Chapter 48: Aliens and UFOs
Derek parked the car on the street in front of his mother's house and got out with a tormented expression on his face. His childhood home was the last place he wanted to be tonight, especially with all the family assembling, he thought dejectedly as he maneuvered between the cars parked in the driveway.
He wanted to go back to his apartment, get into bed and try to fall asleep surrounded by his dark guilty thoughts. He couldn't do that, however. He had promised Meredith he would not shut off other people and would spend the Halloween evening with his family, just as he usually did. Every year after his sisters and his brothers-in-law took the kids trick or treating, they would all get together at Carolyn's for dinner. He would then usually act as an entertainment for the children, and everyone would tease him that he would be a great father in the future and that he was a natural.
His first trial patient died. He died on the table. Two emotions were ripping him apart, guilt at allowing the patient to die and fear. For the first time really, he considered the possibility of failing and that thought sent cold shivers down his spine. He didn't have a back-up plan. What would he do about Meredith if he failed…?
He entered the already noisy house and was hit with yet another wave of guilt. This time, towards his mother who was striding from the kitchen towards the living room, a jug of hot chocolate for the children in her arms.
"Hey, Ma," he tried to put a fake smile on his face when he walked over to kiss her cheek.
"Hello, son," she sighed, leaving the jug on the table for a moment and turning to him He could never pull the wool over her eyes. "How bad is it? And don't bother to lie, I already know about your patient."
"Who couldn't keep their trap shut?" Derek rolled his eyes.
"That's the least important issue here," she said pointedly. "We've already thought you wouldn't come."
"Let me guess, you were about to send a search party?" he snickered.
"If I had to," she shrugged off but then looked at him tenderly, gently brushing his cheek. "I'm always ready to listen, Sweetie, you know that."
"I know, thank you," he sighed. "But I don't need to talk anymore, I've had a long conversation… with Meredith," he added in a hushed tone.
"She has experience in this line of work?"
"She does. She warned me it was going to be hard. Still, I got my hopes up a little too much. But I'm more or less fine now. According to Mer, it doesn't get better, and I should know that as a surgeon because you just can't get used to people dying under your scalpel…" he sighed. "I'm fine. And I'm sorry I'm late, I've been talking to Meredith. She yelled at me and told me to drag my ass here.
"She sounds like a wise woman," Carolyn smiled, her eyes twinkling at her son. He was so smitten with that woman. No actually, he was head over hills. "I'd like to meet her one of these days."
"I'd like you to meet her too, I hope it can happen one day," he answered evasively. "So, what's everybody's doing?"
"Everyone's watching some kind of surgery in the kitchen," Carolyn rolled her eyes. "Amelia brought a stack of DVDs, don't know what it's all about."
"Oh," Derek peeked curiously in the direction of the kitchen.
"No, no, no," she shook her head. "Don't even think about it, you need a break from surgery, at least for one evening. Come with me, children have an amazing ability to drive all worries away," she took his arm and grabbed back the jug, leading Derek into the living room full of her grandchildren all dressed in Halloween costumes.
"Uncle Derek, Uncle Derek!"
The swarm of his nieces and nephews attacked him almost at the threshold.
"Hey, guys!" he couldn't help laughing as he shook hands, gave high-fives, and ruffled their heads.
"How's your Halloween loot?" he nodded at Nancy's sons, their hands full of sweets.
"Not bad at all," one of them answered resolutely from under his skeleton mask.
"Uncle Derek! Where's your costume?" asked Kathleen's youngest daughter.
"Uncle Derek doesn't need a costume," Carolyn teased with a wink. "He's scary enough as it is."
"Gee thanks, Mom," he pouted as the kids all around burst in laughter. "You and Mer would so hit it off."
"Uncle Derek, are you gonna tell us a story?"
"A ghost story!"
"It's Halloween, Uncle Derek!"
"And you tell the best ghost story teller in the world," Kathleen's little girls implored him batting her eyelashes.
"That one spends way too much time with Mia," Derek chuckled over to Carolyn. "Okay, I guess I need to tell you a story."
"Yay!" There was a common outburst of enthusiasm as they all sat around him in a mid-circle. He himself slid to the floor to sit down Indian style as Carolyn dimmed the lights to create the right atmosphere.
"What I'm going to tell you now, isn't just a ghost story," he started conspiratorially, looking at them seriously. "It's a true story."
"How true?"
"Very true."
"No way! All ghost stories start like that!"
"It is a true story," Derek said firmly. "I know because I was there… at the place where it all happened…"
"What? What happened?"
"And where?"
"Do you know where your Grandpa Michael came from?"
"Uhm… Nevada?"
"That's where you went for your mid-life crisis escape?" asked one of Nancy's sons.
"Who told you that?" Derek gasped.
"Uh, no one!"
"Derek, you were telling a story," Carolyn reminded him gently.
"Before I learned that my family blabs about me behind my back!"
"Derek."
"Okay, fine," he pouted briefly. "I'll get on with the story but for your information, I did not have a midlife crisis, you can tell your nosy mommies that."
Carolyn cleared her throat.
"Fine, fine, back to the story. So, Your Grandpa Michael was born in a small town in Nevada called Rachel. And let me tell you, Rachel is the spookiest place in America," he stressed as he eyed them gravely. "It is a small town, and it was even smaller at the time when events of the most mysterious kind took place. It was inhabited only by a few families, the most hardened and persistent. It's surrounded by a rocky desert from all sides and houses are miles apart from each other. It wasn't the easiest place to live, you see. In the past workers used to come to Rachel with hope to become wealthy, working in silver mines. But it soon ran out and mines were abandoned. There are plenty of them even today, but locals never go there, they believe them to be haunted… But this is not what I'm going to tell you about."
"When your granddad was still a boy he worked on his uncle's ranch. There also worked a stable boy named Frank, whom this story is about. Frank was very hard-working and conscientious. He was always the first to start working in the morning and the last one to finish. So, it wasn't an exception when Frank stayed on the ranch after all the other workers had long gone home on one fateful night…" Derek's voice lowered dramatically. "He made sure the horses he was taking care of were safely closed in their boxes and had enough water. He left for home way after nightfall. It wasn't a completely ordinary night though. It was eerily dark as the moon had waned completely and the clouds were so thick that they didn't allow any star to shine.
"Frank had a long way to his house where he lived all alone. But he wasn't afraid, he knew the road by heart because he went there every day. It was not a day like any other. A braver person than Frank would have felt uneasy as the secluded road was unnaturally still and silent. Since he left the ranch, he didn't see either a man or an animal. No car passed him on the way. Fear started to creep up on him, he started hoping to hear a howl of coyotes in the desert. It would be a sign of life as everything around him seemed as motionless as if dead. The darkness was getting thicker and thicker until he could barely make out the path before him.
"Suddenly, he felt his skin prickle at the neck. He felt someone's… or something's… eyes on him. He wanted to run but he was still far from home. And his legs were as wobbly as jelly. They finally gave out and he had to come to a halt. The only thing he heard was the sound of his own breathing. And the chattering of his teeth. Nights in the desert are cold, Frank was chilled to the bone, but not just from the cold, it was also from fear. And he waited. He didn't know what for. But he waited in total silence and darkness…
"And then," Derek unexpectedly raised his voice making some of his nephews cry out and then giggle delightedly. "A light appeared over his head completely out of nowhere. Like a lamp had been lit. Gigantic, blinding, heating the cold air on instant. Frank was rooted to the spot, his eyes fixed on the light. He couldn't tear them away even though he wanted to. He felt his body leave the ground and start to float up towards the light…
"And like that," Derek snapped his fingers, "he was gone. The strange light disappeared, Frank along with it. No one was overly worried when Frank didn't show up for work the next day. People thought he was ill but couldn't let anyone know as there were no phones in Rachel at the time. But when he didn't come another day, and another, they started to look for him. They didn't find him at his house. In fact, it looked as if he hadn't been there for days. They combed the whole area surrounding his usual route home. Frank seemed to have disappeared without a trace. Even dogs couldn't find him. They stopped in the middle of the road as though he had vanished into thin air…" Derek trailed off.
"So, what happened to him?" asked one of the boys.
"Yeah, what happened to him?"
"No one really knows," Derek shook his head, a mystified look on his face. "The whole town of Rachel kept looking for him for days but to no avail. They, however, started to notice weird lights in the sky. They kept flashing and disappearing without warning. They didn't look like a plane, and they moved too fast to be one.
"Was that a flying saucer?"
"Everyone started to believe it was," nodded Derek. "No one could find a reasonable explanation."
"But what happened with Frank?"
"Oh, he returned a few months after his mysterious disappearance."
"He did? What did he say happened?"
"He said nothing… One morning the people at the ranch couldn't believe their eyes when they saw him coming back to work. He was acting as if nothing had happened. He looked the same, he did his job as usual but…" Derek paused dramatically.
"But what?"
"He didn't talk…"
"What? Did aliens cut off his tongue?"
"No," chuckled Derek. "They didn't cut off anything and that was the most frightening and mysterious thing. People kept asking Frank what had happened, but he didn't answer, not a single word. The local doctor was at a loss. There was no medical reason why he wouldn't talk, he wasn't ill. Eventually, everyone gave it up. They saw they couldn't help him. He seemed to be doing okay but he was never the same Frank he used to be. He kept to himself and even when he was with other people he didn't talk. People started to be wary off him, as if something evil had possessed him…
Derek's eyes swept over his audience with satisfaction, they were drinking in every word of his. A sudden idea hit him, one that he had never had before. He could see himself in that apparently spooky town of Rachel telling stories to his own children, Meredith bustling in the kitchen… Stop and rewind. Meredith should never bustle in the kitchen, for everyone's safety… She could... yeah, she could just be lying on the sofa, her belly swollen with another baby.
"Uncle Derek!" a small insistent hand tugged at his sleeve.
"What was next?"
"Well, Frank lived to a ripe old age, though no one ever heard him speak again since the days of his youth. He tended to disappear, however, for days, weeks, months even, usually on moonless nights. He always returned, except the very last time. He was already ninety years old. Some of the ranchers saw him walk down the very same road when they were driving to the local inn for a drink. And that was the last time anybody saw him alive. He disappeared. Since then, strange unexplained disappearances happen from time to time, amongst locals and tourists. And that's why Rachel is the spookiest place in America…
"OMG! And you spend two months in there?" Nancy's eldest son asked in amazement.
"Uncle Derek is brave!" said Kathleen's girl and the kids started a heated discussion on UFO and alien abductions.
Derek was quite pleased with himself, he always thought of himself as the best uncle in the family, until he caught his mother's eye.
"Don't look at me like that," he chuckled knowingly when he got to his feet from the carpet.
"Like what?" she gasped innocently.
"You know exactly, like I should magically produce a bunch of grandkids for you."
"Well, you still haven't given me any."
"Neither has Mia. Take it up with her," he shrugged. "She actually has a uterus."
"Derek Christopher!" she berated him sternly. "Not a word more if you don't want to spend another half hour telling them a different story, one explaining what uterus is."
Derek shuddered at the thought and let himself be steered out of the living room. "Let's say hi to everyone while we can be sure the little devils won't demolish the house unsupervised."
