this a theme in my life or what?) and were trying to find out what to do with it – someone at the wildlife agency told me a scare story of unbelievable proportions, but it took me several days of absolutely neurotic behavior – bleach up to my elbows, burned my clothes, all the while screaming at the kids not to touch the poor, starved-for-contact, incredibly cute racoon – before I began to think about just how unbelievable it was (though racoon roundworm is serious, nursing young rarely carry it; we finally did find a refuge that would take the racoon).
Which is all to say that this excessive worry still comes over me sometimes. But I squelch it, as fast as possible, when I realize what's happening. Because otherwise I'd be totally dysfunctional, and my kids would be neurotic too. I can't afford to worry like that on a daily basis. It interferes. I've got schedules to keep track of, places to be, people who depend on me. Children who depend on me.
Before kids, yeah, I used to write. I also used to lie awake more. I used to be afraid to go down in the basement. It started early; I couldn't walk alone in the dark for months after reading the Classic Comics version of "Frankenstein" when I was ten. Even as an adult, I never could go to horror movies; they rooted too solidly in my fertile imagination. I spent an entire night once working out just how I'd protect my dogs, for Christ's sake, from a nuclear holocaust (it's a complicated problem).
Nowadays, I can't even afford "harmless" speculation, the low-level background noise of worry that used to be one of the mainstays of my creativity. Because my most important job is, still, to be fully functional as wife and mother, to cope when my son is in the hospital or my daughter hits puberty or my husband is out of work. Someday I'd like to delve into the shadows again, to exorcize my fears in story. But it's dangerous. Because I know even little worries can lead to... rabies.
© 2001 by Annie Gerard
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