Ladies and Gentlebeings, mesdames et messieures.

How long has it been? Ten... years? Er. Well... you know how these things happen, right?

I do apologize. It has been very, very long. But position and circumstance and three kids make their own demands. Yet, as the dog returns to its vomit, so the fool to his folly and I return, again, craving attention and approval. And so, here we are.

But in all seriousness, suffice to say that I've finally got on to a position and a point where I have SOME time for writing. Hence, my miserable additions. You will note that this is an UPDATE to an existing chapter, and I apologize for that too: I've been reviewing this and starting one other - and probably better - story this last month, and when I reviewed the last version I nearly vomited. I apologize for that also: there were some godawful holes in the tale and you, the reader, deserved far better. If you will but trust me, as you once used, I will do you better than I have done in the past.

And so by way of making it up to you, I will also post the first chapter in that story quite soon - this week, I believe. I wish it could be faster, but tempus fugit, and habeo caput lupis.

But enough apologies and recriminations! We lack the tale! Arise and read! For I am not the pastor! You have not come to read my woes!

I only tell the story.

Red Eyes

Chapter One: The Ties That Bind

Thurs, July 5, 2012

Miranda Hearns stood at her kitchen window, staring out at her backyard and the dark woods beyond it. Another 4th of July had come and gone, quiet and alone.

She'd spent a good few years there at the sink, she thought. A long time. A woman spent so many years of her life asleep, so many driving, so many in the shower, so many in love, and so many out of it; so many years in the company of others, and the rest – alone.

Miranda had been alone for a long time since Tom had gone and the bottle had borrowed her husband for a year or two before that. Afterwards, she'd hoped he might return someday – thin years of checking the driveway, the mailbox, glancing at the phone. She looked at her hands; it had been a long time. There was dust on that trail, as they said.

She could just see the old swings out there. In that other life, Tom had built the swingset and slide by himself, all from secondhand parts. She'd been so proud of him. But now they were rusted and old too, weeds all around. She'd never had the heart to have them removed. She wanted to. Maybe tomorrow, she thought, in the way of those driven to quiet desperation. Maybe tomorrow I'll start over. It's never too late. She set the last dish in the rack; she never bothered drying them, because it seemed a waste of time, even to those who had too much time to fill. Weeds grew thick in the long grass of her backyard.

In that other time before Sedaia, Colorado, Miranda had been a city girl from Colorado Springs. She had met Tom there, when he was driving a rig along the pike from Albuquerque to Denver, and Denver over to Kansas City and would stop, sometimes, at the gas station where she pumped gas and cleaned windshields and made change for the till. They had courted, holding hands on the dry dusty nights, married and had a child, a boy. Christopher had had a smile like his mother and eyes like his father. They had loved him very well; he had been tall and happy and strong. Tom had moved them to Sedaia – a little off the beaten track – to get away from the problems of Denver, and Albuquerque, and Kansas City, which Tom had seen and not much liked. Sedaia was small, and remote, but it was beautiful and peaceful and Christopher had loved the town and his school and his swingset. He had worn the wooden seats pale with use, ridden the green plastic slide till it bowed and bleached and cracked.

Tom had moved them to the country because the city had been no place to raise their child – Tom had seen the bad things there, had known the bad places - but it had turned out that the country had been no place to raise their child either.

Not that it was Tom's fault; it was no-one's fault, except the man who had done it, of course – everyone said so. It was not like Sedaia, it was nothing like Sedaia, that was what everyone had said. They were more common in the cities, they were found mostly in the cities, but here had come one who had been where he was not supposed to have been.

It had happened on a hunting trip. Tom had always called Christopher Chris when they had done manly things together; it was to grow him up, to make him a man. But Miranda was a city girl and had not liked guns. In the dark places between the hours, waiting for them to get back, she had half expected a hunting accident out in the brush; a horrible mistake, apologies, ruined lives. She had steeled herself to that admittedly remote, unlikely tragedy. But it had not happened. That had not been what had killed Christopher, her Christopher.

What exactly had happened, they had never said and in the dark, honest deeps of her mind, where no lies could be told, she had to admit that she had not really wanted to know. She knew so little of it, the event. It had never mattered enough, without him. She knew Christopher had not been alone: Tom had been there, and Wigel and Bellamy's older brother – full-grown men – had gone that day, too. When the thing had happened, the thing none of the men had talked about. Had ever talked about.

She'd never seen her son after that day. Christopher's casket had been closed and it had been Tom who identified…

She sighed and picked up a cup, then put it down again. Glaser and Wigel had assured her that Christopher had not suffered; more than that, they were sure he had not suffered. She could see it in their eyes. How they could have known that was not clear; from the body, she supposed. The other men, they had said the same. A bad thing had happened: not an accident. Something in the woods. And Tom, well, Tom and the others had done something. They had all done something. They had paid back for what they had lost. A cougar, they said, or maybe a bear. But whatever they had done had not helped. It had not brought Christopher back; how could her man possibly have changed that?

It was so, so hot tonight. It had been hot all week, the heat crawling into Colorado like a lizard until the state was blanketed in thick, humid air. Colorado had its moments, but the last time it had been like this was twenty-two years ago – the year that her Christopher had been taken away, in fact. Perhaps this was why her mind was taking strange roads tonight as the thermometer filled and strained.

The sweltering night breeze wound through the backyard. The swing where Christopher – toothy, laughing boy in her mind's eye, not what they had found in the trees, the remains that she had never seen – swung back and forth, restless in the hot dark with the chirping crickets.

She started, and frowned. It was not breezy. The branches of the trees were still now. The grass was not waving in the breeze, the washing on the clothesline was perfectly, completely motionless, everything was still in the thick, cloying humid air.

She looked again. No, no, she was right. Nothing was moving.

Except the swings.

An atavistic string tied to her heart gave a sharp, plaintive pull. Miranda didn't believe in all that nonsense about spirits and ghosts – she'd come from a Methodist minister whose extremity of faith had driven out a belief in a material afterlife or anything in between as ruthlessly as a glacier, a summit of personalities that had culminated in a final, bitter argument and thirty years of empty phone lines. But there was something about that ghostly motion that stirred a desperate flutter in her heart and before she knew it she was standing on the porch, clutching the dishtowel in nerveless, watching the swings move back and forth, back and forth until they were as still as everything else.

Miranda trembled, closer now, standing in the rough weeds. Coyote. A coyote, or maybe a jackrabbit darting by, or just a puff of breeze on this windless night. Tom had hunted coyote sometimes; 'varmint clearing' he had called it. Christopher was not coming back. He was never coming back. The weather had reminded her, and the scents in the air. Smell was a reminder. Smell was a shadow.

Miranda Hearns suddenly choked and pressed her hands – aging, tired hands – to her face to hold back the tears, but they would not be stopped so easily and then they were flooding out of her. She fell to her knees and wept and wept until her sides ached and not another tear could come. She wept until it ran cold and salty down her wrists like silver tracks in the moonlight, until she could not see and all sound and smell and shadow was blocked out and nothing but the tiny flame of her grief was left.

She breathed slow and hard, hiccupping when she was done. Slowly, she cuffed the tears from her eyes, wiped her nose with the tea-towel and stood. She stared at the swingset, but there was nothing there; no ghost, no spirit, only a sharp, unmoving ache of the mind. She hiccupped again, holding a palm to her chest and letting the last wisps of pain rise into the still, muggy night. She turned to go back inside, sore feet turning taking the divot in the grass to her back door. Christopher had been exorcized for another year, perhaps, or until she would think of him again.

She had only taken two steps when she heard it, a sound she thought might crack her heart and mind.

Mom, the voice whimpered, urgent and pained and terrified.

She froze and did not turn around. It was a trick of the wind, a creak of the trees at the wood's edge, the stray rustle of a rabbit or a prairie dog in the long grass.

Mom, Chris' voice said again; when he was sick, stomach aches, when he'd had chicken pox when he was seven. The pain. The weeping and pleading for it to stop and her heart fluttering as she could not stop it. There was no mistake. A voice dead twenty-two years strummed her heartstrings and she thought she would break, or faint, or scream.

Slowly, Miranda turned towards the sound, took a few steps forward until she could make out the shape in the dark, and the flash of its burning, crimson eyes.

Then she did scream.

The black '67 Impala – a rare and dying breed of vehicle known as the muscle car – thundered west on Highway 70, the sun bright in the windshield and Black Sabbath thudding in the radio, wind whistling through the cabin. It carried two men: driver and passenger. The former was square-shouldered with a sharp crewcut, the other a hulking giant with hair down past his ears slouching in the passenger seat. They were inconspicuous in the way of the young: fitting in by standing out.

The first man thumped the wheel in time to Devil's Daughter, shaking his head with the beat. 'That Ozzie. Thirty years of solid gold.'

The tall one glanced over and turned the radio. 'And the drug abuse, the family issues?' A pause. 'Ozzie Knows Best?'

'You watch how you talk about the prince of rock and roll, Sam. It's like the devil: say his name and he shall appear.' The first man tapped his thumbs on the wheel as the car roared along. 'So where we going, Ponch?'

'We covered this last night, Dean.'

'Yeah, but, ah – ' and the man called Dean made an awkward bottle-tipping motion toward his lips, an earnest expression on his face. 'So c'mon, Sammy: hit me with it one more time.'

'Sam,' the giant corrected him as he opened a wide valise at his feet. A manila envelope inside was marked 'CASES, CURRENT' in faded blue ink. The cover was partially defaced with the phrase 'VAN HALEN RULES' in large mixed-color block letters, and with rude sketches partially obliterated with a felt-tip marker. Sam hesitated. 'Look, I don't want you to flip out, okay?'

'Flip out? Jesus, Sammy, I'm a professional.' Dean looked genuinely affronted. 'A little professional courtesy here?'

'Sam. And don't say I didn't warn you, because I told you about this last night. And you agreed. All right?' Dean only shrugged. Sam pressed on. 'We're headed to Sedaia, Colorado.'

'Aaaand…?'

'Aaand two people have gone missing – '

'Don't they just,' Dean interjected, shaking his head, clearly in a good mood. 'People, am I right? Fall off the earth if they could.'

' – one just up and vanished not leaving a forwarding address, or telling relatives or neighbors where she were going. The other one involves a missing body with a lot of blood at the scene. The articles don't have a lot more than that but it's two missing bodies in a place where a traffic accident is front-page news and I was thinking, maybe cult stuff, or something. You know. So, two people missing so far: Miranda Hearns and Jacob Dryer. Dryer's a widower and an ex-marine, did real estate, and Miranda Hearns worked at the Speedy Mart in town. Hearns was married, looks like that didn't work out; she had a son but he died in what looks like a hunting accident in 1997 and her husband Tom had a couple DUIs before he filed for divorce in 2004. He moved away to Breckenridge, about 2¼ hours away, looks like. Remarried, one kid, one on the way. Disappeared without a trace. No signs of break-in, or anything else.' He shuffled through the sheets. 'At the Dryer residence, bit of a different story. Rear glass door discovered in open state, massive pool of dried blood just inside it, a Spas-12 recovered on the scene, looks like he fired three shots.'

'Quality shotgun,' Dean said appreciatively as the Impala took a slow curve between two hills. 'He hit anything?'

'No way to say for sure, but there was apparently a lot of blood. Maybe he clipped his attacker; but if he did, his attacker just got up and walked the hell out of there.'

'Huh. Interesting,' Dean mused. He leaned his head towards the open window, letting the air cool his scalp.

'Otherwise same as the Hearns place: doors unlocked, guess that's not a big thing around there, nothing reported as obviously stolen, house not tossed, no vandalism – just the people gone.'

Dean nodded. 'That is kind of a thing with us. It's always about the people. Not money, insurance fraud, bank heists – except that one time. Always the people. So Dryer resists, maybe gets killed. Hearns doesn't… and, what? Goes along? Or did she do it? That'd tie up the whole thing really neat. But where's the weird? No… you know. What's our stake, Sammy? How's this our kind of gig?'

'Well.' Sam hesitated again. 'Actually, there's something else. I mean… I'm not sure, but we're in the area… anyway when I was looking it up, I cross-checked it against stuff happening down there and it just seems like… one hell of a coincidence.'

Sam tensed as Dean shot him a critical sideways look. 'What other stuff?'

Sam looked down, then out the window at mailboxes shooting past. 'Just, you know, some things. People have been, uh… seeing things.'

'What things?'

'… Lights.'

'Lights?' Dean was frowning now, as if checking a memory bank of experience.

'And, uh… shapes.'

'Shapes?'

'Yeah,' – Sam took a breath – 'in the sky. '

Immediately, Dean's foot eased up on the gas and the purr of the Impala churned lower as if sensing his darkening mood. 'What kind of shapes and lights in the sky?'

'Well, they're…' Sam thought hard, but there was nothing else for it. '… not identified.'

Dean came right off the accelerator, easing over to the side of the road, the beast growling as it slowed to a stop on the shoulder, gravel grinding. The Impala gave a little shriek as it came to a halt. 'Aw, come on, Sammy!' He smacked the wheel. 'Not identified? I know what that means! UFOs! Little green men carrying people off to their flying saucers and probing them!'

'Hey, I never said – '

'But you know all that's crap! You know what Dad would say! In twenty years of hunting this country one end to the other, he never found nothing that ever proved there was any such thing. Sammy, that ain't no job for us!' He slumped in his seat, rubbing his temples.

Sam, not quite withered, continued. 'Well, actually there have been some… cattle mutilations.'

'Oh, right,' Dean mumbled. 'Little green guys needed a snack. Seriously, is there any probing? Is there any probing, Sammy? 'Cause I could reeally get into interviewing some of them probe-ees again. Like out in Gulf Breeze? Remember Gulf Breeze?'

'I remember you got drunk and hit on a lady that turned out to – '

'Don't change the subject!' Dean barked. 'We've been over this before, we don't – '

'Look, it is what it is, okay?' Sam fired back. 'I told you already: everything is quiet! Nothing is going on, or nothing I can find anyway, and this has the benefit of actually happening. Lots of people have seen it, and it's in the papers. Okay?'

'Oh, the papers! 'Cause they never get anything wrong, Sammy – wait a minute.' A look of realization dawned on Dean's face. 'Why did you buy the Jim Beam? Were you trying to liquor me up so I'd agree to this?'

'Of course not,' Sam lied. 'Look… we're not hunting anything else right now, so I thought… maybe we could go check it out.' He sighed. 'Look, I'm just trying to keep us busy. Keep our mind off… other things. Dad, demons, deals.' He waved his hands. 'Better we go on a… a snipe hunt, than do nothing at all. And missing people are missing people! Weirdly-slaughtered cows are still weirdly-slaughtered cows, Dean! We do weird, just like you said. This is weird! And – and for all we know it really is some kind of weird monster, or a cult gearing up for something bigger, like a person. If it's just people, the worst we can do is show up and take them out. We've done it before. That's positive, isn't it?'

Dean made a noncommittal noise, so Sam picked up his folder, ignoring the doodles, and pressed on. 'The, uh, lights thing in the sky… that comes from an Air Force vet, edge of town named Roger Ellis, who was hiking in the area with his fiancée. Guess they're extreme hikers, blog everything they come across.'

Dean groaned.

'Yeah. Anyway, he says he saw – or kind of didn't see – some unusual activity in the sky.'

Dean put on a different frown. 'Saw but didn't see? What the hell's that mean?'

Gotcha, thought Sam. 'Well – he wasn't really clear and he hasn't posted anything else since then. He said it was some kind of… halo effect? This blue… something. Like it was there but then wasn't, and he only saw it for a second. And then – whatever the hell it was – he claims it then buzzed them low over the woods, just over their heads.'

Dean frowned, thinking. 'That's all in his blog?'

'Some people still doing it, I guess. Maybe he thinks he's going to pick up a Wilderness Supply contract and get famous on Tik Tok.'

'What's Tik Tok?'

'Aanyway, that's all he saw of it. Now – each of these things by themselves doesn't mean a hell of a lot, sure, but add them together: the disappearances, the blood, the lights and sounds right before… something really strange is going on out there, Dean. It all comes together. I can feel it. You said follow your gut and I'm following it.'

Dean was thinking. 'When I have ever said that?'

'Well – it's what you always do. That's what makes you such an awesome brother.' Sam's face slowly cracked in an indulgent grin.

Dean fumed and swore, but crawled the car back out on the 70, clutching up until the Impala was roaring down the highway again. 'Well, hell: you know I'm in. But I'll tell you how it's going to be, Sammy: we run around town for weeks, interviewing little old blue-haired ladies about funny little men on their porch and prodding smelly, stinking cow carcasses. And you know what we'll find? Nothing. Dad went on a hundred of these hunts, and he never found anything under the crazy but more crazies.' He said nothing for a while, then let out a heavy breath. 'Okay, I get it, Mr. Optimism. It's just… I hate the freaks that come out for these things, you know? I mean, first it's the lights in the sky, then it's the cow mutilations – and all that's just fine – but then it's talking to some four-eyed weirdos about abductions, and probings, and hybrid alien babies and government conspiracies and telepathic contact with beings from Zeta-9. I mean, you ever get the feeling that the government knows what's going on so well they have a handle on anything like that? How many government spooks we ever seen on one of our jobs? And the kind of crazy we deal with isn't that hard to find. Fine, we'll go: not because I think little green men are kidnapping people, but because it smells like a spook to me; suspicious death, unhappy marriage, alcohol, divorce, vengeful spirit. Simple.'

Sam thought. 'Usually goes the other way though; the woman files because she's getting beaten up, but he initiated divorce proceedings.'

'Maybe he's a forward-thinking kind of asshole. Either way, there's a family angle here: Dryer and Hearns are involved, somehow, with that death. Gotta be the kid.'

Sam shrugged; rage though he might, Dean was in the bag now and it was the hour to wax rhapsodical. 'Okay. And if we don't find anything… we see the sights, have a few beers, check out the local scenery.' He laid the frosting on the cake: 'I hear they have a really huge ball of yarn there.'

Trees and fenceposts crawled nearer, whipped by as they passed. 'How huge?' Dean asked finally.

'Like... really big.'

A long pause now. 'Well, okay. But it better be.'

The Impala thundered along, eating up the tarmac.

Another car was cruising towards Sedaia; very different to the Impala, it was next year's conservative Swedish import boasting a reliable V6, amply boosted by car magazines and tailored for the world of upscale professionals. It too was archetypically inconspicuous, and therefore very conspicuous: but its passengers benefitted from that, for they represented the halls of officialdom. They were heading south from Denver Airport on Highway 25 rather than traversing America's open spaces, for they were in the uncommon position of having almost unrestricted air mileage within the United States; subject to budgetary approval. Their windows were not down and the air conditioner was on full instead. It had been a hot week in southern Colorado, possibly the hottest on record, or so the prophets of Channel 7 claimed by the entrails of whatever goats they were using on a consulting basis.

The man's suit jacket was folded in the back of the car and his suit was plain, dark and moderately expensive; natty without being ostentatious, as fit his sort of professional. He was driving, as he usually did; a position he had seized by deceit, as he usually did. He tapped his fingers and hummed along to the lyrics from a heavy metal song written by an old English rocker gone semi-pop. He didn't know the lyrics, but could reliably mumble his way through a stretch of the refrain, as could the rocker himself, on a given day.

His companion, a striking redhead in a light green overcoat and conservative pantsuit, stared dejectedly out the passenger window. The morning was clear but she was decidedly un-sunny; it had been another long red-eye flight and – as usual – she wasn't sure how she'd let him talk her into this. The flight had run into an unusual amount of chop at Denver and she did not like turbulence. 'Mulder,' she inquired, gazing out the window, 'what are we doing here?'

Agent Fox Mulder glanced at the GPS. 'Should be there in about an hour, Scully,' said the man. 'We'll check in and get the lay of the land, then check in with the Sheriff and get the lay of the case.' He smiled.

'That's not what I asked.' Agent Dana Scully sighed. She was a striking redhead with a heart-shaped face and bright green eyes. Her head was propped on one hand as she leaned on the armrest, hair slightly tousled; a stance at odds with the severe lines and rigid cut of her women's 'power suit'. 'What are we doing here, Mulder?' she said again.

Mulder, a lanky six-footer with a conservative over-the-top haircut and an angular nose, cleared his throat and adopted his well-worn, ingratiating smile. They were on familiar ground now. 'Chasing leads, Scully,' he said grandiosely. 'In the wide-open spaces of America.'

Scully's cold look encouraged a fuller disclosure. 'Two people went missing last week,' Muller added, passing her a folder he'd jammed between his seat and the middle console. 'One Jacob Dryer, age 59, onetime Marine, wife deceased, also lived alone, on the west side of Sedaia. The other is Miranda Hearns, divorced, no – ' he hesitated, ' – living children, age 48, lived alone in north Sedaia.'

Scully opened the envelope. 'Suicide? Skipped town? Fell in a hole?'

'Vehicles in residence, no signs of robbery. Miranda Hearns was spotted at the supermarket Tuesday evening buying groceries. No visitors, no taxis and she wasn't known for long neighborhood walks. She wasn't seen by anyone after her visit to the supermarket and missed two work shifts. Meanwhile, Jacob Dryer was seen bragging about his first grandson to a neighbor on Tuesday afternoon at his weekly bridge tournament and seemed in, quote: 'good humour'. Who fills up the freezer before deciding to light out for new pastures and doesn't take their car? Or is so depressed by the birth of a grandchild that they decide to vanish from life? Where are the suicide notes? They don't fit the demographic, Scully.'

'Bridge?'

'Not everyone likes depressing medical dramas,' Mulder chided. 'One other tiny detail: substantial amounts of blood were observed at the Dryer residence alongside three spent shells and a Spas-12 shotgun registered to Dryer. Neighbours report hearing some kind of altercation, then loud gunshots from the back of the house, then a yell or scream, and then nothing. Hearns had no neighbours – too far out of town – so no one saw anything.'

'Suspects?'

'None. No one observed going into or out of either residence, and no cars.'

'So Dryer's a homicide, at least. And the timing suggests a connection.'

'Maybe so, Scully.'

'Did they know each other?'

'No idea,' Mulder said, gesturing. 'They were in the same church until Miranda stopped going a couple years after her son died, but that was almost twenty years ago.'

'And where do we come in?' Scully asked wryly.

Mulder leaned left in his seat, as if bracing for a blow. 'Well… the day before Jacobs Dryer is thought to have gone missing, two hikers out in the woods outside of town reported an unidentified flying object.'

Scully gave him a drawn, sardonic look.

'Roger Ellis, age 43, and Karey Miller, age 41, both visitors to our curious little metropolis. They were on some kind of engagement nature stroll – second marriage for both, both health fanatics and not prone to invent outlandish claims, according to their depositions. The truly unusual thing is that they didn't actually see anything. The sky was clear but they related to investigators that something passed over the woods: something massive enough and low enough to create a near wind-tunnel hurricane all around them and smash some branches in the forest overstory but through all of it, Scully, they didn't see a thing, although they did report a kind of hazy bluish light.'

'Depositions? What depositions? How do you know all that?'

Mulder extracted another folder from the space between his seat and the middle console, handing it to Scully. She scanned it and sighed. 'Again, Mulder?'

'The Gunmen talked to some of their MUFON colleagues out here who interviewed a park ranger. The ranger said it was probably just storm damage, but Sedaia – '

'hasn't had a storm in some time?'

'Over a month, Scully.' Mulder brightened a little. 'Colorado gets a lot of afternoon thunderstorms this time of year, but the Weather Service hasn't charted any high wind, rain or lightning strikes since May. Just this rising heat.' He loosened his collar a little, aiming the AC more directly at himself. 'What this means is that we have eyewitnesses to – something. Something over Sedaia.' He rubbed his nose. 'Frohike says hi, by the way.'

'Eyewitnesses that didn't see anything? Anyway this unidentified craft could have been an Air Force jockey having a little too fun with his F-16. Or hers,' she added.

'Schriever AFB, Buckley and Colorado Springs deny having any aircraft in that area.'

'Mulder, how do we know the hikers aren't just experiencing their own kind of group hysteria? Or that we aren't? In 1920 almost a thousand people in Spain said they'd seen the Virgin Mary appear in the sky over Santiago. Dozens of girls in Blackburn, England collapsed with nervous jolts and tetany from a neurotic reaction they literally caught from other girls. The eye sees what the mind wants to see, Mulder. A meteor shower becomes monsters in a flying saucer; a loaf of bread becomes Jesus' face.'

'Does a slice of blasphemous bread abduct two people? Your meteor shower coincides pretty directly with these unexplained disappearances.'

'Coincidences happen every day.'

'Look, I admit: it seems coincidental,' Mulder temporized. He looked across at her, right in her eyes. 'But in our line of work… how often do we see any actual coincidences, Scully?'

She said nothing for a while after that, content to let the sedan eat up the scenery. 'Signs of theft?' she asked, looking over a copy of a military service sheet from the folder; another was of a shotgun lying discarded on a polished wood floor.

'Nothing taken from either scene, bank accounts and credit cards intact, no random note. We have is two disappearances within seventy-two hours in the same small town – population three thousand and thirty-four – at least one of which was violently resisted, probably to the death, no bodies, no suspects, no robbery or other reasonable cause, right after two witnesses report an unusual sky-sighting. No other major crime reported in twenty years. That strikes me as an impressive spree, given the circumstances.'

'Your lights in the sky, you mean.'

'No unusual fingerprints in either location,' Mulder went on. 'Local PD have collected blood from the Dryer residence and the forensics lab in Denver are typing it against verified samples. Prints on the weapon and residual damage confirm it was discharged once in the house and two times outside, by Jacob Dryer: he was defending himself from something, Scully. The amount of blood suggests the opening of several major arteries with some kind of edged weapon. You're also forced to ask what kind of person could take on an ex-Marine with a 12-gauge and then leave the gun behind as they removed his body – 265-lb of dead weight if you'll excuse the expression – from the premises.'

'Any ex-boyfriends or estranged husbands? Angry girlfriends? Local mob connections?'

'Miranda Hearns had an ex-husband: Tom Hearns, 54. Guess she kept the name. Lives about two hours away; he was at work 9-5 the whole week and on Thursday night, when Miranda is believed to have vanished he was at his nephew's softball game from 7 to 10 PM. Multiple witnesses. Dryer wasn't known to be seeing anyone, no enemies.'

'Seems like there's still lots of time for Tom Hearns to drive in, commit a murder and drive home, a couple times. Maybe Hearns and Dryer were having an affair.'

'He initiated the divorce, Scully. Seems a little unlikely. They're checking his credit cards, phone records and other alibis now, but my bet is that he isn't our man.'

'Does this make ET a serial killer?' Scully scorned.

'It makes me curious,' Mulder smiled.

Scully sighed. 'I don't suppose there's anything as concrete as a radar sighting?'

'That's the funny part, Scully – '

'That's the funny part?'

' – no radar contacts at all from either of the air bases, or even from Cheyenne Mountain, so far as they're willing to say, and nothing from the airport at Colorado Springs. You know, Colorado Springs has had 270 UFO sightings since 1995. Open your mind to the possibilities, Scully,' he concluded. 'Let's see what this case holds for us.'

'Oh, I can guess what it holds for us: autopsies for me. Exposition for you.'

The rest of the drive was spent in an awkward silence.

END Chapter 1