Shades

14

Michael stared at the specter that hung in the air behind Jim Valenti. The "ghost" stood almost ten feet tall, looking even taller because the creature had to bend and stoop to fit under the basement ceiling. Loose cloth clung to the specter, folds that barely covered the emaciated figure and flapped in the wind. Dark circles surrounded the black eyes, and the creature was bald.

Staring at the creature, Michael felt certain the thing had stepped out of some horror movie, not a grave. The static-charged air whipped through the garage, and sparks leaped across some of the boxes of ore samples.

"Michael!" Valenti yelled across the roaring winds. "Get the girl out of here!" He tried to step forward, but the winds sucked him back into the basement room. The door slammed shut with a sudden fierceness that swallowed the beam from the flashlight Valenti carried.

Suddenly aware that Kelli was screaming, fighting, and clinging to him all at the same time, Michael guided her out of the garage. The garage door slipped free of the jammed position it had been in and dropped back down with a heavy clank behind them.

Spotting Valenti's truck parked in front of the house, Michael sprinted for the vehicle, half carrying Kelli as she struggled to keep up. When he reached the truck, he shoved the girl inside. "You'll be safe here," Michael said.

"Where are you going?" Kelli demanded.

"To help Valenti."

"You can't leave me here!"

Michael closed the door and said, "Keep your head down," and ran back to Wilkins's garage. He narrowed his eyes against the spinning grit and dust that rose from the garage floor. The wind slashed him with icy talons.

Summoning the energy that was part of his alien heritage, Michael threw out a hand. The energy struck the garage door and forced it back up into the tracks. However, the garage door only traveled something less than three feet.

Michael threw himself under the garage door's edge, sliding and rolling like a base runner stealing second. He pushed himself up on the other side, summoning more energy and creating a ball of light in his left palm. The light illuminated the garage.

Lightning struck the Willis jeep, causing the vehicle to rock violently for a moment. A black singe marked the place where the lightning had struck.

The static electricity discharge still raced through Michael, but somehow seemed dimmer. Either whatever was causing the buildup was dying down, or using his powers was negating the effects. He increased the size of the ball of light in his hand, amazed at how the electrical disturbance retreated before him.

"Valenti!" Michael yelled.

"Here!" Valenti yelled back. "Door's stuck. I can't get it open."

"Step back from the door," Michael ordered, then focused his energy on the door. When the force he generated smashed into the door, the basement door blew open.

Valenti lay inside, covering his head with one arm and holding the flashlight he'd taken from Kelli. He glanced up at Michael.

Without hesitation but with an acquired knowledge of what one of the creatures was capable of, Michael crossed the room, watching as the elongated and emaciated form of the poorly robed man turned toward him.

"Do you see it?" Valenti asked.

"Yeah," Michael replied, watching the creature floating through the air. The wraps that covered the ghost flapped in the wind. The dead face remained emotionless, the mouth and eyes all open in perfect black circles. "Don't you?"

"No," Valenti answered.

Even as Michael wondered about that, and wondered what he was going to do, the thing changed shape, mor-phing into a young woman with a broken face.

Valenti cursed and backed away from the creature.

"Do you see it now?" Michael asked.

"Yeah," Valenti answered hoarsely. "That's the first woman I ever saw murdered after I became a deputy."

Feeling braver and more certain of himself, Michael shook his head. Sand and grit still whirled in the room, stinging his eyes and scratching at his face and arms. He had to speak loudly to be heard over the wind. "That's not a ghost. That's something else. Something that can change forms. That isn't what it was a moment ago. I never heard of a ghost that could do that."

"Jim Valenti," the ghostly woman said. She stood straight and still despite the winds cycling within the darkened basement. "You could have saved me. You could have prevented my death. I died because you didn't take me out of that house and away from my husband."

Valenti stared at the ghost. Panic darted through his eyes, but he stood his ground.

"It's not real," Michael said, sensing that the ghost was somehow touching Valenti's fear, making it stronger. "It's not a ghost; it's something else."

"It looks pretty real to me," Valenti said. His eyes never left the ghost walking toward him. "I tried to save her. I got her to leave her husband once, but she went back. And when she did, he killed her."

The ghost continued walking toward Valenti. It flickered like an image on an old black-and-white movie. A hand lifted, pointing, then a huge spark of electricity flashed from the fingertips.

The electricity caught Valenti in the chest and knocked him back against the wall. A cry of pain tore from his lips.

A silver shine tracked across the basement floor, drawing Michael's eye. He missed whatever caused the shine, and thought maybe it was an ore sample that might have been in the basement, but he noticed the crowbar that Valenti had dropped.

"You killed me," the ghost-thing told Valenti, closing in on him. Electricity sparked at her fingertips as she moved toward him relentlessly.

A desperate idea formed in Michael's head as he stared at the crowbar. He picked the curved piece of metal from the basement floor and turned to the ghost. Grabbing the crowbar like a baseball bat, he swung at the ghost's back. The crowbar passed through the ghost's body.

Okay, Michael thought, the Neanderthal approach is definitely out. He fell to his knees and stabbed the straightest end of the crowbar into the basement's stone floor.

"You are responsible for my death, Jim Valenti," the ghost said, reaching for him. "And you harbor the Outsiders. They don't belong here. They've already brought death to this community. More will follow. They are not like your people. The Outsiders will never care about your people."

Valenti stood his ground and tried to shove against the ghost. His hands passed through the thing, then a massive surge of electricity dropped him to the floor.

On his knees, both fists around the crowbar, Michael poured his energy into the metal length. The crowbar started glowing red. He pictured the energy pulling at the ghost, and willed the power to suck the thing into the ground, whatever it was.

Abruptly the ghost jerked back from Valenti, feet skidding against the stone floor.

"Nooooo!" the ghost howled as it continued sliding toward the crowbar. The creature whirled around.

Michael kept pouring his energy into the crowbar.

The ghost levered an accusing arm toward him. "You will die, Outsider! You will die! You can't remain here!"

Michael didn't bother to reply. The ghost was scared of him. That had to be a good thing.

The ghost came closer, sparks playing between its fingers. The eyes changed, becoming dark, bottomless pits. "You're going to die, Outsider! This is not your place! You can't stay here!"

Michael poured more power into the crowbar, trying to draw the creature into the bar and ground it. Whatever else the creature might be, it consisted of electrical fields.

A huge static energy charge exploded in front of Michael's face, blinding him for an instant and covering his face in a sudden wash of heat. Then he watched as the ghost stretched and became disproportional, like a strip of taffy being pulled. In the next instant, the ghost was sucked into the crowbar, yanked along the lines of electromagnetic force Michael had channeled the creature into.

The ghost disappeared, and the wind disturbance died away. An eerie silence descended over the basement area.

Valenti pushed himself to his feet cautiously. "Is it gone?"

Michael held the crowbar fast in both hands. The power he contained still throbbed within the length of metal. "I don't know. I've got it contained for now."

"What is it?"

Michael shook his head, trying to keep concentrating on holding the force within the crowbar. He imagined the energy striking the stone floor and burning itself out of existence.

A silver surface glinted to Michael's right, drawing his attention to a pile of rags and bones lying against the wall to the right. The thing, whatever it was, moved arthritically, rocking back and forth. It was about the size of a quarter, barely seen in the beam of the flashlight Valenti held.

An explosion of light filled the basement again. Through slitted lids, Michael saw lightning shoot from the crowbar and strike the bobbing silver object trundling through the pile of rags and bones. The crowbar was suddenly dead weight in his hands.

Sparks smoldered in the pile of old clothing, like coals in a campfire.

Valenti joined Michael, walking a little unsteadily. He aimed the beam at the pile of clothes. "You saw it, didn't you?" Valenti asked.

"Yeah," Michael croaked.

The pile of rags turned out to be the remnants of clothing that had rotted away. Inside the rags was a skeleton. The eye patch had fallen as the flesh had melted away over the years, but still hung around the dead man's neck. A leather pouch on a rawhide thong around his neck had a hole torn through the side. The whole left side of the skull was crushed; bone fragments barely clung to the damaged area and the empty cavity where the brain had been.

"Terrell Swanson?" Michael asked, struggling a little to keep from backing away from the skeleton. Standing up to a ghost that he didn't believe was a ghost was one thing, but this was definitely a dead guy.

"Probably take the forensics people a little while to agree to that," Valenti said in a tired voice, "but I'm betting they do."

"Wilkins killed him," Michael said.

"That would be my guess too. When that old man gets out of the hospital, he's going to be up on murder charges." Valenti shifted the light to the gaping hole in the back wall of the basement.

The edges of the hole were jagged concrete. A pick and a sledgehammer lay on the floor nearby.

"Wilkins killed Swanson and buried him in here," Michael said. "Then he dug him up. Why?"

"We don't know Wilkins dug up the body," Valenti pointed out. "That's just guesswork."

"Want to bet against me?"

"No." Valenti probed the cavity in the wall with the flashlight. Spiderwebs filled the space, but they were old and covered with dust. "Spiders lived in here for a while." He played the beam over the dead spider bodies cluttering the floor space at the bottom of the cavity.

"Something killed them?" Michael asked. "Maybe the ghost-thing that was trapped in here with the dead guy?"

Valenti knelt. "No. This wasn't sudden, like through an electrical surge. They starved to death."

Michael stared at the hundreds of bodies inside the makeshift crypt. "Why would Wilkins wall up so many spiders with the corpse?"

"There probably weren't many spiders at first," Valenti said. "The few that got locked up inside the wall had babies." He shone the light on the desiccated corpse at their feet. "They had food. At first."

"Okay," Michael said, edging toward a gross-out meltdown. "That's plenty of bug food chain stuff for me. If somebody like you were teaching biology at the high school, more people would stay awake and lunch wouldn't be such a big draw."

A piece of silver glinted on the dead man's clothes. The material still sustained glowing embers from the lightning strike.

Valenti knelt and took a folding pocketknife from his jeans. Carefully, he speared a delicate network of wires that looked like a bit of shredded aluminum foil. Black stains showed on it, offering mute testimony to the fact that the lightning had hit it.

Michael looked at the metal piece. "What's that?"

"That," Valenti said, "is what I'd call a clue." Then he directed the flashlight beam over stacks of plates containing half-eaten food, beer bottles with cigarette butts floating in them, and a thick book. "So are those."

Michael took in all the dishes and abandoned food, the beer bottles holding cigarette butts. "Somebody put in a lot of time down here."

Valenti studied the food. "None of the food looks more than four or five days old."

"So what?" Michael asked. "Wilkins sat down here spending time with his old, murdered buddy?"

Valenti reached in among the plates and took out the book. He showed the thick tome to Michael.

"The Bible?" Michael asked.

Valenti opened the book at the marked sections. "Yeah. And judging from the areas Wilkins was reading, he was studying how to perform an exorcism."

Staring at the pile of bones lying in the basement floor and remembering the ghost he saw at the Crashdown, Michael said, "Yeah, well, I guess he didn't learn enough."

"It's okay," someone shouted in Kyle's ear. "We've got him. Back off."

Feeling the throbbing pain in his injured arm, Kyle remembered how the room on the remodel job crackled with static electricity before the dead man showed up. He gratefully moved back from the old man lying in the bed.

"He's coming for me!" the old man yelled, fighting against the team of nurses and two doctors that piled on him in an effort to keep him in the bed. "He's dead! Do you hear me? He's standing there with half his head missing! God, it was an accident! It was an accident!"

Kyle walked backward, bumping into Quinlann, who took charge of his injured arm and applied one of the antiseptic compresses the nurses had given him to slow the bleeding.

"What's going on?" Quinlann asked.

Kyle watched the old man struggling against the doctors and nurses. The old guy had surprising strength.

"He thinks he sees a ghost," Kyle said.

"Where?" Quinlann asked.

"In here," Kyle whispered, gazing around the darkened room, looking for the dead man he'd seen earlier. "Somewhere in here with us."

The explosive lightning bolt had taken out the primary power inside the emergency room, but the battery-operated auxiliary lights came on. Some of the darkness went away. There was no sign of the ghost.

"Trank him," one of the doctors told the other. "Get him sedated before we have a riot on our hands."

The doctor rushed past Kyle, heading for the medicinal supplies.

The old man continued to yell fearfully and fight against the hospital staff in an effort to get out of the bed. A moment later, the doctor returned with the hypodermic and injected the sedative into the IV shunt in the back of the patient's hand. Another moment of hoarse yelling ensued, then the old man went limp.

Quinlann guided Kyle back to the bed. "You moved really fast when that old guy started screaming," the construction foreman said.

"Yeah," Kyle said, taking a seat on the bed. He scanned the emergency room, noticing Liz and Max for the first time. Figures. Any weirdness that goes on around here, they gotta be somewhere close by. He wondered where Isabel and Michael were.

Kyle balanced his throbbing arm across his chest, supporting his wrist with his other hand. He glanced at the old man, seeing him sleeping now. A nurse hovered nearby, checking the machines hooked up to the patient.

Liz and Max approached Kyle.

"What are you doing here?" Liz asked, staring at Kyle's arm.

"Accident," Kyle said. "They tell me it looks worse than it is."

"Are you okay?"

"I will be. What are you doing here?"

"Checking on another patient," Liz said. "Did you hear about what happened at the Crashdown?"

Kyle nodded. "The guy who had the heart attack in the Crashdown is here?"

"Somewhere," Liz acknowledged. "Have you talked to your dad?"

"Not since last night," Kyle said. "I was up and gone this morning before he made it out of bed." That was happening more and more lately, and the whole pattern was really beginning to get aggravating.

"He went somewhere with Michael," Max said. "We were wondering where."

Kyle shook his head. "Couldn't tell you."

Quinlann glanced at his watch, then said, "I got a couple phone calls to make, kid. You'll be in good hands with your friends till I get back?"

"Sure," Kyle said. "Why don't you go ahead back to work? I'm going to be fine."

Quinlann shook his head. "I'm old-fashioned. I always go home with the ones I brought to the dance. I brought you in here, I'll see you out and home."

Kyle waited till Quinlann was out of earshot. He lowered his voice. "So what's going on?"

Liz shook her head.

"We don't know," Max said. "Whatever it is, it's going on out at the Mesaliko reservation even worse than here."

Kyle couldn't believe that. "The ghosts are real. I saw one."

"Did you see this one?" Max asked.

"No," Kyle said. "But I have seen them. They're really out there."

"I know," Max said. "I've seen them."

"More than one?"

"Yeah."

Kyle thought about it. "Did you see this one?"

Max nodded.

"How?" Kyle asked. "I didn't see it."

"I don't know. But they want us out of Roswell."

"What makes you think that?" Kyle asked.

"They've told me. And they told Isabel as well."

The statement, delivered so matter-of-factly by Max, chilled Kyle. If something was there in Roswell and was after the alien trio again, then the chance existed that he and his dad would get sucked up into the situation again.

The lights came back on inside the emergency room.

"So what are you guys doing about it?" Kyle asked.

Max shrugged. "We don't know what to do. We're getting together later at Michael's to sort things out."

"What about my dad?"

Max shrugged. "All we know is that Maria said he was with Michael. Michael knows about the meeting at his house. Maybe your dad will be there."

"Neither one of them is particularly notorious for checking in." Feeling the pain burn along his injured arm, Kyle leaned back against the bed and elevated the limb.

Max looked around, then back at Kyle. "If we weren't here, I could fix your arm."

"I'm going to have to get stitches," Kyle admitted. "I'm not happy. Believe me when I say that if you could heal me without my having to answer a bunch of questions, I'd be all for it."

"I don't mean to cut this short," Liz said, "but I've got to get back to the Crashdown."

Max looked uncomfortably at Kyle. "I'm her ride. After I drop her off, I can come back."

Kyle shook his head and waved the offer away. "It's cool. My boss is going to stick around and get me home."

After brief hesitation, Max said, "If your dad knew you were here, he'd be here."

"I know," Kyle said, but the answer was automatic, not even close to the confusion that he truly felt. His relationship with his dad had always been hard because his dad

had held such high expectations for him. Now with his professional life in chaos around him, his dad didn't seem able to fight back, or to demand the same high standards he'd exacted.

After Liz and Max said their good-byes, Kyle blew his breath out and tried to block the pain from his arm. He closed his eyes, blowing his breath out again, then breathing in through his nose the way his football coach had taught him to control pain and regain his focus. The exercise had worked in the past, but the results at the moment weren't worth mentioning.

Suddenly the firm surface of the hospital bed seemed far away, like the bed was supporting someone else's body. Disorientation made his head swim, almost triggering a bout of nausea.

You know the Outsiders, a clear, cold voice accused. They are your friends, Kyle Valenti. Don't you know that you should fear that which is different?

That would be the whole high school, Kyle thought.

Don't trust the Outsiders, the voice went on. They are not like you. They don't have the same agenda that your people do. You can't trust anyone outside your own species.

Kyle struggled to wake but couldn't. Then pain flamed along his injured arm. He groaned, and found he was suddenly able to move again. Blinking his eyes open, he spotted the silver thing on the wall behind the bed. He had a brief impression of wire-thin tentacles and an oblong body the size of a quarter. Soundlessly, the insect-thing spread diaphanous wings that resembled see-through aluminum foil. The thing hurled itself into the air and sped away, glinting occasionally under the lights of the emergency room.

Pain flared in Kyle's arm again, drawing his attention down in time to watch Dr. Bohr shove a hypodermic into his forearm again. The impersonal pressure of the anesthetic filled his arm, turning the limb numb. At the same time, his mind seemed to clear as if a cloud had lifted.

"This is going to sting a bit," Dr. Bohr said. "Sorry. 1 thought you were asleep."

"Not asleep now." Kyle looked up at the wall over his bed. The silver thing with wire-thin limbs seemed to have disappeared. Hallucination, he told himself. That's all it is.

But he was scared that it hadn't been.