Okay, I'm back. Thanks to all of the many reviewers who have submitted reviews in the last four-and-a-bit years since I last wrote. I know it's been a long time coming. Every once in a while an email would crop up in my email inbox from the folks here at FanFiction letting me know I had another review, follower, etc. So Roy and company were never too far away. I was just busy with other writing projects (I have 4 novels on the go. Eventually I might even finish them). As I write this now I am listening to the original 1977 LP soundtrack of Close Encounters by John Williams. Back in Chapter 12 I mentioned an Amtrak station in Moorcroft. Recent research shows there is no such thing. There is no Amtrak whatsoever in Wyoming except for motor coaches. I could have changed that chapter around to allow for that, but chose to roll with what I had for story purposes. Anyway, here goes…
Chapter 13
Late Thursday Afternoon.
Sylvia, Brant, Loughlin and Lacombe got off the train. Brant handled the transaction for the rental car by paying cash.. Laughlin had explained to them about the army and all of the precautions they'd had to take thus far. Brant had trouble believing it, but he went with it anyway.
Out in the lot they got into a spacious Buick and headed out with Brant driving and Laughlin giving directions from the passenger seat.
"Look for a Motel 6 just outside of Moorcroft. That's where they'll meet us," he explained.
"And our Dad is really going to go through with this crazy press conference?" Brant asked.
"Yes, he is."
"And are they going to show up?"
"Don't know."
Twenty minutes later, Brant saw a Motel 6 sign on his left. He put on his blinker and turned into the parking lot. He found an empty spot and pulled into it. Laughlin got out and opened up the trunk to get out the wheelchair. Brant help him get Lacombe into it. Sylvia just stared at the motel. In one of those rooms was her long lost – and presumed dead – father.
"Which room," she asked.
"I don't know. Just a minute." Laughlin pulled out his cell phone and typed a quick text: "We're here. In the lot."
A door opened slightly on the far right side of the motel. Its number was 10.
Laughlin lead the way pushing Lacombe. Conneaut stepped out into the warm afternoon sunshine.
"Mon ami!" he exclaimed when he saw Lacombe.
The two men hurriedly spoke in French to one another for a moment.
"Monsieur Laughlin, welcome. Things are all prepared. Bonjour, Monsiuer Neary. You look like your father. And the young lady?" Conneaut extended his hand towards Brant.
Brant accepted the gesture and replied, "This is my sister, Mrs. Sylvia Connor. Her husband didn't come with us." He paused a moment. "Our father is really in there?"
"Yes, he is. I forget myself. Please come in." Conneaut opened the door wide.
Roy still couldn't believe there could be so many channels on a television – or that it could be that skinny and that wide. Music channels, movie channels, channels devoted to just the weather, to food, to history, to nature. He had the remote in his hand flipping channel after channel when the newcomers stepped into the room. He gasped.
"Monsieur Lacombe! You're still alive!"
"Barely mon ami. I am a dying man but I thank God He has let live long enough to see this day. So many things I want to ask of you! But see whom we bring with us! Look!" He raised a shaky hand and pointed behind him.
"Hello, Dad."
"Brant? My God, is that you?"
Roy made to put his arms around his son, but Brant moved away.
"You've got a lot of talking to do."
"I know, son. I know it." Then he saw the young blonde-haired woman. "Sylvia? My baby girl?"
"Yes, Daddy." Sylvia tried to stay mad, but she could feel herself weakening at the sight of him. She did accept her Dad's hug.
"And look at you. Looks like my baby girl is about to have her own baby."
"Yes. It's going to be a boy."
"My grandson," he said wonderingly. "How about that?" he looked to Jillian who was grinning. "Where's Trent? Is he here too?"
"No Dad. He didn't want to. He wants nothing to do with you. We told him you were alive. As far as he concerned, you're still dead. He has a wife and two daughters now. He doesn't want them involved.
"Granddaughters. Two of them. I'm a Grandpa." Roy sat down on the edge of a bed and broke down in tears. "I've missed so much. Look at you two. When I went on that ship I thought I knew what I was doing. Now all I see is what I missed."
"You really did go with these aliens?" Brant asked. "Mr. Lacombe here told us, but I didn't really believe."
"I did. It's true."
"I was there too. I was on the ship. I was only three when they took me." Barry introduced himself, his mother and Jane.
"I think my sister and I would like to talk to my father alone, please," Brant said.
"A good idea," Conneaut agreed. "We have a second room next door. Come mes amis, and I will take you to it."
Roy, Brant and Sylvia were now in the room alone.
"Why did you leave us? Do you have any idea of the Hell you put us through? What you put Mom through when those government people told her you were dead? We had to move away from the street because everybody looked at us weird. They would talk about our crazy father behind our backs!" Brant ranted. "Why were a bunch of aliens from another planet more important than your own flesh and blood?"
"They were never more important than you. It's just – have you ever had a buzzing in your ear that won't stop? You sometimes a bug will crawl in there and you can hear it and it doesn't stop and it nearly drives you insane? That's how it was – only with me it was an image. With Jillian and Barry over there it was that five note sequence. Everywhere I looked I saw that shape. And this buzzing told me that it was important. It did nearly drive nuts trying to figure it out. You remember the sculpture in the living room of the old house. Once I had done it, I loathed it. Then I saw a news report about a chemical spill on television. I saw the shape – Devil's Tower. I had to see if it was really real. You have no idea of the relief I felt to see that it was real. But it wasn't enough. I had to see it with my own eyes. I had to go. I didn't know what was going to happen when I got there. I didn't know that I wouldn't come back. My plan was to go and see it and whatever was going to happen and then come home and see you and your Mom and try to get you to come home.
"Did I know what I put you through? On some level, yes. On another, no. I was so obsessed with that mountain I couldn't think straight. I never stopped thinking of you. They took me to other galaxies. They took me to where they come from. And I wanted you to see it. I wanted your mother to see it. Do you remember that night that I first saw the UFOs?"
"Sure," Brant replied, "I remember a crazy man waking me up in the middle of the night and making us get into the car to look at nothing."
"I sort of remember that," said Sylvia as she tried to bring back the memories of her five year old self.
"Yeah, okay, it was crazy. I admit that now. I just wanted you to see it with me. I wanted your Mom to see it. I wanted to someone else to see it so that I knew I wasn't crazy. Didn't go so well, I guess. You still think I'm crazy?"
"I don't know what to think. Lacombe and Laughlin told Sylvia and I about this place on the way here. It sounds to incredible to be true. And then what that guy said – what's his name? Barry? – that he was there too?"
"Yes. The aliens took him from his home. Jillian said they took him right through the doggy door. She was here then too, to get him back. We climbed the mountain together." Roy once again told his story right up to standing on the platform of the mothership. "You can't imagine what that was like. Being on the cusp of the greatest adventure of all time. I remember Christmastime wit you guys. I remember how you'd run down the stairs, your faces all lit up with excitement at the wonder of it. Multiply that feeling by a thousand and that is what it was like for me."
Brant allowed himself to smile. "Yeah, we did have some good Christmases. That one was one of the best. Lacombe told us that we couldn't know what having those visions in your head might have done to your brain. Maybe there is something to that. But that doesn't let you off the hook. Now what about this press conference? And this General that is after us? I mean, we're in this now as much as you are."
"You can still leave here, and you should. Both of you. Now."
Sylvia shook her head. "No. I want to see these aliens for myself. I want to look them in the eye and what it was that you left us for. You do think they're going to come, don't you?"
"I don't know for sure, but there is a good possibility, yes."
"And if they want you to go back with them?"
Before Roy could answer, there was a knock at the door and Conneaut re-entered.
"Is everything okay?"
Brant nodded. "For now."
"Bon. I suggest we get some rest now. Tomorrow will be a big day. I was thinking that the young people should have the other room and we older people take this one. Oui?"
"Sounds fine," Sylvia said. "I'm exhausted."
Outside in the parking lot, a man in a black Chevy watched the comings and goings of the people in rooms 10 and 11 through binoculars. He picked up a walkie-talkie.
"Sir, Laughlin and Lacombe just showed up to the party. And they brought two young people. I think they may be Neary's kids. We can arrest them all right now. Just send me the men."
"No," General Taylor over the walkie. "Change of plans. Leave them be for now. I want these aliens to come. If we take those people in now, they won't show. Let them get ready for their little press conference at the Tower. Just keep an eye on them. That's all for now. Over and out."
General Taylor returned his attention to the field where he was standing, approximately 2 miles from Devil's Tower. The flat-topped mountain loomed over his men as they prepared there armoury for the next day. Riot gear and guns enough for his fifty troops were unpacked from the backs of trucks. He looked up to see a few stars beginning to pop out into the darkening sky. They would be ready.
To Be Concluded…