It Came from the Sky Read online

  “Maybe,” I said cautiously.

  “Who wants to know?” Cass asked.

  “Arnie Hodges,” the man replied. “I’m with a group of people who came into town last night.”

  “A Seeker,” I said.

  The guy laughed. “I’ve never called myself that, but it’s true enough. I seek answers about our government’s involvement in the alien agenda.”

  Cass’s eyes lit up.

  “I’m also a member of MUFON,” Hodges added. (MUFON: Mutual UFO Network. An organization dedicated to investigating UFO phenomena.)

  I refrained from rolling my eyes. “That’s wonderful, Mr. Hodges, but—”

  “I don’t mean to be a bother,” he interrupted, “but my sources told me one of the Hofstadts works at this ice cream shop, and it’s important I speak to him.”

  “I’m Gideon Hofstadt,” I conceded.

  Hodges smile drooped. “You’re not the abductee.”

  “Afraid not.”

  “But it happened on his property,” Cass broke in excitedly. “And I saw lights too.”

  “You did? That’s spectacular! Would you be interested in sharing your experience with me?”

  “Totally,” Cass said.

  “Do you think you could do it over there?” I asked, pointing to a table by the window. “I’d hate for you to scare off paying customers.”

  They complied with my request. As soon as they sat, Cass began speaking, her hands flying through the air in animated arcs. After a while, Hodges pulled a packet of grainy photos from his pocket—UFO shots, presumably—and eagerly shared them.

  I watched them from behind the counter with a mild feeling of trepidation, Owen’s question in my head again. Why was I so okay with tricking people?

  When my shift ended twenty minutes later, I clocked out on the ancient machine in the staff room—Ye Olde Time Clock—and approached the table where Cass and Hodges were still engrossed in conversation.

  “Are you ready?” I asked.

  “Actually, Arnie is taking me to meet his friends.”

  I tried to remain composed. “You mean the people with binoculars looking for UFOs?”

  Hodges laughed. “They may look strange from the outside, but they’re a great group. They’re just sick of being lied to.”

  “Lied to?”

  “By the government.”

  “Ah. Of course,” I said.

  “Why don’t you join us?” Hodges asked.

  I looked at Cass. “Could I speak to you by the milkshake machine for a second?”

  Once we were away from Hodges, I whispered, “What are you doing?”

  “I’m totally infiltrating the Seekers,” Cass said, as if it should’ve been obvious.

  “You can’t wander off with some, some…MUFON member.”

  “Seriously? This guy is the cat’s pajamas.”

  “He’s disturbed.”

  “He’s harmless,” Cass insisted.

  “How could you possibly know that? He probably thinks he’s been abducted by aliens.”

  “At least three times,” she agreed. “The first time was when he was six.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  Cass shook her head. “No way. You’ll be all skeptical and no one will talk to us. Look, he’s only taking me over to the lava lamp. It’s not even dark. I won’t get murdered, okay?”

  “Fine,” I mumbled, recognizing defeat.

  “Stop with the attitude,” Cass said. “Isn’t this what you wanted? Aren’t I supposed to be stirring up drama?”

  “Yes, but…” But I didn’t know how to articulate the unease I was feeling. Finally, I said, “Just be careful.”

  “Definitely.”

  “And take notes.”

  Cass grinned. “Do I look like an amateur to you?”

  A moment later, I watched Cass and her unlikely new friend leave Super Scoop and make their way to the lava lamp, where the crowd had thickened. Part of me, a small part, wished I was the sort of person who’d be so easily welcomed into a new group.

  I pushed the thought away.

  I was trying to complete an experiment, not win a popularity contest. And the experiment was going great. It was going perfectly.

  Interview

  Subject #6, Arden Byrd: The day the Seekers showed up, I was supposed to hang out with Gideon and Cass, but they cancelled. I didn’t find out why until way later. At the time, I thought they were ditching me. They’d done that before. I don’t know, maybe I would’ve ditched me too.

  The Next Seven Days

  They came in cars.

  They came in trucks and campers.

  A few seemingly came on foot.

  First, it was the Seekers, lured by the seed planted on Frykowski’s website and grown to fruition through the radio broadcasts of Robert Nash.

  The Seekers drew the bloggers, East Coasters with their own websites chronicling supernatural happenings.

  The bloggers drew the tabloids, and Lansburg appeared in low-quality black-and-white newspapers at checkout stands around the county.

  The tabloid frenzy drew serious newspapers. They didn’t come in the same numbers but sent a reporter or two to our sleepy Pennsylvania town. They covered the frenzy, writing about aliens in a tongue-in-cheek way. Yet there was something in that writing that said, while they didn’t believe in extraterrestrials, they wanted to be present. Just in case.

  The newspapers drew the camera crews. Lansburg’s lava lamp became a fixture in the background of daily news reports.

  Soon our modest town of fifteen thousand was overrun with outsiders. Hundreds of people flooded our motels, set up camps in our fields, filled our town square to capacity. Restaurants ran out of food. Grocery stores ran out of firewood, bottled water, and toilet paper—shoppers had to trek to the Walmart Supercenter in the next town over. Our streets became clogged by vehicles with out-of-town license plates.

  And then, when I was positive the frenzy had reached its peak, when I became certain nothing else could surprise me, the media coverage grabbed the attention of the CEO of a popular health supplement MLM.

  On September 25, J. Quincy Oswald drove into Lansburg like he owned the place.

  Event: J. Quincy Oswald

  Date: Sept. 25 (Mon.)

  “We’re so honored to have you here,” Mother gushed.

  Our entire family, plus J. Quincy Oswald, sat at the dining room table. The table Mother had frantically cleaned after getting Oswald’s call. Our dining room was generally used for its intended purpose twice a year—the rest of the time it was a receptacle for clutter. (See: mail, softball equipment, myTality™ bottles, an assembled 3-D puzzle of the Titanic that Ishmael mystifyingly brought home one day.)

  “I’m just thankful I caught wind of the happenings ’round here before startin’ my East Coast tour,” Oswald replied.

  His tour.

  As if he were a rock star.

  “How long are you staying, Mr. Oswald?” Maggie asked.

  “Please, honey, call me Oz.”

  Oswald had already instructed us to call him Oz. At which my brother had grinned and replied, “Call me Ishmael.” (“Call me Ishmael” is the opening line of the literary classic Moby Dick. I was quite sure my brother had never read the novel, but he never tired of repeating that line.)

  “I s’pose I’ll be here for as long as it takes,” Oswald went on.

  Father passed the chicken noodle casserole Mother asked him to whip up—though she’d made him add some sort of myTality™ protein powder to the recipe. “As long as what takes, exactly?”

  Father’s gruff tone was the single thing that pleased me about the situation.

  Oswald looked around the table with a self-satisfied smile. “I was gonna save this for dessert, but might as well jump right in.”r />
  “Please do,” I said.

  He sat back in his chair and raked his fingers through his hair in that calculatedly casual way of his. “Listen,” he said. “This is gonna sound out-of-this-world nuts.”

  Ishmael and Mother leaned forward, bringing immeasurable shame upon our family.

  “When I was a tyke, growin’ up in the Texas backcountry,” Oswald began, “my family lived in a trailer. We had nothin’ back then. And we learned to be just fine with that. I always say, a man who builds his fortune deserves more respect than someone born into it.”

  It was likely the wrong time to inform Oswald that our own wealth had been handed to us by an innovative ancestor.

  “That trailer, it was no good. My daddy was a drunk and my momma was hardly around. When I needed to escape, I’d grab my sleeping bag and camp out in the back. All those nights, I’d lose myself in the sky.”

  Mother put a hand on my arm. “I’m sure Gideon can relate.”

  “To Father being a drunk?”

  “No.” She swatted me. “The part about the sky.”

  Oswald was too wrapped up in his performance to pay us any heed. I wondered whether this was a tale he regularly shared, or if it had been crafted specifically for the occasion.

  “One night, something occurred that I never told a soul,” Oswald went on. “I was lookin’ at the sky, and I saw a glow. A light blazed brighter the longer I stared at it. And then, something even more outstanding happened.”

  He paused dramatically, taking a moment to make eye contact with each of us.

  “I heard a voice,” he said.

  Well, of course he did.

  “The voice of God?” Mother breathed, as if that was a reasonable conclusion to draw.

  “I surely thought so…at first.”

  I kept my expression neutral while studying my family members. Father was in disbelief; Ishmael and Maggie looked curious. But Mother… Was she enthralled, or was she trying to appear enthralled?

  “So, like, if it wasn’t God, who was it?” Ishmael asked.

  “Extraterrestrials,” Oswald replied simply.

  Amazingly, he kept a straight face. There wasn’t a tug at the corner of his mouth; he didn’t blink. He looked as casual as if we were discussing reality television. Gram would’ve loved to have him at her poker games.

  “Are…are you sure?” Mother asked.

  Father rubbed his eyes like he’d traveled far beyond his tolerance for alien talk.

  Oswald leaned forward and locked eyes with Mother. “Surer than I am of anything else in this world.”

  “I see,” Mother said. “Well, that’s…really quite interesting.”

  She didn’t believe him. I was sure of it then, could almost feel her internal tug-of-war. She knew Ishmael and I had fabricated the alien story, and she knew Oswald lied about it now. She might love myTality™, but she wasn’t entirely taken in by him.

  “That night,” Oswald went on, “my entire future was laid bare. I saw beyond the trailer I lived in. I saw beyond my own life. I was told that I had a place in the cosmos, that there was a mission for me. I could change the world.”

  While I maintained that Oswald was lying about extraterrestrials, there was a 75 percent chance he was being truthful about his perceived “specialness.” He believed he was more important than the rest of us. He was a god; we were starfish. Psychologists would have a field day studying J. Quincy Oswald. He practically defined the word narcissist. (Narcissist: a person with an exaggerated sense of self-importance, the constant need for admiration, and a tendency to dwell on achieving power and success.)

  “What exactly is this mission?” Maggie asked, sounding genuinely curious.

  “To lead people to everlasting life.”

  I nearly spit out my bland, myTality™-enriched casserole.

  “Don’t you see?” Oswald went on. “That’s what myTality was always about. I created a line of products to help people increase their wellness, but I was limited to Earth’s resources. I knew that was only the start, though. Because that night, when I received the message, I was told the extraterrestrial Visitors would be back. When I completed the first steps in their plan, they’d return and give me what I needed to take myTality, and humanity, to the next level.”

  “And what’s that?” Father asked.

  Oswald smiled and sat back in his seat, letting silence linger. “The elixir of life. The ingredients and formula needed to ensure that none of us’ll get old. None of us’ll die. Humanity will become eternal.”

  Oh, for god’s sake.

  I looked to Mother to see what she made of this new development, but Ishmael spoke first. “You think the aliens are here to, like, give you the recipe?”

  “I know they are,” Oswald replied, oozing confidence.

  There was another long silence. Then Father cleared his throat and said, “Well, I have to get to the PTA meeting.”

  He kissed Mother and left us to deal with Oswald on our own. Traitor.

  “Oz,” Mother said hesitantly. “You know how much I respect you and love the myTality business model. But—”

  “I do know how much you love it. And it’s no accident this started on your farm. I should’ve known that when the Visitors returned, they’d contact me through a myTality distributor.”

  Mother smiled unsurely.

  “This could be an opportunity for you,” Oswald said. “The Visitors involved you for a reason. They know you can help me, and in doin’ so…maybe bring even greater success into your own venture.”

  There was a pause. Then Mother’s hesitation disappeared. Her smile turned genuine. “What exactly do you need me to do?”

  Interviews

  Subject #4, Victor Hofstadt (Father): I support my wife in everything she does. Those myTality products weren’t my cup of tea, but Jane sure could sell them. With that being said, was I happy J. Quincy Oswald was in Lansburg? No. I was not. And I sure wasn’t going to let him stay on our property, like Jane suggested. It’s bad enough I had to spend half my day chasing reporters and UFO hunters away from the crater. No way was I adding Oz to the mix.

  Subject #7, Jane Hofstadt (Mother): Oh, Oz’s alien story… That was silly from the start.

  Subject #1, Ishmael Hofstadt: But, like, how would the fountain of youth even work? Would you stay how old you were when you drank from it? Cause what if you didn’t find the fountain ’til you were ninety or something? Then it’s like, what’s even the point? Or would it reverse time and you’d be young again? But then what if you drank too much and it turned you back into a baby? If that happened, would you look like a baby but have all your old-person thoughts like in that Brad Pitt movie? Or would you think like a baby too?

  Subject #8, Special Agent Mike Ruiz: I’m not at liberty to give an in-depth comment. But I can confirm that, at the time, Mr. Oswald’s products were being investigated by the FDA.

  Event: J. Quincy Oswald (Cont.)

  J. Quincy Oswald overstayed his welcome. At least, I thought so. I was more than happy when, shortly after dusk, he said he should be going.

  “You’ll be in touch?” Mother asked, seeing him to the front porch. I trailed behind, ready to push Oswald forcefully into his car if necessary.

  “You can count on it,” he replied.

  Outside, Oswald unlocked his monstrous, gold Range Rover. Funny that with all his talk of immortality, he didn’t balk at driving an SUV that was notoriously bad for the environment. Apparently, Oswald planned to live forever while the world around him died.

  Before he could leave, another car pulled into the driveway. Cass and Arden. We planned to hang out and do homework while they tried to change my mind about attending the homecoming dance.

  They didn’t realize I was aware of the last part.

  Cass maneuvered her car around the Range Rover and she and Ard
en climbed out, looking at Oswald with open curiosity. He gazed back with a similar expression.

  “Who do we have here?” Oswald asked.

  “My friends,” I said curtly. “We’ll be going now. Nice to see you, Mr. Oswald.”

  But instead of allowing me to slip away with Cass and Arden in tow, Oswald stepped toward them, smiling his too-slick smile.

  “J. Quincy Oswald,” he said, holding out his hand. “But you can call me Oz.”

  Cass’s eyebrows shot up. “The great and powerful Oz, in the flesh.”

  I’d given her a full recap of the myTality™ conference, and she’d decided instantly that Oswald and his followers were a source of great fascination.

  “Well, I don’t know ’bout all that,” Oswald said with faux modesty.

  “It was nice seeing you, Mr. Oswald,” I repeated forcefully. “Good luck with your pursuits.”

  I motioned for Cass and Arden to follow me and began walking through the yard, in the direction of my lab.

  “Can’t we hang out in your bedroom?” Cass asked, hurrying to catch up. “The lab is so…lab-like.”

  “I’d like to distance myself from my house right now.”

  “The lab is fine with me,” Arden said.

  Once we’d left Mother and Oswald safely behind, Cass said, “So that’s Oz.”

  “Please don’t call him that.”

  “Come on. It’s hilarious. You can’t tell me it isn’t hilarious.”

  “Do I look amused?”

  “When do you ever look amused?”

  Once we were settled in the lab—Cass claiming the comfortable desk chair, while Arden and I were relegated to the cold, metal, folding chairs—I began to relax. Kepler peered suspiciously from his hiding spot under my desk. Arden moved to pet him and he hissed, making her quickly draw back.

  “I didn’t expect Oz to be so…” Cass trailed off.

  “Smug? Arrogant?”

  “Hot.”

  I rolled my eyes. “He’s the leader of a pyramid scheme, conning thousands of people out of their hard-earned money to line his own pockets.”