Andrea Lepri

The last Christmas on Earth

Translated by

Mickey Perkins

Original Title

L'ultimo Natale sulla terra

First Edition

0111 edizioni -- www.0111edizioni.it

English Edition october 2019

Publisher: Tektime -- www.traduzionelibri.it

This novel is a work of fantasy, any reference to existing people and real events is purely coincidental.

Copyright © 2019 - Andrea Lepri. All rights reserved

Index of the Episodes

EPISODE I Harry's awakening

EPISODE II The plastic model

EPISODE III In the Dead Sea

EPISODE IV Ufo Crash

EPISODE V James's frustration

EPISODE VI The Zen Garden

EPISODE VII Pedro's death

EPISODE VIII The Dome

EPISODE IX Nautilus

EPISODE X In the Great Pyramid

NOTES The Author and the Translator

Episode I

Harry's awakening

Harry looked around confused, struggling to keep his eyes opened. He had just been woken up by complete and deep silence, almost unnatural as if the very essence of life had suddenly left that corner of the world to escape from some kind of dire threat. The fresh and damp air barely moved, a single and unexpected gust shook blowing among the yellow-reddish leaves of the maple grove, otherwise still like in a postcard. Looking at the dark sky above him, speckled only by some remote star, Harry realized he could not tell if it was early morning or late evening.

At first, this fact appalled him, then, by increasing his focus on the clouds that were lying over the Penobscot Bay, he noticed that these had taken on the typical shades of twilight. He assumed the sun must have just set and once again he looked around perplexed, worried because he was late. He carelessly scratched the bite of an insect on his shin, his hand absently came up until an unpleasant sensation of stickiness forced him to look down; then he discovered that he had both knees flayed and that the sense of stickiness was due to a pink jelly, which was penetrating his wounds to heal them with a speed that he thought was impossible.

He watched amazed as his own flesh regenerated until the process was finished, then he touched fearfully where his blood had just gushed a few moments before and he was astonished that he was not hurt at all. He wondered how he could have gotten those injuries, he was sure he had not crashed down from the branch of some tree, because he was more than certain he had not climbed because of his crazy fear of spiders. Later he wondered if by chance he had fallen off his bicycle, but there was no way that was possible. He was a grown man now. How could he have forgotten? Annoyed by all these mysteries, he ran his hands through his smooth, black hair several times, leaning his lower lip forward in an attempt to collect his thoughts. In the end, he sighed resignedly, he could hardly believe it because it had never happened before and yet he must have fallen asleep.

But what happened to his knees? The noise of something struggling furiously in the water intrigued him, drawing him away from his worries. He got up and moved toward the bank of the stream to see what it was. He clung to a low and protruding branch, cautiously walking around a tree bristling on the bank to avoid sliding down and there he spotted his own fishing rod. It was exactly where he left it, between two rocks near the place in the stream by Megunticook Lake. A monstrously large trout was hopping out of the water, trying to break free from the hook. Harry could not remember if he was still awake at the time the fish had bitten and if so what had been his last thought before he fell asleep.

Meanwhile, the grove was slowly recovering to breathe, a sudden and persistent pruning announced that it was the time when the squirrels leap from branch to branch and then go ashore searching for food. An otter, recalled by the noisy trout, peeked out from a bush a few meters upstream, spotted the easy prey and dived, raising splashes of water; when it emerged it aimed firmly towards the fish that seeing it began squirming even more furiously: he knew he had no escape.

Far away the bell chimes of the Rockport church announced that it was time to get ready for dinner. Thinking again he should return home, Harry ran quickly looking for his beloved mountain bike. He really cared about it because convincing his parents he was able to ride it had cost him an arm and a leg; that's why every time he went to the stream he would rest the bike on a tree after wrapping the fishing rod with a rag to avoid scratching it. Instead, he found the bicycle thrown to the ground carelessly; he rushed to pick it up and inspected it inch by inch, to make sure that it wasn't damaged.

Suddenly he felt like someone was spying on him, he looked around for the umpteenth time and the darkness that was cloaking everything intimidated him. A few days before, his father told him to apply a battery-powered light to the handlebars of the bike, but he objected saying that afterward, it would no longer be so beautiful; in that exact moment, he regretted his own decision, because right then a light would have been really useful. New and more intense noises revealed to him that the wood was becoming increasingly alive and faster and when he heard the first nocturnal birds sounds he was frightened so much that he hoped not to be in front of a bear.

He put on his glasses that were around his neck and placed the elastic that prevented him from losing them around his nape. He noticed that one lens was cracked and chipped and he wondered once more what the hell had happened to him; finally he stretched his right arm and then he bent it to bring the watch right under his nose. He wore it by habit because he was not able to tell the time, but knowing that it was late he still brought his hand to his forehead in a blatant gesture deciding that, even if reluctantly, he would leave the equipment there because he doesn't have enough time to pick it up; he told himself he would come back the next day.

He was disappointed he could not take the trout with him because it was perhaps the biggest fish he had ever caught, but he had stopped making noise and this meant that it was probably already gone in the belly of the otter. Harry imagined the otter satisfied while going back to her den to get some sleep because thanks to him the hunt was already over. He shrugged and told himself that at the moment he had far more serious things to think about, for example, the fact that surely his parents already were very angry. So, even though it was a little scary it was necessary to take the shortcut. Without thinking twice he picked up the backpack containing the snack and all its treasures from the ground and threw it over his shoulder, jumped clumsily into the saddle and began to push on the pedals struggling a little to keep the handlebars straight, as he felt stable he swooped down into the woods and crossed the bush in a flash.

He came out on an immense meadow and after walking a few hundred meters he turned left, then he followed a stretch of the mule-track that ran along the valley floor between Payson and Camden until, at the crossroads for the city, he sharply cut through a beet field, being careful to stay away from the scarecrows because he remembered rumors that at night they try to grab whoever passes nearby.

Finally, he climbed to the top of the Camden Hills where he stopped to take a breath. He took off his blue polo shirt, leaving just his white ribbed undershirt on, he used his shirt to wipe the sweat from his forehead and take a break to observe the sea, it was illuminated by the expanse of lights that ran along the winding coast. The evening ferry ride was accompanied by low flying seagulls: illuminated by a multitude of headlights it was crossing the Penobscot Bay bringing home the commuters from Deer Island, whose lights reflected a thousand glints against the dark surface. Harry moved his gaze to the valley floor in the direction of Rockport, his home was just four or five minutes away and by daylight he would have been perfectly able to recognize the dark slate roof. Instead, he saw confused flashes of red and blue light making their way through the ash trees tops and he kept his eyes wide open in astonishment, then he squinted them for better focus and realized that the lights came right from his garden.

Fearing that something might have happened to his parents, his heart skipped a beat, then he tied his polo shirt to the barrel of the bike and got up on the pedals flying down the steep descent, regardless of the pebbles and holes that might have led to a nasty fall.

James had been pacing back and forth in the garden for hours and was now close to exhaustion and hopelessness. Starting from the early morning he spent the day trying to think according to the habits of his son: every time that was approaching some important appointment for Harry, like the 2 pm tv series or the snack at 4 pm, or the Egyptology collection at 5 pm, he had hoped to see him coming back home. Instead still nothing! He stopped and checked the clock once again, it was past 8 pm and Scooby-Doo had just begun, but there was no shadow of Harry.

He shook his head discouraged and began to roam like a robot back to the large garden, chasing away mosquitoes, and due to the anxiety he had not even noticed that he was reducing his favorite flowerbed into mush, the one adorned with violets that in few days would have welcomed the big Christmas fir tree.

He felt a sense of physical discomfort and unhooked the first two buttons of his shirt as if that simple gesture could help him feel better.

Although they were in late December, that year the summer seemed not to want to end. Instead of snow and ice, the lawns were covered with fragrant flowers and the temperature continued to be around thirty degrees. For this James had taken the bad habit of chugging Budweisers one by one, cursing the heat and humidity; consequently, his stomach had definitely grown and his persimmon colored Deputy Sheriff's uniform had begun to be tight.

Even though science was still far from finding a plausible explanation for this incomprehensible phenomenon, experts from all over the world were in agreement that the climate had by now definitively gone mad and things would hardly get back to normal. To support their theory, which initially many had judged absurd, in many places of our planet, deserts had begun to seem like prairies and vice versa.

Entire ecosystems had packed their bags and quickly moved in search of better living conditions, leaving many scientists speechless. James stopped and looked up at the starry sky, then covered his ears trying to feel far, at least for a moment, from the noise that surrounded him. He closed his eyes and counted to ten, breathed deeply hoping that once opened again he would be in his bed, finally awake, thanking God because it was only a bad nightmare. Optionally, in order to hold his son immediately, he would even have agreed to be the victim of some joke orchestrated by an author of tacky Reality Shows. Instead, when he opened his eyes and uncovered his ears, he was still in the middle of the same chaotic shouting, the same traffic of frosty fluorescent bodices, the same colored flashes cutting through the darkness and of the same confused barking of tired dogs. There were those who gave orders and those who distributed tea and hot coffee, someone with block and pencil asked questions everywhere taking notes, a guy placed in front of a field radio marked portions of a topographic map using a marker pen from the gigantic tip.

James got back to his wanderings and his wife Eve took his arm, accompanying him in his furious gait and pulling back trying to restrain him. Another woman would have been dragged away by his volume and his firm step, but she was a bit taller than him, thin and muscular, the classic Northern European woman with long ash-blond hair and blue eyes so clear that at first sight they might even have looked albino. Tired of being pulled like a trailer, she gave him a yank forcing him to stop, then he looked in her eyes.

"What?" he said annoyed.

"Really? You should look your face in the mirror, then you wouldn't ask me what" Eve replied. James snorted.

"Why don't you let Dr. Parker give you a sedative?" She urged him immediately, using a tone James thought was too thoughtful.

"Do you still insist on this? Do you want to tell me why I should take a sedative?" He replied nervously. Before Eve could even answer, Dr. Adam Parker interfered.

He had a fine mustache and round intellectual glasses combined with a fancy butterfly, he looked like a mannequin escaped from an antique shop.

"Mr. James, please listen to me! You have not been sleeping for much longer than a day, your eyes are completely bloodshot and the veins on your neck and temples are extremely dilated. I am telling this for your own health, you should rest because going on like this you may collapse within a few minutes. I'm sure that if you would allow me to check your blood pressure, it would be off the charts" he explained to him seriously, staring at him with his tiny clear eyes.

"Until I won't see my son again I am not willing to rest, understood? Indeed, if waiting here means collapsing, that's fine!" James argued with a raspy voice looking over at the doctor: he was trying to identify who was sharing out some coffee outside in the crowd.

"How I feel is not your business, and if..." he was saying till Hellen arrived. "Excuse me," she said placing a hand on James's forearm trying to get his attention. Eve noticed the gesture and glared at her jealously or perhaps simply claiming her ownership; Helen defiantly stared at her while placing the Sheriff's star pinned to her chest and then again to James.

"I must return to base, I have to plan tomorrow workday," she told him tightening the grip on his arm as a sign of solidarity, then Eve gave her again a piercing glance.

"Sure, I see" he nodded nibbling his upper lip.

"Good. If you have any news, call me please"

"Yes Sir, I will keep you updated. Thank you for doing this" he replied sadly because he feared that instead, for that evening, there would have been no news.

"Don't give up, I'm sure that anytime now you'll see Harry riding his bike up there, at the top of the driveway," she said trying to encourage him.

"I really hope you're right... but I just can't understand why he did it. Lately, we hadn't even scolded him, we didn't give him one reason to run away from home..." he concluded shaking his head slowly.

"I don't think he ran away from home, otherwise he would at least leave you a note so you could feel guilty" Helen objected after thinking for a while. "Anyway try to hold on, you'll see that everything will work out. See you Tomorrow" she concluded, then she walked away towards the patrol car, deliberately ignoring Eve. Before getting on the Jeep she stopped to give instructions to agents and volunteers so that the next day at dawn, unless news, everyone would already have known what to do without wasting precious time. Eve focused on James.

"Love... I would rather prefer not to insist, but why don't you drink herbal tea? Maybe something that won't let you sleep but help you at least to relax".

"So I wasn't clear enough" he snapped so loudly that everyone was looking at them, "I am not going to relax! If you didn't notice yet, I'm in this condition because despite all the efforts we made so far we can't find our son! There is no sign of him or his mountain bike within five miles, and if you really want to know what I don't understand is how can you stay so calm, and above all why we haven't decided yet to call someone expert! By now it is clear that Harry has been kidnapped and despite all their goodwill these people will certainly not be able to help us find him again!"

"Oh really? Then if that's what you think, why aren't you looking for your child on your own?" The Beagle breeder, who gathered the canine units, told him bothered. His partner answered with a blank stare, shrugging his shoulders.

"A kidnapping? We are a very normal family that lives in a remote village of peasants and fishermen, who should have kidnapped our son? And what for?" Eve said, shocked.

"I don't know, what I know is that we have to call experts, I told you! What? Do you hope our Harry will be found thanks to them?" James vented his frustration, pointing to the muddled rescue teams set up by the people of the town; they were all returning to the base camp because it was dark and finding Harry would have been impossible. Men and women were emerging in small groups from the bush, exhausted and distressed, and deliberately avoiding to look at Eve or James. Most of them put torches and backpacks to the ground wearily, depressed, discouraged; one guy called loudly for the dog that had plunged back into the bush in pursuit of a hare, another one slipped into the Headquarters, prepared inside a camping tent.

"Do you think your colleagues and your boss have done better so far? Maybe the sheriff?" Eve retorted, pointing to Helen as she was giving the latest guidelines. James was going to reply, but the doctor placed a hand on his shoulder, drawing his attention.

"Mr. James, I would not seem... don't be offended if I get involved, but I don't think your son may have been kidnapped by someone. You know very well that Harry is not a boy like everyone else, any banality that would leave another child completely indifferent, like a fall from a bicycle, could have caused him emotional trauma. Harry may have lost his sense of direction, or could ..."

"Save your breath!" James shouted, shaking his hand sharply.

Helen was already seated in the driver's seat of her Cherokee and was about to start the engine. When she heard him screaming, she opened the door and poked her head out to see what was happening: James was approaching his nose a few inches far from the doctor's face and he was going to explode, and knowing how much he disliked him, she feared he might do something foolish. Some of the volunteers were heading towards the two contenders aiming to calm down their souls. Helen was wondering it was not the case to intervene in person.

"Look, my son is not an idiot, he only has Down syndrome! Harry has gone fishing alone at Payson Corner several times, he knows how to ride his bike perfectly and can't get lost for five damn miles. Is it clear, Doctor?" James was shouting when a sudden movement behind the doorbell attracted Helen's attention, who would have been able to recognize that silhouette even a hundred miles away.

Helen's heart started beating wildly. Just as she had predicted to James a few minutes before, the boy had materialized beyond the hedge that bordered the east side of the property. Harry used his last energy to quickly walk the steep path that led to the entrance of the garden, and there he stopped to look at the scene panting. He did not understand the reason for all this shouting, but he got close to them, watching fascinated as if it was a movie; most importantly he was relieved because his parents were both there and at first sight, it seemed they were both fine.

"Thank God" Helen murmured, bringing her hands to her mouth, jumping off the road and running towards Harry, who had meanwhile walked a few more yards and stopped not far from James. He was approaching interested and amazed for the circus before him. He got off his bike and got down on his knees as if the forces had abandoned him all at once.

"Harry!" shouted Helen as she saw him fall. Everyone turned to look and then immediately exploded in a roar of joy followed by euphoric liberating applause. James was the first to reach his boy and literally tore him from Helen's arms.

"Dad, you're not angry, are you? I know I was late, but it's not my fault. I must have fallen asleep".

"You fell asleep? " Echoed James. "You have been missing home since yesterday at 2 pm. It's eight in the evening! You've been out for thirty hours, where the hell have you been?" He shouted grabbing him by his curved shoulders.

"I... How can it be possible, since yesterday?" Harry said confused trying to figure an excuse out, but not finding one he looked at his father with a guilty face. His eyes were moistened and his lips began to tremble, he was going to cry because he thought no one would ever believe him.

"Enough! Can't you see he is not feeling well? Let him go!" yelled Eve pushing James away. Then she held his hand helping him to stand up. "Don't worry honey it's all right! Come on, let's go inside" she whispered hugging him protectively.

Nodding she invited the doctor to follow them and James, still confused, watched them go towards the house. He wanted to go with them, but he could not move a single nerve: the discharge of stress showed as a sudden wave of fatigue whose backwash had carried him off any remaining energy.

Harry's dog suddenly came out of the reed that bordered the green at the back of the house and ran to him wagging his tail.

"Toby!" Harry exclaimed reaching out to pet him, but unexpectedly the dog stopped a few inches from him and immediately backed away to avoid the contact. He raised his snout and sniffed the air, lowered his ears and arched his back, lowering his tail back between his hind limbs. He sniffed again and walked away from the boy again, then straightened the hair on his back and began to growl at him, showing his teeth. Finally, he positioned, ready to attack.

"Toby..." Harry murmured disappointed as he moved towards him. James guessed what was going to happen and ran trying to avoid the worst thing. "Toby, what..." he said just in time, a moment later the dog pounced on Harry, knocking him over and biting his forearm, which he had instinctively lifted up to protect himself. After that, he placed his nose an inch from his face and again he growled threateningly. James belted the dog and lifted him from the ground aiming to make him harmless, but he felt that he was struggling so hard that he would have escaped immediately. The sensation of dripping blood showed him that the claws of the powerful Collier's hind limbs had caused him a cut in the thigh of his right leg.

"Hurry, take him inside, I can't hold Toby anymore" he shouted to Eve. She helped Harry to get up and dragged him home by running, the doctor picked up the leather bag and hurried after them. James let the dog go who barked and gave paws to the door already closed and immediately ran to hide in his wooden kennel, where he continued to yelp and howl for a while. James wanted to punish him but he gave up just after one step because his leg was giving him too much pain. "All we need is the crazy dog ..." he whispered stunned scratching his head. That swing of emotions had destroyed him.

It was late and the volunteers were very tired, but Helen continued giving orders to dismantle the Base Camp anyway because the equipment could have been useful if a new emergency had occurred somewhere else. At the end she thanked those who had participated in the rescue and dismissed everyone except the ambulance driver, Dr. Parker would have noticed what to do once he had determined that the boy was fine. Since James was still dazed, Helen was concerned about taking the mountain bike into the shed, she knew how much Harry cared for it and how angry he would have been if the next morning it was still there, thrown out in the meadow.

She bent over the bike and spotted the boy's clock on the grass. She thought the boy must have lost it when he dropped to his knees so she slipped it into his pocket willing to return it to James as soon as possible. She grabbed the handlebars and noticed that it was covered with a very fine light blue-colored luminescent powder; mechanically she tried to scratch it off with the nail of her little finger, but a tiny cut on her fingertip provoked such a pain that she immediately gave up cursing, then she shrugged and started pushing the bike towards the shelter. James recovered and joined her when she was already at the door of the tin shed.

"What did I tell you?" she told him with a big smile on her face.

"As always you hit the mark again" he admitted "it has been scaring. And then the dog ... did you see what he did? Until yesterday he would never have dreamed of behaving that way".

"Dogs are special, probably Harry had a smell he didn't like. Now don't bother your brain anymore, the most important thing is that your boy is at home again and above all that he is safe and sound".

"You're right ... but I really want to know where he was all that time ... do you have any idea how long those thirty hours have been?"

Helen didn't tell him, but she knew it at least as well as he did because she had always felt an inexplicable bond with the boy. "Don't worry, sooner or later he will tell you everything. But you know him, don't try to force him or he will raise an impenetrable barrier and he will shut himself off ... be patient and let him decide when to tell you everything" she advised him shaking his hand to cheer him up and, as it happened other times their bodies touched, that contact gave both of them a sensation similar to a slight electric shock... Embarrassed, James pulled his hand away, then nodded unconvinced because he was dying of curiosity and wanted to ask his son about what he had been doing all that time.

"Now I really have to go, it's very late. Take a few days off, you look wasted" Helen said to close the conversation.

"I don't know, I'll think about it".

"What do you mean?"

"You know, if I stay more than a day locked up in the house, I end up going crazy. And then even Harry will be better distracted, whatever happened to him. I am sure that as soon as he returns to the Scout Camp and his habits than better it will be, for him and us all".

"So what?"

"I think I'll get back to work the day after tomorrow" James pointed out. She scolded him with her face, but she knew she couldn't force him to stay away from work.

"It's your decision, but stay close to him" she replied, and he nodded again.

"Will Eve go to work tomorrow?"

"Knowing her, I think so, and I don't get it. Sometimes it seems like she doesn't care about the two of us".

"Don't say that, you know everyone shows his feelings in many different ways. Still, until everything is back to normal, don't show up, otherwise I'll send you home" Helen concluded, laying down the bike, then pulled the garage door over and left.

On the way home, James saw the doctor going out and ran after him. " Dr. Parker ... Adam..." he called, and he slowed down.

"Don't worry, James, it's all right. I carefully examined Harry and, except for what the dog did to him, there is not a single scratch on him. I applied a light bandage to his arm, but Toby is healthy and vaccinated and the bite will have no effects" he informed him, continuing to walk towards his Guzzi.

"Indeed about the dog, do you know why he acted like that?" James asked him, accompanying him.

"I have no idea, I'm not a vet," Parker said rapidly. "Anyway, I gave the boy a sedative, you should go soon or he will be asleep" he added, stopping in front of the bike.

"Has he told you something?" James insisted.

"He's a little confused, he doesn't remember anything. Now I really have to go, I just received a call from the Roses" he concluded by showing him the flashing led on the pager.

"Thank you for everything, doctor. Goodbye".

The man answered with a vague smile and James walked away, but after just two steps stopped. "Dr. Parker?" he called him, and he sighed annoyed because it seemed that James was not really going to let him go.

"Look, I ... I know it's worthless, but ... I'm sorry for..."

"It's okay, it's okay. Now go to your son" the doctor ended the conversation, and James obeyed.

The doctor nodded to the ambulance driver like to say you can go home, then dropped the tool bag into the sidecar of his 1937 Guzzi Sport. He took a buckskin from the glove compartment and removed the layer of moisture from the saddle, an instant later he was booming away.

When the alarming situation ceased, James was experiencing tiredness he'd never had before. Looking down the stairs he was overcome with dizziness and had to hold onto the handrail to keep him from falling. He took a lifetime to reach the upstairs and once he reached the doorway of the bedroom he timidly looked out the door. Harry was lying on the bed with his eyes closed, Eve was sitting beside him and drawing some invisible circles on his forehead with his forefinger to help him relax. James looked at the life-size copy of Pharaoh Tutankhamun's golden mask hanging on the wall opposite the door, then glanced along a line of hieroglyphics until he came across a photo of the Giza Plain taken from the satellite and next to it the three-dimensional poster that reproduced the Sphinx. Later he saw the model of an ancient Egyptian Solar Ship resting on a shelf. He continued by the path of the Nile reproduced on the wall until he got right to his wife's face.

"If you're not hungry, at least try to get some sleep, the doctor said you should rest" she was saying to his son. James came in and she looked at him resentfully because a few minutes before he had attacked Harry, then she moved sideways to let him stay and he sat down cautiously beside her.

He took Harry's bandaged arm and lifted it gently, he opened his eyes in surprise and looked at him uncertainly because he feared his father would start to grumble again.

"How are you, Professor? Is it hurting you so much?" James asked affectionately instead. Harry was relieved cause when his father was angry he didn't call him by that nickname. "So you are not upset with me?" He still asked to have absolute certainty.

"Of course not," said James hinting a smile. Harry smiled at him and his eyes lighted up.

"I wasn't even angry before, it's just that you made us..." he started to add, but Eve pinched his leg looking at him badly and he winced because she had caught him just where the dog had hurt him before.

"... It is that we have been so anxious..." he mended, lowering his head.

"Dad and I were so scared for you, so we were so nervous" Eve explained.

"Yes, Mom is right" agreed James, "we have been very worried for you".

"I didn't want to make you ... it's just that..." the boy began to say, but immediately he fell silent because a lump in his throat prevented him from continuing, then he hit against the edge of the mattress to release his frustration.

"You don't have to worry, now it's okay. Let's not talk about it anymore, okay?" James suggested, winking at him. Harry smiled again and looked at the Constellation of Orion painted on the ceiling, made of a special fluorescent yellow paint that made it shine all night. "We will go to Egypt anyway?" He asked them, taking courage. James tried to imagine what would have happened if his son had lost himself in a Casbah or in the middle of one of those neighborhood markets crowded with tourists, and thinking that they probably would have never seen him again he overshadowed. While looking at the brochures stuck between two volumes in the library his heart shrank, then not knowing what to answer he turned to Eve. "Of course we'll go, if I am not wrong we decided that it will be your Christmas present" she confirmed.

"It's fantastic," the boy said enthusiastically. "Thanks" he added, hugging them both with his short, stubby arms.

"But you will have to be very careful and listen to everything we tell you!" Eve pointed out, and Harry nodded.

"You have to promise it" James pointed out.

"I swear on Amon Ra" Harry confirmed solemnly.

" Well. Now we go to sleep because we are destroyed and you will do the same. Do we agree?" Proposed his mother, getting up, James did the same.

"All right," said Harry.

"Goodnight, Professor," James told him, bending down to kiss his forehead.

"Goodnight daddy". Then when James was near the doorway he called him back. James stopped and turned to look at him, Eve passed by and left the room, but stopped in the hall to listen.

"Dad, I haven't told you a lie. I don't remember it, what happened. I woke up suddenly, and..."

"It's okay, I told you don't worry. What matters now is that we are all together again" he assured him. "Sweet dreams kid" he repeated, taking a step forward, but the boy called him once more, forcing him to stop again.

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Dad, what does it mean I have the Down Syndrome?" Harry asked out of blue; James felt his stomach twisting and he cursed the moment he had used that word in his presence, even if unknowingly. He blamed himself for breaking the only taboo of his life and his mind ran back almost sixteen years before, it was a beautiful sunny morning like any other day. Dr. Parker had chosen that sunny morning to tell him that his son had genetic problems and that anomaly, that extra chromosome, would have caused him a "different" life.

He had reported it to him in the clinic, without preparing him at all for the news and without humanity, coldly explaining the fact to him as if he were teaching a normal lesson in a university classroom. At that very moment, James discovered the meaning of the word "hate", because he had hated the doctor for his eternally insensitive manners. He had thought that if someone had pointed out to him that he had just sat on a bomb ready to explode, he would have made that usual unbearable gesture with his hand and replied, "Well, we will see what we can do about it." He remembered how in an instant all the projects he had done on his child had collapsed, at that precise moment he realized that from that moment on their lives would be changed forever.

Since then they would have had to think mainly of blocking the blows because Harry would never have reached full self-sufficiency and probably would have been bullied even starting from the kindergarten. Often James asked God why it had happened to him, almost as for personal offense or spite, he had repeatedly wondered if this was a punishment for something he had done and, if so, for what. But when he picked up Harry for the first time all his doubts and bitterness suddenly vanished and over time he learned that his son was something incredible. Something different, indeed not worse, and so he had made peace with God.

While he was looking for the most suitable words to answer James swallowed a couple of times, he had the impression time was flying. Harry kept staring at him, waiting for an answer, his eyes half-closed and his tongue resting on his lower lip, just a little bit protruding, and he couldn't tell if the question had been asked three seconds or three hours before.

"It means...it means..." he stuttered, unable to finish the sentence.

"It simply means that you are special ... but you already knew that!" Said Eve, returning into the bedroom to help James.

"Now sleep, or this time I'll be the one to get angry!" she added a little bit impatient, tucking him in, then turned off the lamp on the dresser and took James by the arm to drag him out.

James was still under the sheets with his arms folded under his head and peering at the ceiling, he was too tired to sleep and couldn't stop thinking about those nightmarish hours. He heard the television downstairs turning off and his wife slowly coming up the stairs. Eve entered the room, took the clip out of her hair and placed it on the dresser, took up her brush and the nightgown and went to the bathroom without looking at him once. He followed her with his eyes until the bathroom door was closed, only then he slapped with anger the pillow next to him. Eve had stopped changing in front of him for so long, over the years they had almost completely lost their intimacy and confidence and had sex seldom; James could not even remember when it had been the last time. Moreover, she always wanted to have it in the dark, as if she had something to be ashamed of, and James had never liked that. In the end, as in a silent truce, he had stopped looking for her and she had begun to deny herself, without trauma, and James had thought resignedly that it was probably because of their own hormones that they no longer fit.

Suddenly he compared his wife to a Praying Mantis: just as the insect kills his companion after the relationship that serves only to procreate, in the same way, she had killed their relationship after having had Harry. Annoyed by his own thoughts, he snorted and turned on his side in trying to sleep. Eve entered the room continuing to smooth her hair with her fingers untangling a knot. She put the brush on the dresser, mirrored herself one last time and slipped under the sheets. "Goodnight," she said, turning off the light and then turned her back.

"Goodnight?" James said, turning the light back on, Eve gave him a nervous glance. "Why, now what? I'm destroyed and I want to sleep!"

"How can you be so calm? Our son was away for a day and a half, he came back with torn clothes and broken glasses but no a single scratch on him. Furthermore, he does not remember where he was nor what he did for all that time; we have been searching for him by sea and by mountains and there was no single sign of him. Then suddenly, as he had disappeared, he reappeared magically, even so, everything is fine now? As if nothing ever happened? And all you can say is "goodnight"?"

"Why? What do you think we should do now? Do you want to call the FBI to find out what happened? My son has come home and that's enough for me, and let it be enough for you too!"

"I can't!" James murmured, shaking his head. She sighed dejectedly.

"He got probably lost, perhaps he found slept in a barn or a cabin for hunting and spent the night there. And maybe he doesn't want to tell us the truth because he fears our reaction" she strived to say it stretching her arm toward the light switch.

"When he told us he didn't remember anything he wasn't lying!" James insisted.

"How can you be sure of that?"

"You also know that Harry doesn't tell lies! And in any case, this fact changes everything, we will have to review the margin of trust and freedom that we can grant him! This is a big step backward" he concluded dismayed.

"How can you say so? I think you're exaggerating".

"Do you think I'm exaggerating? Think if it happens again, maybe next time we might not be lucky enough to see him again! Do you know how many people disappear every day without leaving a trace?"

"It won't happen again, don't worry!" she cut him off with her firm expression. Shocked by the excess of security in the tone of his voice, James oddly looked at her.

"I mean, my guess is it was just a prank, I don't think he will do it again... and how can you even presume to know how I feel about it? I'm exhausted, I stayed awake all night the same just like you! Now I'm begging you, please turn the light off, I really need to get some sleep!"

James thought about them, when in the middle of the night together they were wandering in the woods searching for Harry, shouting his name as loud as they could, and concluded that perhaps he had judged her too harshly. Eve had not stopped searching for a moment, even when he had returned to base camp to take stock.

"You're right ... I'm sorry, that was mean of me" he admitted, and she looked at him seriously. "You're forgiven," she told him after a moment.

"Are you serious?"

"Yes, as long as you let me sleep now ... please, I need it so much" Eve said, then turned on her side and curled up. James turned off the light and turned to her, made his chest stick to her back and pushed his knees into the crook of her bent legs, then gently laid his hand on her hip and moved a little closer. He had naively dared to hope that episode could have helped them to be closer, to reopen a speech that had by then been closed, but in response, she took off his hand and let it fall a little further. "I said goodnight" she pointed out, pushing toward the edge of the bed to get away from that contact.

"Goodnight" James replied, annoyed and disappointed, then turned away.

After continuing to change position and turning over for at least half an hour James had succumbed to fatigue, the digital alarm display showed it was seven minutes past three in the morning and he had been snoring loudly for over four hours. Eve put her hand on his shoulder and shook him vigorously, he mumbled something in protest and curled up pulling the sheet towards him. She began to count mentally and before she could even arrive at ten James was snoring again, stronger than before, so she turned on the lamp and studied him to make sure he was really sleeping soundly. When she was sure nothing would have wakened him up, neither firing a cannon shot, she turned off the lamp and took a flashlight from the drawer of the dresser, slipped silently out of bed and after putting on her robe she climbed the stairs leading to the attic.

In the attic, she started looking for a faulty wooden skirting board element, once she found it, pushed the table away and slipped her hand into the slot to pull out an old leather bag. She opened the zipper and spilled the contents onto a dusty carpet, chose what she needed and repeated the stairs. She went back into the master bedroom, holding a small bottle to which she had already removed the cap, then she went around the bed to join James, stopped in front of him and after a brief hesitation she placed the bottle just under his nose for a couple of seconds. He jumped suddenly and opened his eyes, opened his mouth as if to say something but unable to speak, because he instantly fell into an even deeper sleep. Immediately afterward, Eve went to the bedroom and repeated the same treatment to Harry, who had the same reaction as James, then took an object similar to a metal clamp from a pocket of her robe; an object that ended with a magnetic hemisphere placed on top of a telescopic stem. She pulled the boy's head abruptly, grabbed the pliers and stretched the stem towards his face while wondering how she could not be sorry for what she was doing to him. She looked at him again for a few seconds, her arms firm, still being completely indifferent, then she summarily slipped the device into his nose because she was in a hurry to go back to sleep.

The Rockland Sheriff's Office controlled the entire Knox County coastline and much of the hilly area behind it. It had been placed inside an old neoclassical building set in open countryside, near the Provincial road that connected South Hope to Rockville and even to the vastness of the area it was perfectly equipped. Helen hardly up to the steps until the entrance, framed by the stubby white columns that supported the pediment, she mumbled a greeting to the agent Dower who was working in the gatehouse and slipped furtively into the hallway reluctantly. The woman had never been happier to work in such a quiet town, she knew that probably that morning would run off without trouble and she would have enough time to recover. She needed to sit and stay as long as possible with her eyes closed because she felt like she was falling apart; in fact, she spent the whole night trying to delete the image of that frightened boy clinging to the handlebars of his bicycle.

She walked through the hallway with his head down, pointing straight to her office, responding with nods and grunts to the greetings of the agents she met along the way.

"Helen" the receptionist tried to stop her with her shrill voice, but Helen as responding raised an arm, to say "whatever it is, it can wait", and went straight on her way. Cindy looked at her walking away shocked because she didn't expect such an answer, then shrugged, thought "worse for you!" For a moment Helen felt guilty for being so rude to her, and soon she was seized by the suspicion that probably, judging by the anxiety she had caught in her voice, that morning would not have been as quiet as she had hoped. Opening the door of her office she closed her eyes and began a loud yawn that ended when the door was closed.

"Bless you!" Exclaimed an unexpected male voice, making her jump. Despite her numb senses and the blurred vision due to two massive tears, Helen found that figure and voice vaguely familiar. She repeatedly rubbed his eyes, and when her eyes started working well again, she looked frustrated at the man who was sprawled on her chair. Dr. Stevenson was the last person she ever wanted to have to deal with that morning.

"You took it easy this morning!"He said, checking the clock, then reached for his red-orange juice, but she forced him to retract his arm with a sharp glance. While she was trying to find the words to answer in the most appropriate way, she violently scratched the little finger of his right hand, which continued to annoy her uncomfortably from the previous night. "What a nice surprise" she mumbled, "I come to work after two consecutive nights without sleeping and I find you blissful seated on my chair, with your feet crossed on my desk. And as if that was not enough you have just eaten my breakfast, and you are not just someone but a coroner. And if there is a coroner in my office, then there is a dead body coming! Am I right?"

Stevenson pointed to the corridor in the direction of the morgue, to specify that the corpse was already on the couch, then raised his hand to show his fingers open to "V" to emphasize that, indeed, the corpses were two. At first, Helen hoped that the doctor was there for a quick visit and as usual he had stopped only for one of his usual jokes, perhaps even for have his breakfast, but looking at him again she realized that on his face there was not even a shadow of a smile.

"Gosh! What a great way to start the day" she murmured, despaired. He spread his arms as if to clear his name and then pointed to the dust-covered treadmill set in a corner of the office. "Do you still keep yourself fit?" He asked. She turned absently to the roller, but just a moment later she remembered that this was one of his usual tricks, her head snapped back and surprised him with his open hand reaching back for her juice. Helen put her hands on her hips and looked at him annoyed, then he faked to sweep away some crumbs from the desk and then tidied up his shirt.

"I haven't lighted it for a while..." Helen said turning around the table while he got up to let her seat, she sat down and scratched her little finger again, yawning again.

"What happened to your finger? It seems to be pretty bad".

"What do you mean?" She asked, looking down to take a look until then she had not considered that annoyance and it appeared alarming.

"I don't know, from the color of the skin it would seem the beginning of necrosis ... if I were you I would immediately jump to a dermatologist to get a check" Stevenson advised her, grabbing her wrist to look at it better, but she abruptly pulled her hand back. "Forget my finger and tell me who's there!" She said, then grabbed the glass and took a couple of sips of juice because she began to feel her throat dry.

"I don't know, they didn't have documents and their car doesn't have a license plate" the doctor informed her, and she threw her eyes to the sky, cursing it because that was the worst way to start an investigation. "Where were they found?"

"Apparently two nights ago they were in the mood for effusions and they hooked up in the woods behind Camden Hill, near the Megunticook Lake. What happened afterward is unknown, they were found this morning at dawn thanks to an anonymous phone call".

"Did you say two nights ago?" Helen asked, surprised.

"Yes I did" he confirmed.

"And how do you know they were there for two days?"

"You know how long I've been in this business, haven't you?"

She nodded as she wondered how two bodies might have been found right there. In the previous two days they had searched that area far and wide with every mean looking for Harry; how could they not have noticed a car with two bodies inside?

"What's the matter?" Asked the doctor, noting his perplexity.

"Nothing, I was wondering about something else" she lied. "What happened to them?"

"I don't know yet, for now, I just looked shortly, but the visual analysis showed no trauma whatsoever. When you feel ready we will proceed to the autopsy".

"...We?"

"Of course, I said we".

"And what makes you think I'm going to assist you during the autopsy?" She said, puzzled.

"My assistant is sick and you know better than me that the necrological exam cannot be done alone. You will only have to pass me the surgical instruments, it won't be the first time, isn't it?"

"Unfortunately not, it won't be" she replied disgusted, moving the still half-full glass of reddish liquid away, "and I can guarantee you that this is not the kind of experience I love to do".

"I get it," the doctor commented gravely. "Can I?" He added afterward with a raspy voice pointing at the juice; if he had waited another minute without drinking he would have fallen, choked by Helen's sandwich. She nodded, thinking that from his hunger he seemed to have just returned from jogging rather than about to do an autopsy. Then she wondered, tall and thin as he was, how could he eat all that food. He chugged the juice in one gulp, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood up.

"Are you ready?" He urged her with a burlesque smile.

"I'm ready, but I don't understand what's so funny about this," Helen said, annoyed by his attitude.

"Nothing, what should be funny about doing an autopsy?" He agreed. "I'll show the way," he added then, heading toward the morgue with his lazy step while continuing to smile.

James hardly woke up, he felt like his head had been pierced by a million carpenter's nails, and it took him several minutes to get the room around him to stop. At first, that discomfort had almost bothered him, then he thought it was probably caused by the stress accumulated during the previous days and by the fact he had not rested enough, so he decided not to worry too much. The noise of the shower informed him that the bathroom was occupied by his wife, so he decided to swallow a couple of aspirins to recover and then he would come down to make coffee; as to wash and get dressed he would think later. When Eve made her appearance in the kitchen door, fully dressed and wearing a fine green pea jacket over her forearm, James had just poured coffee into the cups.

"It's still hot," he said, inviting her to sit down with a broad wave of his hand.

"I'm sorry, but I'm late."

"Don't you think it would be better if you stay with us today?" He said, disappointed.

"And you think I wouldn't want it?"

"Yeah ... but you could at least wait for Harry to wake up, you know how much he wants to greet you."

"I can't delay a minute longer, today it will be a busy day and Adam asked me to go as soon as possible."

"But why, isn't he able to work alone?" James let it slip in response.

"Are you willing to argue this morning too?" Eve fought back by throwing her eyes to the sky. James shrugged, looked down at the cup and slowly turned the spoon to melt the sugar.

"I just thought Harry would have wanted you here with us this morning, but apparently your job is more important. As always."

"Enough, I don't want to face the same subjects every day," she said, raising her arms as to surrender.

"Don't forget to warn the Scouts that Harry is not going to the camp today, otherwise they will send the bus to pick him up and they will charge us for the voyage," she added, heading towards the door.

"I'll do it," said James.

"I'll be back at five o'clock," Eve announced going out; she was already in the garden when she thought something and turned back.

"Sometimes I think you should show a little more gratitude toward Dr. Parker, in all these years he has always been close to us!" she scolded James, leaning out the door.

"I couldn't agree with you more, he has often been so close to us that I can't tell if you're more attached to work or to him ... sometimes I even wonder if I shouldn't be jealous," said James almost whispering, as if he was talking more to himself than to her. "If you asked me to take him on holiday with us to Egypt, I probably wouldn't be surprised at all," he finally declared.

Eve replied with a surprised expression that to James it seemed "you just read my mind, I was going to propose it", and he straightened up on the stool. An indecipherable flash crossed the clear eyes of the woman. "Don't be ridiculous!" She replied firmly afterward, then slammed the door and as every day called Toby to take him with her. James thought that after all, it was better that way, after what happened the previous night he didn't want the dog to buzz around the boy not until he wouldn't have understood something more. He decided that after drinking his coffee in peace he would prepare breakfast and wake him up, then he would take him for a walk with the intent to distract him and maybe to buy him a new pair of glasses. As soon as Eve's car sound faded far away, James heard a dull thump approaching, then threw the empty cup into the sink and interested he ran out. Instantly recognized the helicopter, it was a dark Black Hawk, and there was no number or a text or any other sign of identification. It was slowly flying over his house at a height of about thirty yards while a man, wrapped in a tight black suit, with a hood and strange glasses, was leaning out of one door clutching what looked like a camera.

James thought that whoever he was certainly wasn't making a documentary, so he ran inside home to get the binoculars to watch him better. The operator continued to fathom the area below until he realized he was framed in James's binoculars, then abruptly pulled back and closed the sliding door, a moment later the helicopter turned and moved away until it disappeared behind the treetops, as fast as it had arrived. James scratched his head confused, then his eyes fell on the garden and the sight of the conditions in which it had been reduced hit him like a fist in the face. In the previous two days, focused on more important matters, he had not realized the damage caused by the trampling of all these pairs of feet. He went down the stairs and approached the flowerbeds, unable to believe that it was true; not a single plant had remained healthy. He began to count a rough estimate of the damage, but an unexpected voice behind him frightened him.

"Mr. Robinson?" A boy asked; he wore a white and yellow Fedex bodice and held a bulky package in his hands. The wind was slowly dispersing the dust raised on the path by the van. Concerned as he was for his violets, James had not even heard it approaching.

"Yes ...?" He asked doubtfully, wondering what the package could contain, then he remembered that a few weeks earlier he had ordered a scale reproduction of the Giza Plateau by Internet for his son. He considered a blessing the fact that he had arrived that very day because to cheer up Harry there could have been nothing better in the world, he was sure he would have been much happier spending the morning building the plastic rather than going for a walk. He would have seized the opportunity attempting to resurrect his beloved flowerbeds; as to the new glasses, they would have thought later about it.

Stevenson turned off his mini recorder and threw it angrily onto his desk, lowered his mask around his neck and pulled off his latex gloves. "Nothing at all, damn it!" He said, taking off his medical cap to uncover his almost bald head.

"... Nothing at all?" Helen echoed.

"Not even a shred of evidence! All I can say is that my first impressions were confirmed and that the death occurred about thirty-six hours ago, but the victims show no cause of death."

"So?"

"I don't know, it's the first time something like this has happened to me," he said, almost ashamed of having to make such an admission.

"There is always the toxicological examination," offered Helen hopefully.

"It will not give us any result."

"How can you be so sure?"

"While you were staring at the ceiling trying not to vomit," the Coroner explained, pointing to some test tubes, "I tested the fabrics with the most common substances without getting any results. It remains only to analyze the samples taken with some reagents a little more particular, but I am sure that nothing good will appear."

"So what are we going to do now?" Asked Helen distressed, the investigation was certainly not starting well.

"I really don't know what to do, let me think. There is no evidence to suggest that they may have committed suicide or may have been drugged or intoxicated, or killed. They look too relaxed, not even a contracted nerve. Then they should be in full Rigor Mortis, and instead, they seem to be sleeping, rather than being dead. Do you know how many corpses I have analyzed in over thirty years ?" He added then indignantly, noticing Helen's perplexed look.

"And you have no other evidence? For example, if they had or had not yet "copulated"?"

"Whether or not they did it is irrelevant to what we're looking for. It's like if those two had died without a real reason, as if their souls had waited to fall asleep and fly away, all at once. In sync."

She eyed him with her eyebrows raised as if he was raving.

"You don't believe me, eh? And then, let's hear what happened to these guys."

"All right, let's listen to your absurd theory!" Helen challenged him, crossing her arms over her chest.

"You know what's a hairdryer, don't you? You take it, you turn it on, and when you finish using it, you unplug it and in the end, you put it back in the drawer. The same thing happened to these two. They died out of the blue, as if something or someone had suddenly pulled their thorns out, you know? And the exact same thing happened to their car."

"Now what has their car to do with it?" Asked Helen, always more and more confused.

"When I arrived where they were found to carry out the preliminary inspection, the mechanic who went to pick it up was swearing badly. He tried in every way to start their car but failed; the car is new and the engine is perfect, but it won't start."

"Maybe because of a hole they broke some electrical wires, or it was flooded," Helen suggested, but the Coroner shook his head. "The guy had the laptop with him for the self-diagnosis, he connected it to the control unit and it said everything was working perfectly. Simply, the car didn't want to know how to start."

"Strange indeed," Helen said.

"And furthermore, the control unit said the last time the car was off more or less at the same time when those two kicked the bucket," he concluded.

Helen looked at him pissed-off because of his disrespectful way of expressing those two poor people's deaths.

"The only thing that could explain this fact is that those two were hit by an electric field, that had the wave frequency necessary to simultaneously blow their hearts and the control unit of their car, but I just can't imagine what might have produced a similar situation in the middle of a forest," concluded Stevenson.

"I have never heard such an absurd theory," the woman considered after thinking for a moment, then began to wander thoughtfully around the room looking at her feet going back and forth. When she raised her head looking for Stevenson to ask him a question, she saw him with his forefinger resting on the "on" button of the pod coffee maker.

"Don't do it," she told him, but he was already pressing the button and a moment later all the lights went out.

"What is going on now?"

"The machine is short-circuited, every time it is turned on it blows the current to the entire compartment."

"Then why don't you get rid of it?" Stevenson asked, annoyed.

"The fact it has the plug disconnected doesn't mean nothing to you? And then I would love to know how you can think of having a coffee just five minutes after having gutted two bodies, you still have the bloody coat on," she replied disgusted, turning with her arm outstretched toward the corpses. Something about those bodies caught her attention and came closer to watch them better.

"What's going on?" He asked.

"Be quiet."

"Tell me what the hell is going on?" Stevenson insisted.

"That blue fluorescence they have on their foreheads and arms ... do you see it?"

"It is really strange ... is it radiation?" He proposed.

"I wouldn't say," she replied, shaking her head doubtfully.

"It looks rather like a powder that has adhered to the skin, so fine that it penetrates the pores and gets trapped inside ... I found something similar even on Harry's bike."

"Harry?"

"Yes, James's son."

"Your James?"

"Is it possible that even in moments like these you have to start joking?" She scolded him, pushing him.

"Ok, sorry ... but then what is it?"

"You should tell me, you are the doctor, aren't you?"

Dr. Parker was deeply demoralized, despite his systematic attempts over the whole range of possible frequencies he had failed to restore the radio link that had been interrupted for a long time. He insisted day after day, trying and trying again, but his messages had always received as response the usual "bip", absolutely meaningless. He hypothesized that this silence could not have been due to a simple failure of the receiving station, because it had lasted for too long; it was rather as if no one was at the other end of the line. He came to the conclusion that, regardless of the cause, that trouble was not needed, at least not at that very moment and after another vain attempt, he switched off the device nervously. Establishing the link and keeping it alive over time had cost him years of hard work and experiments, and now, that the radio link had dissolved, he felt like a newborn abandoned on the stairs of a church. He wondered if it was necessary to inform Eve about it, but knowing that she would not take it well, he decided that for the moment he would not tell her anything. After all, he still had a few days left to try and get things back in order and hoped that sooner or later he would make it.

Thinking of Eve, he looked at his watch and found out that, as usual, she was late; soon the first patients of the day would have arrived and she could not brief him on developments before a couple of hours. And that long awaiting would have torn him inside because he was impatient to know if everything had gone according to plan.

Considering that there were still ten minutes left before the first appointment, he placed his finger on the power button of the device, uncertain whether to make another attempt or not, but when he was about to press it, someone knocked forcefully on the door. He looked at the monitor connected to the camera installed on the door and immediately recognized Mrs. Murphy, her appearance was unmistakable due to the red. smudged lipstick and to the platinum, blonde hair covered in part by the shawl. The old lady stood at the door and holding her Miao in her arms. She had thoughtfully wrapped it in a Scottish-style cover and was cuddling it as if it was a child. Dr. Parker slammed his foot angrily on the ground. Although he had explained to her several times that he was not a veterinarian, the woman had taken the bad habit of bringing the cat to the clinic at least once a week, and in one way or another, she always managed to force him to visit her cat.

James set the table and placed toasted bread, jam, spreadable butter, hot milk and orange juice on top, then went upstairs to call Harry.

"Professor, are you awake?" He asked quietly as he entered the room. He was convinced that he was still in bed, but his son was already washed and dressed, and like every morning he was placed in front of the telescope pointed at the Constellation of Orion. "Good morning, daddy," he greeted him smiling as if nothing had happened. Apparently, the events of the previous 48 hours had not left the slightest trace and James was happy.

"... I'm sorry but, can you see anything during the day?"

"No, I don't see anything ... but it doesn't cost anything to try, does it?" The boy answered making his own the phrase that his father so many times had used to convince him to try something when a challenge seemed terribly difficult.

"You're right," James confirmed, returning his smile.

Harry got up and applied the cover to the telescope lenses, then put on his glasses and adjusted his bangs.

"Apparently, we'll have to go and choose new glasses later," said James.

"I think so ... and then we should also go and get back the fishing gear," the boy replied guilty.

"Agree, but first we will face the most important things. We can go back to the fishing rod in the afternoon, you can be sure that no one will steal it from you. We need to buy new glasses, but first I suggest you to run downstairs because breakfast and a nice surprise are waiting for you!"

"A surprise? What is it? " Harry questioned him, starting to hop from one foot to the other as he always did when he was excited.

"Slow down Professor, if I tell you now what kind of surprise would it be? You'll see it when the time comes, now let's go down," James replied, putting his arm around Harry's shoulders.

Harry showed an unusual appetite and James considered it a good sign, at the end of the breakfast the boy smiled at him satisfied and looked at him intrigued.

"What are you staring at?" His father asked him, pretending he had already forgotten the promise he had made to him. He frowned.

"It's right there," James said, amused, pointing to the room, "go see it. I finish washing dishes and I'll join you."

The boy excited ran to open the parcel covered with an anonymous yellow paper, discarded it and at the sight of its contents exploded in a shout of joy.

"... I don't believe it!" He exclaimed excitedly continuing to lift the pieces to examine them one by one against the light.

"It's all transparent, so even from the outside you can study the inside of the pyramids and the Sphinx," James explained to him sitting at his side, and the boy rushed to embrace his father so strong that he almost choked him.

"Hey, watch your arm or we'll have to go back to the doctor."

"Thanks, Dad," said Harry, moved.

"I knew you would like it," said James satisfied.

"Will you help me assembling it?" The boy asked hopefully.

"You know I don't have the knack for it, it takes too much patience. And then the professor of Egyptology in this house is you. That's what we are gonna do: now you get to work and I go to fix up the garden, you should see how bad violets are reduced. If I can't fix it in time I don't really know where we will put the Christmas tree this year. As soon as you finish you'll call me and I'll come to admire your work, then we will go for the glasses ... agree?" Proposed James.

"All right," Harry replied absently after almost a minute, his words were coming from far away because he had already begun to arrange all the pieces neatly on the floor.

"Then I go," James concluded without getting any answer. Harry was already completely absorbed in his new task.

Helen and the Coroner were seated facing each other in her office, she continued to examine the photographs taken that morning where the corpses were discovered, perplexedly. She was very sure of having checked that area personally during Harry's research and, like her, many other people, some even accompanied by dogs, had been in that part of the wood.

She kept telling herself that at least the latter should have noticed something; how was it possible that no one had noticed a pink convertible Cadillac with two people on board? It was true that the research had taken place in the middle of the night, but it had been a fairly bright night and what's more, the area was not very thick.

"I have a really nice tiger by the tail, I don't envy you at all!" Stevenson said just to break the silence, he had finished his task and was waiting for Helen to dismiss him because he had many other matters to deal with that day. She continued to scan the photos without answering, so he took an aluminum foil from inside his jacket and started to open it.

"Yeah, just a nice tiger. I don't even know where to start!" Helen answered after a moment. "Do you think that ..." she took his eyes off the pictures and as she saw the Coroner she stopped horrified, because he had just snapped a sandwich filled with roast beef and green sauce, and a trickle of reddish liquid had slipped down his chin to ooze on his shirt.

"What?" He said innocently.

"This is too much!" She snapped up.

"But why? What's wrong?" He protested.

"Get out! Get out of this room immediately!" Helen snarled, grabbing him by the jacket and pulling him out of the chair with force, dragged him to the entrance and thrust him out.

"Females shouldn't do certain jobs," Stevenson said with his mouth still full from behind the door.

"I don't want to see you or hear you anymore," she said furiously.

"Anyway, if I were you, I'd try first to track down the caller," the doctor shouted as he moved away, then started mumbling his sandwich again, wondering what he'd done that was so terrible. Helen let her shoulders slide down the door, holding her breath, struggling against her stomach to not give up to gagging. She managed not to vomit by a whisker; as soon as the crisis had passed she opened the window searching for some fresh and clean air because she was sweating cold. She let a few minutes go by, when she judged that her stomach had completely subsided she returned to her desk and pressed the intercom button.

"Yes, boss," Cindy answered from the switchboard.

"I want everyone in the meeting room within twenty minutes," she ordered while continuing to rub her little finger against the rough fabric of the side pocket of her trousers because she felt again it pricking intensely.

"But Sheriff, the agents are almost all out," Cindy objected.

"I don't give a damn, tell them we have bigger fish to fry and to let whatever they're doing go."

"All right, boss, I'll do my best."

Helen hung up and took the report written by the agent Mario Benelli, who had been the first to arrive at the dumpsite. She sighed and read it again for the tenth time, continuing to scratch his finger more and more furiously.

James immediately realized that it would take weeks for the garden to get back on its feet. Although in those days of December the climate was practically the same as in the summer, there were no ideal conditions for gardening. In fact, lately the wind was blowing mainly from the sea, making the air too salty, as well as hot and humid, and from day to night, there were really consistent temperature changes. At least two-thirds of the plants he had already checked up had definitely gone, he looked doubtfully at the few that he had mercifully splinted the trunk and judged that if he managed to make half of them survive, it would be a true miracle. He was thinking resignedly that year he would have to find a different location for the fir tree when suddenly he felt an intense gaze pointed at the back of his neck. An alarm bell rang in some remote corner of his consciousness giving him a shiver down his spine. Looking at the ground he spotted the shadow of the person silently appearing behind him, the blood shuffled in his veins because his arm was suspended in mid-air just above his head, ready to hit him with his own spade. James promptly rushed forward with a somersault to get out of the path of the spade and jumped to face the enemy, but instead, astonished he found Harry. The boy was staring at him with a piercing gaze, but completely blank. James had the impression that he was into a kind of trance. A slight tremor shook his lower lip, a thin trickle of blood had come out of his right nostril and was dripping onto the yellow t-shirt.

"Harry ..." he tried to call him gently, but he kept staring at him.

"Harry," James repeated, troubled. He moved to his side to talk to him in the ear, raising his voice a little, but the boy's eyes didn't follow him. While staring off into space, his lower lip leaned further and began to tremble a little harder, an intense shudder began to shake him from head to toe as his father looked at him powerless, unable to decide if and how to intervene.

James recalled that he read that waking up a "normal" person in those conditions could produce disastrous consequences in his psyche, so he thought that doing it on his son could even be more devastating. Unexpectedly, just when he was about to give in to panic, his son was shaken by a stronger tremor and immediately stopped shaking.

"Daddy," he exclaimed, putting him in focus as if he had just woken up, and James started breathing again. "Harry... are you not feeling well?"

"Of course not, I'm fine, why do you ask?"

"So what happened to you?"

"Nothing, what should have happened?"

"You're bleeding from your nose," James informed him, wiping it with a handkerchief, then tipped his head back to stop the bleeding. When he raised his head he noticed a kind of small scar behind his ear and he was surprised, he did not remember that Harry had ever been hurt at that point.

"I didn't notice," said Harry, taking the handkerchief from his hand.

"What do you need the spade for?"

"The spade? Ah yes, you forgot it in the kitchen when you came to drink and I brought it back to you ... "the boy replied letting it fall to the ground," ... but why do you keep staring at me like that?"

"Nothing important, forget it. Have you already finished assembling the model?"

Harry shook his head and became absorbed again, and James had the feeling that he was leaving again.

"... Harry?" He called worried.

"I'm sorry for your creatures, I know how much you care about them," the boy said, calling the plants as his father usually call them. "Do you think you will be able to cure them?" He asked, getting down to lovingly caress a battered plant.

"Trying does not cost anything, does it?" Answered James using what was now their catchphrase. He smiled slightly, but Harry got up without answering and started looking very far away with a very serious expression printed on his face. Harry and James stood there for a few minutes, side by side looking at the expanse of sunflowers that covered the entire side of a nearby hill, then James saw that Harry seemed to be completely recovered and so he picked up the gardener's toolbox moving to the next flowerbed.

"Dad..."

"What's up?"

"I haven't told you a lie, I don't really remember anything!"

"You already told me, and I told you I believe you," James assured him, looking him straight in his eyes to convince him that there was nothing to worry about. "Now I have to continue a little further with the plans, then we'll go and buy your glasses," he added, taking a step.

"Dad, I'm scared!" Harry suddenly exclaimed in a voice so distressed that it shocked James, his hand unintentionally opened, dropping the toolbox.

"And what should you be afraid of?" He asked distressed.

"I don't know, I just know that I had strange dreams. At first, they were fun because I was flying and I could go through things like a ghost, then suddenly everything turned blue and my dreams have become very ugly, but I just can't remember them ... I don't remember anything. I woke up and my knees were scratched, but they didn't hurt and after a while, they were already healed" he said.

"Maybe you were wrong. Maybe you dreamed that too, maybe you were just scared about something and ..." hypothesized James perplexed, but he couldn't finish his speech because the boy started to get excited.

"I wasn't wrong!" He shouted vehemently. "So it's not true that you believe me! Look at my knees!" He added angrily and James obeyed. He noticed that on his knees there were small crusts similar to the ones of a fall of a few days ago, but he knew well that in the previous days Harry did not fall.

The boy started walking back and forth repeating that same sentence obsessively, James was silent because he knew from his experience that he had to let his son calm down alone.

And in fact, after a couple of minutes Harry calmed down, stopped and looked at his father. "I'm afraid that it will happen again!" He confessed with a voice so frightened as to inspire terror and tenderness in his father at the same time. Too often he forgot that despite being almost sixteen, Harry was a little more than a child, and like all children, he had his fears.

"It won't happen again, I promise," he whispered firmly in his ear, hugging him tightly.

Eve opened the door of the clinic and Toby ran wagging his tail to lick Dr. Parker, intent on studying a map hanging on a wall, the atlas was painted in china ink on sheepskin and was so old and discolored that looks like an ancient treasure map. It was a representation of the world dating back to a long time ago, the outlines of the sourfaced lands were painted unusually and in the center of the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans the mythical islands of Atlantis and Mu stood out. Eve locked the door with three turns.

"You're late, patients will be coming soon," Adam pointed out as he pulled away from the map, then he rewarded the dog's impetuous request for affection with a couple of careless caresses and he rolled happily on the carpet to show his belly. Eve did not answer, hung her bag and her coat on the coat rack and let herself fall, sighing on a chair in the waiting room. She stretched out her legs and crossed her ankles, then began turning a velvet jewelry box between his fingers.

"You're late," Dr. Parker repeated, waiting for her justification, he was nervous because, in the end, he had to deal with Mrs. Murphy, his rotting Kit Kat stink was still lingering in the clinic.

"I'm very sorry, but today the daily argument with James lasted longer than usual," Eve argued. Without replying, Dr. Parker sat down on the chair in front of her and questioned her, staring at her, deeply. In response, she handed him the velvet pouch and encouraged him to open it. He rummaged inside with two fingers and pulled out a metal ball, looked at it against the light and smiled because in what had begun as a really bad day at least one thing seemed to be going right.

"I keep wondering how you could have been right even this time," Eve said.

"We simply got lucky," the doctor taunted, adjusting his bow, which matched with his shirt.

"Don't be humble, luck is not part of your repertoire."

"You also know how many people come here to be treated for sinusitis or chronic headaches without the slightest suspicion that they are caused by these little objects, which the Greys graft into their cavities and people doesn't even know about it.Getting one was easy, and once we applied it to the boy the game was done. Considering that the Greys always return to visit the same abductees, it was foreseeable that with this transmitter on him sooner or later Harry would have fallen into their hands," he explained, pleased with his genius.

"Sooner or later? We had only this one occasion, and almost those two in the woods didn't..." Eve began to mutter. Knowing where she was going to finish, he immediately interrupted her. "Cut it out! I already told you a thousand times that I only came up with this plan in order to have a way out in case something goes wrong. We have all the credentials to get close to the end without any problem, and you know it well, but if we need them now thanks to Harry we have all their knowledge available. As for the unwelcome presence of the Men in Black, you must instead thank Abel, "he replied, annoyed by her complaints," she has not been able to keep them away."

"Then you also believe that those two were agents ..." she asked with surprise.

"I see no other explanation, and in any case, I prefer not to think about it. Whoever they were, now they are no longer in a position to harm us," he cut short. "How is it going with your husband?" He then asked in a slightly accommodating tone to change the subject.

"It gets worse every day," she informed him.

"You have to wait a little longer," Adam encouraged, taking her face in his hands in a rare movement of affection. She returned with a tender, fleeting glance and immediately snatched back. "You speak well, but you're not the one who lives in that house. Every day spent there gets heavier and heavier, and the more time passes, the more futile the reason we are doing this seems to me... so much that sometimes I'm afraid I almost forgot about it," she murmured, becoming thoughtful.

"So I am going to remind you what's the reason: what do you think would be our fate if someone discovered who we really are?" Replied the doctor, changing his expression.

"Don't treat me like a fool, do you think I don't know?" Eve replied annoyed.

"Anyway, at this point it is also useless to discuss it, whether you want it or not, we are at the last crossroads ... and in any case, it is not said that all this will really matter."

"What does it mean?"

"I just spoke on the phone with Abel, he told me that scientists are very pessimistic. In this remote village we live like in a cocoon, but nature has begun to rebel against mankind a long time ago.

Every day there is a new catastrophe and it seems that time is running out, and even though we have played our cards well up until now, we have nothing concrete in our hands yet."

"But what will happen to the Earth? And when will this happen?"

"I don't know, Abel couldn't be more precise. There are probably only a few days left, after which there will be no payback or second chances."

"And then, if the situation is so serious, why doesn't Abel make his move?"

"Do you think it's so easy for her?"

"We'll need a lot of luck," Eve said after thinking a lot about his words.

"It's not about hoping for luck, you said it yourself," he said.

"We can start," Helen said when all the agents sat in their seats.

"Why did you rush us back?" Agent Dower asked politely raising his hand like a schoolboy. She decided to skip the preambles and immediately went to the point. "If someone of us still doesn't know, there we have two corpses, we found them this morning aboard a car without a license plate and they had no identity documents. Dr. Stevenson has just finished the autopsy and failed to establish the cause of death, and to make matters worse the bodies were found in the wooded area that we swept several times last night in search of James's son. The Coroner would put his hand on the fire that those two were already there, dead at least from the day before, how is it possible that none of us noticed anything?"

"It's strange," the giant Joe considered with his cavernous voice.

"That's right," Helen agreed.

"Then they may have died elsewhere and been dumped there tonight," said Claretta Jones in a faint voice because of her shyness.

"It's impossible since the car doesn't work," explained the Sheriff.

"And couldn't it have broken down afterward?"

"No, the control unit indicates that the car has stopped approximately when they supposedly have died."

"It's a nice brain teaser..." Claretta commented.

"Exactly ... and this means that we all must work to solve this case as soon as possible, because, in a small village like ours, voices run quickly. I'm sure that a lot of looky-loos will come soon and when this happens we will have to be able to answer their questions."

"So what do we do now?" Asked Agent Benelli.

"It has absolute priority, we must give up everything we are working on at the moment to dedicate ourselves exclusively to this case. We don't know who those two were, but sooner or later someone will surely come alive to look for them."

"How should we proceed?" Dower asked.

"Claretta, you're going to take a nice stroll around, to ask here and there, showing their pictures.

You will start from Spring, then you will pass by the Country Hole and the Boe emporium, then from the gas station, and since you are there you will also go to the pharmacy... maybe someone noticed them and will give us some information. Benelli, you go and take another look at the place of their discovery, I want a nice photo book. Dower, you go to the Motor Vehicle Office with the car's chassis number to see if you can trace the owner, then call the mechanic and ask him if he has figured out what caused its stopping. Coming back from the Motorization, stop everywhere to ask questions. Joe, go to the terminal and look for cases like this, if you find something we could have a trail to follow." Joe nodded silently but deep down he was unhappy, she hadn't let him go for a while because he was old, and being confined within those four walls, he did not like it at all. In addition, Helen had assigned him a computer task and he hated computers because his fingers were so big that he always took at least two keys at a time. He thought, resignedly, he was going to have a nervous breakdown , but he didn't protest because he knew it would be useless.

"Finally you, Cindy, call the phone company and ask if they have the tape with the recording of the anonymous call, because what we have is barely understandable. The call was made by a public telephone, if it is part of the chain of those monitored, we could have something more to work with."

Harry had been working on his model for a while, but James was so upset by his behavior that he couldn't find the right concentration to devote himself to his beloved plants. He looked at the last one he had fixed and judged he had really sucked, so much that for a moment he was tempted to squash them for good, in order to vent his anger. Furthermore, his headache rather than fading, it had intensified and his temples were pounding ruthlessly. Realizing that he was no longer fit to continue, he decided to settle down and then finally bring Harry to buy his new glasses.

He also thought he had been selfish because he should have taken him first. He consulted the clock and thought that if he hurried, they would still be able to get to the store before closing time. He bent over his tools and as he put them back in the wooden box he stared at the circular flowerbed of violets, convinced of being in a dream: the plant Harry caressed an hour before, it was practically resurrected. The slender trunk had regained its vigor and had almost completely straightened, soaring upwards, the ties, that held it to the stick, which he attached as a reinforcement, had loosened, the leaves and petals had spread out again and appeared smooth and shiny, alive. James was wondering how it was possible when he thought he caught a movement in the bush beyond the hedge, something very similar to a fast-moving black shape.

He jumped up scanning the spot where he thought he saw it, but there was anything strange. Immediately after that, he was seized by slight dizziness, because he had risen too quickly and his temples were hammering even harder.

"This whole thing has shaken me too much, I'm becoming paranoid," he said to himself aloud as he bent down again to pick up the toolbox, but again he suddenly felt like he was not alone. He brandished his hoe and walked uncertainly toward the edge of the woods to check the situation, but found that everything was perfectly still. Perhaps too much still, he told himself, it wasn't singing a single bird and not even a poor cicada. But he seemed to perceive, from far away, the dull sound of the Black Hawk that he had just seen circling above the roof of his house. Suddenly, he reminded Harry's terrified face and words, he turned to look at the house and noticed that the front door was open. Caught by a bad feeling he let go the hoe to run and take a look, but before he could move a single muscle, he felt a sting in his neck and his strength abandoning him; a moment later he was lying unconscious on the ground.

After spending a couple of hours intensely studying documents and photographs, notes and scribbles, Helen went to the locker room and removed her uniform to wear shorts, a T-shirt and sneakers. She has been running on the treadmill for several minutes now and kept staring at the material she had scattered on the floor. She used to do so when she felt the need to isolate herself to reflect and trigger inspiration, and more than once this ploy worked. But this time the right intuition just seemed not to arrive and she kept wondering what she could do to solve the mystery that bordered on the absurd. At the moment she had no pretext to hold on or a single trace to follow. Benelli's first inspection of the crime scene, if it could be called a crime, had been completely unsuccessful. The agent did not find a single print of feet or tires that did not belong to the corpses and their car, but nor even a piece of fabric or hair, or any other element that could in any way indicate a track to follow, a modus operandi, a physiognomy. Research at the local Telephone Company had been in vain because the anonymous call was so brief that it gave no indication as to which equipment had been used to make the call, so they could not go to the site to attempt to take fingerprints. Furthermore, they did not have a decent registration because the author of the call had disguised his voice, it was not even clear if that hoarse whisper belonged to a man or a woman. All she had in his hand was, therefore, a tape in very bad condition that he should have sent to some technician to try to clean it up, and this would have taken days. Besides all this, some things prevented her from reasoning clearly: it was the anguishing sense of unreality that took over her because of her sleepless nights, the inexplicable temporary disappearance of Harry.

The chilling image of those lifeless fluorescent bodies that did not want to leave her mind. Moreover, the fact she had found the same unusual luminescent powder on the bike of James's son also indicated that between the two accidents there must necessarily have been some kind of connection, but she absolutely could not get an idea of what it could be. Thinking of the powder, associated with the sweat, woke the itch on her finger. She looked at it and realized that Stevenson was absolutely right, it was shabby; on her first phalanx a sort of plague had formed but did not secrete any liquid, it was quickly drying himself like a dead appendage. And yet, judging by the pain and itching it gave her, his little finger was far from dead. She made up her mind to go to check it as soon as possible, she scratched it again, holding back a groan of pain, and began to reflect. The first hypothesis that occurred to her was that Harry found the bodies, or even witnessed the double murder and ran away scared, hiding who knows where. Then, after many hours, he would finally find the courage to come out and return home. In reality, this hypothesis seemed too trivial, but the alternative saw Harry more directly and more deeply involved in the affair. Thinking about it she judged that such a thing was impossible, it should have gone in another way, but even though she tried hard, she could not get even a vague idea. During the morning, the temptation to call James repeatedly, she raised the receiver and started dialing several times, but every time she ended hanging up, she was convinced that after what he spent the day before he had something else to think about. Moreover, knowing him she knew very well that at the latest she would see him the next day, so she forced herself not to disturb him. She also considered the idea of personally making another inspection, but she knew that it would only be a waste of time because Benelli was a pain in the ass, but he was also damn good. If there had been something interesting, he would not have missed it during the second inspection he was carrying out at that moment. She hoped with all her heart that the coroner was wrong and that from the toxicological examination it turned out that the two had been killed by a new synthetic drug, as unknown as deadly, because the situation that was occurring was too tangled and she feared that she would never manage to deal with it. A dull grumble from her stomach informed her that it was lunch time, but after having participated in the double autopsy eating was the last thing she wanted, at ninety-nine percent, she would vomit the meal. Experience taught her that if she kept the gas generated by the gastric juices for a while, they eventually would fill her stomach, giving her a temporary and illusory sense of satiety, so she opted to resist. She stopped the treadmill and worked out to stretch his muscles. The police station was practically deserted and so she decided that after a shower and a couple of phone calls she would take a nap. Collecting all the sheets, however, her eyes stopped again on the photo of the two luminescent bodies and an idea came in her mind. She pushed the intercom button. "Cindy?"

"Yes, Sheriff ..."

"Do me a favor, find me the chemist Larry and suggest him to show up here at fifteen o'clock with all the equipment. If he makes stories, tell him that it is a matter of life and death."

"All right, Sheriff. Is there anything more?"

"Yup. I won't be available for anyone until fourteen and fifty-nine, understood?"

"All clear."

Episode II

The plastic model

James suddenly opened his eyes, as if waking up from anesthesia, and his thoughts immediately turned to his son. The pounding at the temples had become a real torture and he had the feeling that all that pressure would literally blow his skull at any moment. He looked at the clock and determined that, by the time he had passed out, a maximum of six or seven minutes could have passed; without thinking about anything he picked up the hoe and ran inside home. He entered cautiously, trying to catch any movement, but inside there was absolute silence. He relaxed thinking that perhaps he had imagined everything and looked into the room convinced that at once he would find his boy there, intent on finishing fitting his new model, and instead, he sank into terror. The model was broken up into a thousand pieces, many of which were completely broken as if someone had hit and trampled them several times, the seats were moved and many objects were scattered on the ground, and James hypothesized that there had been a struggle.

"Harry? Harry?" He called softly a couple of times without getting an answer, and immediately heard some confused noises coming upstairs. In a moment his mind elaborated a terrifying theory: two days before someone had kidnapped his son, he had managed to escape but he had not spoken about it because he was too shocked, and now that bastard, whoever he was, had even the guts to enter in his house to try to kidnap him away again. After all, Harry told him earlier that he feared it would happen again. James threw away the hoe and went back into the kitchen, took his semiautomatic Colt, he kept hidden in the pantry, and threw himself up the stairs. As he reached the top floor he realized that noises were coming from Harry's bedroom, but now they had dimmed and no longer gave the impression that a scuffle was going on.

"That's not ... it is not so ..." a whining voice was repeating it obsessively, that at first James could not recognize as belonging to his son. Then he forgot to be careful and ran into the room. The bedroom door was ajar, he peeked out, and the blood in his veins became thick and cold because it seemed that a hurricane had just passed in there, without stopping, he breathed deeply and broke in with his arm extended forward, he turned of three hundred and sixty degrees and discovered that Harry was alone. Still upside down, he put the gun down on a high shelf of the library and took a couple of deep breaths attempting to calm down himself, his son was standing in front of the giant picture of the Giza Plain and repeating always the same sentence.

"Professor," said James, approaching him, but he ignored him as he did before in the garden.

"Professor ..." he repeated in a louder voice without being able to earn the attention of his son, who seemed to be on a different planet again. Then he reached out his hand to his son's shoulder to shake him out of that sort of trance, but as he was about to touch him the boy turned and looked at him in a way he had never looked before.

"Harry, you're scaring me ..." he murmured, taking a step back.

"It's not like that!" He shouted angrily, then he got ahead giving his father a push that made him fall backward, and went to sit at his desk, where he started to look at the photos on some open books.

James got up and took courage, grabbed the back of the swivel chair and turned it towards him.

"Dad," Harry shouted in dismay.

"If this is a joke, you scared the hell out of me!" James rebuked him. A moment later, a stabbing pain forced him to kneel on the floor, holding his temples. The boy looked at him as if he had not understood the meaning of his father's words, and then he frowned at the area where his father was in pain. James sat on the ground with his shoulders resting on the edge of the bed, closing his eyelids, because he could no longer even keep his eyes open.

"Here it is," said Harry, kneeling in front of him.

"... what ... what ..." James started to answer, but he couldn't finish the sentence because the pain was so intense that it even prevented him from speaking.

"Your migraine," Harry replied seriously. He grabbed his father's wrists and gently stretched his arms at his sides, then brought his palms an inch away from his father's temples and began to whisper something.

"Harry, what are you doing?" James tried to oppose, opening his eyes, but Harry ran his hand over his father's eyelids to close them again and began to murmur his litany again. After a few moments, James felt his head get very hot and the pain increased in intensity until it reached its climax, but only for a moment, immediately afterward he had the sensation that his son was literally pulling it out of his head. He relaxed and over two minutes he felt as good as he had never experienced before. After the treatment, Harry traced incomprehensible signs in the air with his hands, then returned to sit in his chair and made a happy expression for having managed to heal him.

"How ... how did you do it?" James asked him when he finally found the courage. Harry answered him by spreading his arms and he shook his head, resigned himself to not understanding anything anymore.

"Who was here with you?" He questioned then, pointing to the open window.

"... no one, who should have been here?"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes ... I think so ... I don't ... I don't know, I don't remember."

"Did you destroy the plastic?"

Harry nodded, then put his hands behind his back and started looking at his shoes, waiting for the well-deserved reproach.

"But why ..." his father simply asked him.

"They tricked you, that model is fake. The Room of the Sun and that of Knowledge in the Sphinx are missing, and then the Chamber of the Zed is missing in the pyramid of Cheops »Harry explained to him leaving him for the umpteenth time with his mouth open. James appealed to all his inner strengths to be able to not lose patience, in a few hours his son had made him take a series of terrible fears as well as having destroyed a pair of two-hundred-dollar glasses and a three-hundred-dollar model without count the fishing rod still to be recovered. He waited a few moments; when he was sure he would be able to support the rest of the conversation without exploding, he asked him the question.

"But how can you say that?"

"I ... I know it and that's it!" Harry answered with a hint of presumption in his voice, then looked again at the confusion that reigned in the bedroom and made a displeased expression. "Dad, what's going on?" He stammered, running to take refuge in his arms for protection, and James felt helpless.

"Sorry I'm late," Larry said as he entered Helen's office. He was gasping and his belly still bobbed because of the run. He had a hem of his shirt out of his pants and was sweating profusely. Helen replied with a shrug, continuing to scratch her little finger, he wiped his neck with a handkerchief and adjusted his thinning hair in a kind of comb-over.

"Hey, what happened to your finger?" He then asked troubled, now the first phalanx was almost completely peeled and the outer surface was so livid that it seemed as if it would begin to crumble any minute now.

"I have no idea, but it's nothing serious... I think it's mycosis or psoriasis caused by stress or something like that. It started to bother me last night," she replied nervously. She was full of problems, but all of them seemed to notice only his stupid finger.

"It will be as you say a small thing, but in your place, I would put a plaster on it. This environment is very dusty and it certainly won't help you heal."

"Thanks for the advice, I'll do it later."

"Well. Why did you call me?"

"You'll see it in a minute, I hope you haven't had lunch or that you've already digested it," she said standing up.

"I don't understand," said Larry, perplexed.

"We're going to take some samples from a couple of fresh autopsy corpses," Helen explained to him as she started walking down the hallway leading to the morgue.

"Wait a minute," the chemist replied, stopping in the middle of the corridor.

"You know that for these matters we need the authorization of the judge, right?" He said taking advantage of the pause to take off his shirt, although the air conditioning was at full power, he had not yet managed to stop sweating and the fabric was annoyingly stuck to the skin. Helen nodded.

"And if the corpses are fresh from the autopsy that authorization you haven't got yet, isn't it?" He insisted. From behind the glass door of the office, Joe, who was struggling with his computer research, leaned forward to look at them. Apparently, Larry had spoken too loudly, Helen looked sheepishly at Joe and he replied with a half-smile and then turned back to his stuff. Helen took Larry by the arm and dragged him to a corner where no one would see or hear them.

"Those corpses have something strange, probably that something is the only clue we have about their death and I am convinced that you are the only person who can figure it out."

"Are you crazy? Have you forgotten that I work in a paper mill?"

"And have you forgotten that this is not the first time you are consulting us?"

"You're right," he agreed, "but I've never seen a dead body so close. It would be better if you entrusted yourself to a professional ... and then you could at least wait for the judge's authorization, what's all this haste?"

"I fear the clue may vanish before the sheets are ready ..."

"But, what's it about?"

"You'll see it with your own eyes."

"What if someone finds it out?"

"I will take all the responsibility."

"Does this mean I will work for free?" Larry guessed slightly disappointed. Helen replied with a forced smile and he looked at her indecisively. "All right," he said after a moment, continuing to walk, "but I only do it because you're my favorite sheriff!"

Helen made him sit in an empty room next to the morgue and went to make sure no one was there, then went back to call him and when they were inside she bolted the door from inside.

"Is it really necessary?" The man asked uncertainly.

"It's better if nobody knows we're here," she said, and Larry nodded unconvinced.

"You will not like what you see," she told him to prepare him, arriving in front of the cold rooms.

"Don't worry, my stomach has never betrayed me," he assured her, hoping that it wouldn't be the first time. "But let's see to hurry, I don't like this place," he added. Helen took the drawers that contained the corpses out of the cold room and removed the sheets, fixing Larry's eyes.

"My God, what reduced them like that?" He exclaimed turning to look somewhere else and instinctively taking a step back.

"What do you mean?" Helen asked, turning, and seeing the dead bodies she let out a groan. The two corpses were in the process of mummification, their faces were already dug by very deep furrows and their orbits seemed almost empty, the bones protruded overwhelmingly from beneath the skin throughout the body and the stitches of the "Y" incision on the chests were completely loose.

"There are two options, or this is a nightmare or I'm just going crazy," she murmured.

"What the hell ...?" The chemist said as soon as he caught his breath.

"I don't know ... they've been dead for two days and now it seems like a few decades have gone by. There is not a single minute to lose, "she replied, reaching for the electric panel.

"Wait, what are you going to do? I do not..."

"I have to turn off the lights."

"Are you kidding? Do you want me to shit myself?"

"It's the only way I have to show you what I have to, but I can't force you. If you don't feel up to it, we'll leave right away, I didn't expect to find this situation," she said discouraged.

Larry thought about it for a moment. "Do what you have to do, but do it as quickly as you can, I can't wait to get out of here!"

"Me too," she replied, hastening to turn off the light and, although much less intense than a few hours before, the corpses immediately began to shine.

"Do you see it?" Helen asked him, raising the switch.

"Of course I see it ... but what is it?"

"I was hoping you would tell me. Certainly, it is not radiation, it is a kind of very fine and adherent powder. That's the thing you'll have to analyze," she said, pulling a nylon bag and a pair of scissors from a pocket. "Forgive me, I'm doing this for you," she murmured approaching their bodies; she cut a few strands of hair and put them in the bag with trembling hands, then handed them to the chemist. "You have to get to work right away, the glow is already much less intense than this morning and I hope it won't disappear completely right now," he said. Larry chewed his lips in puzzlement, he had no idea what he could get out of it. "Then I have to run home and get to work right away," he replied, checking that the zipper on the bag was tightly closed and walking towards the exit.

"Larry," Helen said after she closed the door.

"Yes?" He replied annoyed, like to say: "what else now?"

"Thank you."

As soon as she returned to the office, Helen dialed the doctor's phone number. "You have to run here right now," she said without even saying goodbye as she heard the receiver pick up.

"You are out of your mind, today I've already done so many miles that I became Shell's shareholder ... what the hell happened?" He replied.

"I ... I don't know how to tell you, I'm afraid you think I'm crazy!"

"After the outburst you had this morning, there is no doubt about it. Come on, spit it out, I'm busy and I can't stay on the phone all day," he informed her.

"Fine! Is there a logical explanation to the fact those two dead bodies are already mummifying?" She then asked. The coroner took a few moments of silence and Helen feared he was about to shoot one of his usual, stupid jokes.

"Of course I do!" He answered confidently, confusing her.

"...Really?" She hesitated.

"I am sure, indeed, I am absolutely sure ... the explanation is that we are in the middle of an episode of X Files" he confirmed with his usual irony, provoking a tide of anger that she kept for herself thinking "I knew it!".

"I'm serious," she told him frustrated.

"Whether you're joking or not it doesn't change so much, now I don't have the chance, and honestly I don't even want to ride for three hours in the car to come and see it. I promise that I will be there the morning after tomorrow, when we will also have the results of the toxicological exam."

"The day after tomorrow? But it's an eternity!"

"I know, but I'm not just following your case ... I'm really sorry," he replied. Helen told herself that in two days, going ahead at that speed, corpses would remain nothing but dust. On the other hand, even if the coroner came back and found that a mummification process was in progress, without the lab reports and the results of the analyzes written by Larry, they would still not know what to do.

"All right, I'll wait for the day after tomorrow. But don't blow it off, I don't know where to hit the head anymore."

"You can count on me, I'm dying from curiosity," he assured her, using a tone that once again didn't convince her at all.

"Mom's coming!" Harry said happily as he heard Eve's car roar. Immediately after he ran out because he had a mad desire to hug her and show her the new glasses and the model. And then he wanted to make peace with Toby and play with him as always. James looked out on the patio, Harry reached Eve and dived into her arms, then peered inside the car without being able to see his beloved dog.

"Mom, where is Toby?" He asked, moving away from Eve, she put her hands on his shoulders and bent to look him straight in the eye to prepare him for the news. "Love, a very bad thing happened to Toby ..."

"Where is Toby? I want Toby! Where's my Toby?" Harry began repeating around Eve's Voyager, she chased him and grabbed him by his shoulders again. "Love you must be strong," she whispered in his ear.

"What did you do to him? He didn't bite me on purpose, he didn't bite me on purpose! Why did you hurt him, he didn't bite me on purpose!"

"Honey, I didn't hurt him! When we left the clinic he ran to the middle of the road chasing a cat, and a car could not stop in time ... it hit him," Eve explained to him, but Harry shook his head struggling to repel the tears.

"I don't believe you!" He shouted, showing his fists.

"Harry ... honey ..." the woman tried to calm him.

"Leave me alone!" Harry repeated, then ran into the house and went to lock himself in his room. Eve and James followed him up the stairs and waited ten good minutes at the door calling him, but he didn't show up.

"He's able to stay in there for two days, it's better if we go back downstairs," suggested Eve to James. She went down to the kitchen and started fumbling with the microwave to warm up the dinner. James remained still for a while, leaning against the handrail, staring at the door of Harry's bedroom with his arms folded, then decided to join her.

"What happened to Toby?" He asked, helping her set the table.

"I've already told you, he ran in the middle of the road and ended up under a passing car, the driver couldn't brake in time. Luckily no other cars passed by, otherwise, someone would have been hurt."

"It shouldn't happen," said James. "But even if it is ugly to say, I must admit that after his behavior of last night I feel almost relieved because this incident has taken away from us a big problem," he added, ashamed of himself for his petty statement.

"Yeah," she agreed, continuing to slice the tomatoes.

"But you should have brought him home, didn't you think Harry wanted to bury him here in our garden?"

"Of course I thought about it, but if I had brought him back, Harry would have liked to see him and it wasn't really the case ... that poor beast was torn to shreds," Eve replied without turning around. "He said he would think about it ..." She added, but cut off short the sentence there because she did not want to discuss it again.

"Let me guess ... Dr. Parker, isn't it?"

"That's right," she replied, ignoring his provocation, then placed the tray with the chicken nuggets and chips on the table. She distributed them in three plates and covered Harry's with another upside-down plate, then sat down and began to eat. James drowned the fries in the ketchup and began fiddling with a fork against a croquette, continuing to turn it over thoughtfully without putting anything in his mouth.

"Don't you eat?"

"A lot of strange things happened around here today," he informed her.

"For example?"

James told her about the helicopter and Harry's crisis, about the bleeding and the strange movements in the woods, about the dart that made him lose consciousness and finally about the pranotherapy his son had given him, but all the time Eve continued looking at him skeptically.

"You do not believe me? Look here, I still have the sign," he said, turning to show his neck.

"In my opinion, your poisoned dart seems only the sting of an insect, there is still the sting," Eve minimized. "Wait till I take it off, stand still for a moment ... that's it," she said. James groaned because of the pinch, then looked at Eve undecided whether to be happy or upset because all his assumptions had been dismantled piece by piece within a minute. No one came to his home to kidnap his son, no one shut him a narcotic dart.

"You're still shaken by what happened to Harry," suggested Eve.

"Oh yes? And what about our son's behavior?"

"And what's so strange about him?"

"What's strange about him? I felt he was not alone in his room, that he was talking to someone. You know he never opens the window because he is afraid of spiders, and instead I found it completely wide open. And then my headache ... "

"Suggestion," she said. Immediately after she gave him a tender look as she hadn't done for a long time, she shook her head slightly and dropped the fork on the plate to caress the back of his hand. He was confused by her attitude, but he returned her affectionate gaze anyway. Although sometimes it seemed that it was the entire Chinese Wall that divided them, Eve still needed so little to take hold of him. He saw that she was going to speak and he arranged to listen to her.

"What happened yesterday proved to us all, much more than we thought."

"You mean I'm ranting?"

"No, I just want to say that maybe we need a little break-off. We could try to spend next weekend out together, maybe it could help us forget more quickly what happened."

James looked at her more and more astonished because in the last few years she had always shown herself reluctant to leave the narrow margins of the country, and even on the rare occasions that they had planned something, an unexpected last-minute event had always occurred forcing them to give up. And often the unexpected had something to do with her work or even with Dr. Parker himself. Those facts, along with so many other small signs, had almost led him to suspect that she had some particular reason to be holed up in that anonymous town, so much that she sabotages their holidays.

"I have no intention of forgetting, I want to understand," he pointed out with his usual air, abruptly changing his expression. "I want to understand why our son seemed to have become another person, and if necessary I want someone to visit him."

"Oh yes? And who would be to visit him, maybe an exorcist?" She taunted him, her sarcasm broke in an instant the idyll that James created in his mind.

"Eat, cold fries really suck," she added to end the conversation as he continued to stare at her disappointed, then stabbed a croquette and resumed eating.

At exactly seven o'clock Helen went to the meeting room where her little "A-Team" was waiting for her, it was time to take stock of the day. "So who wants to start?" She asked democratically, taking his place behind the bench and Agent Jones was the first one to raise her hand.

"Claretta is always the most hurried," Benelli teased, as usual, snatching a few smiles from his colleagues.

"If instead of having your wife who prepares always your dinner, you would have to run home to look after three children, you too would have hurried," she replied, looking him up and down.

"Well, then let's hear what you have to say," Helen said. "Has anyone noticed our subjects here in the area recently?"

"Nobody saw anyone," said Claretta.

"It was to be expected. Maybe they had arrived that night from who knows where and probably were headed for who knows where ..." commented Helen. Then she turned to Benelli. "Mario, what news do you bring us from the second inspection?"

"None. I scoured the area again, I was there for more than three hours but I didn't find anything interesting."

"Surely, starting from Tomorrow, there will be lots of onlookers out there and I don't want them to set foot there, have you fenced the perimeter well?"

"Yes, boss."

"Is there anything else?" Helen asked him, he shook his head and she looked at Joe.

"How is your research going?"

"It was a goose egg, I have not found a single recent case that is similar to ours. There have been a couple in Alaska but it's old stuff from years ago, more than twenty people have disappeared in Maine only in the last two weeks, but judging by mug shots, no one reported the missing of our "guests"," replied the big man.

Helen felt just a little bit reassured, because if someone had appeared to ask for explanations she would not have known what to tell, instead, thus they had at least a little more time to investigate.

"Has anyone heard something about the author of the call?" The audience then asked, clinging to a thin thread of hope, but everyone shook their heads in denial.

Dower's turn came. "At the DMV they didn't know what to say, when the clerk questioned the terminal this replied that there is no Cadillac with that chassis number.

The old Bob is checking it piece by piece, but he says there is nothing bad, simply, the car doesn't want to start going."

"From bad to worse ... we have two ghosts driving a ghost car ... however, it was to be expected," she commented.

"I would just like to know why the author of the call wanted to be unknown," said Claretta demoralized.

"There are two cases, or the person who called to report their bodies is somehow involved, or simply doesn't want trouble. For example, if he had made himself known, then he would have to explain what he was doing in the woods at that time of night," Helen explained. "Now go to rest, tomorrow will be a bad day for us all. To be able to get on top of this, we will have to jump through hoops," Helen concluded to dismiss the agents, and they began to prepare to leave the meeting room.

"Helen, Helen," Cindy called, breaking into the meeting room. She slipped and clung to the door handle to prevent from falling.

"What's so bad that you almost risk your neck?" Helen asked.

"I was afraid you were all gone already," she justified herself, struggling to stand on her feet, and Benelli brazenly laughed about her clumsiness.

"The guy from the car workshop just called, he said there is something absolutely incredible we must see immediately," she explained.

"What is it about?"

"He said it's very urgent, but he doesn't want to talk about it over the phone."

"And what did you say to him?"

"To hold the line."

Helen made her gaze run over the agents, they were looking at her like a schoolboy looks at the professor when, despite the last bell has been played for a while, he keeps you in the classroom to finish the explanation. After such a busy day, everyone wished rightly to return to their family, and she didn't feel like ordering someone to get sixty miles just to check what it was.

"Tell him we'll go tomorrow morning."

"But boss, the mechanic said ..."

"I understood perfectly what the mechanic said! If you care so much about it you can go there yourself tonight."

"Copy that," Cindy replied, then turned back to go to the switchboard.

"Now leave, before I change my mind," Helen ordered the agents, they sighed and began to leave the room.

"There is another thing," Benelli informed her.

"Yup?"

"Ms. Murphy called me at least a dozen times, today she was waiting for that famous story of border measurement. I promised her I'd call her back, what should I tell her?"

"That we are now busy with a more important case and we have no time for a stupid question of boundaries," she replied, throwing her eyes to the sky, then accompanied everyone to the front door to lock it.

Once alone, Helen went to check all doors and windows, then went to the guardhouse to pull a camping cot out of the closet and finally went to the bathroom to prepare herself for what it might have been another sleepless night. After brushing her teeth, she removed the very thin layer of makeup she applied to her eyes that morning. She did not like to make up her face, but after a few nights awake, the female part had taken over the Sheriff one, and like any self-respecting female, she had felt the need to hide those dark circles she had considered as deep as the Grand Canyon. She checked her little finger and had the impression that the itching had slightly decreased, on the contrary, the infection had already spread from her first phalanx to the second one, and even there the most superficial layer of the skin had begun to dry out. She decided to go as soon as possible to Dr. Parker, then she took off her shirt to take a quick shower. Instead of the uniform, she would have liked to wear her comfortable nightgown, but it didn't suit the place or the moment. "Patience, even dressed in this way I would be happy to sleep at least six hours," she thought, shrugging her shoulders, then finished combing her hair and went wearily into the gatehouse. The police station staff had self-assessed to buy a small TV, a very useful companion through the long lonely hours of the night on watch. Helen had turned it on and set the automatic shut-off to twenty minutes, hoping it would be enough to fall asleep. She had just lain down on the cot with the blanket pulled up to her nose when the phone rang causing her a heart attack; she threw away the blanket cursing the fact she had forgotten to leave the cordless closer and got up to go and answer.

"It is Larry speaking, I was hoping I'd still find you at work."

"You were lucky, tonight is my guard duty..." she said ironically.

"Ready? I have something incredible to tell you," he told her with a certain agitation in his voice.

"What is all this euphoria due to?" Helen asked, sitting down on the cot. She was convinced that after such a day there would have been just a few incredible things he could tell her, yet she was ready for the worst.

"Are you ready?"

"Shoot."

"Your blue powder is mainly composed of silicates, carbon, graphite, and solidified helium that works as connective tissue.

When they penetrated into the earth's atmosphere in the form of dry ice, ultraviolet radiation altered the molecules producing ..."

"Sorry if I interrupt you, but couldn't you speak easier? I don't understand much about all these big words," said Helen without bothering to dampen his enthusiasm.

"Cosmic dust," Larry summed up.

"Dust what?"

"Space dust! That stuff is dust that comes from space."

"How can you be so sure?"

"I already suspected it last time because I remembered I read something similar on a scientific publication of Pasadena laboratory, which is affiliated with NASA. However I used my special reagents and made a couple of phone calls, and the response always seems the same."

"... does it seem?"

"At ninety-nine point nine percent! That stuff is very similar to the one found in meteorite impact zones."

"You mean that stuff comes from space?"

"From deep space, to be precise."

"And do you think the cause of the mummification of their bodies is the dust?"

"If I have to guess, I think there is a high chance it is so, in its composition there are also highly corrosive elements," replied Larry. It came to her mind the image of her finger trying to remove it from Harry's bike and the very painful twinge she felt when she touched it with the part of her fingertip causing the small wound. "Oh my God," she thought, fearing that she could die like the two corpses, then repeated herself it couldn't be true. Larry must have been wrong. "And how did that stuff get to this point, from deep space?"

"Honestly, I haven't an idea yet," Larry confessed, fantasizing about some kind of investigation, and imagining an increase of his reputation that would have been a real stroke of luck for his profession. "What do you think about it?"

"That it was not necessary this thing!" She said, cooling all his enthusiasm.

"Ah," He murmured, disappointed.

"Don't get me wrong, of course we'll go all the way and you'll help us, because you deserve it and because I owe you," Helen assured him. "But right now I'm really exhausted because in the last few nights I didn't sleep at all and so many things have happened today, I absolutely need to rest," she added.

"I see ..." mourned Larry frustrated.

"I'll call you as soon as possible, okay?" Helen proposed, realizing she had been rude. "I will keep you updated and I will surely still need your help," she added, rewarding at least morally his efforts.

"As you wish, my favorite Sheriff," Larry replied with a hint of dissatisfaction in his voice.

"Well, then have a good night," said Helen. "Cosmic fine dust ..." she repeated, scanning the sky through the half-closed slats of the rolling shutter, then she looked at her finger and thought about mummies and Harry's bicycle. "I have to warn James, if Harry has been in contact with this stuff he is really in danger." She took the phone to call him, then she considered it was late, and bothering him at that time would only serve to give him an extra worry. In any case, James had spent the whole day with his son, if he had any problem he would certainly have noticed. She set the device down, turned on the table lamp to examine her finger meticulously and verified how much that infection had progressed in just twenty-four hours. "I have to call the doctor so that he prescribes me a drug," she thought troubled, taking the cordless phone again. "And what do I tell him, that I have an allergy to space dust?" She replied then, shaking her head and putting the device back on the table. "Cosmic fine dust, it doesn't make any sense. Moreover, I started talking to myself, I am going crazy," she concluded, falling heavily on her cot. She lay down and began to brood over what had happened, and at that point, she was sure that was going to be her third consecutive, completely blank night.

Eve and James had finished their dinner in silence and had sat down in front of the TV without actually looking at anything, everyone was chasing their thoughts waiting for Harry to calm down. The boy showed up after a couple of hours, but contrary to what they expected, he walked by ignoring them and went straight to the kitchen where he ate something, cleared the dish, as he used to do when he was upset, and walked the path backwards to go back upstairs in his room, a clear sign that he was still angry for the loss of the dog. At that point, Eve considered that the day was over, so she went to put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and then went upstairs. James watched the TV, zapping in an attempt to find something interesting, but after a few minutes, he switched it off and went upstairs too. He slept a few hours during those difficult days, therefore judged that sleeping a little more than usual could only be better for his health. Thinking about it, he concluded that remaining locked up at home would have been good neither for him nor for his son, so he decided that the day after he would accompany him to the Scout Camp and then he would go to work, trying to get back to their daily lives. By the time Eve came out of the bathroom James was almost completely dozing off, she lay down beside him and he heard her invading his half of the bed and as usual, he moved towards the edge, to avoid misunderstandings. But instead, she moved closer and he felt the contact with her body warmer than usual, he stretched an arm to push her back, but she grabbed his hand and brought it to her naked breast.

James raised his head surprised, she turned and pulled him towards her. It was a fleeting and silent moment, in the dark as always, it lasted barely enough time to count to ten, without exchanging a kiss or a caress, nor a single word. Immediately afterward, Eve fell asleep and he stayed awake to wonder why the weirdness just seemed not to want to end. First, she suggested a vacation all together and then they had sex, and that could be the prelude to a new beginning. But he did not dare to really believe it. Deep down inside him, he thought that he didn't even know anymore if that was what he really wanted.

While waiting for the unpleasant meeting that awaited him, the President had begun his usual relaxing chess game against the PC, and slowly he filled in his mind with reflections. "Benjamin Hope ... sometimes life really enjoys playing with people's names. How can a man, with a profile similar to that of a vulture and with a zombielike complexion, have such a name? Not to mention the few times we met was just to tell me the bad news ... how can a man so similar to a scavenger be called Benjamin Hope?" He was wondering, when the sudden "bip" of the intercom startled him. He checked the time on the PC application bar and snorted in resignation, the time for the dreaded appointment had arrived.

"The people you were waiting for arrived," the secretary informed him via intercom.

"Thanks, Elisabeth. Please let them sit in the anteroom, I will receive them in two minutes," he replied.

"As you wish, Mr. President."

The President saved the game and closed the computer, finally sorted out the desk and placed two large files on it, as to make a good impression. He tidied up his shirt and walked to greet his guests. Walking along the short stretch that separated him from the door, he passed in front of the United States flag, placed between a philodendron and a pachira plant, and stopped to look at her perplex. How in a lightning movie trailer he relived the path that, starting from so far away, had brought him there, and for a moment he wondered if all the efforts and sacrifices he made to be in front of that flag in that precise moment were really worth it. Aware that there was only further delay in his torment, he shook his head and decided to go and open the door.

Helen was lying on a metal table and two voices kept telling in her head she had nothing to fear. She could not remember how she ended there, she only knew that the contact of her naked skin against the cold steel was horrible and that she wanted to escape, but her body did not respond to her commands; she felt like a piece of iron resting on a magnetic surface.

She opened her eyes and looked around, but what she saw let her wish to have never done it. She was in a laboratory, strange machines were hanging from the ceiling next to a lamp, it was so powerful as to blind her and some metal tentacles were threateningly leaning towards her. Shining surgical instruments were arranged in order of size on the top shelf of a trolley on her left, and on a metal shelf, just a little further back, there was a collection of crystal jars containing human fetuses. Helen suddenly felt completely lost and a sensation she had never had before, a completely resigned terror. One of the two silent figures in white coats grasped an instrument and stretched his arm towards her belly, meanwhile, he mentally kept repeating to her to stay calm. She felt a kind of tickling and when she finally managed to figure out what they were going to do she tried again to rebel but she couldn't, everything seemed muffled and she felt helpless, the only thing she was able to do was crying. She closed her eyes, so as not to see what they were doing, and tried to gather all her energy, tried to scream as hard as she could, and her own voice woke her as she fell from the cot. Not even the time to touch the ground and she was already on her feet, she turned the light on and ran towards the bathroom because she almost shitted herself. Going out of the bathroom, she stopped in front of the mirror in the anteroom and rinsed her face with trembling hands, continuing to look around hallucinated. Although she had been awake yet for a few minutes, those terrible sensations had stuck to her like a second skin, almost as if they weren't the fruit of her stressed mind but rather memories of a truly lived experience. She repeated to herself to calm down, it was only her cursed recurring nightmare. She knew that in that dream there was also Harry, she had never been able to see him, but she was sure he was there too somewhere. Suddenly she realized when she had really tried that kind of annoying tickling in his lower abdomen: that nightmare had brought back the memory of when, years before, she had thought she was pregnant. She had lulled the dream of becoming a mother for a few days until Dr. Parker, just on the third check-up, informed her that there was no fertilized ovum in her womb and dismissed her saying it was a simple hysterical pregnancy, brutally extinguishing all the emotions she had blossomed in her mind. The woman began to cry again, when she calmed down she sat at her desk and took out a sheet and pen with the intention of finding a rational way to go with her mind. She thought back to Larry's and coroner's words scribbling notes about it, and the more she thought about it, the more obvious it seemed the chemist must have been wrong about it. The worst thing of all was that there was probably at least one killer among them and, surely, it was the author of the anonymous call. All the faces of her fellow villagers passed in her mind one by one, in one line. She tried to imagine each one of them in the guise of a homicidal maniac. She was sure that none of them could go in the woods in the middle of the night to kill a couple in a moment of intimacy, but if it really had been one of them, how could he have done it without leaving a single trace?

Such a job was worthy of a professional and certainly not a beet grower or a skipper. And then, what was casing the fact those corpses were mummifying? Perhaps a malfunction of the morgue cells? And that phosphorescent powder what was it? And her finger? What was happening to her finger? She looked at the clock and realized that it was barely one o'clock in the morning, she decided that she had to do something practical immediately or once finished her shift her colleagues would have found her completely and definitively out of her mind.

"As you certainly know Dr. Benjamin Hope is the coordinator of the working group that completed the Project Earth, which NASA itself commissioned to the National Academy of Sciences during the previous presidential term," the Chief of the National Security Department, Jason Ross, began after the customary pleasantries.

"I know Mr. Hope very well," the President replied, extending his hand. "Over the past few years, our roads have crossed more than once. And it is a pleasure to see him again because I respect him greatly both as a man and as a scientist" he lied in order to flatter the scholar. The way in which Hope had insisted on meeting him had given the President the certainty that he had come to bring him a very bitter pill to throw down and he hoped that, if he had flattered him a little, he would at least have the foresight to sugar coat it a little. Doctor Hope nodded his lips in a vague smile, but the firm expression of his eyes did not change by a thousandth because something in the words of his interlocutor had sounded out of line.

"In our opinion, we can begin to talk," announced Ben Kowalsky, Jason Ross's deputy.

"At least let me offer you something to drink first, to cool you off, you walked a long way," the President proposed.

"No compliments and no offense, Mr. President, but we know this will not be a five-minute thing. We are all very tired and the sooner we go straight to the point the sooner we can go to sleep," said Ross, certain of interpreting the thought of everyone present.

"Well then, let's not waste any more time," the President agreed, pointing to the seats.

"The Ring of Fire is a forty-thousand-kilometer-long belt that borders the Pacific Ocean basin, it looks like a horseshoe and is characterized by an uninterrupted series of oceanic trenches and volcanic chains that generate a strong instability, due to the continuous plate tectonic boundaries," Dr. Hope began. Then he paused and looked directly at the President to make sure he was following him. The President thought "as I predicted he has come here to talk about misfortunes" and for a moment he was tempted to send him away. Instead, he invited him, with a slight nod, to continue.

"About ninety percent of earthquakes in the world occur along the Ring of Fire, where, among other things, about seventy-five percent of the Volcanoes on Earth are located. And it is precisely in that area that the most devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions recently have occurred: the 2012 tsunami caused by a major earthquake in Indonesia, with the consequences that we all know; the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that struck Chile in 2010; and then there was the tremendous episode of the Fukushima earthquake. But it seems that Earth is awakening everywhere. In the opposite hemisphere, exactly in the same period, there was a great earthquake that devastated Christchurch in New Zealand. And then there are Kamchatka volcanoes in Russia and Indonesian ones like Merapi, Krakatoa, and many others, which since then have consistently increased their volcanic activity. Recently the Fuego and the Santiaguito also erupted in Guatemala ... and then many other incidents occurred that it is useless to mention," stressed Hope interrupting the rosary of catastrophes he was counting one after the other because he realized that the President had assumed an indecipherable expression on his face. He turned to Ross and Kowalsky hoping to get some help, he had been in that room for less than ten minutes and was already deeply uncomfortable.

"Go ahead, please, we don't have all night," Ross urged him, and he obeyed.

"Our planet intensifies periodically its seismic and volcanic activity, it is something more than normal, but we suspected that generally climatic changes could not have been caused exclusively by this phenomenon, that even if very intense it was not however sufficient to justify this significant changes in every part of the globe," said Hope, but immediately afterward he paused again. He had talked while everyone present was listening to him in silence without blinking; the way they looked at him made him feel more like a guest than ever before.

"Come on, don't stop right on top of it," the President urged him. Hope could not have said if he was really interested in what he was saying or if he was ironic about it, in any case, he continued to have the feeling that man actually blamed him, but he just couldn't understand the reason. "Very well" he resumed after drinking a glass of water, more to stall than to thirst. "The first thing we found out is that climate change is partly due to the fact that many places on the planet are no longer present where they were until recently."

"Explain that better please," the President invited him.

"Tectonic plates movements, a slight shift of Earth's rotation axis caused by all the events I mentioned earlier, and finally a slight variation of Earth's orbit due to an alteration of gravity fields. The result of the sum of the effects of these three changes, as I said earlier, is that many places are no longer in the geographical position they were in until a few months ago. And so now they are subject to different climatic situations."

"It's incredible," Kowalsky said. Ross nodded silently.

"I suppose you didn't ask to see me just to talk about the weather ..." the President said.

"Yes," agreed Hope, "here the climate changes are the minor problem."

"Are you kidding? So what would be the biggest one?" Kowalsky asked.

"What really opened our eyes was a sudden and drastic reduction of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, which we accidentally discovered during a research session on the thinning of the permafrost layer at the North Pole. When we arrived at the site, in order to find out the causes, we were stunned, the surface of that floating plastic island, thousands of square kilometers wide and thirty meters high, had reduced its size by about forty percent in just a few weeks. This phenomenon resulted from an intense overheating that caused the island to crumple upon itself. Whole shoals of fish floated upside down, literally boiled, and in many parts of the ocean, we recorded temperatures well above fifty-celsius degrees. And while we kept monitoring sky and sea and discussing several hypotheses, other scientists were making a series of discoveries that I would call scary," said Hope. Then, feeling more and more uncomfortable, he stopped again.

"... What are you talking about?"

"It's about solar activity."

"Explain yourself better."

"The Sun has a repetitive functioning cycle, approximately every eleven years our star records on the surface a peak of activity that for some weeks produces geomagnetic storms that end up right on us. This phenomenon will reach its climax soon, after which it should fade and return to normal."

"We already knew it," the President said, interrupting Benjamin Hope's speech for the first time, who was almost happy because that intervention meant they were listening carefully. "And it has always happened," the President continued, "I don't see what is so worrying. At worst, if our planet will really hit by solar wind particles, we will have serious problems for months and many people will die, but at least nothing irreparable will happen. This was established by your research a few years ago."

"I'm sorry to contradict you, but it changed a little since then," Hope objected. "The comparative analysis we did, using the spectrometer, showed something completely unexpected and not very reassuring."

"That is?" Kowalsky urged, paling slightly; when too many big words began to buzz in his head he lost the focus on his speech and got nervous.

"During our research, we identified deep fractures at many Mohorovicic discontinuity locations, which are nothing but wounds in Earth's crust, at very great depths, and so we finally realized what is causing these intense localized temperature increases. The nature of solar radiation is changing. Until recently, the frequency spectrum of emissions that reached the ground has always involved a range from three to ten Gigahertz, but lately, it started to fall and touched more than once values very close to 2.45 Gigahertz.

This fact has contributed significantly to triggering the phenomena that recently occurred in the area of the Ring of Fire. Moreover, it seems that emissions are about to become more or less stable around those values."

"I still don't understand what is your point," the President confessed.

"Practically, in this phase, the Sun is gradually turning into a huge magnetron, the tube for operating microwaves."

The President questioned Ross and Kowalsky with a quick glance, who responded by sticking their chin forward to indicate they too had not understood.

"I'll explain it easier. Let's take a silicone balloon, fill it with water and put it in a microwave oven. If we..."

"I get it now," the President interrupted again. "The silicone will not change, but the liquid inside will boil, and increasing its pressure due to overheating, it will explode, shattering the casing."

"Unless fractures are created on the surface of the balloon to allow some liquid to escape and to rebalance the internal pressure," Dr. Hope pointed out.

"So according to his theory the Sun is slowly overheating all the magma contained within the Planet sending it to boil, and if the right conditions are met we run the risk that the Earth will explode" hypothesized the President; then he stopped waiting for a confirmation.

"Your theory is very fascinating, but in my opinion, it seems too much extreme, the chances such event occurs are minimal," replied Dr. Hope after thinking it over.

"Then what is the real problem? Why are we here tonight to discuss instead of saying goodnight to our children?" Asked the President angrily, he almost had the impression the scientist was having fun behind him.

"The real problem apart from the various active volcanoes scattered all over the planet lies in the chain of super submarine volcanoes located in Antarctica," explained the scientist.

"What volcanoes?"

"The British Antarctic Survey discovered them a few years ago, they are twelve volcanoes located not far from the South Sandwich Islands, a stone's throw from the South Pole. Some of them are three thousand meters high and still seem to be active."

"I don't see what problem they can cause, they are so far from civilization," the President objected.

"We know the cracks that affect the Mesosphere are so large as to favor the flow of real huge underground magma rivers, you have no idea of what could happen if all the thermal energy absorbed by the Ring of Fire would channel in that direction without getting lost along the way."

"So you tell me," the President replied impatiently, the researcher was treating him as ignorant and he didn't like it at all.

"The ashes produced by the possible eruption of many huge volcanoes would poison the sea and obscure the sky for years, depriving us in a short time of all the resources we need daily and generating a sort of nuclear winter that would affect the whole planet. The biggest explosion would then be located just where Earth's axis of rotation ideally meets the surface, and this would have irreparable consequences. In the worst scenario possible, such an explosion could give the planet a tremendous boost, that our engineers have established to be comparable to the rockets on a spaceship ..."

"That's enough!" The President surrendered, he didn't want to imagine other catastrophic scenarios. "Are you suggesting that we must wish for a further increase in seismic and volcanic activity so that Earth can, let's say," discharge "? Should we hope that many great calamities rather than one huge catastrophe occur? "

Dr. Hope raised his eyebrows as to say "there you go".

"If I'm not mistaken, you also said that the culmination of the solar crisis will come soon," the President then asked to take control of the situation.

"A fortnight, maximum twenty days. Perhaps less," the scientist confirmed.

"How many chances do we have that the sun really works like a microwave and triggers the grand finale?"

"I suppose we have good chances to survive, but I am not able to state this with certainty because we do not have similar precedents to study. Making predictions would be unscientific, but if I were forced to venture a number I would say fifty and fifty."

"And does one chance out of two seems good to you?" Ross remarked, annoyed. The scientist answered spreading his arms.

"Will there be any warning before it happens?" Asked the President.

"A maximum of four or five days' notice, I assume. The internal pressure of the magma chambers will increase exponentially by transferring part of its energy to the Astenosfera, which will be significantly affected by the effects of this phenomenon. Earthquakes and chain eruptions will occur, but it will still be a fairly slow process. The first consistent signal will be the large masses of water that will start to evaporate from lakes and rivers and then from the sea with rapidly increasing speed and intensity. When water vapor comes into contact with the colder air in the upper parts of the atmosphere tremendous storms will break loose. Once fallen, the water will immediately start evaporating again to start the cycle again increasingly devastating. Meanwhile, even living beings..."

"Did you say living beings?" Ross interrupted him, he wasn't sure he understood.

"Exactly. We, for example, we are made of water at seventy percent, what do you think would happen to our bodies in such a situation?"

"Does that mean we're destined to burst like that balloon in the microwave?"

"It's a possibility. It is not certain that all this will happen, but if it really happens then there will be no single safe place on Earth, if this is what you wanted to know."

"What can we do?" The President asked Benjamin Hope, and he did it in a way that for the first time since he had stepped into the White House had seemed humble. The scientist looked at him strangely, because he could hardly believe that the President himself had really asked him a similar question. Then the President immediately regretted asking it to him. Dr. Hope had asked him a meeting for a long time, telling him that he had to expose vital questions to him, but he had always done everything he could to avoid that meeting.

"What can we do?" Dr. Hope echoed, the President nodded and let him rub salt in his wound. To rub it in for how much superficial he had been in postponing that meeting was the least he could have done.

"As far as I am concerned tonight I will go back home and dedicate all the time I have to my family, I will try to prepare as best as I can for what could be our last Christmas on Earth," he replied quietly, without arguing. The President looked strangely at his collaborators who shrugged their shoulders, then returned to seriously look Dr. Hope because that was certainly not the answer he expected. Dr. Hope noticed it and nodded, he knew that the President was asking what humanity could work out about that specific problem and so he took a few moments to think about it.

"We have to cross our fingers, it seems obvious to me ... at this point, I can't see what else we could do!" He declared at the end of his reflections; everyone present remained speechless.

"Goodbye," he added, getting up, then put his hat on his head in an elegant manner and moved toward the door.

It was almost three o'clock and James had not yet managed to sleep. He was just about to doze off when an unexpected distant rumble of a low-speed diesel engine got his attention. He opened his eyes cursing that noise, it awakened him just when he was about to fall asleep, then he got up yawning and looked out of the window wondering who could wander at that time of night. He looked carefully through the closed shutters, but the open space in front of the house was deserted, there were no lights of any kind, and he thought he had only imagined it. Once awake, he decided to look at Harry, slowly opened the door and found him blissfully asleep. He smiled smugly and went back to bed, ready to sleep, but as soon as he closed his eyes a screeching squeak made him alert all his senses again. He listened for a few moments without being able to catch other noises, then he thought that probably a gust had stirred the unstable walls of his tin shed.

"Sooner or later I'll have to make up my mind and settle it," he thought, once again ready to fall asleep, but just a moment later he heard a new crunch. Eve grumbled something and changed position by pulling the sheet towards her.

"Did you hear that too?" James asked her as he turned on the lamp, but she was sleeping soundly with her earplugs insert. He heard yet another unusual sound and at that point, he was quite certain that someone was rummaging in his tool shed, then got out of bed, took the torch and the semiautomatic from the drawer of the dresser and ran down the stairs. Once downstairs he put on a pair of boots at his feet, put on a sweatshirt over his pajamas and lurked behind the kitchen door, the best point from which he could observe the garden without being seen. He noticed a faint glow inside the shed and decided that he would exit the back door to walk around the house passing over the hedge that bounded the property, in that way he would arrive behind the shed without being seen. He would have lurked and would have surprised the intruder at the exit; whoever it was would have dealt with, he would have let him pass the desire to go and rummage into other people's houses. He walked those thirty meters behind the hedge with his heart in his throat, thinking back to all the strange things that had happened in those last days, and he repeated several times that he had to be very careful. Arriving at the shed he flattened himself against a side wall and patiently waited. Shortly after the door opened slowly and a shadow came out, James jumped on her, seizing her from behind and pinned her to the ground, with her arms crossed behind her back, like when he makes an arrest, and before the other could try to move he sat astride on her back.

"Don't move," he growled in her ear, then he raised his arm to hit her shoulder with the butt of his pistol just to show immediately who was in charge. At that point, the intruder, frightened and put in inferior conditions, would have told what was she doing in there without resisting and without inventing stories. As soon as he began to lower his arm, however, he stopped because a light bulb had suddenly lit up in his head: when he had approached the intruder's ear he had the feeling of knowing her. The vague hint of a familiar scent, though almost completely covered by the smell of her sweat, had awakened a sensation in him. Also, thinking back, he realized that when he had belted her from behind he had touched something soft, something very similar to a breast.

"James, stop for the love of God!" Shouted Helen, terrified.

"Helen? What are you doing here?" He said puzzled lowering his arm.

"Do you want to leave me now? You are hurting me!"

James loosened his grip and moved to her side, she stood up rubbing her aching wrists and looked at him badly.

"How could I know it was you?" He justified himself. "Luckily I recognized you at the last moment, otherwise I don't know what I would have done ... lately, too many strange things happened."

"Don't tell me!"

"Why, what happened to you?"

"It would be faster to tell you what hasn't happened yet."

"In the meantime, start by explaining why you came to rummage in my garage at this time of night," he asked her again.

"Didn't Harry tell you anything about his little escape yet?"

"Don't call it that, I still don't know what happened, but now I'm more than certain it wasn't an escape. And why do you ask me that anyway? What is so important about my son to push you here in the middle of the night?"

"Nothing ... maybe I'm just becoming paranoid and now it's very late ... it's better if we talk about it tomorrow morning at the office, right now I should be guarding the police station and you sleeping with your wife," she replied pretending to leave.

"Wait a moment! Eve has earplugs in her ears and will sleep for at least another four hours, and as for paranoia, it's the same thing I've been repeating myself since this morning."

"I have to go back to the Station," Helen insisted, shaking her head without much conviction, she was still undecided whether to tell him about the two corpses and the probable connection with Harry's bike. But on the other hand, she knew that if she didn't do it at that moment she would still have to say it in a few hours, in the office.

"Don't worry, what could happen at the Police Station? Nothing ever happens there."

"You say? And then you'll hear what happened today," she replied, then she told him everything and when she finished she noticed that James was looking at her as he was looking at a Martian. "Are you saying that there were two corpses in a car in the woods up here, just behind my house, and that with all the people who walked around in the bush looking for Harry nobody saw them? And besides, if I understand correctly, do you think there is a possibility that those corpses have something to do with the temporary disappearance of my child?"

Helen nodded confidently.

"I think you were right a while ago when you said you were becoming paranoid," James commented, noticing the signs of fatigue on her face.

"Then come and see," she offered, opened the shed and pointed to the bicycle.

"It's unbelievable ... I have to go and tell Eve everything, maybe this time she will admit I am right," said James, seeing the luminescence on the handlebar.

"No, don't do it!" Said Helen with an impetus that James judged to be excessive.

"What's the matter with you? Why shouldn't I tell my wife what's going on?"

"I don't know, but I think that for the moment it is better if we say nothing to anyone ... call it women's intuition" she justified herself to respond to his perplexities. James resumed examining the luminescent powder, hesitantly reached out a hand to touch it and she abruptly pulled his arm away. He frowned because now Helen was behaving in a really bizarre way, she sighed at his glare and took the bandage off her finger to show him the necrosis.

"The other night I tried to remove that powder with this finger," she explained.

"Damn, you have to show it to someone right away."

"The finger can wait, now I have more important things to think about," Helen replied with a shrug.

"I'm serious," James insisted, continuing to study her doubtfully, she got the impression that he was really worried about her mental balance.

"All right, I assure you I will do it as soon as possible," she promised to calm him. "In the meantime, think about making the bicycle disappear. Harry shouldn't approach it for now."

"You're right, I'll go right away and hide it in the woods and if he'll look for it I'll tell him someone stole it."

"Poor Harry ... first that terrible experience, then his bike ..." said Helen.

"... and finally Toby," he added.

"Why, what happened to the dog this time?" She asked curiously, and then it was James' turn to let her know what happened.

"It all seems so absurd ..." Helen commented at the end of her story.

"Yeah ..." James said wearing his thick gardener's gloves. He pushed the mountain bike out and walked up the path to the woods and she followed him right after.

"That's it, you can be sure no one will find it here," said James satisfied, taking off his gloves. "It's late, it's time to go to sleep," he added.

"Yes, I think you're right," agreed Helen, but neither of them moved.

"How much time we spent here, lying on the grass looking at the sky ..." he murmured, raising his head to contemplate the starry night.

"And how many pranks we did. Do you remember that time we stayed three days hidden in that barn? "

"If I remember it? Of course, I do, my parents did not let me out of the house for two weeks as a punishment!" He said, they laughed happily, and immediately afterward a slightly embarrassed silence fell.

"There was a time I believed we would always be together," Helen confessed.

"I often felt this too, sometimes I even believed that one day I would have married you," said James, looking at his shoes.

"Yes, but you never proposed to me!" She replied, pretending to be offended.

"Of course, when I finally made up my mind, you found The Incredible Hulk," said James.

"It was just to make you jealous, and anyway you immediately took comfort with that fussy one."

"That grumpy one is my wife now, I won't let you talk about her in this manner!" He joked, and they laughed again.

"James, what's going on? Here it has always been all so peaceful and so ordinary..." she became sad afterward.

"God knows how much I'd like to know ..." he replied. The wind gave him her scent and he suddenly felt a slight sense of yearning. He wondered how their life would have been like if they were really married, but soon after he thought that surely he wouldn't have Harry and that certainty was enough to make him stop thinking immediately.

"Shall we take a look?"

"To what?"

"Don't pretend to fall from the clouds, I know very well that you're thinking about it too," said James, pointing to the top of the hill, but she hesitated.

"I promise we'll just take a look, and I'll also get Harry's fishing rod back. It will take just ten minutes cutting through the forest ... and then we have torches and guns, there is nothing we need to worry about."

"I do not know..."

"Come on, it's evident you're dying of curiosity too," insisted James.

Dr. Hope left the meeting and the President rested his elbows on the desk, propped his chin on the back of his hands and started brooding silently. From time to time he glanced at Ross and Kowalsky, who were visibly devoured by anxiety too, as if in their eyes he could find an answer. In a few minutes, he wondered, at least a million times, if was it really possible that starting from tomorrow there would be such a brutal event that could wipe out the entire humanity from the face of Earth in a flash. He could see it in their eyes too, that was the same question they were thinking about. The President also considered whether he should disclose that news or keep it classified; he was sure that Benjamin would not have done so because he was aware that revealing such news would only trigger a global panic, and this would produce easily predictable negative consequences. He, therefore, decided that he would not make it public, but also that he would not passively wait for events to unfold; he was a man who never gives up, because he had grown up on the streets and the first lesson he had received from his life was that if you want something you have to struggle to get it. Whatever it takes.

"Immediately track down Professor Hamilton, I want him to be here at ten o'clock tomorrow morning," he suddenly ordered his men to shake off that feverish thought process. He knew that if Dr. Hope saw right, then Professor Hamilton would be his last asset to try to save the world from that catastrophe, or at least to limit its damage.

"Are you sure, Mr. President?" If I remember well, last time we met him he gave us the impression he was no fit to think clearly anymore" said Ross unconvinced.

"Why, does this seem to you something for sane people? We don't have much time and we have no other choice, haven't you heard what Dr. Hope said before?" The President replied firmly. "And get me Dr. Abel Parker quickly, I need to talk to her as soon as possible at least by phone," he added.

"We'll get to work right away," answered Ross, standing up.

"Obviously there is no need for me to tell you that this meeting never existed," the President pointed out as they left the room.

"Just a rapid look," Helen said once they were there. "Just a look," agreed James, lifting the yellow tape to make way for her. They went into the confined area throwing glances here and there and orienting the torches randomly because they didn't even know what to look for. James decided to immediately retrieve the fishing rod and went to inspect the creek; he found it exactly where his son was used to place it and noticed that it gave off the usual bluish glow too. He put on his gloves, grabbed it carefully and was dismayed by the fishing line.

"Helen, come and see!" He called loudly after a few moments.

"Shhh! Do you want them to hear us up to Hancock?" She scolded him, reaching him. "Damn, what's that?" She then asked disgusted, pointing to the thing hanging at the end of the line.

"I have no idea," said James. "It would seem that something had taken the bait and that something bigger had tried to eat it. But it's impossible to understand what animals they are, they look like wood."

"They are mummified, just like ..." Helen started to say, but before he finished the sentence James covered her mouth with his hand and dragged her behind a bush, she stumbled into a root and fell, slamming her shoulder.

"Hey, what the hell are you doing?" She scolded, rubbing the painful part. "In the last half hour, it's the second time you try to kill me!" She protested.

"We're not alone," he whispered, keeping his hands on her shoulders to keep her from getting up.

"It's impossible," she replied.

"I tell you that there is someone around here, can't you hear this hiss?"

"No! I can't hear a damn thing," Helen said, freeing herself from his grip and getting up to check. "And furthermore I'm the Sheriff, I'm not the one who shouldn't be here," she said as she stepped out of the bush.

"Helen, please, get down," James urged her again, pulling her by her arm, but she got rid of him and stepped out. At the same time, James heard a buzzing sound coming from the bush that reminded him of the sound of a generator being activated.

Instinctively he threw away the fishing rod and threw himself once more time on Helen, overwhelming her and causing her a stifled groan.

"Now I have really had enough of you!" She exclaimed, and as she struggled to get rid of him, an intense storm of blinding lightning hit them, followed by deafening hisses that terrified them. As soon as they felt better, they heard someone was approaching, they were quickly rummaging, with the help of that powerful light.

"Stop right there, whoever you are. Stop or I shoot you!" Helen ordered with her arm outstretched, squinting in an attempt to focus on something or someone. In return they heard the buzzing of the generator one more time, James took Helen by force and pushed her into the creek, dived back and dragged her behind a spike of rock near the opposite bank of the stream. A new burst of lightning swept that corner of the forest, she tried to peep out from behind the rock to fire at least one shot, but James pulled her back for the umpteenth time.

"Damn! Do you want us to get killed?" He snarled at her furiously, she huffed angrily and put her Sig Sauer in the holster. The power light repeatedly caressed the stream surface looking for them and they remained motionless behind the rock, immersed in the icy water up to the neck and without breathing. After a long time, when they were about to give in to the cold and nervous stress, the light finally shifted in the direction of the stain and moved away until it died out in the dark. Helen couldn't stop shaking, moved to return to the shore, but James held her back.

"Are you all right?" He asked.

"I think I'm still in one piece," she stammered, still shocked. James hugged her to warm her, their eyes met and he wondered how those eyes could be so bright even in a bad night like that. Before he had time to notice, his mind raced to make a thousand comparisons between her and Eve, and discovered that what he had felt just a little while ago making love with his wife was nothing compared to what he was feeling simply by embracing Helen. He wonder what Eve must have done to him many years ago to bewitch him like that. He hugged Helen a little closer and caressed her.

"James ... please don't ..." she said trying to escape the embrace; the way he was looking at her made her uncomfortable. Suddenly James realized how beautiful Helen was, he told himself that he probably never realized it before only because they had grown up together, day after day, and he had always been in front of her. She again tried to get away from James and he loosened his grip, embarrassed. Helen relaxed, but a breath of light wind once again brought her scent to James, who, before that evening, believed he had forgotten it forever. It had nothing to do with that of Eve, a scent that had the power to erase the world. Without almost even realizing it he pulled her to him and kissed her. For a brief moment, Helen responded to that kiss, but immediately after she pushed him away with all her strength.

"What's wrong with you tonight, have you gone mad all together?" She shouted furiously as she drew back. That kiss made her nervous because she was unable to determine whether to feel happy or indignant; on the other hand, the only thing she was sure was that she felt guilty and ashamed, as a thief.

"If they had killed us a little while ago, I would have died without having done the only thing I think I really wanted for all my life," James justified himself, spreading his arms, she lowered her head without replying and began to cross the river to come back.

Luke Mac January was leisurely driving along the Seventy-three Road in the direction of Rockland and was more than perplexed, having spent the last year scouring the United States far and wide and doubting that he would find what he was looking for just in that lost place on the edge of northeastern America. In his opinion, a great mystery necessarily needed a great location, and it seemed to him that this place had nothing to do with it. The solution to that mystery he had been seeking for so long, we knew well that at that point, after yet another failure, his desire to give up would have increased even more forcefully than before. But he also knew well that he would never give up and then he would come to hate himself because of his curiosity and his damned sense of duty. An ordinary morning of about a year before, an elderly man, who looked very wealthy, appeared in his dilapidated private investigator's office to ask him to find his young wife who had disappeared many years before. At first, Luke had thought it was a joke and had been staring him uncertain for a few moments, but when he opened his mouth to answer he was interrupted.

"I know what you are thinking, that I'm an old fool and that this is one of the usual boring rickety whims" he had anticipated by looking him straight in the eyes, and Mc January had tightened his lips tilting his head a little to one side.

"This woman left almost twenty years ago," the man continued, "and thanks to my powerful means, I searched for her throughout the continent for years without getting any results. She disappeared in a wink, without leaving the slightest trace and without stealing a single dollar. The only thing that took me away was a precious book from the Potala Palace in Lhasa, which as you know is a sacred city in Tibet."

"What was the book about, if I may ask?" Asked Mc January, slightly intrigued.

"No secret, for the little I know it was a collection of legends concerning some very ancient civilizations. It told about aircraft piloted with the sole force of thought, that flew through the skies and fought epic battles with some destructive weapons that even today we are not able to imagine ...

I have never managed to understand why she took it since it was written in an incomprehensible language. I suppose she only did it to spite me because she knew how I was fond of it ... anyway, speaking of her, after all this time she could be dead or hidden who knows in what remote corner of the world," he had said, and Luke had nodded and raised his eyebrows at up.

"And with all the money I have I could have as many women as I want, young, beautiful and very consenting," he added; at that point Luke had spread his arms, disheartened by his frankness.

"But then why are you here? Do you think that if I had the ability to perform such a miracle I would work in an office like this?"

"The office you have is not important, and I know everything I need about you."

"And that is?"

"For example, those licenses hanging behind you are ... let's say ... not really regular," he replied, and he stiffened in his chair. "Excuse me, but how can you know?" He wanted to ask him, but again the other hadn't even let him have time to start the sentence. "You have no fixed binding and therefore you can go around the world indefinitely and, as far as your professional successes are concerned, let's forget it, the most important aspect is certainly not that. I know you are skeptical, cynical, material and miscreant. And you are stubborn and resolute enough, the classic type capable of spending a whole life behind a case without yielding by an inch, the mastiff that when he sniffs a bone won't let it go even if that means to die."

That intrusion into his private life had irritated Luke, who had been investigated as an investigator does. Moreover, those personal judgments had bothered him deeply because they were extremely close to his person. At that point, he had decided to light a cigarette to conceal his bad mood and had offered one to his interlocutor, who had declined with a wave of his hand.

"What makes you think I will accept this job?" Luke had asked him after a while.

"A lot of reasons."

"For example?"

"For example, those," the old man replied, pointing to a pile of expired bills piled up under a paperweight, and Luke was hating that man because he was touching all his uncovered nerves one after the other.

"But above all these" the man had concluded, scattering under his nose a pile of papers and photographs concerning his wife that he had taken out of a briefcase: they depicted a tall and blond woman with a very particular appearance, in many situations and in so many different places. Luke had examined them for a long time, carefully, holding his breath in disbelief. Then he had shaken his head.

"It's a joke, isn't it?" He had said with a faint smile on his face. In response, the other had placed a Visa Platinum, a blank check and a business card with a highlighted phone number on the desk.

"You do not have a time limit and it will not be required to provide periodic reports, in fact, the less you will provide me, the better it will be because every time the phone rings I will delude myself that you have found her. This card is an unlimited fund to support your expenses and the check is your fee, you just have to write the amount."

"How much time do I have to think about it?" Luke had asked, and for the first time since entering his office, the man had abandoned his stern expression to give him a smile. Then he had taken a pen and a leaf from his desk to write his phone number.

"This is a confidential number for emergencies, in case you will need to tell me something and you can't find me at the other number."

"But why...?"

"That woman hides a secret that is too big" he had simply replied, standing up, then had left the studio discreetly as he had appeared, leaving his briefcase and everything else there. Luke kept nodding alone in front of the photographs for several minutes, scratching his head, then a little bell had rung in his head and reminded him that it was time to get ready for his "Mc January".

The alarm clock had rung several times and each time it had been a lost battle, but in the end, it had won the war and in spite of it James had to get up, still sleepy and cold because of that midnight bath. After a hot shower he went down to the kitchen and found the table set and breakfast ready, coffee was in the cups but there was anyone inside the room. He heard the voices of Eve and Harry and joined them in the living room, found them bent over the miniature that had been repaired and fitted perfectly. They were so focused that they hadn't noticed his presence, she showed the boy some things about the cards accompanying the miniature and whispered, Harry listened, nodded and answered.

"What kind of language you are using?" James asked them angrily after a couple of minutes because he had failed to grasp the meaning of a single word. Meanwhile, he kept wondering at what time they must have got up to be able to complete the miniature.

"Good morning, Dad, Mom is teaching me the ancient Egyptian," Harry explained enthusiastically.

"The ancient Egyptian?" Echoed James doubtfully, looking at Eve.

"Yes, but it was just a game," she said, smiling.

"But it wasn't a game! It also taught me to read hieroglyphics, it wasn't a game," Harry protested.

"Of course, of course," Eve confirmed, looking at James as he placed a hand on the boy's knee to silence him. "Do you have breakfast with us?" She asked James.

"I'm sorry, but I'm too late, I don't even have time to accompany Harry to the Scout Camp."

"Don't worry, honey, I've already called the bus. I'll wait for them to come and get him."

"Are you serious?"

"Sure!"

"Then I run, I'll stop and buy something on the street," he replied, taking the car keys from the glove box on the shelf near the door. "Hi Professor, play nice," he told Harry as he left.

"James, wait!" Eve called him as he closed the door behind him, he stepped back and leaned his head toward her.

"What happened to you tonight?" He asked, startling him. He doubted that she had already discovered everything, including kissing Helen, blushed and ran with his mind to find a justification.

"You seem destroyed ..." Eve added instead, in an accomplice tone, winking at him, and he felt like being reborn.

"If I have to be honest, I didn't sleep a wink ... then you will wait for the bus?" He said after taking a breath.

"Sure dear, bye."

"See you later," said James.

"Of course dear, bye... the world is probably going crazy," James repeated to himself several times as he drove to work.

Cape Canaveral, Florida, local time almost nine in the morning. The stage equipped with seats and microphones, intended to welcome astronauts for greetings and ritual interviews, had been ready for a couple of days. The small stage packed with people had been set up next to the runway so that in the last meters of the landing maneuver the shuttle would slowly pull out until it stops right in front of the spectators. The rescue vehicles, newly polished and arranged in a herringbone formation on the opposite side to the grandstand, awaited the arrival of the Space Shuttle to make the sirens sound like a party. In a small hangar just a few meters from the runway, a buffet had been prepared in honor of the astronauts, understandably fed up with eating just dehydrated single-serving dishes and eager to return tasting real food. For the hundreds of curious people who came to enjoy the show, with their nose stuck to the fence of J.F.K. Space Center, witnessing the return of a Shuttle was always a very exciting event. It was not as interesting as the takeoff, when the shuttle is pointing straight up against the sky to pierce it in a deafening din while everything around seems to collapse, but to see the shuttle landing and come out normal people who had just taken a nice walk in space had anyway its charm. And this time the enthusiasts were driven by one more reason: the official closure of the Shuttle Space Program had taken place with the return of Atlantis on June 20, 2011, and that unscheduled mission a few years later would probably have been really the last one. Although this kind of operation has to be considered pure routine, a certain apprehension has been circulating for some days among the technicians of the Johnson Space Center in Houston; some of them feared that the long period of inactivity had rusted them. They would have finally relaxed at the exact moment in which the astronauts, after spending the last twenty minutes inside the Orbiter to turn off all the systems onboard, would put their feet on the asphalt of the runway. Only then the mission really could have ended satisfactorily. Inside the Control Tower, the ground staff was following with their maximum concentration the returning maneuver of the shuttle in the atmosphere, which represented the most critical moment of the whole mission. The Reaction Control System had fulfilled its duty perfectly: entering the Ionosphere it had given the correct inclination to the Atlantis and immediately afterward there was the awaited and feared Ionization Blackout band. Those twelve minutes of radio silence were always the most terrible because that inability to communicate, even if planned, kept everyone in suspense. Everything was proceeding as planned, but the heat of the moment still reigned supreme, the fronts that dripped sweat due to stress were more than one. After all, the experience of the Columbia a few years before taught that a very small unforeseen event, like a microscopic crack in the outer covering of the shuttle traveling at a speed of twenty-eight thousand kilometers per hour, would have been able to destroy years of work and take away their heroes'life in an instant. The countdown was just finished, a few moments after the Atlantis had left the ionized belt it was framed by the very high-definition cameras installed on the satellite which, through the big screen, showed its images to the public while flying over the Atlantic Ocean like a great white angel.

"Houston ... Houston ... here is Atlantis."

"Atlantis, we are in visual contact and we hear you loud and clear. How's it going?" Said Connor, the communications clerk.

"All according to schedule. The instrumentation on board is fully functional and the control system has just returned my manual command."

"What about fuel?"

"There is enough to make a nice ride."

"Good, but be sure not to delay because in Florida we are waiting for you with open arms. Out."

"Houston, wait ... Lieutenant Garrett has a problem," Major Salas, the shuttle pilot, and commander announced in a serious voice. Hearing those words, the ground Coordinator jumped on his chair. His name was Rupert Lee, but everyone called him simply 'the Chief".

"What kind of problem?" He asked worried as he ran his hand through his reddish curls.

"He claims to be reassured that he will find a couple of roast chickens waiting for him as we land," the Major informed him, and for a moment Lee was tempted to send him to hell for the fright he had given him.

"Tell Lieutenant Garrett that he is getting older, last time he asked me to get him a couple of girls," he replied instead, smiling with a sigh of relief; his collaborators giggled.

"Yeah, I told him exactly the same thing, but he still claims he would be able to have them both in less than four minutes, so we bet a few dollars. You know how it is, Christmas holidays are approaching and some extra money in the wallet to make gifts is always be needed... couldn't you talk to those of J.F.K. to see if we can get those chickens?"

"I don't know, over there it's nine in the morning and the buffet has already been set up ... anyway, it's fine, I promise I'll see what I can do."

"Thanks, boss. Speaking of Christmas, where will you spend it?"

"Well, if aside to roast chickens you don't create other problems, I might even be able to finish all the paperwork in time and go back to Richmond to pass it with my wife and my son."

"Well, then I'll try to do my best with this old grinder. See you later by videoconference when we are on the runway, close."

"Nick, can you think about chickens?" We have little time and you are a true magician in these things, "Lee suggested to one of his assistants.

"All right, Chief," he answered, picking up the phone.

"Even this time America can be proud of us," the Chief declared finally relaxed. He untied the knot of the scarf with stars and stripes that he wore around his neck like a cowboy and used it to dab his cheeks and chin. Then he bent down to look for something under the desk.

"So it's serious!" Exclaimed Truman, the Radar Man, seeing that the Chief had taken from under the table a Moet et Chandon Magnum. Lee began to arrange the crystal flutes on his desk reproducing the shape of the shuttle.

"Every time I sweat like a sauna, tonight I'll have to drink five or six beers to replenish all the mineral salts I've lost," Rupert Lee announced, wiping his neck again with a scarf. "Who's coming to keep me company?"

All those present raised their hands in participation except the Communications Officer, who remained with his eyes glued to the screen as if he had not even heard.

"Hey Connor, what's wrong with you? Have you become teetotaler or deaf?" "Chief ... it would seem that something is not going well."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know," Connor explained, "the video signal comes and goes, it would seem that the shuttle is like ... like fading."

"Fading? What the hell does it mean "the Shuttle is fading"?" Rupert asked running to sit beside him.

"Wait a minute ... here, can you see?" Said Connor clicking on the mouse zooming the image.

"What the hell, you're right!" Rupert admitted. "What is it?" He then asked, putting his hand back into his red curls to scratch his head perplexedly.

"On the spot, I don't know, it could be a defect in the cameras or a magnetic storm or a train of electromagnetic charge that they carried from the ionized belt. In any case, there is something that disturbs the transmission. What do you think about it?"

"I have no idea, you are the expert! Can't you be more precise?"

"I don't know what to say, the monitor has been doing this since Atlantis entered the Triangle area," Connor informed him. "It looked up, lost speed, and then ..."

"Don't say bullshit! Won't you believe those silly superstitions on the Bermuda Triangle?"

"Of course not, Chief, but I would still try to contact them to see if they are okay."

"All right," Rupert said, wiping his neck again with nervous gestures, then he sighed and turned on the microphone.

"Houston to Atlantis ... do you receive us?"

"Strong and clear, Chief ... are there any problems?" Major Salas answered promptly.

"No, no problem, it was just to inform you we are working on those chickens," Rupert Lee lied to not unnecessarily alarm the Shuttle crew. "We look forward to meeting you, make yourself beautiful for being on TV. Out."

The chief closed the call and dedicated a murderous look to Connor because he had made him worry for nothing.

"Houston," the radio croaked right after.

"We are here, what's going on?"

"Boss, what's the weather like?"

"Excellent, why ?"

"Because last time we heard, the weather was a fairy tale here too, but within ten minutes it has changed and now is rapidly darkening. It seems as if a storm was brewing, moreover all the instruments on board have started acting up," explained Major Salas. Rupert's collaborators exchanged odd looks because the last conversation between the Atlantis and the control room had taken place no more than fifteen seconds before and not ten minutes as the commander of the shuttle had just said.

"What is this, another one of your jokes?" Lee growled into the microphone and began to warm up. "We haven't seen such a clean sky for years," he resumed, "and then ..."

"Chief, look at the monitors," Connor interrupted softly.

"What's up?"

"The sky is very clear, but the image of the shuttle is continuing to lose consistency. If you look at it well, now it seems to be wrapped in a green mist ... actually, it would seem that it has been enveloped by some invisible tentacles."

"Connor, do you want to finish saying these bullshit?"

"Chief, here is Atlantis," Major Salas called nervously, "we need help. Here it started to rain badly and the instruments do not ... ggzz ... ffffrrrr we've ... lost ... ggzz ... tion. Oh God! Wha ... ... hell? ... Help !!!" shouted the Major as the image on the monitors became more and more evanescent.

"Enough with jokes! Atlantis, do you understand me? I've said enough with jokes, I've had enough! Salas, answer me! ... Salas! ..." shouted Rupert one last time into the microphone with all the breath he had, then he took off his headphones and threw them away pissed off. He let himself fall back on the chair and stared at the screen in complete disbelief. His Shuttle, an entire Shuttle, had literally vanished before his eyes and he couldn't believe it. A cold silence had fallen in the Control Room, and everyone was wondering what the external relations Officer would have told the crew members' relatives. Rupert roused himself almost instantly, his quick reflexes were one of the aspects of his character that made him a good leader.

"Nick, contact immediately the Crisis Unit and make sure the research starts immediately, within ten minutes I want at least six planes to patrol the area! If the Atlantis has impacted the water the wreckage and the oil and fuel spots will be seen miles away, if the crew has catapulted out and there are survivors we can still save them. David, contact the Navy and ask for the nearest ship to be sent immediately," he ordered. "They can't have disappeared like that, and above all, they can't have gone far. We have their path and their last coordinates, we have to find them at any cost, even if this means moving the entire US army!" He concluded, banging a gritty fist on his desk.

Relatives and journalists, authorities and onlookers, who had managed to crash somehow, had witnessed speechlessness at the slow disappearance of the shuttle from the giant screen that dominated the stage. But above all, thanks to the idea of making the public take part in unclassified conversations between the shuttle and the control tower, they had listened to the last, shocking, desperate request for help from Major Salas. Now they were all looking in the direction of the sector reserved for the authorities, waiting for some explanation. The General, in turn, looked at the External Relations Manager so that he could somehow decide to intervene, because he didn't know what to say. He answered with a vacant look, because he had not the faintest idea what could have happened, immediately after he took the phone to contact Houston. The big screen continued to transmit images of the blue sky for a few moments until someone finally decided to turn it off. Emergency personnel got on the vehicles that left quickly towards the management buildings. A man and a woman, in their seventies, were crying softly, hugging each other. After years of vain promises to their son, that time they had finally overcome the fear of flying and had put up with twelve hundred miles in an airplane to see him getting off the shuttle at least on that last occasion. "Mom, what happened? Mom, why did they turn off the screen?

Why can't we hear dad's voice anymore?" Asked a child. His mom opened her mouth trying to say something but she couldn't, she got up to take her child out of there, but before she could realize what had happened she was taken ill and ruined down from the gallery.

James rushed into the Police Station clutching a paper bag containing two milkshakes and two sandwiches, glanced at the clock above the front door and walked straight to the meeting room.

"Good morning, Mr. Robinson, did you rest well?" Agent Benelli taunted him, seeing him out of breath, as usual, he was in the mood for irony.

"Back off! It's not a good day," James replied seriously, taking a seat; he put the bag on the counter and rubbed his eyes.

"If you had called me I would have brought you breakfast at bed," the other insisted. Without saying a word, James jumped to his feet to face him, because that morning he wasn't exactly in the mood to put up with trouble.

"Hey, don't warm up! I was just joking," said Benelli, getting up in his turn to avoid being caught unprepared.

"Enough now" thundered Helen from behind the desk, "we are full of problems and you two should be ashamed of your childishness!" The two sat down with their heads down and she spoke again. "We have to get busy fast because what happened will leak out from one moment to the next and then the newspapers and TVs will hit us. The tasks remain those assigned yesterday and tonight try to present in this room concrete results in hand or it will be better if you don't show up at all! Now go."

"Do I have to inspect the woods again?" Benelli asked doubtfully, he had absolutely no desire to go again to examine and photograph the absolute nothing. Helen told herself that after what happened the night before, it was better that for the moment no one set foot there.

"No, it would only be wasted time. Today you will join Claretta and you will be looking for someone who can give us some information," she replied. Benelli twisted his mouth, because he thought she was as clumsy as Cindy and would rather work alone.

"Come on, are you all still here?" Helen said to the agents still sitting at their desks. They hurried to leave the room. James was the only one who didn't have a specific task yet and was waiting for an order.

"You come with me!" Said Helen, not at all friendly, he took the bag containing the breakfasts and followed her into her office. Helen closed the door and lowered the curtains, sat on the edge of the desk and turned off the intercom. James placed a glass and a sandwich next to her, then he chose a chair and began to unwrap his sandwich. She pushed the breakfast away and began to peer at him with her arms folded. James noticed her gesture but preferred to pretend nothing happened and sent down a couple of bites because he was hungry.

After a minute, feeling uneasy because she continued to stare at him severely without opening her mouth, he placed the sandwich on the table and looked at her, pursing his lips.

"About last night ..." he began to say, but then he found that the speech he had prepared was too childish. Not knowing how to proceed, he broke the sentence there, embarrassed as a teenager on the first date. She took a long sigh and began to remove the cellophane from her sandwich.

"So many things have happened that I don't know where to start! First of all, I'd really like to know who last night tried to burn us," Helen began, then snapped into the sandwich and James felt refreshed. Contrary to what he had feared, she was not going to face the "kiss" topic.

"I don't know, and what I understand even less is why! Was it possible that they were looking for Harry's fishing rod and for that kind of monster that was attached to the hook? "

"I don't know what they were looking for, but if they were willing to kill us and burn the whole forest to get it then they were definitely looking for something extremely important. Maybe it was something that would put us on the right track and instead we are still at the same point as yesterday. And when we succeed in tracing the relatives of the victims, if they are not the ones to trace us first, what will we tell them? That their boys died of an unknown death and that they turned into mummies before our eyes? Who could believe it? As soon as the news will be public, newspapers and TVs will stick to us like vultures, they will tear us to pieces" Helen considered disheartened, then took a long drink at the milkshake and let out a smile because James still remembered her favorite taste. James found the dimples that formed on her cheeks adorable, Helen saw that he was staring at her like a perfect idiot, and she got serious again.

"We absolutely need to find a foothold and we need to find it quickly because otherwise, we'll have no hope of solving this case," said James.

"I fully agree. And as if that's not enough, in a few days Lobster's Festival will start down at the bay and we will be busy there. And since we are few, someone will also get a double shift."

"Look, I don't have much experience in such matters, but I do know one thing for sure because they forced it into my head during the course at the Police School. If a case is not resolved within the first forty-eight hours, doing it later becomes almost impossible, and given the means and the evidence we have available, we would need a real miracle."

"That's right," Helen agreed. They finished their breakfast in silence, crumpled napkins and wipes and challenged each other with their eyes, after which they competed, as they were used to do since they were boys, to throw it in the garbage can. As always, the result was a draw and they exchanged a carefree smile, and then they started to reflect each on their own.

"As for what happened last night, it must never happen again," she muttered seriously after a few minutes without looking him in the eye.

"I agree with you, no one has to try to kill us in the middle of the night," James tried to defuse, but she didn't smile and he blushed again. "... What if we contact someone more experienced than us?" He then proposed to get out of that mess. That idea was buzzing in his head from the first moment he had put his feet out of his bed, but he had not yet dared to propose it to avoid hurting her pride. Like any honorable sheriff, Helen was jealous of her city and her cases. James feared that in front of that suggestion she would be unwell.

"Who do you think we should call?" She asked instead, surprising him.

"I honestly don't know, I just know that in America we have special units and detective agencies of all kinds ..."

"I promise you I'll think about it," Helen murmured, and he looked at her in awe because he didn't expect to find her so pliant.

"Now go, I have to get to work," Helen added.

"Yes, but what am I supposed to do?"

"Stay in the office and squeeze your brains out, as soon as they tell us something new you will check on the spot," she said.

"As ordered," James replied, standing up, and in that precise moment, Cindy knocked on the office door.

"Come in," said Helen. Cindy looked out timidly at the door. "I am sorry, but the intercom was off ..."

"Oh, how distracted I am! What's going on?"

"The guy from the workshop called ..."

"Damn, I completely forgot about him. Tell him that James will be there as soon as possible."

"He said to go ahead calmly because now he doesn't have the car anymore," Cindy informed her.

"What does it mean?"

"What I just told you. Bob told me that when he went into the workshop this morning he didn't find the car, "the receptionist explained with a shrug.

"It's not possible!" Helen said, banging her fist on the table. At that precise moment, she realized she was in front of an enemy too shrewd and powerful and she had the clear impression that the strange chain of negative events would not stop before having overwhelmed them. "You hear that? And to think that you were afraid of getting bored ..." she said discouraged to James.

Episode III

In the Dead Sea

Abdul had an olive complexion, and on his wrinkled face there were a sharp nose and two small dark eyes, and under the bulky woolen robe that protected him from the heat, he must have been incredibly thin. Abdul was a bedouin and lived as a guide for tourists in search of strong emotions; he got paid so handsomely that soon he could buy camels and become a breeder, in that way he would climb to the top of the social ladder of his clan. But meanwhile, he was seated on an inflatable mattress under the shade of the cross-legged tent, intent on scrutinizing the water vapor rising from the immense surface of the Dead Sea. Apparently he was dozing, in reality, his trained senses were ready to perceive and process tiny signals in an infinitesimal time. With the wind blowing in the right direction, he would have been able to distinguish the smell of a camel almost a hundred yards away, and that was the secret to survive in such an inhospitable place, where you have to fight hunger and thirst, to watch out for the heat of the day as for the cold of the night, for friends as for enemies, for snakes and for scorpions.

Although he was extremely attached to that kind of life, with his customs and traditions, he appreciated so much modernity and technology that he never left any assignment without his inseparable sat phone and a set of spare batteries. The phone vibrated in the folds of his robe and he quickly ran his eyes along the gravelly bank of the great salt lake to make sure that Bryan had not yet emerged, then began to rummage calmly in the meanders of that wool labyrinth.

"Yes," he replied in Arabic, "like every day. I gave the animals a drink, I took up the gun and I started looking at the water ... no, he didn't want to tell me what he was looking for, he talked about a treasure ... of course, he is crazy as most of the crazy people are Westerners. He travels unarmed and has not taken the slightest precaution ... Yes, you are right, usually, those like him are too stupid or too clever, but he seems really naive to me. However, he has already scoured more than half of the lake and now it should be a matter of a few days unless the scuba tanks run out and we have to go back to As Samik once more time to let them recharge. In that case going, coming back and finishing the job, it would be a matter of staying here for about two more weeks and I wouldn't mind that much because he pays well and above all pays in advance. It is true that it is a boring job, but before now nobody had ever paid me to stay almost all day sitting without doing anything. At least, if he finds nothing and we can't steal his treasure, I will still have made good money. You know how much it costs to keep all those wives ... women are no longer as they used to be, now they watch television and want to be modern, so much for the Qur'an.

And they now realize that many hands make light work... just listen to me, my friend, we have to watch out for women!" At that moment an alarm bell sonde in his head, an unspecified sensation of danger quickly made its way. "Now I have to turn it off, I'm busy. Get ready, because depending on what comes out of that lake we will make a good joke about it!" He concluded, then he hid the phone in his robe and left the tent holding up his Kalashnikov. He made a little reconnaissance to understand what had been to make him worry; at first, he had thought he smell the exhaust of a car, but he judged impossible that someone had been so unconscious to venture up there with a motor vehicle. He climbed the highest dune and looked around, smelling in the air and listening to the wind. After a few minutes, he decided to return to the camp to prepare dinner thinking it was just a false alarm. He had just lit a fire to bake shrak bread and warm up the Mansaf when Bryan splashed out of the water with the sprint of a flying fish, spit out his snorkel and began to call him insistently. He took off his fins and threw them on the ground, then started running along the gravelly shore and immediately after to hop, because due to excitement he had even forgotten to put on his shoes and the temperature of the ground at that hour was almost fifty degrees. He went back and slipped his sneakers he had left on the shore like a slipper, then started running again towards the tent. Abdel intercepted him halfway.

"Maybe I found it," Bryan informed him enthusiastically, hopping from foot to foot in an attempt to avoid the burning ground, but he knew that surely that evening he would still have some nice blisters under his feet.

"Sahib, are you sure of it?" Abdel asked him, smoothing his thick dark beard.

"Almost sure. Prepare the ropes for the harness and bring a couple of camels to the shore, I want to finish the job before it gets dark ... soon the prayer time will start for you, isn't it?"

"Certainly Sahib, Allah doesn't care about money and treasures."

"Well, then let's get a move," Bryan urged him as he ran back to the boiling pebble beach. Although he had installed a lightning buoy he feared that if he waited too long he would risk losing the exact spot. He put on mask and fins, put the respirator in his mouth and dived. The Bedouin took the opportunity to recall his accomplices. "Get ready to intervene and don't forget to bring a few pitchers of Arak, we'll need them to celebrate!" He whispered at the phone.

Entering the workshop James stepped on an oil stain and slipped and nearly broke his head against the vertical support of the workshop's movable bridge.

"Clean and tidy as always, eh?" He shouted to the mechanic, but he didn't hear it because he had plunged into the engine compartment of a flaming red Ford Mustang. To reach him, James made a slalom of tools, cables, car parts and machinery scattered on the ground.

"Good morning!" Said the mechanic, looking at him sideways from under the hood lid.

"Hi Bob, sorry I'm late ... how are you?"

"Honestly, it could be better," he answered as he carefully lowered the rod and closed the engine compartment. Then he spat a bit of chewing tobacco on the ground, and without even wiping his dirty hands, he caught more from a golden box and put it in his mouth.

"When are you going to finish it, this train? Since I met you a long time ago, you are working on it!" James teased him, caressing the Mustang's hood.

"You know, the shoemaker always wears the worst shoes ... how about you, instead, you keep going around with the usual grinder?" He replied, and James nodded with a smile. Bob was in his sixties, he was portly and had a beard so white and thick that if it hadn't always been dirty with grease it could have been the envy of "Santa Claus". And above all, he had two huge hands, so big that even then James wondered how a man with such stubby fingers could work as a mechanic.

"So what happened last night?" Straight to the point. Bob's lips tightened in anger because he was still a long way from having bitten the bullet. "How the hell did you get your car fooled?" James insisted, rubbing salt into his wound.

"Don't make me think about it," Bob said, slamming a wrench on a workbench; he did it with such violence that a big cylinder just bored jumped and fell to the ground, and he swore because now it would be his turn to polish it again. "Among alarms and chains, pitfalls and padlocks, the only one who in theory could have managed to set foot here tonight without causing hell were me! And instead they screwed me a whole car, can you believe it? A car that didn't even get in motion, what the hell did they do to take it away? But now I'll get organized, even if this means sleeping here for the rest of my life! If only they try again, I get all the tools up their ass, from the smallest to the largest. One by one! »He concluded, banging the wrench on the counter again.

At that moment a boy with a pale and sleepy appearance shuffled in, he was so tall and thin that he looked curved and had long straight bleached hair.

" Morning Bob," he mumbled in a faint voice.

"You were late last night too, eh?" Bob scolded him. "You have to stick in your thick head that rock and roll won't give you food! Arrive late one more time and I'll send you home forever, understood?"

"Sorry boss, you're right ..."

"And don't call me "boss"," I've told you a thousand times. Come on, get to work. The overhaul of that Chevrolet has to be finished, in half an hour they'll come to pick it up and now I am busy with James, "said Bob, entering his little office. He turned on the machine to heat the coffee and James stared at it, admiring the office walls. They were plastered with calendars depicting half-naked girls posing in sexy poses and he thought with some regret that he probably would never find anything like this hidden in his son's books of Egyptology.

"How much sugar?"

"... What?"

"Come back to us, I asked you how much sugar you want."

"Two teaspoons, thanks," said James as he sat down.

The mechanic spilled the sugar in the cafes using a dispenser, then mixed his own with a screwdriver and then handed it to James.

"I'm sorry, but I used the last spoon to do a job on a Freelander," he justified himself, then wiped his mouth full of tobacco with his fingers.

"Don't worry, it's fine ... I hope that at least now the car works," James said with a shrug.

"Damn if it works ..." the mechanic replied, then took a sip of coffee.

"We'll talk about the theft later, now I want you to tell me about the Cadillac. What was so special about the car that made you call us last night so we could see it?"

Bob came to the door to check that the boy was quite distant and busy that he couldn't hear. He saw him sitting in front of the computer analyzing the smoke discharge and found him strangely still. The Chevrolet had been on for some time and was booming, the workshop was filling up with smoke and he had to run to activate the vacuum cleaner.

"Fred, you wretch!" He yelled with all his breath. The boy jumped on the chair and looked around alienated, then hurriedly turned off the car.

"It's unbelievable, he fell asleep another time! If it were not that he is the son of a dear friend of mine ... "Bob explained to James, showing him a clenched fist, then leaned over the table to get as close as possible and looked him straight in his eyes. "That car didn't belong to ordinary people, I think those two deaths were secret agents or something," he whispered.

"What makes you think so?"

"I had set to work to find the fault, I had sworn I would have found it at the cost of removing bolt after bolt. I started with the engine, it was perfect but it showed no signs of life. I put it on the bridge and started looking at it from beneath, looking for an idea, and finally, I realized what was wrong with it. That car had two mufflers but instead, that production model has only one.

I took them apart and discovered, as I had suspected, that one of the two was fake ... it was a hidden storage compartment."

"Are you serious?"

Bob nodded.

"And what did it contain?"

"What did it contain?" Bob echoed emphatically. "When I opened it, I found everything in it: fake licenses and documents headed to those two who have died, license plates, bundles of banknotes for a few thousand dollars, some very strange devices, three Glocks and even a laser rifle."

"... a rifle what?"

"A laser rifle."

"Have you ever seen a laser rifle before?"

"Of course not, where do you want me to have seen it?"

"So how do you know it was really a laser rifle?" James asked him, showing him all his perplexity. In response, the other pointed to the outline of a perfectly cut wrench in a sheet of steel of one inch thick. James made such an absurd expression that Bob had to try hard not to laugh in his face.

"At least did you take some pictures?" James asked, but knowing him, he hadn't hoped so much for that.

"No, honestly I didn't really think about it. And then who was expecting that in a few hours they would have taken everything away from me?" Replied the other one.

"So you don't have anything left of all the stuff you listed before ..."

"I had put everything in the safe, when I went into the office this morning and found it open, I almost fell off my feet. Luckily they only took their things without touching my money, otherwise, it would have been trouble. However, this means that they were people who knew exactly what they were looking for, as professionals. Otherwise, they wouldn't have been able to get in here so easily."

"You're probably right ..." agreed James.

"Of course I'm right! Surely someone is doing a nice clean-up to cancel the evidence of some kind of inexplicable event, I wouldn't be surprised if those two corpses have even disappeared," hypothesized Bob. James shuddered, because as Helen had dared to say it was not excluded that Harry had somehow been involved in that strange story.

"Maybe your theory isn't completely wrong, but now you're exaggerating!" Whether they are professionals or not, it seems impossible to me that they could even take away two bodies from inside a police station! "He replied.

"On television, you can hear so many stories..."

"Anyway, didn't you notice anything strange yesterday?"

"Nothing, all those who passed by the workshop yesterday were people I know well. Ah, damn it, I was about to forget it!" He added, rummaging in a pocket of his suit.

He pulled out a metal object as big as a matchbox, placed it on the table and pushed it towards him. "There is only this one left, I took it home last night to show it to my son," he explained.

James grabbed him by two opposing edges and examine it: it seemed hermetically closed on all sides, but no welds; it looked like a printed block and, weighing it, he found it very light.

"What is it?" He asked his friend after trying in vain to open it, the other shook his head.

"I have no idea," he replied.

James studied the metal box for a few moments curiously, waved it and then took it near to his ear to hear if by chance it made some noise, finally put it in a transparent nylon bag and put it in his pocket.

"What else can you tell me about the car and what you have found out? Even something that to you may seem silly and meaningless but to us could be fundamental."

"I'm sorry, but I can't think of anything else," the mechanic declared, and James sighed because the mystery was thickening. He opened his folder and took a form to report the fact. "Well, now tell me about the theft."

"Forget it," said Bob, "would it be useful to file a complaint? After all, as you can see, nothing has been stolen ..."

"I don't want to contradict you, but they cheated you of one of the main findings of our case," James pointed out.

When at last by pulling and pulling the "treasure" emerged laboriously from the water, Abdul stood motionless and watched it for several seconds, unable to determine whether the damned Westerner had teased him since day one or if he was simply fucking crazy. The camels lay on the ground exhausted and the Bedouin was certain that they would not get up for a while, they were offended for having been treated like mules and solicited to do their work with the sound of straps and sticks. Bryan continued to turn excitedly around his jewel-like a child and Abdul said he must have missed some detail. What he had before could not really be the fortune so much sought by that man; the treasure could not only be an insignificant hollow wooden trunk eaten by salt. Probably inside it hid a secret compartment from which a treasure chest overflowing with gold coins or diamonds would have come out, or at least a map bearing the indications to reach the real treasure. No, it couldn't be otherwise! He looked puzzled as Bryan stopped to remove the oxygen tank and his scuba suit.

"What?" He asked, smiling at the Bedouin who kept staring at him in astonishment.

"Sahib ... but this is ...?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I was looking for."

"A ... a piece of wood?"

"A piece of wood is what you see, in reality, this object represents much, much more," Bryan answered. At that point Abdel doubted that infidel was brazenly making fun of him and struggled to keep the temptation to draw the scimitar; he would have loved to cut him in slices and leave him agonizing on the spot. Then he told himself that Bryan might have become suspicious and had therefore decided to leave the treasure there and return to take it secretly at a later date; maybe that tree trunk was just a distraction.

"Forgive me, Sahib, but I don't understand," he said, pretending to be more humble than he could to try to hide instead his anger. "If it's not just a piece of wood, then what is it?"

"You know who Jesus Christ was, don't you?"

"Of course Sahib, the Qur'an speaks of him as a prophet ... but I still don't understand!"

"Do you know what the priest says at the most important moment of the Christian Eucharist when he gives the sacramental bread to the faithful?" Asked Bryan. He shook his head more and more confused.

"The Body of Christ".

"What do you mean?"

"Exactly what I said! Some time ago, during an expedition near this place, I found the true Gospel of Judas Iscariot in a cave and I managed to translate it! It looked like reading a science fiction novel, but I believed it and did researches after researches. And if I am not wrong, what we have in front of us is the body of Jesus Christ, or rather, the body with which he fell on Earth aboard his spaceship. The body he then abandoned in order to look like a human being."

Abdul haven't even the time to process that information, because, just a moment after the ranting revelations of that man, he saw many heads appearing from behind the dunes in the distance. After only a moment, he became aware that he had bothered the entire merciless tribe of marauders of Sinai. In order to get them involved in his plan, he had told them about a great treasure and now that he found out the treasure did not exist he was in trouble. A deadly mess, to be precise.

"Those up there are your friends, aren't they?" Bryan read in his thoughts.

"No Sahib, I swear to you ..." the Bedouin tried to deny, but the way Bryan looked at him took away his desire to finish the sentence.

"I think now they'll really want to pull that greedy heart out of your chest," said Bryan indifferently. Knowing he made that mess, the Bedouin looked around desperately, but knowing they were the ones looking for them, then the desert was not a place large enough to hide. Seeing that the sunset was approaching, he hastened to unroll the mat and knelt down, then began to pray towards Mecca and the marauders standing on the surrounding dunes descended from their camels and did the same thing. Bryan pressed a button on his watch and communicated with his partner.

"It's been ten minutes since I sent you the radio signal, where the hell are you? As soon as they will finish praying I will have them all on and I can guarantee you they are really ugly and bad!"

"Quiet Indy, all this sand caused me a problem with the carburetor, but I solved it. You'll see me coming sooner than you think," a distorted voice answered.

"I really hope you're telling the truth ..."

When their prayers were over, the marauders carefully rolled their carpets and began to descend unhurriedly from the dunes, "the prey" was alone and unarmed and with no way out, so there was no reason to pick up the pace. But after a few moments, a deafening noise made them turn in unison as in choreography. Right after they all were with their faces sunk in the hot sand and with their hands covering their heads, in order to protect it. The Dune Buggy, suddenly sprung up behind them, climbed skidding to the top of the dune and from there jumped like from a trampoline, flew over them a few inches above their backs and fell a few meters ahead, skipping a couple of times and risking to overturn, but the pilot regained control and accelerated. The marauders stood up and began to descend the dune in leaps, spitting and crying out like crazy, they wanted to run but could not, because their legs were sunk in the sand almost to their knees.

"It's unbelievable, you really did it! Harrison Ford would die of envy," the Dune Buggy driver commented, stopping in front of Bryan.

"It's not the time for congrats, in case you haven't notice yet those guys you almost ran over, they just braced their Kalashnikovs," he said nervously.

"Then it's better to load up and leave quickly," said the pilot, jumping down from the vehicle to help him lift the trunk. The bullets began to whistle a few meters from them. At first, the raiders simply wanted to force them to stop, because according to their code of honor when you kill a man you have to be close enough to look him in the eye. The two hoisted the trunk and began to secure it to the roll bar with a rope. The marauders had realized that they would never reach them in time and began to shoot them closer and more intensely, aiming at the tires of the vehicle. Bryan and the pilot jumped aboard, finished fixing the trunk and were ready to flee.

"Please, Sahib, don't leave me in their hands ... I have four wives and seven children, what will happen to them?" Abdul pleaded, kneeling. A real hail of bullets whistled a few centimeters far from them, one of which hit the oil lamp in the tent and fire broke out everywhere. A great black smoke momentarily hid the fugitives from the sight of the marauders, who for the anger began to shoot blindly as they quickly and dangerously got closer and closer. Bryan glanced at the pilot.

"It is your choice, but it is still a guide and could be useful to us" proposed him.

"The scimitar and the mobile phone leave them here though," Bryan pointed out, nodding to him to jump aboard.

At that moment there was a metallic bump and one of the diving tanks exploded in a thunderous roar. The shockwave caused the Dune Buggy to leap up in the air.

"Come on, jump on!" Ordered the pilot to Abdul, but now he was lying on the ground with his eyes fixed on the sky and he was gasping.

"They hit him! Come on, we can't do anything for him anymore," Bryan shouted at the pilot, patting him on his shoulder.

Following the procedure Dr. Parker had recommended to her by phone, Helen carefully washed her finger with a block of antibacterial soap and placed it in front of the fan to dry it, avoiding painful rubbing. After some hesitation, she finally found the courage to spray the disinfectant on the sore and immediately swore repeatedly hopping on her toes because the burning was tremendous; she waited a few moments and brushed the last two phalanges with an herbal calendula ointment from the refreshing effect, which gave her immediate relief. Stevenson entered as she applied the plaster to fix the linen bandage with which she had wrapped it. "Still struggling with that finger?" He asked her, almost thoughtfully.

"That's right."

"How are you?"

"Not very well, apparently," she replied, grinding her teeth due to an unexpected and painful stab like a knife one, forcing herself up, she told herself that maybe it hurt so much because the miraculous ointment had already begun to take effect. "But didn't you say you'd come tomorrow?" She asked the Coroner, thinking back to their last conversation.

"It's true, but I annoyed so much those who work to the analysis lab that they gave me the report earlier than expected. They owed me a favor, so I sat down there last night and they worked until late night because they knew they had no alternative, if they wanted me to get off my feet," he explained, throwing the report on the table. Helen looked hopefully at it, but Stevenson shook his head.

"... nothing?" Asked Helen. "Nothing of nothing of a damned thing," Stevenson confirmed, then sat down in a disheveled pose and folded his hands on his stomach.

"So to date, we are unable to establish the causes of their deaths?"

"Absolutely not!"

"And what will I tell their relatives when they'll come here?"

"I don't know, if I were in your place I'd burn the car with the corpses in it and come up with a different version of the story to feed the journalists."

"You're kidding, aren't you?"

"Such a case can only lead to trouble," he insisted disenchanted.

"I don't understand how you can be so cynical," Helen murmured.

"Believe it or not I'm saying it for your own good. Those are gone now and at this point how it happened doesn't matter. What really matters is that fighting windmills often end up getting us in trouble up to our necks. Knowing the cause of death would not help you bring them back to life, nor to find any responsible ... listen to me, try to get rid of this case as soon as possible, in one way or another. There are too many off-key notes in this story."

Helen looked thoughtful and began to fiddle with the paperweight because in her heart she knew that Stevenson had said something true: that story couldn't have lead to other than trouble.

"Don't you read the report?" He urged, interrupting her thoughts.

"And what for? There will certainly be written" negative ... negative ... negative ... "Helen replied, and he nodded. "At this point, I don't even understand why you are here, a phone call would have been enough."

"I want to see your mummies."

"For what purpose?"

"Simple professional curiosity, something like this has never happened to me in so many years. I also brought the camera and the equipment necessary to take new samples," Stevenson explained, rekindling a faint hope in her. "New samples? Then you have some ideas!" She exclaimed confidently.

"No idea, but if what you told me is true, maybe some scholars of different alternative disciplines could help us out. Those not approved, so to speak. Maybe we could even make some sensational discovery ... are we going?" He proposed without putting the usual bit of sarcasm in his voice.

"If it pleases you ..." she replied, shrugging.

It was a long time since Luke Mc January's met the man who had hired him. He had never phoned him and as far as he knew he could even have died due to some typical old age ailment, like a heart attack or pneumonia. But for all that time someone had worked hard to ensure that his Visa wouldn't be blocked and this comforted him. Luke turned on the direction indicator to enter a gas station and the attendant took his eyes off the book to look him annoyed, for the last half hour it was the fourth time he began to read the third last page of the novel and it was the fourth time someone interrupted him ... and three times out of four they had only asked for information. He thought angrily that even on that day he would not be able to finish reading his book, so he closed it and threw it on the table with a blatant gesture, then took a sip of lemonade and walked with a listless step towards the car.

"Fill it up, please," Luke said, handing him the key of his Dodge Nitro's tank, then got out to stretch his legs a little.

"Fine," replied the attendant, opening the flap of the tank in a brisk manner.

"Is there a restroom I may use?" Luke asked him. The other pointed to a door next to the entrance to the store with a nod of his head and watched him walk away as he pumped diesel into the car. Tall and thin, dressed in a pair of tight black leather trousers and a raincoat also in very fine black leather, Luke reminded the attendant of the protagonist of the novel he was vainly trying to finish reading. But the fact that man went around dressed like that, made him think that maybe he was a little tossed in the head. "This is the classic type that will never wear gym clothes," he said to himself. When Luke returned to the car the attendant was cleaning his windshield, a supply of a hundred dollars could always soften him up a bit.

"You've traveled a lot, huh?"

"What made you understand that ?"

"You've made a beautiful massacre of gnats."

"Indeed."

"Are you here for the Lobster's Festival?"

"Lobster's Festival?" Luke said curiously.

"Yes, it is an event that takes place every year at the marina and on the main streets of Rockland, it's a gigantic festival of the lobster. It doesn't have anything exceptional, but if you aren't busy yet I suggest you not to miss it, at least it is very original."

"It smells good, it seems more a summer festival ..." Luke considered.

"In fact, the event usually takes place in the first days of August, but this year the Hurricane Sandra has put the sticks in the wheel to the organizers and so the festival will begin in a few days."

"Actually, I'm traveling for pleasure, so if you tell me it's really worth it, I might even decide to stay until then. After all, this place seems quiet and welcoming to me," Mc January explained to him, handing him a one-hundred-dollar bill, then he sat down in the driver's seat.

"I wouldn't call it very quiet lately," replied the attendant looking out the window to hand the rest over.

"... What do you mean?"

"Just in the last two days so many things have happened ..." he said, cursing himself immediately afterward. That sentence could have opened another conversation and he had no desire to chat, he just wanted to sit back and finish reading those last three damn pages. "Anyway, if you decide to stay, you'll see it for yourself, I don't want to ruin it," he said shortly. He had been sufficiently polite, had enough conversation and now was anxious to send him away to return to his book.

He turned to go and lower the windshield wipers so that he could leave, but for a long moment, he stared bewildered at the picture of the woman hanging from the lowered sun visor. Luke noticed it and hastened to pull it up, then the two peered at each other for an infinite moment.

It was the typical dead moment when one would like to ask a question, but at the same time he fears a question from the other, so neither of them makes the first move to not open things up.

"Can you recommend a good Motel?" Luke asked to break the awkward silence.

"Go ahead for five or six miles and you'll see the Spring sign. It's clean and well equipped, the food is good and its prices are honest."

"Well, thanks for everything. See you soon," Luke greeted him, shifting the gear. The attendant answered with an awkward hand gesture.

"... I know that I am a pain in the ass, a cynic and that I have a bad temper and I recognize that if you have organized all this to make me a joke I probably deserved it" the Coroner mumbled, "but I guarantee you that it is not funny at all. To get the reports and come here as soon as possible I had to raise hell, I antagonized the staff of the whole laboratory of analysis," he added, while Helen stared in shock at the empty beds she had taken from the cold room.

On the metal floors, there were only a few hairs and a few shreds of skin left, and she wasn't even sure that they had belonged to the bodies of those two or even to those who had occupied those beds before them.

"Come on, where did you hide the bodies?" Stevenson asked, pulling out all the compartments from the cold room one after the other, but he found them all empty. "Have you already sent them to their relatives?" He went on, rummaging through the desk drawers, looking for documents attesting to the transfer. Helen gave him an expressionless look, then put her hands to her face, bowing her head and then Stevenson calmed down.

"Do you realize that two bodies have disappeared here?" He asked good-naturedly. "What are you going to do?" He insisted after a few moments, but Helen remained barricaded behind a wall of silence. Then the Coroner sat down at his desk and pulled his packaged sandwich out of his leather briefcase, always keeping one of it for every eventuality because he became even more ravenous when he was nervous. He began to unwrap it and the noise of the tin foil attracted the attention of Helen, who finally uncovered her eyes and surprised him with his hands fixed on the sandwich and his open mouth ready to bite it. He froze.

"I ... I ... oh, dam nit!" he exclaimed. He threw the sandwich angrily into the garbage can, picked up his belongings and walked down the corridor to leave. At the front door, he met James, who was returning from his visit to Bob.

"Hey Stevie, where are you going so fast?" he greeted him.

"Go to hell!" Replied the Coroner pulling straight on his way.

It took Luke Mc January less than a minute to realize that the chirping lady who ran the Spring, a beautiful woman in her fifties named Sally, was the gas station attendant's wife. He booked the room until the end of the Lobster's Festival and exchanged a few chats with the lady, studied the map of the area hanging in the small hall to put the focal points well in his mind and finally went inside of the room. He found it small but welcoming, the door was half armored and the windows had double glazing; furthermore, he was satisfied that the furniture included the two things he needed the most, a desk and a bar fridge. He opened it to check the contents and found that in the freezer compartment there were even ready-made ice cubes, then he took from the travel bag his inseparable shaker and the ingredients necessary to prepare his habitual drink, the devastating and horrible mixture he had named "L.M.J.". Between a sip and the other, he unpacked the few bags he had with him and arranged them with meticulous care in the wardrobe and in the chest of drawers. Once the unpacking operations were completed, he put his precious briefcase under the bed and sat at the desk to update his logbook. When he finished he closed the notebook and looked at the phone, because like every time he arrived in a new place he was tempted to make a few calls, but like every time he told himself too much time had passed since he showed up, and give up the idea. He lay down on the bed to finish his L.M.J. and thought back pleased about the reaction the gas attendant had when he saw the photograph hanging from the sun visor: that was the umpteenth confirmation to his theory that the old trick of arousing curiosity in the interlocutor always works and that, moreover, it is much healthier than going around asking direct questions. He had learned it at his own experience that time when, by asking too much, he had hit someone's susceptibility and received very annoying answers. Instead, he had just thrown his bait and now he knew that sooner or later some fish would take it, it was just a matter of time. Luke then judged the fact that the attendant had sent him to his wife's Motel had been another stroke of luck, because if you know how to take them the right way, women can be very talkative. He told himself that he had to walk on eggshells because he had been already disappointed several times, but the attendant gave him the impression he knew the person depicted in the picture very well. It could also be only a resemblance, but contrary to his initial expectations there were instead good chances this time he had definitely hit the mark. Or at least that he went very close. He smiled and narrowed his eyes to rest a little; later he would have gone for a pizza and a beer in the village pub, because often in those places it is enough to know how to listen to rumor to be able to capture important information.

For the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon, Helen and James had fruitlessly stuck looking for an idea, a logical thread, a clue.

"Just yesterday, Stevenson had told me jokingly, but it seems to me to be right in the middle of an episode of X Files ..." Helen murmured suddenly demoralized.

"The only thing I'm sure of is that fortunately, you weren't here last night, everything else counts very little for me..." James answered seriously, and she nodded gravely. He sensed how deeply she was suffering and felt the impulse to embrace her, but after the incident of the night before he was not sure she wanted that too. And then, shortly afterward all the agents would have returned, if someone had caught them in an equivocal attitude they would have added complications to the problems.

"What can we do?" Helen asked in a faint voice.

"I swear I wish I knew," he replied, disheartened.

"Perhaps it would really be appropriate to call the Bureau, what do you think?" She then proposed judging that they had already run out of gas. James looked out the window and found himself frustrated.

If they haven't had all those problems it would have been a wonderful sunny day, one of those that at the end of the shift you take your family and load them in the car driving straight to the sea to take a nice bath, so much for December. And then to eat a sumptuous pizza. He snorted indecisively.

"I believe it would not be good. Obviously, something happened beyond our understanding, there are very powerful forces at play that we do not know and that act in the shadows. Stevenson is probably right, maybe the best thing would be to simply pretend that nothing ever happened ..." he suggested.

"You know it's not possible. Surely sooner or later this story will come up and then someone will come and ask us to give an explanation of what happened," Helen objected.

"On the contrary, it seems to me that whoever is behind all this is working to eliminate all evidence of what happened. Indeed, if we were to tell this story, that someone would do anything to make us ridicule or, worse, to put us in silence. Except for this mysterious box, which until proven otherwise could only be an empty box, we have nothing in hand. And, furthermore, by making this story known, we would be investigated for letting us swindle all the evidence in such a manner," James explained.

"And Harry? What if he saw something? If he speaks he could at least help us to clarify some things, after all on his bike and on the fishing rod there was the same dust."

James thought about his son's strange behavior and frowned.

"In this story, he must not get involved, whatever happened to him I want you to forget as soon as possible," he said.

"But there must be a connection! And then, honestly, I can't understand how he could not have suffered the deadly effects of contact with that stuff."

"Listen," he countered, changing his expression, "if there was a connection I don't know and I don't want to know.

I'm glad that despite behaving a little strangely, Harry is fine, and I just want him to quickly forget that experience. And then, even if we involve him and someone decides to set up an inquiry, the sheriff's son with Down syndrome would certainly not be a reliable witness. I repeat, I think the best thing is to pretend that nothing has ever happened."

"And what do we do with the people of the country?"

"Apparently no one saw or heard anything, so nobody knows exactly what happened. Soon the Festival will begin and everyone will think only and only about that, they are all waiting for the hordes of tourists that will arrive to make up for the economic damages produced by the hurricane Sandra. We will all forget this much sooner than you think."

"Yes, but there are always a few meddlings around."

"We will release a version, it will be enough to say that the case was not ours and that we passed it to another jurisdiction along with all the evidence."

"And old Bob?"

"Proud as he is, he will certainly not go around telling what happened to him, he doesn't want to look like a fool."

"What about the guys?"

"If they don't want to lose their jobs, they'll do better to don't say a word, if feds get here, the whole county police force would be wiped out and replaced within five minutes."

Helen wondered for a long time, tormenting the finger that in the meantime had removed the bandage, to make the skin breathe a little and allow the blood to circulate better. She gave a little more scratching and a small piece of the last fingertip, now completely lifeless, broke away and fell to the ground without causing her any pain. James heard the faint noise produced by the little piece that touched the floor and looked at her with his eyes wide open, on the other hand, she spoke again as if she was completely indifferent to that fact as if losing pieces was the most normal thing in the world.

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