Authors: Mikel J. Wisler
Unidentified
UNIDENTIFIED
A Novel
Mikel J. Wisler
Runaway Pen Productions
Unidentified
Text copyright © 2015 Mikel J. Wisler
Based on the screenplay by the same title, also by Mikel J. Wisler.
Published by the author
First Edition: July 2015
Copy Editor: Jeremiah Hawn
Interior Layout: Eric Bumpus
Cover Model: Kate Paulsen
Cover Photography and Graphic Design: Mikel J. Wisler
Both feature-length screenplay and novel manuscript are on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
FBI logo from Pond5
Additional graphic elements from
DeviantArt.com
, by
savagelandpictures
struckdumb
GreyGhost
All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—such as electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written consent of the author. The only exception is brief quotations in reviews, both printed and electronic.
The characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictitious. Any resemblance to real people or events (outside of specific references to historical figures and documented UFO cases) is purely coincidental.
In the process of writing this novel and screenplay (which happened in tandem), I relied heavily on the help of many people. First and foremost, I thank my wife, Danae, without whom none of the storytelling I do would be possible. My thanks to Jedidiah Burdick who helped light a fire in my imagination for making this not just a feature film script, but a novel as well. Thank you to Eric Bumpus and Tom Conners, who read the early drafts of the novel and gave me valuable feedback. Thank you also to Dominic and Kristina Stone Kaiser, my partners at Stories by the River who are working with me to make this story into a feature film. Both of them have provided such invaluable input, feedback, thoughtful questions, and encouragement as they read everything from a very rough and naked early outline to the finished script and novel.
My thanks to Trevor Duke, who though not a fan of the horror genre, allowed me the incredibly enlightening experience of telling him my whole outline for this story over beers one night. He’s even shot interviews with me for our early marketing materials. Thank you also to Luana Bessa for reading this novel and providing me with specific feedback as it relates to the fields of therapy and psychiatry as well as to James Ross Otis for giving me feedback in relation to military deployment. I must extend a big thank you to the editor of this manuscript, Jeremiah Hawn. You’re keen eye and insightful suggestions will make me come across as a far better writer than I am. Thank you Eric Bumpus again for helping me with the Kindle formatting and the publishing process and constant encouragement.
A big thank you to Kate Paulsen, the woman on the cover of this book, who read the screenplay and agreed to dive in with both feet into being part of this project as the model for the cover art and the lead actress as soon as we can secure the funding for the feature film. Along those lines, thank you also to Rajah Samaroo for the feedback on the script and all the support and enthusiasm for this project and willingness to sign on so early in development as the cinematographer for the film. Thank you both for taking such a big risk on me!
My thanks also to the people of Lincoln and North Woodstock, New Hampshire. I have visited multiple times and have always found the people warm and welcoming and the towns and scenery absolutely lovely. I have taken many liberties in fictionalizing versions of both towns in this story that are dealing with on-going cases of UFO sightings and abductions. To my knowledge, no one in these real towns has been abducted by aliens.
Finally, in writing this novel, I drew heavily upon the research compiled in the book,
UFO's: A Scientific Debate
edited by Carl Sagan and Thornton Page.
For Kristina Stone Kaiser
Thank you for believing in the profound value of stories.
Man has traditionally tended to construct a myth to explain anything he cannot understand. And this is precisely the way that flying saucers or UFO's came into existence.
Donald H. Menzel,
UFO's — The Modern Myth
When Galileo’s telescope made it possible to sight the moons of Jupiter, many refused to look through the telescope. They “knew” that there could not be such bodies around Jupiter, and therefore they “knew” that the telescope was a deceptive instrument.
Robert L. Hall,
Sociological Perspectives on UFO Reports
Science began as an outgrowth for theology, and all scientists, whether atheists or theists ... accept an essentially theological worldview.
Paul Davies,
Are We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life
There is a wide range of concepts which would be fascinating especially if only they were true. But precisely because these ideas have charm, exactly because they are of deep emotional significance to us, they are the ideas we must examine most critically. We must consider them with the greatest skepticism, and examine in the greatest detail the evidence relevant to them. Where we have an emotional stake in an idea, we are most likely to deceive ourselves.
Carl Sagan,
UFO’s: The Extraterrestrial and Other Hypotheses
There is a hush that surrounds these things. A seemingly impenetrable invisible wall of silence wraps certain mysteries in life. Overwhelmed by the unknown—or is it the perverse nature of such events?—words fail most people. The temptation to move forward and carry on with daily life as if such things were not a reality is quite strong. This seems an understandable response in the first world dominated by lives quietly—and most often unknowingly—shaped by materialism and empiricism. That which can be owned becomes the real focus. That which we believe is accepted through mainstream general consensus of the collected evidence of our age.
So it was in early 2011 when a collection of startling and unsettling events took place in and around the town of North Woodstock, New Hampshire. This small town, just southwest of Lincoln, was known for its brewery and shops as far as most tourists are concerned. The town, which mostly consists of businesses stretching down Main Street, has a few surrounding houses in a small neighborhood. Most of the rest of the town’s inhabitants live in the surrounding area within the town limits. From the center of town the tree-covered peaks of the surrounding mountains can be seen in every direction. It’s a quiet place with kind people. But a rash of odd experiences had become the talk of the town for several years. Lights had been spotted in the skies several times, nearby livestock had been found mutilated overnight, several people reported seeing strange persons or beings on their property, others heard noises or could not account for hours of a given evening.
The following year, Jeffery Bines, a bit of a local recluse who occasionally ventured into town to buy a few things at the Fadden General Store or enjoy some drinks at Truant’s Tavern or the brewery, was found walking down main street one night nude and incoherent. Local police took him in for the night. Bines claimed he had no idea how he had ended up in town. His truck was found on his property six miles south of town. Bines explained that three nights before, he’d seen lights hovering in the sky over the trees on his property. Since that night, he’d been waking up in strange places in various states of undress. He was unable to recall how he’d gotten to such places or what had transpired in the time since he’d gone to bed and the time he had come to.
The night he was arrested was the farthest from home he had ever found himself. Police placed little stock in his strange tale, however. Meanwhile, talk in the town continued to grow. Some were quick to dismiss his claims, while others wondered if anyone was safe. Two weeks later, Bines’ ex-wife reported him missing after she hadn’t managed to contact him on the phone for a week and thus went by his house only to find his truck and all his belongings exactly as they should have been aside from one small detail: his door was unlocked and ajar. Bines, a very private man, as a rule always locked up. It was as if Bines had simply gotten up one day and walked off into the surrounding woods. Certainly some in town attributed his disappearance to Bines’ known affinity for hard liquor. Others, however, found renewed reason to believe Bines’ original claims of contact with UFOs. In any case, he was never found.
Just as folks in the area were starting to move past such strangeness, however, new talk emerged of more UFO sightings in the area. It all came to a head when news was leaked that a local family claimed to have been experiencing alien abductions. Jim and Tammy Ferguson claimed psychiatric therapy had revealed that their son, Tommy, had been abducted multiple times. Naturally, skepticism prevailed until one night in April of 2014, Tommy vanished. An in-depth investigation that involved the cooperation of local police and the FBI followed. But in the months that followed Tommy’s vanishing, little progress was made in ascertaining his whereabouts or confirming the allegations of alien abduction his parents continued to hold to so firmly. Ultimately, after a year of waiting, the Fergusons no longer found North Woodstock and the surrounding areas to be all that comforting of a place to live and moved away. Tommy’s case remained technically open, but no one really believed there was any hope of a resolution, that is, until a new case emerged in town. Hushed whispers returned and suspicions were stirred again. Whatever one might think of such matters, one thing was clear: an invisible gloom seemed to hang over the area again, thick as fog.
Her scar hurt again, and this was always unsettling. Stephanie looked out of the car window at the nearly moonless night and tried to distract her mind, which seemed determined to fixate on the small scar on the back of her neck. Silvia, who drove the old Camry while talking with Annette, pulled over and stopped the car. Outside, the driveway to Stephanie’s parents' house stretched away from the road, pine trees lined both sides. Normally, this was a welcomed sight, a comfort. But tonight, looking out that window, Stephanie felt as if the darkness appeared somehow more intensely black and the driveway longer and surrounded by unseen dangers.
“Are you sure you don’t wanna' come?” Silvia looked back at Stephanie in the back seat. “Eddie will be there.”
“I’m sure,” Stephanie replied, not taking her eyes off the driveway.
“Well, look, the movie starts in ten minutes. We have to get to the theater in Lincoln. So …” said Silvia, doing little to mask her annoyance.
“Thanks for the ride,” Stephanie mumbled, and opened her door.
She exited the car and watched it pull away. How could she explain how she felt to them when she wasn’t even sure how to rationally explain it to herself. She wished they would have told her ahead of time the evening’s plan included going to the theater in Lincoln to watch a horror movie. She felt stupid for insisting on being dropped off at home instead of going with the rest of them. Maybe she should have forced herself to go, but she couldn’t put herself through that, not anymore. It was hard enough to sleep most nights now as it was. She didn’t need to infest her mind with even more nightmares, imagined or otherwise.
Turning, she began to walk down the gravel driveway that led up to the log cabin house her parents, Tim and Dorothy Clark, had owned for the past eleven years. A subtle pulsing sense emitted from the small scar on the back of Stephanie’s neck. It sat right over her spine and most days, it was something she thought little of. It had randomly appeared there almost a year ago, but she had no recollection of what had caused it in the first place. But one thing seemed certain, any time it bothered her, she had a bad night.
As she made her way up the driveway, an increasingly familiar feeling crept over her body. Her skin crawled, and a chill traveled through her in spite of the warm summer night. She was being watched, she was sure of it. Try as she may to keep her eyes locked on the house up ahead of her, they wandered left and right, peering momentarily from one dark shadow to another. When she was younger, these woods had been a welcomed refuge for imaginary adventures. And maybe in broad daylight, she would have felt the same way about them. Now, however, they were menacing and suffocating.
This discrepancy between how Stephanie felt about days and nights was something that had been growing for months. She felt a split within herself. During the comforting light of days, she was generally happy and content. But when the sun set, she could not escape the sense of fear that crept over her. It made her feel childish. Over the months, it had worn her down to the point that even during the day while she felt safe she could not keep from thinking about each coming night. She’d grown more withdrawn and depressed. She eventually realized that the most distressing thing was not being able to talk to anyone about all of this. She knew the stories in town. It was hard to escape speculations about where that man had gone, or who had taken that boy, Tommy. So she kept her fears to herself. But even as she had finished up her second semester at Wellesley College, she found that she hated crossing campus at night. She found herself studying late in the library; sometimes, she even wandered it’s open interior architecture and suspended walkways that crisscrossed the building to kill time, waiting until someone she knew seemed headed out towards the dorms. Some nights she was lucky, other nights she wasn’t.
A subtle rustle from somewhere in the trees off to her right caught her attention. She picked up her pace. An icy chill spread through her chest as she heard the rustling matching pace with her. In an instant of brash bravado, Stephanie stopped. The rustling stopped too. There’s someone there!
Willing herself forward, Stephanie continued to walk quickly. She reached the yard and headed straight for the front steps. Stopping, she turned back to look at the woods. One part of her brain could hear what her father would say: it’s probably a deer—though it might be a coyote. But the other part of her brain, the primal part responsible for the drive to survive, felt sure that lurking in the deep shadows of those woods was something much more sinister than a coyote. She stared into the blackness and felt sure she could feel something staring back at her.
Unable to will her body to stay there another moment, she turned and bolted up the steps. Reaching the front door, she ripped open the screen door and produced her keys. She unlocked the door and flung herself inside the house before she could give much thought to the hour. It was nearly ten thirty. Her parents, both prone to rising early, were no doubt asleep. She wondered if she’d been too loud. Pausing, she listened to the quiet house. She could hear the faint sounds of the old TV on in her parents’ room. Only the light over the kitchen sink glowed downstairs. This was what her mother always did when she was out. She crossed to the kitchen and extinguished the light. The darkness felt immediately oppressive. She turned it back on and opted to pull out her cell phone to use as a makeshift flashlight.
She crept up the wooden stairs, trying to keep them from creaking too loudly, though no amount of effort prevented them from creaking to some degree. In the stillness of the house, each creak and pop seemed amplified. Reaching the top of the stairs, she immediately headed for her parents’ room. As she expected, she found them both in bed, fast asleep, the TV still playing an old movie on cable. She quietly reached over to the television and turned it off. Her mother stirred slightly, but made no other sound. Stephanie hesitated for a moment, looking at her sleeping mother. An urge to wake her swept over her. But why? What did she need exactly? What would she say to her? She was nineteen, not nine. Somehow, claiming to be scared of … of what? What did she think was outside? Now that she was inside, she wondered if her mind had just been playing tricks on her. You’re just being silly, she told herself. And with that, she turned and left the room.
***
She spat the foaming toothpaste out and rinsed her mouth. Standing in the bathroom now in shorts and a tank top, she looked in the mirror. She reached back and brushed aside her dark hair. Her fingers hovered above the scar on her neck. She touched it. A pulse like a low-level electric shock shot through her neck and back. She removed her hand and just stared into the mirror. Somewhere in the house, something creaked. Her eyes shot to the door she’d left ajar. You’re letting your mind run wild now, she told herself. The sooner you just go to bed, the sooner you can just be done with this night. But was that all she could hope for from now on? To get through nights so that she could lead a perfectly happy and seemingly normal life during the day? Standing in the bathroom in the middle of the night feeling creeped out, either by her own active imagination or by something else, she realized that this was not the time or place to work that out. She forced herself to leave the bathroom. She exited and shut off the light. Though the distance to her room was short, she felt every inch of that darkness as though she’d been plunged into murky dark waters with no sense of how deep it reached.
In her room, she quickly turned on her bedside lamp. She climbed in bed and looked over at the window. A light breeze caused the curtains to wave slightly. She cursed her father for being too cheap to install air conditioning. It was too warm tonight to dare to close the window. But it was clearly one of those nights for Stephanie: a bad night. Every now and then, she had these. Her methods of muddling her way through the night varied. She glanced over at the lamp by her bed and the alarm clock that sat below it. It was now nearly eleven. There was still a lot of night ahead of her. Leaving the lamp on, Stephanie rolled over and forced herself to close her eyes. Just go to sleep. Everything will feel different tomorrow. It always does.
***
She had no recollection of when exactly she might have drifted off to sleep, but she must have been asleep. Now she was awake, suddenly. She looked around without stirring from her place in bed. She was still on her side. Her lamp was still on. But she faced away from the lamp and clock. So she had no way of knowing what time it was or how long she might have been out. But the air felt cooler. She must have been asleep for a while at least.
A faint tapping sound somewhere behind her caused her muscles to tighten and goose bumps to travel up her arms. There was that feeling again, that feeling of being watched. She turned herself over quickly, unsure of what she would see, but hoping to see nothing at all. Her room as it normally looked confronted her. Her stuffed animals were on the old dresser, her closet door securely closed, her mirror in the corner … she hated the mirror. Something about mirrors at night …
She took a deep breath and tried to relax. Laying back down in bed, she looked over at her alarm clock. It was now 2:58 AM. She had definitely been asleep, and for a while too. That was the good news. The bad news was that being only about three AM, there was a lot of night ahead of her still. And of course, this part of such nights was always the longest. Sometimes she would just lay awake unsure of what had unsettled her. Had she dreamed? Other times, she knew she’d heard things, felt things, seen things. She pushed all such thoughts from her head. Now was not the time to think about anything like that. She had to get her mind on something else, anything else. An old urge she hadn’t felt in years crept up. Should she say a prayer? Her parents, still being “church folk,” as she had once described them to her college roommate, had brought her up with some semblance of religious tradition. But she had let all of that drift away from her—or she away from it—some time ago. It wasn’t the first time the thought occurred to her on a night like this. But she never knew what to say. Instead she just stared at her clock. The minute digit changed from eight to nine.
Her lamp flickered! Faint tapping sounds emitted from the far corner of her room. Stephanie felt the cold flow of fear race through her body. They’re here! She laid on her back, trying to control her breathing. She gripped the sheets of her bed. More tapping. Her lamp flickered again. Then, it went out!
Darkness swallowed her. It couldn’t have been more than a split second, but in that time, Stephanie wondered if she should run. But as the thought occurred to her, a bright blue light suddenly shone through her window. The light travelled up the floor, over the bed, and across her body. A pressure crept over Stephanie’s entire body as she lay there. She couldn’t move!
She was lifted from her bed, head and shoulders first, her feet remaining on the bed for the moment. Her fingers were forced to open and release the sheets. Her arms remained stiff, still outstretched where her hands had been gripping her sheets. She was standing, arms out, facing the window now. Only, there was no weight on her feet. She floated forward, off the bed, and towards the window. Her heart raced; she desperately wanted to scream, to make this stop. Only her frantic eyes could move, searching left and right for any means to stop her slow approach to the window.
An oppressive hum droned now. The light grew brighter and the hum louder. It hurt her eyes, but she couldn’t close them. Tears streamed down her cheeks, yet brighter still the light grew as she was pulled closer to it by some unknown force, some invisible hand that both pulled her from her bed and slowly squeezed her body tighter in the process. She couldn’t breathe. The light grew brighter still, until there was nothing but the blinding light and the deafening hum.
***
Karen knew better, but she was so annoyed with her husband that she couldn’t help herself. She looked down at her cell phone screen even as she drove down the rural New Hampshire road, the familiar sight of trees and the White Mountains in the distance at the moment forgotten. Instead, she read the last text from her husband: “No time, had to give them money for lunch.”
She swore under her breath and glanced up at the road. Then she looked back down and began to type out her furious message. She doubted that her son would end up being able to have lunch at all with his gluten allergy. What would be available to buy at the day camp? Would they have accounted for food allergies? How many times had she told her husband to pack her son and daughter a lunch? She managed to tap out the words, “What will Devon eat?” and then she glanced up at the road.
She screamed and slammed on her breaks, jerking the steering wheel hard to the right. A person stood in the middle of the road! The tires screeched and her Jeep Grand Cherokee leaned forward and a little to the left with the force of fighting so much inertia. Her seatbelt held her in place. The SUV rocked back as it reached its sudden stop.
Karen looked out her window. She hadn't hit the person. They still stood a few yards back in the middle of the road. It was a girl, by the looks of it, maybe a teenager. Her dark hair blew in the breeze. Karen threw on her hazard lights and got out of her car, her sudden panic instantly exploding into rage.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she screamed at the girl. “I could have killed you!”
She marched up to the girl, but as she approached, she noticed that the girl wore only a tank top and shorts. Her feet were bare. Judging from how dirty they were, she’d been walking for a while. What’s more, it seemed the shorts and tank were inside-out. The tag on the back of her shorts fluttered in the light breeze as Karen approached her. The girl still faced away. She took a shaky step forward on her stained bare feet.
