Murders of the Sixth Kind, Ch. 5

Part 1

Author’s note: The 5 chapters presented here in ILLUMINATION Book Chapters are from the second novel in my Legends of Tsalagee mystery series. The release date hasn’t been set, but I expect it will be late summer, early fall 2021. In the meantime, I’m seeking beta readers for the entire book. If interested, please visit my website and contact me via email stating you wish to participate.

Five Part 1

Sunny put Samwise’s and Adalgrim’s headless remains in the root cellar. It would’ve been downright silly to bury them; even she knew that. Still, she mourned. She felt in her heart the hobbits had a spirit, and that they’d suffered injury. White Oxley was an evil man. Although they’d once been friends, that’s how she regarded him now. But before Samwise and Adalgrim, she’d never thought him capable of murder.

Sunny knew people thought of her as eccentric, called her crazy, made fun of her ways; but she didn’t care. They were just ignorant and unenlightened. She believed she had a genuine gift, could feel the energies of the universe, hear the spirits. They were all around everything and everybody, trees, grass, rocks, fairies, gnomes, whatever existed; but most people ignored them. Not her, she felt chosen, a true apostle of the Wicca.

Samwise and Adalgrim would be okay in the root cellar. It was like a tomb in there, anyway. Besides, she thought she could resurrect them if she could reconstruct and re-attach their heads. All it would take was Plaster of Paris and paint.

The idea came to her one night, or rather she received the thought after some visitors appeared. It wasn’t something she told the sheriff’s deputy, though, after her call about the bright lights. She suspected White’s harassment after her accusation of him murdering the hobbits. That he rigged up some sort of klieg lights pointed at her in retaliation. That’s when she pulled out her cell phone and called the Sheriff’s Department. But after the call, she saw the entity and got the message.

She was tall and blond, very good-looking, almost like an angel, only not as friendly. Sunny thought her countenance a little… menacing. She stood in the light and spoke to her. “Don’t be afraid,” she said. “We have important work to do here, and you’re to be a part of it. We’ll contact you later.”

At least, that’s what she thought she said. The entity went back to the craft out in the field. It rose in a buzz and moved off out of sight. She realized she’d had a close encounter, one of the third kind like she’d seen on that History Channel show. When the deputy got there, she tried to blow it off, blame it on White.

She couldn’t trust the local authorities to believe her, and they might contact the military. People already thought she was crazy. This would invite more ridicule. She did some research on the internet and found out the entity was of the Nordic species. It surprised her to learn more than a dozen extraterrestrial species lived on, in, and around Earth, all with different agendas. There were scads of videos on YouTube about them.

She needed more help, people who would believe and understand what she experienced. She found an organization called NUFOR — Network for UFO Research. They’d listen to your story and investigate.

First impressions being what they are, Sunny thought the guy looked the part: short, about five-nine, skinny, wore wire-rimmed glasses that sat crooked on his face, short hair that look like a half-eaten haystack, and an absurdly thin attempt at a Tom Selleck mustache. Her brain label him a typical nerd.

The man himself was aware of his nerdish look, maybe even affected by it. Like some guys would wear cowboy hats and boots to project themselves as shit-kickin badasses, Herm George wanted people to think him smart, a rocket scientist, perhaps a genius with an Einsteinian unconcerned for mainstream grooming and style.

He had a master’s degree, but most wouldn’t think so to look at him. With a boyish face, he thought the mustache made him look older. But it didn’t help, had more of an opposite effect with its sparseness. Along with the mustache, he sported a permanent smirk which expressed skepticism and condescension; a quality that didn’t endear him to those he interviewed, but qualities he considered essential for his job.

“Afternoon,” He leaned against the screen door frame with one arm, smirking. A green backpack hung on one shoulder.

“Yes?” Sunny answered. Her hand rested on the handle of the Ruger Blackhawk .45 stuffed in the back waist of her jeans. “Big gun for a little lady,” the guy at the gun shop said to her. “But, by damn, it has stopping power.” As much as she hated guns, she always liked to keep it close when she answered the door, especially if it was a man.

“I’m Herm George from NUFOR.” He held up a bent business card, with a diagonal crease across it. “You called about a sighting?”

Sunny opened the screen a crack and took the card, still gripping the Blackhawk with her the right hand. She glanced at the card, then back at George. Not what she’d imagined. Younger than expected. He’d come a day early.

“I know our appointment isn’t until tomorrow,” he said, as if reading her mind, “but I got freed up. There’re others I need to talk to about this case, too, so thought I’d come on down.”

She studied the card some more. The lower left corner read “Kansas City, MO” with a phone number under that. No street address. She flipped it over, seeing some handwriting on the back. “This has got something written on it. You need it?”

George took the card, looked at the writing. “Nah,” he said, handing the card back.

“Well, okay,” she said, pushed open the screen door and stepped out. Three cats ran out in front of her. “We can talk out here.”

She led him over to the end of the porch and pointed to the field going out to White’s fence line. “It was over there, that’s where it approached from.”

“Hold it a sec,” he said, and pulled a small digital recorder out of his backpack, turned it on. “Okay, go ahead.”

“It stopped, hovered, moved around a bit; then came closer to the house and settled near the ground. Never heard a sound, well, a low buzz, but no helicopter sounds. It disturbed the air some, but the night was still, quiet, no wind other than what that thing caused.”

George leaned his butt onto the porch railing, crossed his ankles, yawned. “Did you see any form for the craft, any shape?”

“Not really, the light was so bright. Kinda round, I guess.”

“Mmm, and this being, did you see him get out of the craft?”

“Well, I was shading my eyes against the light, and it was a female. She just appeared. Came from my right over there.” She pointed toward her drive. “I didn’t know she was there until she spoke. Scared the crap out of me.”

“Female.” He smirked with mock surprise. “How far away from you was she?”

“Maybe twenty, thirty yards.”

“Okay, describe her: features, body, hair, what she was wearing.” He looked over Sunny’s head at the porch ceiling behind her with that damn smirk, impatient and indifferent like he’d heard it all before. Sunny already didn’t like the guy. Considered him an arrogant little twerp, creepy.

“Had on a black jumpsuit sort of thing, all skin-tight. Well, I guess it was black; dark, anyway. Kinda tall, about six-four or five. Well-built, but not muscular. White-skinned, and blond hair, almost white, shoulder-length. Couldn’t really see her eyes, the color, I mean.”

George kept looking out into the field as Sunny talked, nodding some with that slight smirk. “Tell me what she said to you.”

“She, uh, she said, ‘Don’t be scared,’ uh, ‘We’re doing some important work here, and you can help.’ Said they’d get in touch. Oh, and she said, ‘Don’t tell anyone.’”

“Or what?”

Sunny shrugged.

George sighed loudly and looked at the ground. “Could I get some water? I prefer bottled if you’ve got it.”

“Well, I… okay. I think I might have one,” Sunny said. “You can come in, um…” She looked at the card again. “Mister George.”

“Herm’s fine.” He followed her, checking out her butt. He raised his eyebrows when he noticed the grip of the revolver sticking out of the back of her jeans.

Herm sat his backpack on the floor and took a seat at the kitchen table without being invited. “Okay if I sit down?” he asked after the fact. He unzipped a side pocket of the pack and took out a pen and steno pad.

“Sure,” Sunny said, eying him. She went on to the fridge, opened it.

Herm watched her move, bend slightly at the waist when she looked into the refrigerator. He decided she wasn’t half bad for an old broad, he guessed her to be in her forties.

“Who do you think it could’ve been?” she asked.

“Most likely a Nordic.” He clicked the pen and wrote something on the pad. “From what you described.”

“A what?” She played dumb. She’d done her due diligence on space aliens, wanted to see what he knew.

“Nordic. They’re pretty common, but not the most common.”

“You mean there are others?”

“Oh sure, dozens.” Herm looked up at her and smirked. “Besides Nordics, you got your reptilians, insectoids, Arcturians, moth-men, serpents, Sirians, Pleiadeans. The list goes on and on. Grays are the most common, they’re the ones most reported. They don’t seem to be friendly, kinda cold and analytical. Nordics are the nicest.”

Sunny stood silent for a few seconds. “Have you seen any of these?”

Herm snorted, “Nah, just listened to people who say they have… like you.” He wrote something on his steno pad. “When she spoke to you, did she actually speak, or was it like, telepathy?”

“She spoke. Had a funny accent.”

“Really? What kind of accent.”

“I couldn’t really identify it, but it didn’t sound local, or even American.”

“Hmmph,” he said, took his cell phone out of his shirt pocket and started checking texts.

She pulled a bottle of Ozarka from the back of the fridge and brought it to him, setting it on the table. “So, what do you think?”

He started typing a text with one thumb, ignoring her.

“Mister George?” she said.

“Herm,” he answered without looking up from his phone, kept on with his thumb-texting.

She waited a few seconds more. “Well, Herm, what do you suppose occurred?”

He stopped texting but re-read it, then pressed the Send button. He looked at Sunny and shrugged. “You saw an object flying over your field you can’t identify; you had an encounter with an entity fitting the description of a space alien of the Nordic variety. Other than that, I can’t say.”

He opened the water bottle and took a swig, put his pad and pen in his backpack. “I gotta run.”

“Well, wait,” Sunny came off the counter with a step toward him. “Is that all you want?”

“You got more to add?” he asked.

“No, but… I just thought you’d want to look around, you know, for physical evidence or something.”

“I could go out in your field, if you want; have a look.”

She gave him a look of exasperation. “It’s not what I want; I mean, it’s for your investigation.”

Herm nodded, looking through the gingham curtains hanging on the kitchen window. “Yeah, okay.” He held up the bottle of water. “Mind if I take this?”

“Sure,” she said, looking at the floor and giving him a dismissive wave. “Not like I’d drink it now.”

© 2021 by Phil Truman. All rights reserved PTI Publishing Broken Arrow, OK

This is a work of fiction. All persons and events depicted sprang from the mind of the author.

Shout outs: Britni Pepper, Liam Ireland, Stuart Englander, Trapper Sherwood, Terry Mansfield, Tree Langdon, Roz Warren, Bebe Nicholson, Linda Halladay, Teresa Kuhl, The Garrulous Glaswegian, Amanda Walker, Frank Kelso, Sooner Woodard