Bell nodded. "Actually, she had some wild years, but she
always took care of Jimmy. Their parents died when they
were young, and they were living with an aunt who doesn't
much care about either of them. Jimmy still lives there."
"Jimmy said she was planning to move to Pueblo with
him," Liz said.
Bell nodded. "Yes, she had gotten into a hairdressing
school. They were supposed to leave in a few weeks."
The table went silent for the rest of the meal. Liz found
she wasn't hungry, but forced herself to eat. As she did, she
found the new thing inside her asserting itself more
strongly, pushing aside the fear that she had felt for so long.
And she realized that she knew that new thing's name.
It was determination.
* * *
13
Liz and her friends walked back to Johnny's Garage in
silence. They automatically headed for the studio apart-
ment in the back of the garage.
"So what do you guys want to do tonight?" Michael asked.
"Well, Space Boy, those of us who have worked all day
are looking forward to sleeping," Maria asked.
"We'll have to work out sleeping arrangements," Max
said. Gesturing to himself, Michael, and Kyle, he added,
"We can sleep in the van."
As the group came around to the side of the garage, Liz
shook her head and said, "We'll squeeze in. The floor will
be better than another night in the van seats."
They reached the apartment door and found a pile of
blankets and sleeping bags next to it. "The locals are a
simple and friendly people who offer travelers oatmeal,
blankets, and diner food," Maria said with a smile.
"That's really nice," Liz said, examining the pile. They
were all old but clean. She grabbed up what she could and
stepped inside, the others close behind her.
* * *
"What happened in here?" she asked. The room looked
different, like it had been painted. There were some other
changes as well.
"Don't get us started," Michael said. "Isabel, our alien-
redecorator."
They took a few minutes to figure out how to fit every-
one. There were three sleeping bags, some blankets, four
regular pillows, and two couch pillows. The guys insisted
that the girls take the sleeping bags and pillows, while
they made do with the blankets, the one pillow, and the
two couch pillows.
Max and Liz would sleep next to each other, taking the
first turn on the bed. Maria and Michael would share a
blanket on the floor, though Liz could see that things were
strained between them. At least, she could see the strain
on Maria's face. Michael, on the other hand, seemed
unusually relaxed. That meant that Kyle and Isabel would
be next to each other. Kyle looked uncomfortable, but
Isabel seemed oblivious. Well, there was a little room.
They wouldn't be on top of each other.
The way things looked for the near future, Liz figured
they had all better get used to being close together.
Back in Roswell, she had dreamed about the day after she
and Max had left home and they could spend the night
together without worrying about parents. Well, she was get-
ting her wish, but none of those dreams included four other
people in the room. And Liz found that, at the moment, Max
was not the most important thing on her mind.
By now, everyone was sitting in his or her respective
sleeping area. Liz stood up and said, "I want to talk to you
all about something."
* * *
The room immediately fell silent. Everyone was looking
at her. From the look in Max's eyes, Liz knew that he
already knew what this was about and he was not pleased.
Max didn't wait for her to go on. "Liz, we all feel for
Jimmy, but this is a police matter. We can't get involved,
not right now," he insisted.
"Max, in case you weren't paying attention, the police
are among the missing," Liz replied.
"Liz, we just can't. We're less than five hundred miles
from Roswell. We can't do anything to call attention to
sorry, Liz, but I can't allow it."
Liz felt the blood rising to her face. "I'm not asking your
permission." She saw the surprise on Max's face. And hurt,
too. Liz hated to see him look like that, but this was too
important. "As you said, you aren't making all the decisions
for this group," Liz said. She softened her tone. "I'm not
talking about sending up a huge alien-flare to the Special
Unit, but maybe we can help—find something out and
place a call to the state police. That's it," she said.
"It makes me uncomfortable," Max said.
"Everything makes you uncomfortable," Isabel chimed
in, surprising Liz. She had barely spoken since they'd left
Roswell. "If we never wanted to make you uncomfortable,
we wouldn't have left the house since we climbed out of
our pods," she added.
Smiles broke out in the room at that. To Liz's surprise,
one of them on was on Max's face.
"There's something else," Liz said. "I know for a fact
that if we don't do something, Jimmy's sister Jessica is
going to die."
* * *
"Did you have a . . . ," Max asked.
"I saw it when I touched him. I saw him at her funeral.
I also saw her ..."
She tried to describe the room that wasn't a room and
the screams, but she knew they wouldn't understand
unless they saw that place, heard those screams, and felt
the menace that she had felt. "Whoever has her is very
dangerous," she said simply.
Michael was the first to speak. "I'm in," he said. That
once might have surprised her, but less than two days ago
Michael had been the one to insist they help the air force
pilot's daughter she had believed was still alive and the
victim of a government conspiracy.
"I don't like bullies," Kyle said. "I'm in."
"I'll help," Isabel said.
Liz looked at Maria, who shrugged and said, "What?
You already have a majority. Okay, I'll help. My grand
waitressing powers are at your disposal."
Liz looked at Max last.
"That's the problem with democracy, not everybody
gets what they want," he said, a tight smile on his lips.
"Okay, I'm in. What's your plan?" he asked.
When she didn't respond, he prodded questioningly:
"You do have a plan?"
"Well, I assumed we would come up with something
together," Liz explained.
It was true; she had been so focused on convincing the
group that she hadn't thought about the next step. Reach-
ing into her pocket, she pulled out one of Jimmy's flyers.
She had taken it from the diner as a reminder. Now she
thought of a more practical use for it. "Isabel?" she said,
* * *
holding out the flyer with the picture of Jessica on it.
"I'll do it," Isabel said. "But it's a long shot. Since I don't
know h
er, she'll have to be asleep for it to even have a
chance of working. And she'll have to be dreaming some-
thing useful about her surroundings, something that will
tell us about where she is or who has taken her."
Liz nodded. "A long shot it is. We know what will hap-
pen if we do nothing."
Isabel tried to clear her mind. She found that most of the
usual petty thoughts and distractions weren't there. They
had been replaced by a single thought, by a single pain.
Jesse.
Leaving him had pushed aside a lot of things. Cleared
out the cobwebs. Now, he seemed to have taken up resi-
dence in her brain as well as her stomach as a large, heavy
ball. By force of will, she loosened the knot and was
relieved when it began to disappear. Flashes of her pain
reared up from time to time. She let them come and then
bubble away.
When her mind was finally clear enough, she opened
her eyes and focused on the picture. She saw a girl of some-
where between sixteen and eighteen years old. She was
pretty, and the picture looked posed, like a school picture.
Images of Jesse and other feelings that were surpris-
ingly strong rose up. The knot started to form in her stom-
ach again. Isabel didn't fight it. Instead, she concentrated
harder on the picture, the smile.
Jessica.
Then Isabel began to feel the girl.
* * *
There was no better word to explain what dreamwalk-
ing was like. She simply concentrated until she was able to
feel people. The closest analogy she could make was the
feeling she had about people that lingered after she had
dreamed about them when she slept herself. Dreamwalk-
ing was like that feeling, but instead of dissipating as she
woke up, it grew stronger and stronger until she was with
them in their dream.
With certain people, the feeling lingered long after the
dreamwalk. She still had flashes of Max from the time that
she had dreamwalked him while he was in the Special
Unit's White Room. He had been so scared and vulnerable.
She had felt it all; she had also felt him more clearly than
she ever had before while they were growing up.
Then there was Alex. Isabel had dreamwalked him a
number of times. At first it was just to find out if he was a
threat to their secret, but even then the dreamwalks had
left her feeling closer to him, connected to him in a way
that she had had no words for at the time.
Eventually she was able to give that closeness a name.
For a very short time around the night of the dance when
she and Alex had held each other and she had called the
closeness by its proper name—in her head if not to him.
Then Alex was dead.
Oddly enough, thinking of Alex did not distract Isabel.
It focused her concentration and her energy. It had hap-
pened before, and she liked to think that he was somehow
helping her. Isabel began to feel Jessica more keenly,
though the girl remained just out of sight, as if she was
dancing on the edge of Isabel's peripheral vision. There
was a cloud between them. Isabel had no trouble giving
* * *
that cloud a name. It was fear. Wherever she was, Jessica
was very afraid, even while she was sleeping.
Isabel concentrated again and suddenly found herself
in a bedroom. Looking at the decorations on the wall, she
realized it was a little girl's bedroom. On the bed she saw a
dark-haired girl of perhaps nine or ten sleeping fitfully.
It was Jessica, Isabel realized. And she was dreaming
about her herself as a little girl, sleeping in her room. The
room felt very familiar to Isabel, but she knew that was
only because it was familiar to Jessica. There was some-
thing else, too, a sense of deja vu, as if Jessica had not only
been here before, but had had this dream before.
Suddenly, Isabel was sure that Jessica was in the middle
of a dream she had had since she was a little girl. That
made the dream less helpful for Isabel. A recurring child-
hood dream wouldn't have the kind of detail that Isabel
and the others would need to find Jessica in the real
world. There was a noise from inside the closet on the
other side of the room, and the girl on the bed opened her
eyes. Isabel could see fear in young Jessica's eyes.
Jessica glanced with recognition as if remembering this
dream. Whatever was in that closet scared her badly. Isabel
considered interfering, but decided to let the dream run its
course. Perhaps it would show her something helpful.
Jessica got out of bed and walked toward the closet. She
did so almost unwillingly, as if she knew what was inside
and was being forced by some twisted dream logic to seek
it out.
Isabel felt a swell of sympathy for the scared little girl in
front of her in a long white nightgown and the scared
young woman out there somewhere. She wanted to stop
* * *
the girl from opening the closet door, but Isabel forced
herself to keep out of it. Jessicas life would likely depend
on what Isabel could learn here.
The girl padded across her room and reluctantly put
her hand on the closets doorknob. Slowly she turned it
and started to pull at the door.
An instant later, the door practically exploded open,
throwing the girl backward and onto the floor in front of
her bed.
What happened next, happened quickly. The first thing
that Isabel noticed was the noise: A loud roar sounded
from the closet.
It wasn't an animal sound that Isabel had ever heard,
nor did she recognize it as anything from any movie or tel-
evision show she had ever seen. It was a high-pitched and
piercing series of clicks and tones that Isabel could feel in
her chest.
Isabel was sure of one thing, though: It was terrifying
Jessica. Feeling her panic rise, Isabel realized that there
was something unnatural in that sound. Reflexively,
Isabel found herself raising up her hand to defend herself
as Jessica backed away from the closet as she sat on the
ground. Then the creature that made the sound took a
step from the darkness of the closet into the light of the
room.
It was hideous. Isabel couldn't believe that it had come
from a child's imagination. The creature had roughly the
shape of a person, but that was where the resemblance
ended.
Covered in a scaly brownish-yellow skin, it had a large
head that came to a point in the back of its skull. Its eyes
* * *
were a bright yellow, and it had a wide mouth that jutted
out from its face and was full of long teeth.
It was a monster, and Isabel felt her blood run cold just
looking at it.
A scream sounded from behind her, and Isabel turned to
see Jessica cowering against her bed. The creature looked
down at Jessica, and then it seemed to notice Isabel.
The monster began to make its sound, which was even
louder now that it was free of the closet. When it lurched
forward, Isabel instinctively raised her hand and sum-
moned her energy. Before the monster could take a step,
Isabel released her power and hit it full force in the chest.
The creature betrayed a moment of surprise as it sailed
backward into the darkness of the closet. As Isabel caught
her breath, she sensed motion next to her. Then she turned
to watch Jessica getting up and heading for the closet.
"Wait," Isabel said.
But before Isabel could act, the girl grabbed the closet
door and slammed it shut.
Then Jessica looked up at her and said, "We should go."
Isabel nodded and said, "All right."
She took Jessica's hand, and they started walking for
the bedroom door. They had only taken a few steps when
Isabel felt the little girl jerk in her hand.
Looking down, Isabel saw that something was pulling Jes-
sica toward the bed. A claw with three fingers had snaked
from underneath the bed and had grabbed Jessicas ankle. She
recognized it as belonging to the creature from the closet.
Jessica screamed, blind terror in her voice. "Help me,
don't let him take me!"
Isabel pulled on Jessica's hand, trying to tear her away
* * *
from the bed. But the creature was very strong, and Jessica
started to slip down to the floor.
"Nooooo!" Isabel heard herself scream.
Then the world flashed around her, and Isabel found
herself in a large room. No, not quite a room, she realized as
her heart hammered in her chest.
She looked around frantically and saw that the creature
was gone. She was relieved, but still felt the tension and
adrenaline of the encounter in Jessica's bedroom. As she
started to relax, she took note of her surroundings. She
was in a ... place that she had never seen before.
It wasn't a room.
It had a floor that was made of some sort of metal and a
ceiling maybe ten feet above. But it did not have walls. The
floor and ceiling seemed to go on forever on all sides until
they just disappeared into the distance.
There were no lights that she could see, but there was