Chapter 38

 

“Okay, we‘ve got 72 hours to gather evidence before we return to Strangetown,” Raven said once we were roaming the Pleasantview streets. The machine had worked.

“Wait,” I said, “real 72 hours, or The Sims 72 hours?” I couldn’t resist making the joke.

“Joan, now is not the time.”

“Sorry,” I replied. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”

“We need to figure out what kind of evidence to get,” Raven said as we stopped at a crosswalk.

“Yeah, how exactly do you prove that someone arranged an alien abduction anyway?” I asked.

“We should get some information first,” Raven said. “Like how common alien abductions are in Pleasantview and what normally happens with one and then go from there.”

“Good idea.”

“We need to find a place where we can access the Internet.”

“Uh, Raven,” I told her, “this is ‘94. There is no Internet.” Then I realized what I said. “Oh my gosh, there‘s no internet.”

“I thought it was invented in 1992,” Raven said.

“Yeah, but nobody really used it until ‘98 when Goggle was invented,” I told her. “Look, either way, we would have to go to the library. There has to be a book on some of this stuff there.”

“That‘s also a good idea,” Raven told me.

We found the Pleasantview library and walked inside. It looked like any other library, with a checkout desk up front and lots of books scattered all over the place. The first thing we had to do was find the section that housed the books we were looking for. Normally, I would go to the computers and use the database to look up the call numbers, but libraries didn’t have those in 1994. I knew what we would have to use instead, and I started walking toward rows of what looked like mini filing cabinets.

“So where‘s the database?” Raven asked me when we reached rows of wooden storage units.

“This is it,” I told her.

“Isn‘t there a computer we could use?”

“Those aren’t around yet. We‘ll have to use the card catalog.”

“The what?” Raven asked.

“Look, I have a distinct memory of my mom using one of these when I was four,” I said. I opened one of the tiny drawers to reveal many note cards inside. “Each one of these drawers contains note cards with the title of the book and the call number,” I explained. “This is what they had before computers.”

“All right,” Raven said, getting the idea. “I think we should look for information on the history of Pleasantview first and see if there‘s anything about alien abductions.”

“Sounds like a plan,” I told her. I went to look for the drawers where I could find the call number for a book, but I stopped once I realized I needed more information.

“Raven, how do you spell Pleasantview?” I asked.

“Are you serious?” Raven said.

“You know I can‘t spell,” I told her. “Is it p-l-e-a-s-n-t or p-l-e-s-a-n-t?”

“Joan…”

“Okay, fine. If you won’t tell me I‘ll look under Sunset Valley. I know how to spell that.”

“Joan, they don‘t alphabetize the books. They use the Dewey Decimal system,” Raven said.

Aw man! I knew if I remembered about to using the card catalog I’d forget something stupid like that. I hit my head and just like that, another question came to mind.

“Raven, where would you find alien abductions in the Dewey Decimal system?”

“I‘ll figure that out, you look for the history book,” she answered. “Oh and by the way, it‘s p-l-e-a-s-a-n-t.”

I found the section on history in the card catalog, pulled open a drawer, and found a book about Pleasantview. The call number led me to the library’s second floor where I found whole rows devoted to history books. When I found the book on Pleasantview, the size surprised me. How could there be so much information about one suburb?

I opened the book and stared flipping through it. I couldn’t find anything on what I was looking for. Raven showed up when I had gotten through about a quarter of the book.

“Find anything?” she asked.

“Not yet,” I responded.

“I‘ll look through it then,” Raven told me. I handed her the book and she gave me a note card. “Here‘s the call number for the books on alien abductions. Why don‘t you go look for those?”

“Got it.”

I found the books as easily as I found the one on Pleasantview. There were several of them so I grabbed the ones that looked like they had the most information and took them to the table where Raven was looking through the other book.

“I found it,” Raven said when she saw me coming.

“That quickly?” I asked her. “How did you do that?”

“I used the index,” Raven told me. “Anyway, look at this. The book says that there‘s never been an alien abduction in Pleasantview. Maybe one or two outside of town, but none in the highly populated areas.”

“That all changes in two days,” I said.

“Is there any way we can get a copy of this, or anything else we find here?”

“Sure. All libraries have copy machines.”

“How much would it cost to make a copy?” Raven asked me.

“I don‘t know. Maybe ten cents. Mark the page, we need to keep looking.”

I opened one of the books on alien abduction to a page filled with pictures of fancy telescopes.

“That‘s a lot of telescopes,” Raven pointed out. “I wonder what the big deal is about them.”

“I know,” I said. “My aunt would be thrilled to be able to stargaze through any of these.”

“There has to be a reason why they’re pictured here,” Raven said as she started flipping the pages back. “Maybe if we go back a little… got it.” She pointed to a paragraph at the top of the left page. “It says here that aliens always abduct people who are stargazing through fancy, expensive telescopes. The photos are pictures of telescopes that people were using when they got abducted.” Raven looked at me. “Was Bella using anything this fancy?” she asked me.

I went back in my mind to what I had seen on Don’s roof, where Bella had looked through a simple telescope.

“No,” I said. “It wasn‘t anything nearly as fancy as any of these models. The aliens never would have taken her while she was stargazing with the telescope she was using.”

“Unless someone asked them to,” Raven said. “We should take a look at that telescope later. Do you think Don would have it out before the night of Bella‘s disappearance?”

“Well, considering Dina‘s the mastermind behind all of this,” I told her, “I would suspect that she would have told him to put it out earlier in order to avoid suspicion.”

“That might be,” Raven said. “I‘ll keep looking through this book while you look through one of the others. We‘ll have more time to go look for evidence that way.”

“I was just about to suggest the same thing,” I said.

I took another book from the group I had taken off the shelves. I opened it to find that the book was, in fact, a bunch of documents about everyone who was the product of an alien abduction and their fathers. It was just like Pascal told us - aliens were able to create children with the men that they abducted. It wouldn’t have any useful information for us in it, but it did look like it had been published recently so I decided to take a small detour and see if Kelly Curious was listed. I went to the index and was scanning though the C’s when something caught my eye. There, listed among the people who were half alien, was a man with the name Caliente - Dina’s last name. I flipped to the page that profiled him in more detail and my jaw dropped.

“Raven, you gotta look at this,” I said.

“What is it?” she asked, taking her eyes off of her book and looking at mine.

“This book is a document of everyone who was the product of an alien abduction,” I explained.

“How did you find that?” Raven asked me.

“I don‘t know. It was on the shelf. But anyway, I was looking to see if Kelly was in here, but look what I found instead.” Raven stared at the page.

“Flamenco Caliente?” she said, almost in disbelief.

“You know, like the dance?” I clarified. She looked at me like I was crazy. “Yeah, I know, it kinda sounds ridiculous but…”

“Is he any relation to Dina?” Raven asked, pulling me back to the task at hand.

“A direct one,” I said. “Look.” I pointed to the last paragraph on the page. “It says that Flamenco married and had two daughters: Nina and Dina Caliente!”

“So this is Dina‘s father,” Raven said.

“That means she‘s one fourth alien.”

“And the aliens would be more likely to do a favor for someone who had their own blood,” Raven said.

“We‘d better copy this too,” I told her. “We have to show this to Kalena.”

“How do you find this stuff?” Raven asked me.

“I have no clue, but it looks like me not staying focused actually paid off for once,” I said. “But there‘s more information to find. We should keep looking.”

It took a few hours, but we finally got all the information we needed. Once we finished researching, we took the books downstairs to the photo copier and made copies of the pages with useful information. Then we left the books on the cart and left the library. We walked out the doors with confidence - we knew where to go from here.

 

Chapter 39

 

Our first order of business was the telescope. It was by far what would be the most convincing evidence that Bella’s disappearance had been set up. We went to Bella’s house and looked across the street to find that the telescope was already sitting on Don’s roof, just like I had suspected. All we needed was the model number, which could be found on the telescope. Getting to the telescope would be easy - after all we did have the power of flight. The hard part would be remaining stealthy. We wouldn’t be able to do much of anything if we were caught snooping around on someone’s roof. We would have to make sure no one saw us. For that, we needed the cover of nightfall.

As we waited for the sun to set, we spent the time figuring out what we were going to do. Our sightseeing trip the first time around did come in handy, since we were kind of familiar with the town.

“So what‘s the plan again?” Raven asked me.

“Once we‘re on the roof, we need to find the model number of the telescope,” I said. “It should be on there somewhere.”

“And what if we can‘t find it?”

“What do you mean?”

“We‘ll be searching a black telescope at night and you‘re horrible at finding things,” Raven said. It wasn’t an insult - she was just stating the truth. I couldn’t find my own shoes when they were right in front of my face.

“But you‘re not,” I told her.

“So where on the telescope would the model number be?” she asked.

“I don‘t know.”

“Exactly. We‘ll need a backup plan in case we can‘t find it.”

“What about taking a picture?” I asked. “We could find a store that sells telescopes, show someone the photo of Don‘s telescope, and they can tell us the model number.”

“There are two problems with that,” Raven told me. “One: we can‘t take a picture at night.”

“Ever heard of a flash?” I asked. Raven gave me a look. It was her way of letting me know that I had said something I shouldn’t have. “Sorry, that just sounded like a stupid question.” Then it occurred to me what she was getting at. “The flash won‘t bring much attention - no one will see who took the picture.”

“There‘s still one problem,” Raven said. “I may not have known about the Internet, but I‘m pretty sure digital cameras are not around yet.”

“Yeah, using one of them is out.”

“And using film would be a waste of time,” Raven continued. “We‘d have to shoot the whole roll and then wait for it to develop. We need the picture as soon as possible, and there‘s no way we can do that.”

There was, however, one camera that would give us a picture as soon as we took it - a Polaroid. By the time we bought the camera, ate dinner, and walked all the way to Don’s house, the last rays of sun were setting.

We both know from experience that unless a house has a huge security system or floor to ceiling windows, the people inside would have no idea that someone was on his roof at night. Now was our chance. We walked around to the back of the house and Raven lifted us up, a disk of telekinetic energy supporting us. It disappeared once we landed on the roof, and we immediately went over to the telescope. I searched the top side and Raven looked at the bottom

I ran my hand along the smooth surface, looking for any indentation that felt like letters or numbers. I found a few dials, but other than that the surface of the telescope was marking-free.

“Did you find anything?” I asked Raven, who was searching the other side.

“No,” she said.

Raven pulled out a flashlight and shined the light on the telescope as we continued our search. I checked everywhere, but I still couldn’t find a number.

“Got it,” Raven said. She pulled out a pad of paper and a pen and handed them to me. She showed me the number, and I started writing it down when a car came down the road. Raven shut the flashlight off, and just in time too. The car turned into the driveway of Don’s house.

I couldn’t see who it was, but someone got out of the car and began walking to the front door. In an effort to conceal myself better, I bumped into the telescope, the force knocking the pad of paper out of my hand. The next thing I knew the paper had landed right on the pathway between the driveway and the porch. And then Don, or at least I think it was Don, stopped in his tracks and picked up the pad of paper, probably wondering why it had fallen off his roof. Crud!

Once he walked inside the house, Raven turned the flashlight back on.

“Get the picture,” she said. “He‘s coming up.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. I pulled the camera out of my backpack and quickly set up a photo. We didn’t have that much time. Sixty seconds at the most. I pressed the shutter button on the camera and a photo slid out from the bottom. I grabbed it as soon as the camera let it go. As soon as Raven shut off the flashlight, the silence on the rooftop gave way to a creaking noise.

Raven and I exchanged glances, and I quickly stuffed both the camera and the picture in my bag. Then we took off running in the opposite direction of the stairs. I took Raven’s hand when we reached the edge and we jumped off the roof.

After about two seconds of falling, I felt myself being pulled up. A solid surface appeared under my feet as we begin to move forward. Then, Raven and I flew off to safety.

 

***

 

The next morning, Raven and I set off to find a place that sold telescopes. The picture had turned out pretty good. It wasn’t a great shot, but we could still use it to identify a certain telescope. I remembered seeing a science store around the place where we had eaten lunch on our first visit, so we headed for that location.

On the way there we passed a park and I decided to take a detour through it so I could see one place for myself. It was a grassy area shaded by a few trees. I knew what this was. It was the place where Mortimer and Bella had their very first kiss.

Bella had told Amanda and Anne about it as a bedtime story. It was their tradition to visit that place on every anniversary and they had even gone on their wedding day. She said that after she had been abducted, Mortimer had come to that place and cried. So for the first original anniversary after they had been reunited, they stopped by this place on their way home from their trip. As they stood together, Mortimer started crying.

“What‘s wrong?” Bella had asked him. Mortimer had placed his arms around her and pulled her close to him.

“I never thought that I would ever be here with you again,” he told her.

“I‘m so glad that we are,” Bella said. And then she turned around in his arms and kissed him. She told us that kiss had made that anniversary the best they’d ever had.

I figured that as long as Raven and I were in the area, we might as well go see that place. I could tell my friend that had had visited a place that’s very special to her.

Raven and I left the park and walked to the science store. The telescopes were located in the back of the store and we could see several on display. We had no time to look at them all - we needed a model number.

We walked over to the assistance desk where a guy was standing. I showed him the picture and asked him if he could tell us what model the telescope was. He went into a back room and came out with model numbers of three telescopes that closely matched the one in the photo. Raven wrote down the one that looked familiar. We left the store with booth the number and the picture.

We had walked a few blocks down the street when I saw something that caught my eye. It was a woman with blonde hair and a black dress - Dina!

“Look over there,” I said. “What do you think she‘s doing here?”

“I don‘t know,” Raven told me. “She could be doing anything.”

“Let‘s follow her,” I suggested. “She might do something suspicious.”

Raven nodded in agreement. This was great luck. I didn’t think we’d ever run into Dina, but if we could get evidence of her doing anything related to Bella’s abduction, Dina would have no chance of defending herself in court.

We waited as Dina walked several paces past of us, and then we followed her down the street.

 

Chapter 40

 

Following Dina around became a mini tour of Pleasantview. She went to a nail solon, a department store and a supermarket before heading to her house. Didn’t that woman have a job? I got my answer when she told someone she had called in sick so she could get the day off and still get paid.

It was mid-afternoon by the time Dina pulled in the driveway of her house. There were boxes all over the place, and besides Dina’s car, a huge truck sat in the driveway. A “for sale” sign was in front of the yard, with the red “sold” sticker slapped in the middle of it. So Dina was moving. The question now, was where.

Dina stepped out of her car and was greeted by two guys who were moving a sofa out of the front door. They stopped when she tried to get in the house, and she responded with a “Well get moving! I‘m not paying you to hold up furniture!” She was definitely the same jerk.

There were several boxes lying around in the front yard, giving Raven and I easy access to whatever Dina had in there. We decided not to look through it, however. That would have been a stupid idea, as Raven and I needed to keep a low profile.

We spent the rest of the afternoon staked out at Dina’s house. We couldn’t see exactly what she was up to, but we did hear an occasional outburst at the movers, the loudest one being “Don‘t move the bed, you idiots! I have to spend one more night here!”

After getting tired trying to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside the house, I reached into my bag, pulled out a piece of gum, and slipped it in my mouth.

“You bought gum at the store?” Raven asked me.

“Of course not,” I told her, “I had it with me when we went though the machine.”

“You brought that with us?”

“I didn‘t know what kind of gum they had in 94.”

Eventually, Dina left her house again and we followed her to a restaurant, giving us a chance to grab something to eat.

After the sun had set, Dina came out of the restaurant and drove off again. We flew after her. This time, she took an old country road that left the town and crossed a bunch of fields. She pulled over about an hour after she left town. Raven and I saw her get out of her car and walk into some kind of field.

“What is she doing?” Raven asked me when we took off behind her.

“I don‘t know, but she must be up to something,” I said, slipping another piece of gum in my mouth.

“Why else would she be here?” Raven agreed. Dina disappeared behind something that looked like a row of bushes, and Raven and I got lower to the ground so she couldn’t see us.

“I hope this isn‘t a corn field,” I said as we approached the line of bushes.

“We have more important things to worry about,” Raven said.

“I know that,” I told her while we peered over the bushes. “That‘s what…” I stopped cold once I saw what was going on behind the bushes. Dina was standing in front of an expensive telescope, shining a flashlight through the viewfinder. The light went through the telescope, seemingly magnifying in power, and a bright column of light shot up into the sky. I had read that it was the technique used to attract aliens. It didn’t matter that I knew that Dina had arranged Bella’s disappearance with the aliens. I never expected to see her making contact with them, but now I had caught her in the act. My jaw dropped and the gum came tumbling out of my mouth. “Oh come on! I just put that in my mouth!” I whispered in frustration. Raven warned me to be quieter. “Sorry,” I said. “You don‘t think she would wait to arrange the abduction until the night before it would happen, do you?” I asked.

“She‘s been here before,” Raven said.

“Really?”

“That telescope was there when she got here, and the chances of her randomly finding that kind of telescope in the middle of a field are close to zero.”

“You‘re right,” I said. “We need to get a picture of this.” I reached into one of our bags and pulled out the digital camera we had brought from Strangetown. “There is no way we‘re missing this. Now where is that night vision switch?”

“Over here,” Raven said. She took the camera and pushed a button that I somehow hadn’t been able to locate. She gave the camera back to me and I took the picture. There, on the screen, was incontrovertible proof that Dina had set up Bella’s disappearance. It was too bad that there was no way we could use that in the trial, but knowing that Dina had indeed set up Bella’s disappearance was satisfying enough. I knew Bella and Mortimer would feel the same way.

Dina suddenly dropped the flashlight after something had shocked her. The flashlight fell to the ground. It bounced as it hit, sending the beam of light right into Dina’s face. She shrieked as the light hit her eyes, and I couldn’t help but laugh.

“What did you do that for?” she snapped. “You could have blinded me!” Dina picked up the flashlight, shut it off and threw it back on the ground. “What took you so long?”

“We took the same amount of time that we did when you first contacted us,” said someone in front of her. He had a normal voice, but I could see that he had completely black eyes and green skin - he was an alien!

“But you knew…” Dina started, “oh, never mind! I‘ve set up the rendezvous point. It‘s a small house that‘s…”

There was no way I was passing this opportunity up. Having a picture of Dina shining a light through a telescope was incriminating enough, but Dina talking to an alien - this I had to capture. I grabbed the camera and was about to took a picture when I got an even better idea. I switched to mode on the camera and instead of taking a still picture, I shot a video as Dina continued to talk to the alien. That way, I got audio too.

“Be there at exactly at nine,” Dina finished.

“You can count on us,” the alien said. “Goodnight.” And then he disappeared back into the darkness. I shut the camera off.

Dina looked on the ground frantically in the place where she had dropped the flashlight.

“Where did that thing go?” she asked.

I looked at Raven to find her holding a plastic bag containing Dina’s flashlight. I starred at her with my mouth wide open.

“How…”

Not so loud, Raven said, signaling a switch to telepathic communication.

When did you get that? I asked her.

I moved it while Dina was talking to that alien, Raven told me. It was her best idea yet. The telekinetic energy she uses to move objects turns them black, the perfect way to move something at night that you wanted no one to see.

Let me be the first to tell you that that was ingenious, I told her.

Well here’s another brilliant idea, Raven said.  Let’s leave before Dina suspects anything.

Raven placed the flashlight back in the bag and we took off into the darkness.

 

***

 

Raven and I talked it over - there was one thing left for us to do on our last day in Pleasantview, and that was to see where Dina was moving to. That task had to wait until the afternoon when Dina finally left her house for the last time. Instead of following her on foot, or in our case, in the air like we had the previous night, we got in a taxi and told the driver to follow Dina’s car.

The driver was an expert on following people and not so much on driving. At one point Dina had made it through an intersection and we shouldn’t have, but the driver went ahead and gunned it, sending us flying under the red light and through the intersection with me cringing in my seat.

“I‘m so glad you have healing powers,” I whispered to Raven. She was looking out the window.

“Joan,” she told me, “You might want to look at where we are.”

I did, and I knew exactly where we were. It was a street we had walked on several times, on both of our trips to Pleasantview. Then I saw Dina’s car make a turn onto a street just as familiar - the street Bella and her family lived on.

Raven and I decided to continue following Dina on foot, and we got out of the cab. Dina’s house wouldn’t be too hard to find - it would be the one with the moving vans in front of it. We found it all right, and believe it or not, Dina was moving into the house right next to Don‘s, and right across the street from Bella and Mortimer Goth.

“What‘s she doing?” Raven asked me. “She should know how much suspicion that could cause.”

“She‘s setting herself up,” I realized. “She‘s getting ready so she can move in and pretend to comfort the Goth family once Bella is gone. That… ugh I want to punch her in the face so bad!”

There was nothing more we could do until we got back to Strangetown, so I decided that we should spend the rest of the day relaxing before we got back. Being tense when we got back wouldn’t do us any good and what better place to unwind than the beach. It was the only place we hadn’t been to on our first visit. We couldn’t swim - it was only April - but the beach was open so people could go fishing. We didn’t fish, but we did make a sand castle and I jumped a few waves. It was an ocean beach. I found that out when I tripped, got a mouthful of water and felt like I had been thrown into the San Francisco Bay.

We spent that night camping out, but I didn’t look at the stars. We hadn’t seen Bella or her family at all, but that would have been kinda creepy. Something about seeing my friend right before something horrible happened to her didn’t feel right. And it would be totally weird to tell her what happened when we got back, even for me.

The next morning, it was time for us to leave. We would leave the same time we had arrived - 9:00 in the morning. Raven and I made sure we had every piece of evidence we had gathered in hand as we waited. Right at 9:00, a white circle appeared in front of us. Raven and I grabbed hands, and we stepped into it.