1
Lizzie pushed open the trailer door, grocery bags in hand, and lightly kicked the package at her entrance way along the floor before her. After greeting Lizzie at the door with several urgent meows, Lucy gingerly stepped along, heading toward the kitchen, trying to avoid being struck by the kicked-along package. Lizzie deposited her bags on the kitchen table, as Lucy wove in and out of the legs of the table and chairs. The package at her feet was small and brown, with UPS markings. Excitedly, she picked it up and placed it on the counter. She was unable to take her eyes off of it, as she returned to her groceries, removing eggs and milk from the grocery bag and into the refrigerator, cheese and deli meat, fruit and soda. When she was done stowing perishables, she used a paring knife, and — smile on her face — sliced open the package. She pulled out the first of several books she’d been expecting. She held a child’s six-page “Touch-and-Feel-Home” book. It had a Teddy bear, toy clown, choo-choo, and a kitty on the front cover. Lizzie smiled, glancing down to Lucy, now sprawled on the linoleum floor like a cocky Lounge Lizard, her tail tripping out. The Teddy bear’s fur stomach was exposed through a hole in the cover. Lizzie rubbed her fingers along the fake fur, and smiled. Opened the book.
Let’s explore the house with Chloe the kitten!, it said on an inside page.
On another it said, Tickle Teddy bear’s FLUFFY tummy!
On that page was an identical Teddy bear from the cover, only this one’s entire stomach had the fluffy, furry fur she’d been petting. Lizzie turned the page and found Lift the SOFT cottony curtain! on a page with Chloe the kitten sitting beside a vase of black-eyed Susans. Lizzie looked down to Lucy, who just so happened to be looking up to her with a whiskered expression of “Yeah, so?” Lizzie smiled and returned to her book. On the opposite page a loose piece of material flapped free. She moved it and found it covered a fake window, more
(people at a table?)
flowers behind the fake curtain.
Lizzie closed the book and looked back into the box. There were Touch-and-Feel books on farm animals, wild animals, and baby animals. A book on ponies and one on shapes that kinda looked interesting. Lizzie took out the book on shapes. An orange, gold star, and a cube were on the front. She opened it and flipped through it, checking out the BUMPY orange, SILKY cushion, and FLUFFY pencil case…
Images of children.
Thousands of them?
Millions…
In her head… they all stood in a field that stretched out as far as her mind’s eye could see. All smiling, all happy.
Lizzie turned the next page to find SMOOTH sunglasses… and mentally zoomed in on the crowd of children. She psychically giggled and laughed with the energy that radiated from the boys and girls in her image — when someone, way in the back and who stood out from the crowd, caught her attention. This person stood head, shoulders, and torso above the children.
Turning the page, Lizzie came upon a SHINY magic wand.
She stared at the word “magic.”
Zoomed in on the person standing above the children in her mental image.
Lizzie touched the book’s shiny magic wand and closed her eyes. She knew this guy, and now she saw him… smiling… standing between two children, one hand resting lightly on a girl’s head, the other on a boy’s. There were incredible amounts of energy swirling — arcing — about the images. Lizzie found it harder to focus. She heard the distant-yet-joyous laughter of the children. Felt their excitement…
When are we coming home, Mommy? one of the children, the boy, asked, still under the smiling man’s hand.
When, Mommy? the girl asked.
Lizzie couldn’t answer. Too much emotion, too much energy.
Vapor locked.
I… I don’t know, she was finally able to get out. Mommy wishes she knew… you know how Mommy misses you. Every day.
The two children smiled. Lizzie looked back to the smiling man. Compassion radiated from him, not only for the children, but for her. Specific emotionally charged energy purposely directed toward her.
Then it was gone. Children, field, the smiling man.
Lizzie gasped, flung open her eyes and jerked, sending the children’s book across the room.
Slowly inhaling, she again closed her eyes; centered herself.
Lizzie exhaled slowly and deliberately, then got up and retrieved the surprisingly undamaged book, placing it back in the box. Picking up the package, she took it into the hallway and placed it before a closed door to a bedroom. A crooked sign was tacked up on the door that read “No Grownups Allowed!” It was written in multicolored crayon, with the “G” and “e” written backward. Lizzie stared at the sign. She stared at it for a long, long time before she left the door…
2
Mel didn’t know how long he’d been awake. He just lay there in his parents’ bed, staring into the ceiling. Bright light now filtered in from between closed drapes. It made absolutely no sense he had no parents. He had a car (had he checked this?), money in his wallet (or this?), a stocked refrigerator, and a house full of furniture (though he swore when he’d first awoken there’d been nothing).
Mel sat up. It felt as if, though he had slept, he hadn’t. Not really.
Mel swung out of bed and padded along on bare feet over carpeted floor, into the hallway. He descended to the family room on the middle landing; pulled open the drapes and looked out the picture window. The sun was indeed shining (at least that hadn’t changed), birds chirped, and it was still high summer. Somewhere in the neighborhood he heard someone mowing their lawn. He looked to his.
Mowed.
In fact, it was so fresh, there were still clippings scattered across the sidewalk and steps that lead up to the front door (the house sat on a small rise, up from a culvert full of flowing water). Opening a window, he could smell the fresh-cut grass and hear the calming flow of water through the culvert. In fact, the lawn was still wet from early morning dew. Across the culvert Mrs. Cole walked her dog.
Mrs. Cole?
He knew her?
Of course he did. This is where he lived.
Right?
Of course. His parents… the accident… school… did he have a job? Why couldn’t he remember much about school (but who did, or wanted to, anyway, during summer)?
Okay, ignore school.
Did he have a job?
God, it was beautiful out! Absolutely gorgeous.
Mel left the window and went to the bookcase. A huge oak one that covered most of a wall.
Did anything here ring a bell?
There were all kinds of science fiction, history, and travel books. “Weird” books on dreaming, ghosts, and other paranormal stuff, as well as something called remote viewing. Books on JFK grabbed his attention, one simply titled Kennedy. He reached for it… when the doorbell rang. Mel pushed the book back into its slot on the shelf and answered the door. A mail carrier stood before him.
“Morning!” the carrier said.
“Good morning,” Mel answered back, cautiously. There was something about the guy… he seemed too there, anything but two-dimensional. He was dressed as your standard-issue mail carrier, and was certainly friendly enough, blue-gray shorts and all.
“Mail call, my young sir!” the carrier exclaimed, eyes wide and attentive. He handed over a fistful of mail. “Here you go!”
As the carrier extended his hand, Mel looked to the bundle without taking it. It should have been a normal gesture, a transfer of mail from an agent of the United States Government to Mr. Private Citizen, but there was something more to this transfer. Something… different… out of the ordinary. He studied the outstretched hand, the fistful of letters, and what looked like a catalog or two.
Was there any mail in there for his parents? His dead parents?
“Go on, take it — it’s for you.”
Take it.
Mel noticed that the look in the mail carrier’s eyes had somehow changed — for just a fraction of a second — from the happy, no-care appearance, to… something else. It had been so fleeting that Mel wondered if it had even happened at all.
It’s for you…
“Me?”
He continued to study the outstretched mail stupidly, as if afraid to touch it, then looked back to the man, who continued to smile back at him — now, unsettlingly so. Pleadingly so. The carrier’s eyes burrowing into him. Dark, deep eyes.
Intense.
“Yes, for you. Of course for you. You. Who else you?”
“But—”
Mel thought about protesting, but what of his parents?
Why couldn’t the mail also be for his folks, and how would he have known they had died (and why had he felt so little remorse for them now?), but it was at that moment that the mail man began to grow more than a little agitated.
“Please, Son, take it, I—” the carrier said, “I have to continue my rounds. Here,” he said, shaking the handful of mail in the air between them.
Mel took the delivery.
The carrier smiled (why was his smile so electric, so penetrating?). Mel saw an intense sense of relief flood over the man.
“Now… you go out and have yourself a wonderful day, young man!” the carrier said, back to his cheery self. “It’s a beautiful one, isn’t it?” he said, turning and looking up into the sky.
The minor wave of stress that had temporarily washed over the carrier was as if never there. He turned to leave, but remained on the stoop, continuing to admire the day.
“I say, it’s such a waste, being cooped up inside on such a wonderfully gorgeous day like this, don’t you think?” He turned back to Mel. “Don’t you? A great day for a walk! Why, a young man like yourself could walk just about anywhere, on a day like this. Anywhere!”
“Yeah, sure,” Mel replied. “Thanks… for the mail,” he said, raising the bundle in a parting gesture.
Again that smile. The mailman stepped off the stoop, and walked out to the sidewalk. Mel watched him for a few moments, before closing the door.
“Weird little man,” Mel said, and tossed the mail onto the coffee table.
3
A mailman.
A boy — a teenager.
Lizzie jerked awake on her couch.
A tall black scarecrow…
Lizzie again closed her eyes; rubbed them.
What had she been doing?
She’d put away her groceries… putzed about the place a little… then sat down — apparently ending up in an unplanned nap.
Was there something about her parents?
Lizzie sat up, rubbed her hands, and realized she’d left her rings — her wedding bands — in the bathroom. She went to the bathroom by way of the bedroom, and directly to the sink. She opened the third drawer down, where she always kept her rings… but didn’t see the radiant-cut, one-carat diamond engagement ring and wedding band she’d expected to find there. Rummaging around in the drawer, she hastily moved things around. Still nothing.
“Damn it,” she said, “where are they?”
Lizzie removed everything from the drawer — old Ziploc bags, toothbrushes, Clearasil, an extra toilet-paper roller, a brown plastic bottle of iodine and a box of bandages — but still no rings. She stepped back. Jammed her hands to her hips.
“I do own a wedding ring, don’t I?”
Lizzie closed her eyes. Tried to remember.
She’d been married… yes, that was still the same… his name had been Joe, and he’d worked in One Tree… also still the same… and his death… yes, his death had been an accident. That, too, unfortunately, also remained the same.
Lizzie opened her eyes; directed her gaze about the room as if trying to secretly detect something not meant for her to see.
Yes… it all continued to ring true, she grimaced… so, where the heck were her rings?
Lizzie again looked down to the drawer.
Nothing had changed.
She pulled out the other drawers, rummaged through all their contents, but still found no rings.
They were gone, plain and simple.
Lizzie replaced everything she’d taken out of the drawers, and began a methodical search of the bathroom itself, of the storage space and cabinets beneath and above the sink.
The room was suddenly filled with the laughter of children.
“Not now, please — I’m not in the mood,” she said sternly.
All laughter ceased.
Images of the earlier Kennedy scenes returned to her, but she also brushed them aside. Lizzie headed for the bathroom closet.
Mommy!
Lizzie whipped around.
No one.
Lizzie again closed her eyes and leaned into the closet door. Arms crossed, she slowed her breathing… and listened.
Nothing else… no other pleas for attention. In her mind, she shouted, Ridiculous! This is absolutely ridiculous! Not this! I refuse to allow this to be! I want my rings back, and now, goddammit!
4
Mel sat in the blue swivel chair, paging through a book entitled, JFK: His Life and Times. He thumbed through sections of JFK’s WWII experience with the Japanese Amagiri, and its ramming of his Navy PT 109 patrol boat, on August 2, 1943, in the waters of Blackett Strait, off the south Pacific’s New Georgia. He glanced at a section describing his 1953 marriage to Jacqueline Bouvier. Glanced at sections detailing his dual-term presidency, including the Cuban Missile Crisis, African-American Rights, and something that gave him cause for pause.
Remote viewing?
This was the second time he’d encountered that term this morning. Mel settled in, reading the section on psychic research, and what had come to be known as “remote viewing.” John Fitzgerald Kennedy, the book had begun, created the ultra-secret program back in 1962—at least the initial research into it. The book went on to say how it had met with much resistance, even from his closest advisors (one was quoted on record as saying “I wouldn’t believe in it even if it were true”). The entire program had originally been highly classified, the book reported, but in the early nineties, when industry began to openly use it, portions of the program had been declassified. Though only a year of research had begun in 1962, actual operational work (called “tasks,” or “taskings”) had begun in earnest in 1963, and was instrumental in averting the Vietnam Crisis. The power of the remote viewing program had not only proven itself with Vietnam, the book continued, but also in fighting crime through the powerful and insightful stewardship of JFK’s brother, Robert F. Kennedy, who continued its use into his own two terms as president, immediately following his brother. A section was devoted to how the Kennedy brothers were the only sibling presidents, made even more eventful because they had served back-to-back presidencies, having had an unprecedented sixteen years in which to reform and shape the country under one unique vision shared by both men. In March of 1963, the book said, during his first term, JFK created the John F. Kennedy Center, or “The Center,” against the beauty of the Blue Ridge Mountains of north-central Virginia. “RV-ing,” as it was now called, was quickly applied to many applications beyond national security and global terrorism. Much less violent uses had also been applied, such as historical research, future predictions for various industries, population growth, economic catastrophes, global warming and other environmental issues. Though government use of psychics had been secretly used as far back as governments existed, JFK had single-handedly begun the focused modernization of its application — and had been determined to bring it out of the shadows and into controlled public use. Kennedy believed in secrecy when needed, but also believed that in making this particular tool known, it would prove to be its own deterrent. In fact, there were several declassified sessions in which remote viewers, while working tasks, had become suddenly aware of becoming tasks themselves, when Russian and Chinese counterparts (it was discovered) peeked in on them with their own programs. There had been much opposition to JFK’s point of view, but he and his brother had ultimately prevailed, and now the paranormal had become accepted as just another application in humanity’s toolbox, proclaimed the book.
Not that that had stopped the 1-900-numbers, Mel thought.
Something clicked.
Mel got up and went to the kitchen table. The gray business card was still there, beside the rest of his unremembered birthday cake:
Madame Nostradameus
1-900-PSI-KICK
Where had this card come from? He certainly hadn’t remembered picking it up anywhere, and his parents—
Mel took the card with him back to his swivel chair, trying to remember where it had come from — when the doorbell again chimed. Mel got up and went to the door. A man’s back greeted him, as he opened the door. A dark-haired man dressed in a dark suit coat, well over six feet tall, had just shouted something to the handful of kids running about on the sidewalk in front of the house, and though he hadn’t made out what he’d said, the tone was unmistakably harsh and dismissive. The man had also just thrown a ball back to the children, but Mel watched as it arced high above their heads and into the culvert behind them, carried swiftly downstream.
The man spun around to greet him in what seemed an impossibly quick movement.
He paused for a moment. A smile unnaturally
(painfully?)
crept across his face.
Dreams.
Darkness.
An evil scarecrow?
A really baaad feeling…
“Good morning,” the man said, extending a large hand. “I’m Black. From the FBI. We’re investigating a kidnapping… and I understand the suspect frequents this neighborhood.”
Black produced a picture from within his jacket, uncomfortably working his left shoulder as he handed it over to Mel.
Large hands, Mel noticed. What had those hands —
“Seen him?”
Mel examined the picture — a sketch; looked back to Black and his forced smile. Looked back to the picture (of a man in his forties or fifties, maybe even late thirties).
“Nope,” Mel replied, “haven’t.” He attempted to return the sketch, but Black held up a hand.
“Keep it. My card,” he added, handing him a card with only his name and number on it. “If you should hear of anything, please be good enough to call.”
Mel nodded.
“Thank you for your time, Mr. Roberts.”
Mel closed the door. He turned away, still examining both the card and picture—
He shot back to the door and whipped it open.
Black was gone.
Mel rushed out onto the sidewalk and daylight. The kids were once again playing with a ball, but Black was nowhere to be found.
Mr. Black, from the FBI… who had somehow, and for some unknown reason, during a casual, neighborhood canvassing, known his name without him having given it.