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Chapter Eight-
The next day I wake up earlier than normal, crawl out of bed, and walk out of my room to find Henri sitting at the table scanning the papers with his laptop open. The sun is still hidden, and the house is dark, the only light coming from his computer screen.
"Anything?"
"Nah, nothing really."
I turn on the kitchen light. Bernie Kosar paws at the front door. I open it and he shoots out into the yard and patrols as he does every morning, head up, trotting around the perimeter looking for anything suspicious. He sniffs at random places. Once satisfied that everything is as it should be, he bolts into the woods and disappears. Two issues of They Walk Among Us are lying atop the kitchen table, the original and a photocopy that Henri has made to keep for himself. A magnifying glass lies between them.
"Anything unique on the original?"
"No."
"So, now what?" I ask.
"Well, I have had some luck. I cross-referenced some of the other articles in the issue and got a few hits, one of which led me to a man's personal website. I sent him an email."
I stare at Henri.
"Don't worry," he says. "They can't track emails. At least not the way I send them."
"How do you send them?"
"I reroute them through various servers in cities across the world, so that the original location is lost along the way."
"Impressive."
Bernie Kosar scratches at the door and I let him in. The clock on the microwave reads 5:59. I have two hours before I have to be at school.
"Do you really think we want to go digging around in all this?" I ask. "I mean, what if it's all a trap? What if they are simply trying to root us out of hiding?"
Henri nods. "You know, if the article had mentioned anything about us, that might have given me pause. But it didn't. It was about their invading Earth, much the same way they did Lorien. There is so much about it that we don't understand. The entire situation with the disappearance of the Elders also doesn't make sense. If we one day make it back, I think it's imperative to understand what happened in order to prevent it from happening again. You know the saying: he who doesn't understand history is doomed to repeat it. And when it's repeated, the stakes are doubled."
"So what's our plan then?"
Henri shrugs. "There are still five others out there. Perhaps they've received their Legacies. I think it's best to plan for all possibilities."
"Well, what are you planning to about these guys?"
"Just make a phone call. I'm curious to hear what this person knows. I wonder what caused him to not follow up. One of two possibilities: either he found no other information and lost interest in the story, or somebody got to him after the publication."
I sigh. "Well, be careful," I say.
I pull on a pair of sweatpants and a sweatshirt over two T-shirts, tie my tennis shoes and stand and stretch. I toss into my backpack the clothes I plan to wear to school, along with a towel, a bar of soap, and a small bottle of shampoo so I can shower when I get there. I look down at Bernie Kosar.
"Ready for a run, boy?"
His tail wags and he turns in circles.
'Yes! Yes! Yes!' He says nearly shouting in excitement in my mind.
"See you after school Henri."
"Have a good run," says Henri. "Be careful on the road."
We walk out the door and cold, brisk air meets us.
Bernie Kosar barks excitedly a few times. 'Let's go already!'
I start at a slight jog, down the drive, out onto the gravel road, the dog trotting beside me as I thought he would. It takes a quarter mile to warm up.
"Ready to step it up a notch, boy?"
He pays me no attention, just keeps trotting along with his tongue dangling, looking happy as can be.
"All right then, here we go."
I kick it into high gear, moving into a run, and then into a dead sprint shortly after, going as fast as I can. I leave Bernie Kosar in the dust. I look behind me and he is running as fast as he can, yet I am already so far ahead of him. The wind through my hair, the trees passing in a blur. It all feels great. Then Bernie Kosar bolts into the woods and disappears from sight. I'm not sure if I should stop and wait for him. Then he jumps out of the woods ten feet in front of me. I look down at him and he looks up at me, tongue to the side, a sense of glee in his eyes.
"You're an odd dog, you know that?"
'I am just as odd as you are.'
After a couple of minutes, the school comes into view. I sprint the remaining half mile, exerting myself, running as hard as I can because it is so early that there is no one out and about to see me. I have barely exerted myself, these runs to school are no longer tiring to me. Bernie Kosar arrives thirty seconds later and sits watching me. I kneel down and pet him.
"Good job, buddy."
I pull my bag from over my shoulders, unzip it, and remove a package with a few strips of bacon and I give them to him. He scarfs them down.
"Okay, boy, I'm heading in. Go on home. Henri's waiting."
He watches me for a second and then goes off trotting towards home. I turn and walk into the building and head for the shower.
XXXXXXXX
I am the second person to enter astronomy. Sam is the first, already sitting in his normal seat at the back of the class.
"Whoa," I say. "No glasses. What gives?"
He shrugs. "I thought about what you said. It's probably stupid for me to wear them."
I sit beside him and smile. It's hard to imagine I'll ever get used to his eyes looking so beady. I give him back the issue of They Walk Among Us. He tucks it into his bag. I hold up my fingers like a gun and nudge him.
"Bang!" I say.
He starts laughing. Then I do, too. Neither of us can stop. Every time one of us is close the other starts laughing and it begins all over again. People stare at us when they enter. Then comes Sarah. She walks in by herself, saunters up to us with a look of confusion, and sits in the seat beside me.
"What are you guys laughing at?"
"I'm not really sure," I say, and then laugh a little more.
Mark is the last person to walk in. He sits in his usual seat, but instead of Sarah sitting beside him today, there's another girl. I think she's a senior. Sarah reaches beneath the table and grabs hold of my hand.
"There is something I need to talk to you about," she says.
"What?"
"I know it's last-minute, but my parents want to have you and your dad over for Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow."
"Wow. That would be awesome. I have to ask, but I know we don't have plans, so I assume the answer is yes."
She smiles. "Great."
"Since it's just the two of us, we don't usually even do Thanksgiving."
"Well, we really go all out. And my brothers will both be home from college. They want to meet you."
"How do they know about me?"
"How do you think?"
The teacher walks in and Sarah winks, then we both start taking notes.
XXXXXXXX
Henri is waiting for me as usual, Bernie Kosar propped up on the passenger seat with his tail wagging, thumping the side of the door the second he sees me. I slide in.
"Athens, Ohio."
"What about it?"
"That's where the issues of They Walk Among Us are being written, and printed. It's where they are being mailed."
"How did you find that out?"
"I have my ways."
I look at him.
"Okay, okay. It took three emails and five phone calls, but now I have the number." He looks over at me. "That is to say, it wasn't all that hard to find with a little effort."
I nod. I know what he is telling me. The Mogadorians would have found it just as easily as he did. Which means, of course, that the scale now tips in favor of Henri's second possibility—that somebody got to the publisher before the story further developed.
"How far away is Athens?"
"Two hours by car."
"Are you going?"
"I hope not. I'm going to call first."
When we get home Henri immediately picks up the phone and sits at the kitchen table. I sit down across from him and listen.
"Yes, I'm calling to inquire about an article in last month's issue of They Walk Among Us."
A deep voice responds on the other end. I can't hear what is said. Henri smiles.
"Yes," he says, then pauses.
"No, I'm not a subscriber. But a friend of mine is."
Another pause. "No, thank you."
He nods his head. "Well, I'm curious about the article written on the Mogadorians. There was never a follow-up in this month's issue as expected."
I lean in and strain to hear, my body tense and rigid. When the reply comes the voice sounds shaken, disturbed. Then the phone goes dead.
"Hello?" Henri pulls the phone away from his ear, looks at it, then brings it back in. "Hello?" he says again.
Then he closes the phone and sets it on the table. He looks at me.
"He said, 'Don't call here again.' Then he hung up on me."
XXXXXXXX
After debating it for several hours, Henri and I wake up the next morning and while Henri prints door-to-door directions from here to Athens, Ohio. I am getting a quick workout in to loosen up my nerves for what's to come. The plan is for us to drive to Athens early in the morning find out all the info we need then get out of there and make it back in time for the Thanksgiving dinner with Sarah's family. I finish my workout and head back inside to hit the road, finding Henri at the table looking over his papers and the laptop with the directions still on the screen.
"Are you sure this is worth it?" I ask.
"We have to figure out what's going on."
I sigh. "I think we both know what is going on."
"Maybe," he says, but with full authority and none of the uncertainty usually accompanying the word.
"But I want to find out what they have done to scare this man so badly. I want to know if they have mentioned us if they are searching for us by means that we haven't yet thought of. It will help us to stay hidden, stay ahead of them. And if this man has seen them, we'll learn what they look like."
"We already know what they look like."
"We knew what they looked like when they attacked, over eleven years ago, but they might have changed. They've been on Earth for a long time now. I want to know how they're blending in."
"Even if we know what they look like, by the time we see them on the street, it's probably going to be too late."
"Maybe, maybe not. I see one, I'm going to try and kill it. There's no guarantee it's going to be able to kill me," he says, this time with the uncertainty and none of the authority.
I concede that if things go well it could possibly give us the advantage we've been needing.
"You sure we'll be back on time?" I ask.
"We are leaving now, which puts us there about nine. I doubt It'll take more than an hour, two at the most. So we should be back by one."
We walk out to the truck and get inside. Bernie Kosar of course jumping in ahead of me wanting to come along for the adventure.
XXXXXXXX
We drive south until, nestled in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains, Athens comes into view: a small city sprouting through the trees. In the waning light, I can see a river curling gently around that seems to cup the city, serving as the border to the east, south, and west, and to the north lie hills and trees. The temperature is relatively warm for November. We pass the college football stadium. A white-domed arena stands a little beyond it.
"Take this exit," I say. Henri guides the truck off the interstate and turns right onto Richland Avenue.
"So this is what a college town looks like, huh?"
"I guess so," Henri says.
Buildings and dorms are on each side of us. The grass is green, meticulously trimmed even though it is November. We drive up a steep hill.
"At the top of this is Court Street. We want to turn left."
"How far are we?" Henri asks.
"Less than a mile."
"I think we should park the first opportunity we get and walk."
We drive down Court Street, which is the main artery in the center of town. Everything is closed for the holiday—bookstores, coffeehouses, bars. We drive a couple of blocks until we find a lot to park in. By my guess, we are a five-minute walk at most from the address.
We leave BK in the truck as Henri and I walk back up Court Street, before finding the house. Henri decides that it would be best if I hang back and stay out of sight while he goes up to talk with them. So I try and find an area where I can see Henri as he talks with the people inside.
He walks right up and knocks on the door, and just a minute or so later a big man opens the door. He is big, at least six feet six, two hundred fifty pounds. He has a goatee and his head is shaved. He's wearing work boots, blue jeans, and a black sweatshirt pulled up to his elbows. There is a tattoo on his right forearm but I cannot see it from this distance. I can tell that whatever Henri is saying is making the man nervous but he backs up and it looks like he is inviting Henri inside though just as Henri enters the house I see another man with dark shaggy hair, not as big as the other man, but not exactly small either. He has a short stick that he uses to club Henri in the back of the head, the man turns around and shuts the door. I have lost sight of them and Henri is in trouble. I don't even think about the repercussions I blitz over to the house and kick open the door.
Henri is on the floor with the first man binding his hands with some rope as the second man is taping his legs together, I then see a third person standing behind all of them he seemed to have been in the middle of a phone call when I kicked open the door.
"Wh.. What the hell!?" The first man says looking up at me.
I dont bother responding, I grab the man on the phone with my Telekinesis and fling him backwards into a wall, and the man closest to me, the one at Henri's feet gets up to swing at me, I duck under his wild haymaker and plant my fist directly into his gut, knocking the wind out of him. Pushing him over I move in closer to the next. The first man by now has grabbed a baseball bat and comes running up to hit me with it, wanting to test my strength. I let him strike against my arms that are poised to defend my face and the bat shatters against them. I see his stunned face as he looks between his bat and me, I just slug him across the jaw and watch him drop.
I thought I had them all until I hear a distinctive click as the man I threw to begin with, is holding a gun and pointing it right at my face.
"Hold it right there, I know what you are and I will not let you guys take over earth and kill me and my friends!" He basically shouts at me, with spittle flying towards me.
He's standing right on the other side of Henri from me I dont know what to expect with these people but the sooner I can diffuse the situation and get Henri out the better.
"I don't know what you are talking about," I say, hands raised to show that I am not a threat.
"They already told us all about you, they told us you might be coming. That you would look like humans. That you were the real enemy," the man says. "They are on their way here now and I'm going to make sure they get you."
It doesn't look like I'm getting out of here without taking care of this man first then. I use my Telekinesis again to try and grab the gun from him, only to meet some brief resistance as he has a vice grip on the gun. He sends off a couple of shots amidst the struggle and I point my hand towards the bullets and I make them all stop. I move the bullets so that they hang in front of the man's face.
"Wha... What did you...," he struggles to say confused as to what just happened.
I don't give him a second, dropping the bullets I leap over Henri and tackle the man to the ground and smash his head into the floor. He goes limp immediately.
Getting off the man I crawl over to Henri tearing the tape and rope off of him. I try to wake him up by slapping his face a couple of times and giving him a shake, I get a couple of grunts and his eyes crack open for a second before closing again.
"Henri come on wake up, come on please wake up," I'm worried that the blow to his head did a lot of damage.
"Ugh... John what's happening," he manages to get out.
"Oh thank Lorien you're still alive. They knocked you out as soon as you got inside, I broke down the door and took them all out."
"Really? Ow... No wonder my head is pounding," he says while grasping his head.
"Come on let's get you up and seated, then I'll try and wake one of them up."
I get him rested into a chair in their kitchen before going back to the front door, I pick it up off the floor and lean it up against the now broken door frame. I take two of them and drag them into the kitchen before going back for the third. The guy that I knocked the wind out of with a gut punch is the only one that stirs when I move them, so starting with him I slap him hard across the face while holding him upside down with my Telekinesis. He yelps shaking his head trying to orient himself, I flip him right side up and set him on his feet but I keep a grip on him.
"Start talking. What do you know about us."
"No!" he yells. "They said they'd kill me."
I raise him up and I start to squeeze him with my mind.
"There were three of them!" he yells, talking fast. "They showed up the same day we sent out the magazines. They showed up that night."
"What did they look like?" Henri asks.
I had forgotten he was there for a second as I turn to look at him to make sure he's okay.
"Like ghosts. They were pale, almost like albinos. They wore sunglasses, but when we wouldn't talk one of them took the sunglasses off. They had black eyes and pointy teeth, but they didn't look natural like an animal's would. Theirs looked as though they had been broken and chiseled. They all wore long coats and hats like some shit out of an old spy movie. What the hell more do you want?"
"Why did they come?"
"They wanted to know our source for the story. We told them. A man had called, said he had an exclusive for us, started raging about a group of aliens that wanted to destroy our civilization. But he called on the day we were printing, so instead of writing the full story, we put in a small quip and said more to follow next month. He talked so fast that we hardly grasped what he was saying. We were planning on calling him the next night, only that didn't happen, because the Mogadorians showed up instead."
"How did you know they were Mogadorians?"
"What the hell else could they have been? We wrote a story about the Mogadorian race of aliens and lo and behold a group of aliens shows up on our doorstep the same day wanting to know where we got the story. It wasn't hard to figure out."
The man is cooperating so I set him back down and loosen up on my grip holding him
"And that's the only time they came?" says Henri.
The man shakes his head. "They came back."
"Why?"
"To make sure we didn't print anything else. I don't think they trusted us, but the man who called us never answered his phone again, so we had nothing else to print."
"So they knew where he lived?"
"They had the phone number we were supposed to call him back on. I'm sure they could have figured it out."
"So they threatened you? With what, what did they do?"
"Hell, yes. They trashed our office. They screwed with my mind. I haven't been the same since."
"What'd they do to your mind?" He closes his eyes and takes another deep breath. "They didn't even look real," he says. "I mean, here are these three men standing in front of us talking in deep, raspy voices, all in trench coats and hats and sunglasses even though it was nighttime. It looked like they were dressed up for a Halloween party or something. They looked funny and out of place, so at first I laughed at them…," he says, his voice trailing off. "But the second I laughed I knew I had made a mistake. The other two Mogadorians started towards me with their sunglasses off. I tried to look away, but I couldn't. Those eyes. I had to look, as though something was pulling me there. It was like seeing death. My own death, and the deaths of all the people I know and love. Things weren't so funny anymore. Not only did I have to witness the deaths, but I could feel them, too. The uncertainty. The pain. The complete and utter terror. I wasn't in that room anymore. And then came things I've always feared as a kid. Images of stuffed animals that came to life, with sharp teeth as mouths, razor blades for claws. The usual stuff all kids are afraid of. Werewolves. Demonic clowns. Giant spiders. I viewed them all through the eyes of a child, and they absolutely terrified me. And every time one of those things bit into me, I could feel its teeth rip the flesh from my body, I could feel the blood pour from the wounds. I couldn't stop screaming."
"Did you try to fight back at all?"
"They had two of these little weasel-looking things, fat, with short legs. No bigger than a dog. They were frothing at the mouth. One of the men was holding them on a leash, but you could tell they were hungry for us. They said they would turn them loose if we resisted. I'm telling you, man, these things weren't from Earth. If they were dogs, big deal, we would have fought back. But I think those things would have eaten us whole despite our size. And they were pulling against the leash, growling, trying to get to us."
"So you talked?"
"Yes."
"When did they come back?"
"The night before the next magazine went out, a little over a week ago."
Henri gives me a concerned look. Only one week ago the Mogadorians were within a hundred miles of where we live. They could still be here somewhere, maybe monitoring the paper. Perhaps that is why Henri has felt their presence of late.
"Why didn't they just kill you like they did your source?"
"How the hell do I know? Maybe because we publish a respectable paper."
"How did the man who called know about the Mogadorians?"
"He said he had captured one of them and tortured it."
"Where?"
"I don't know. His phone number was from the area code near Columbus. So north of here. Maybe sixty or eighty miles north."
"You spoke to him?"
"Yeah. And I wasn't sure if he was crazy or not, but we had heard rumors about something like this before. He started talking about them wanting to wipe out civilization as we know it, and sometimes he talked so fast that it was hard to make sense of anything he said. One thing he kept repeating was that they were here hunting something, or somebody. Then he started spouting numbers."
My eyes open wide. "What numbers? What did they mean?"
"I have no idea. Like I said, he was talking so fast that it was all we could do to write it all down."
"You wrote while he talked?" Henri says.
"Of course we did. We're journalists," he says incredulously. "Do you think we make up the stories we write?"
"Yeah, I do," says Henri.
"Do you still have the notes that you wrote?" I say.
He looks at me and nods. "I'm telling you, they're worthless. Most of what I wrote are scribbles on their plan to destroy the human race."
"I need to see them," I nearly bellow. "Where, where are they?"
"Upstairs they are on my desk, on sticky notes." I dash upstairs and over to the desk, which is covered with papers, and start looking through the sticky notes. I find some very vague notes on the Mogadorians' hope to conquer Earth. Nothing concrete, no plans or details, just a few indistinct words:
"Overpopulation"
"Earth's resources"
"Biological warfare?"
"The Planet Mogadore."
I come to the note I'm looking for. I read it carefully three or four times.
Planet Lorien?
The Loric?
1–3 dead
4?
7 trailed in Spain.
9 on the run in SA
(what is he talking about? What do these numbers have to do with invading Earth?)
"Why is there a question mark after the number 4?" I ask once I get back downstairs.
"Because he said something about it but he talked too fast and I didn't get it."
"You've got to be kidding me?"
He shakes his head. I sigh. Just my luck, I think. The one thing said about me is the one thing that wasn't written.
"What does 'SA' mean?" I ask.
"South America."
"Did he say where in South America?"
"No."
I nod, stare at the slip of paper. I wish I could have heard the conversation, that I could have asked questions of my own. Do the Mogadorians really know where Seven is? Are they really following him or her? If so, the Loric charm still holds. I fold the sticky notes and slip them into my back pocket.
"Do you know what the numbers mean?" he asks.
I shake my head. "I have no idea."
"I don't believe you," he says.
"Is there anything else you can tell me?" I ask.
He thinks about it for a moment, then says, "I think bright light bothers them. It seemed to cause them pain when they took their sunglasses off."
"Alright John I think we have heard enough," Henri says.
"I'm going to let you go now," I say to the man I am still holding. "We are going to let you guys go and then we are going to walk out of here, okay?"
The man nods fervently but doesn't say anything else. I walk over to Henri after letting go and take one of his arms and toss it over my shoulder helping him to his feet and we walk out of there.
XXXXXXXX
I help Henri walk to the truck, Bernie is there waiting for us. I put Henri into the passenger seat and hop into the driver's seat thankful that Henri had taught me how to drive. We pull out of Athens and I tell Henri everything that I was able to do, stopping the bullets and letting the man shatter a bat on my arms. It felt good to be this powerful.