The Grays

TWENTY-SIX

CONNER HUNG AT THE EDGE of the playground, as far from the other kids as he could get. He’d left message after message at home and on Mom and Dad’s cells, but they hadn’t responded yet and the bell was about to ring and he’d have to go back near the other kids, and he could not bear that.

If he got close to the kids, like, three feet away, he could hear extra voices that were extremely disturbing, because he knew the voices were the kids thinking. What was worse, they hated him, a lot of them, and that hurt his soul.

He remembered last night perfectly well. He’d had something done to him by the grays, using a science so high that he couldn’t even begin to touch its meaning. They had changed him, though, and he was marked, and would forever be marked, by the greatness of that hour.

Will had said as Conner came out onto the playground: “Hey, Conner, how’s it hangin’,” smooth and easy, but his inner voice had screamed, I’d like to get a knife and cut your heart out, you stupid asshole!

Look at them playing around now, laughing, horsing around… and glancing at him from time to time, sly glances from Will and Kevin and David Roland, from Lannie Freer—even sweet Lannie Freer—who had imagined, that she was going to come up behind him and tap him on the shoulder and spit in his face when he turned around.

She’d done it, too, she’d tapped him on the shoulder and he had run, it had been like a nightmare knowing what she was planning.

Not all the kids had those thoughts. Paulie didn’t, thank God for little blessings. He was only thinking how scared he was of Conner. He was thinking how to convince his parents to move, and feeling sick inside every time he so much as glanced Conner’s way. Then he’d smiled and said, “Hey, pal, I ditched the busters, okay? They’re gone.” He’d snapped his fingers and said, “Poof!” and his mind had said, Get away from me, you’re a monster, get away!

Then a familiar car appeared at the end of the street. It turned, came this way. Conner tore through the gate and down the middle of the street. The moment Mom stopped, he jumped in.

“Honey, what’s the matter? Do you have fever?” He doesn’t look sick, he looks terrified. If they’ve been hassling him, that damn Paulie, my poor little guy, he’s too damn small for eleven, the baby…

He looked at her. Most of the time, her mouth hadn’t moved. He pushed up against the door, but it wasn’t good enough, he could still hear that sorrowing voice and he didn’t want it to be that way, he wanted his mother to see him as strong and confident.

“Conner?” What’s the matter now? Oh I’m so tired, the damn kid… “Honey, what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”

Her face smiled but that was no smile, he knew the truth of it, he knew that his mom wasn’t close to being as happy and contented and full of energy like she wanted him to think. She was terribly upset and so tired that last night she’d dreamed about her own funeral.

“You won’t have a funeral!” he shouted.

“What? What funeral? Conner, what’s the matter with you? Why do you want to go home in the middle of the day?”

“Mom,” he whispered, “I love you so.”

“Oh, honey, I love you so, too! What happened, honey, why do you want to leave school?” Why can’t he get along, oh but I do love you, I do love you my gray eyes.

How could he tell her that the kids wanted to kill him? The thoughts came back to him, the ones imagining that they would shoot him, the ones imagining that they would kick him to death, knife him, choke him, but smiling, always smiling. How could he tell her about that?

Mom pulled the car over and stopped and turned toward him. “Honey,” she said, reaching out her hand, “honey, now, what’s the trouble? Why do you need to go home, what happened? What happened at school, Conner? Did Paulie and his friends give you a hard time? Because if that damned kid—”

The angry thoughts that accompanied these words were like brands burning into his skull as she talked. She wanted to slap Paulie, to shake Maggie Warner until she broke her neck, to wade into the class slashing with a sword.

“Mom! No, Mom! It’s not that, it’s not Paulie. Paulie was okay to me today. It was better than it has been, actually.”

“Then why aren’t you on your way into English Lit? Why did you tell me it was an emergency, Conner? You terrified me! I adjourned my seminar and came over here as fast as I could. But you’re not sick and you’re not hurt and you’re not in trouble with the kids. So why am I here, Conner? Please tell me.”

He tried not to listen to her thoughts, but he did listen, and she was thinking what is wrong with my child? and that thought was making her scared.

“Mom, I need to be home.”

“Then it’s not an emergency? You’re just—”

“I need to be home!”

She sighed, then put the car in gear. Then she turned around, heading back toward the school.

“It’s an emergency!”

“All right, tell me what the emergency is.”

He could not tell her he could hear thoughts, hers included. How could he? He said, “I’m afraid I’ll go insane on you, unless I can go home and get some private space.”

She took a sharp breath. Then she stopped the car again and sat there for a moment in silence. Look at his face! He looks insane! Oh, God, he looks like his great-gran. Could it be that he’s schizophrenic, too, will we be cursed now with that? Help him, help him God.

He smiled a glaring, hollow smile.

“Come on,” she said, “whatever, you can take the rest of the day off. Let’s go home and game together. Would you like to game with me?”

They played a lot of Myst: Uru together but he didn’t want to. “You never told me we had schizophrenia in the family.”

She was silent for some time. When she talked, her voice lilted like it did when she was trying to hide something. “What makes you ask that?”

He had to watch her lips to see if they were moving, or he was going to keep giving himself away. If Mom knew he could hear her thoughts, she was going to withdraw from him. Not right away, but over time. Anybody would, because of the invasion of privacy. He hunched close to the door, stared out.

“What makes you ask that particular question right now?”

“Uh, it was in science.”

“They were talking about schizophrenia in science? Why was that?”

“Abnormal-psych module.”

“Dan would be fascinated.” Oh, my Dan, I need you now.

Conner clapped his hands to his ears and forced the scream that urged to get out to become a hiss through his teeth, ssssss!

Mom’s neck flushed, she gripped the steering wheel, she glared straight ahead. Then she sort of shook it off. She started the car and they continued home.

“Mom, it’s not Dad’s fault.”

“What isn’t Dad’s fault?”

“Mom… you know. It’s not his fault.”

She almost ran the car off the road. Then she looked at him with her eyes bugging out and her face bright red. What is this? Her hand came out and she grabbed his shoulder and she turned him to her. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry.”

She stared at the road, tears rolling down her cheeks. “Conner, I think I know why you’re feeling so bad. You’re feeling so bad because you know about Marcie.”

He did not exactly know, not the name. But now he did, because the instant she uttered the word Marcie, a huge complex of thoughts and feelings had poured out of her. They were frightening adult thoughts about sex and things he knew little about, and they made him feel like he was prying into his mother’s deepest privacy, and he didn’t want to but could not help it.

“Conner, has she been at the house? Has she been there when I was gone?”

He shook his head. She’d turned onto Starnes, which meant that they would be home soon and he could get away into his room and get out of this hell of thoughts.

“She has, hasn’t she, Conner? You answer me!” He better not lie because if he lies, he’s not my son, not anymore!

“Oh, Mom, no! NO! I’m not lying and I am your son, I love you so much, Mom, you have no idea!”

She looked toward him. Her eyes were full of tears, now. “You’re reading my mind.”

He could not lie to her, he would not do that to his mother. But he wanted to, he wanted desperately to. He remained silent.

“You know what I’m thinking!”

He still did not answer.

In her face there were suddenly other faces, flowing one and another to the front with the lazy assurance of carp drifting up from the shadows of a pond. She was a shimmering mass of changing eyes and lips and shapes and hair. She whispered in a voice quite different from her ordinary voice, that he recognized as her soul’s voice, her real voice, “I know what you’re doing and we don’t do it, Conner, we hide this. This is a secret of the soul.”

Just then they turned onto Oak and then into the driveway, and Conner was very, very glad to open the car door and get out of there, and run downstairs and get some space and not have to listen to thoughts.

“Conner?”

“Gotta go to the bathroom, Mom!”

He raced into the kitchen from the garage, then headed across the family room toward the door to the basement. He took the stairs three at a time and dashed across to the bathroom and shut the door.

His mother followed him. “Conner, are you okay?” If this is locked…

“Fine, Mom!”

He is not. “I’m coming in.”

“Mom, I’m on the pot!”

“Oh, for goodness sake, I’m your mother.”

The handle turned, and in the gleaming of the brass he saw people moving in bright rooms. His vision focused and then he was in one of the rooms. The Keltons were there and they were in a state of rage, fighting and screaming and pushing each other around like battling animals. Pictures were falling off the walls and their dog was all contorted trying to bite itself—and then Mom came in and she came down to the floor where he had fallen, and he saw a boy walking away down a lane lined with flowering trees and dappled by golden sunlight. He knew, then, what had thrown him to the floor, what agony. That was the lane that led to the land of the dead.

“Mom,” he whispered, “I’m in danger.”

She held him close to her, and he knew that he had seen something that was going to come soon. When the sun was low in the sky and the bare trees shuddered in the wind, everybody on Oak Road, him and Mom and Dan, Paulie and the Keltons and everybody, even the animals—everybody who lived here—was going to face death.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“THEY’RE FINISHED,” CREW SAID. “I observed it to completion, then took the boy home myself.”

“When did it happen?” Rob Langford asked.

“Last night, just at two. They instilled Adam’s content into the child. It looks like it went well.”

“So Adam is gone?”

Crew heard Lauren’s grief. “You and Adam have a long future together. You’ll find him in Conner. He’ll seem like a sort of shadow, I’d imagine, a little like seeing the ghost of the parent in the child.”

“But he’s… in there?”

“Adam is no more. What’s in Conner is his knowledge, and the structures of his mind.”

“Then my friend is dead.”

“I don’t think you really have a word that describes his state. He’s not alive. He hasn’t possessed Conner, he’s given himself to him. But there is so much of him in there, of his personality, his being, his—well, essence, I suppose is the closest word—that you’re going to feel, when you’re with Conner, that you’re also with your friend.”

“Is that reassuring?”

“It’s meant to be.”

“Then that’s how I’ll take it, but what does it mean to Conner? What’s he experiencing? He seems like such a very intense child.”

“He’s confused and afraid, I would think. He’ll have powers he doesn’t understand, and that’s going to really throw him. Knowledge that seems to have come out of nowhere. It’s probably going to be about as stressful as human experience can get. The whole family will be stressed. Extreme stress. Psychotic breaks are possible.”

“Have the grays factored that in, do you think?” Rob asked.

“That’s a hard one. What do you think, Lauren? What sort of insight do they really have into the human mind?”

She thought over her time with Adam, remembered how profound the communications difficulties had been. “Anything might happen,” she said. “My guess is that he’ll go into meltdown.”

“Then you’ll have to help him keep his sanity. He’ll be able to communicate smoothly with you, while he’s going to find fear in every other mind he touches.” Crew glanced at his watch. “I had a little conversation with Dr. Jeffers this morning. Unless this alien sensation is quieted down, Conner’s going to have a really rough time.” He turned on the TV. “That boy has to have the chance to grow up in peace.”

The local station came on, and there sat Dr. Chris Jeffers, blinking into the lights like a disinterred mole. They ran what had become known in the media as the Oak Road Video. It had been on CNN, Fox, even ABC and the BBC. It was all over the Internet, of course.

DAN SAT BEFORE HIS TELEVISION watching Local Edition. After Chris had called him, he’d come straight home to see it. Chris had said that his appearance would be a big surprise, but he scarcely believed what he was seeing, his good friend blithely lying like that on TV. The spot might be on a local afternoon newsmagazine buried at 3 P.M., but it would be picked up worldwide. The media had committed itself a long time ago to the notion that the grays were nonsense. They had not liked being shown to be wrong when the Keltons’ video was broadcast. The backlash would be ferocious.

Their own dear Chris had become a voice of authority, and he was lying. It also made Dan jealous as hell, but that he suppressed. Firmly—or, in any case, fairly firmly. “Hey, Katelyn, you think this’ll get him a better job?”

“Nancy says that CalTech is reconsidering him.”

“Now, that is impressive.”

“You don’t sound impressed.”

“He’s lying for dollars, here.”

“Well, I—”

“Don’t you think that people have some sort of right to know this? My God, he’s dirtying his soul, and look at him smile. It’s revolting, Katelyn.”

“If he tells the truth, what happens to him? The press went to him, remember. They demanded a statement from the head of the physics department. He has no net and a baby to feed.”

“He’s the believer, and now listen to him.”

She went into the kitchen, kicking the door closed behind her. He listened to it swing, and it surely felt like rejection.

IN WILTON, MIKE WILKES BRACED close to the wall of the convenience store. Stinging snow blasted him as he fumbled to make his call. He didn’t want to do this again, but he had to. “Hello, Charles.”

“Mike! Is this line secure?”

“I’m on a pay phone. I tossed my cell. Any word about this investigation, Charles?”

“I don’t see a thing from this end. I’d say that there isn’t one.”

That was wrong. “I saw them, Charles.”

“Well, they weren’t from any investigative body I can tap, and I think I cover pretty much all of them, Mike.”

So the danger was still out there, and it was beyond the ability of Charles Gunn himself to detect.

In that instant, Mike decided that he had to cut off all contact with Charles. Without another word, he replaced the receiver. He would not communicate with him again until the operation was complete.

He glanced at his watch, then stepped away from the phone. Time was wasting. There was work to do.

He drove through the streets of the town. Too bad this car didn’t have tinted windows. A little thing like that could have been so helpful.

He approached the grain elevator carefully. The snow had not been plowed in its drive, only on the road in front. He got out of his car and surveyed the situation. There would be tracks, no matter how he approached the entrance. If a gust of wind blew snow over them, that would simply be a matter of luck. Time was flying, though, and soon these people weren’t going to be concerned about a few tracks in the snow.

IN THE OFFICE AT ALFRED, Lauren considered again what Crew had been saying. It looked as if the grays had won… whatever that might mean. “So, if Conner—if he’s now this extraordinary person, does that mean that Mike’s finished? That Conner will always be able to stay ahead of him?”

“Conner is like a newborn baby, confused and frightened and in need of support. Right now, he’s more helpless than he was before it happened.” He glanced at Rob, who said, “I’ve had my team in the Mountain burning satellite time looking for Mike. So far, no joy.”

Crew took a cell phone call, listened for a moment, then disconnected. The two of them waited, but he said nothing.

AT THE CALLAGHANS’, KATELYN RETREATED into the kitchen, largely to get away from watching Chris. He’d warmed to his subject, lying so well that it became agonizing.

Dan came in. “You know, the wonder of the whole thing is that they really are here. I mean, what a thing to know.”

“I wish we knew what they wanted with us and I wish especially that those strange military people weren’t involved. They make me think it’s all terribly dangerous, and Conner is vulnerable in some way that I can’t quite understand and that scares me. It’s affecting him, too, Dan, and it worries me. I almost thought he was reading my mind this afternoon.”

“In what sense?”

“He kept answering my thoughts. It was terrifying.”

“Was it—do you think…”

“I don’t know!”

At that moment, Conner appeared. His hair was a mess, his eyes were swollen, he shuffled along in a bag of a T-shirt. Katelyn tried to hug him but he stared at her fixedly for a moment, then shook her off.

He looked from one of them to the other, frowning.

“What?” Katelyn asked.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said.

“Are we?” Dan asked.

Conner was watching this sort of darkness that kept flickering between them. He could hear Dad moaning inside himself. Mom’s inner voice was crying and crying, like a little lost girl. The darkness flickered, grew more intense, seemed to come out of them, then toward him like a shadow full of claws.

He clapped his hands to his head and shut his eyes and screamed with all his might.

“Conner!”

“You have to stay married, you have to! Mom, Dad, don’t you end this family, don’t you dare!”

Katelyn stared at him, too amazed even to try to comfort him. His face was bright red, his eyes were swimming with tears, but his voice—his voice!

Dan stood slowly, staring at Conner as if he could not understand what he was seeing. “Hey, there, Conner. Take it easy, son.”

“You’re not leaving me, either one of you. I need you, do you understand? I NEED YOU!”

“Conner, hey! You’re outta line!”

Conner pointed at him. “No. You are out of line. Both.” He turned and ran from the room. A moment later, music came roaring up from his basement.

“Two-thousand-one time,” Dan said. Katelyn came to him. They stood, staring toward Conner’s door, silent. He wanted to kiss her, but he was afraid he would feel that coldness again.

From downstairs, Conner’s voice came again, a boy’s voice but full of something else, something that neither of them could really identify—a strident roar, fierce and brooking no opposition. “Do it,” he cried. “DO IT, DAD!”

“How does he know?” Dan whispered.

She shook her head.

Dan kissed her hard and clumsily, like a scared teenager.

She did not close her eyes. When he stopped, he saw tears welling and rolling down her cheeks, and reached up and touched them away.

They embraced, but not like lovers, like people in a small boat in great waves.

IT WAS FREEZING ON THE roof of the grain elevator and Mike was concerned about frostbite, as well as slipping due to numb fingers.

He had waited until the light was leaving the sky to come out here. This time of year, the sun hung low in the west by four, and he hoped nobody would chance to look up and see the figure on the roofline installing an antenna.

When the transmitter was up and running, he got off the roof, sliding badly at one point, so far he thought he’d go over the edge. But he caught himself in time.

Even back inside the structure itself, it was frigid. Also dusty. He coughed a little, and held a handkerchief to his face. Leaving the conveyor running overnight had been more effective than he’d thought possible. He was in a haze of dust, and since the temperature wasn’t much above ten at the moment, the humidity would be effectively zero. He should have picked up a face mask at some hardware store. Well, he hadn’t, so he’d just have to live with it.

He hoped that nobody would make the Volvo. As far as satellite surveillance was concerned, they had probably located his cell phone by now, so they’d be certain he was here.

He wished he believed that this was all going as well as it seemed, but he had been dealing with the grays for too long to be anything but extremely uneasy about doing something they did not want done. If they’d been more open in their opposition, he would perhaps have felt better. This way, he could not know where he stood.

ACROSS TOWN, HIS FIRST LITTLE experiment came to fruition. Gene Ralph Petersen had run Petersen Texaco for thirty-one years, and his dad had run it before him. Before it was a garage, it had been Petersen-Michaelson, a stage stop, livery stable, and smithie. Just now, Gene was in the kitchen of his house behind the station. He was rustling up some coffee and fried ham. Ben, his dog, paced nervously. “You want out again, guy, in all that snow? It’s ten degrees out there.”

Ben stared at him, stared so hard that he stopped what he was doing and stared back. “Ben? Boy?” Was the dog having some kind of a fit? “Hey, Ben!”

When Gene took a step toward his dog, its lips lifted, it let out a window-rattling growl and it leaped at its master like a wolf leaping at a fawn.

Gene was not in any kind of shape at all, and he fell back against the stove, his arms windmilling. He hit the frying pan and the ham flew up in a mess of scalding grease, and he felt fire searing his back as the dog came at his throat.

Like a volcano that had been building pressure, Gene erupted. He grabbed the hot frying pan and slammed Ben with it, but Ben was filled with unstoppable rage, and got a piece of his neck and shoulder before he beat him off.

Screaming, his own teeth bared, he lunged at the dog, and the two of them went down fighting.

They fought and blood flew, and fingers were torn off, and the dog’s muzzle was shattered with the skillet, but finally the dog won. Gene lay on the floor, his eyes glazed, his face gray. Ben, his companion of fifteen happy years, bent down and pressed his bloody muzzle into the face of the master he had adored, and ripped it to pieces.