Goodnight Sometimes Means Goodbye (Wrong Flight Home, #2) Read online

  Goodnight Sometimes Means Goodbye

  The Sequel to Wrong Flight Home

  A JOSHUA CHAMBERLAIN SERIAL NOVEL

  NOEL J. HADLEY

  Copyright © 2014 by Noel J. Hadley

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever

  Hadley, Noel J. 1980 –

  Goodnight Sometimes Means Goodbye

  CHAPTERS

  Prologue: Only the Fools Need Saving

  Goodnight Sometimes Means Goodbye

  The Runaway

  A Shoulder to Lean On

  The President's Wife

  Taming a Wild Ass

  .

  For Sarah

  Next time, Paris

  PROLOGUE: ONLY THE FOOLS NEED SAVING

  “HOLD ON, I NEVER SAID anything about alien abductions,” I held both hands up from the couch as a dramatic exemplification of my point. After all, I wasn't crazy. And people who had these sorts of experiences were crazy.

  “No, you didn't.” The woman sat comfortably erect in her office chair. Her name was Dr. Barbara Kennedy. Red hair, green eyes, and light freckles spoke of her shamrock people. She probably ranged mid-forties, though could have passed for a decade younger, and was immaculately dressed in a black pinstripe blazer, pearl blouse highlighted with a single turquoise necklace, and skirt long enough to maintain the dignity of her profession while short enough to exemplify an incessant heaping of legs, one crossed over the other. “And I never claimed you did. But if we're being honest, your story has some enlightening similarities to the abduction experience.”

  I opened my mouth to protest, but if the doctor noticed, she showed no signs of it and continued. “By no means am I advocating extra-terrestrial activity, but let's go over some of your observations. A key factor here includes your recent difficulties maintaining interpersonal relationships, especially as they pertain to your wife moving out for the explicit purpose of involving herself with other men. We both agree that her decisions are unhealthy, even destructive, to put it kindly, for everyone involved. But in the meantime consequence dictates an abrupt change in sexual status on your end. I think that's key to understanding much of this. These abductors attempted to dismember an integral sex organ of yours....” The doctor quickly referred to the notes that she'd filed away in her skull. “With a cigar cutter, did they not?”

  I tightened my legs. “I believe so.”

  “Then, by your own account of events on July 4th and most recently this weekend, July 19th was it, we can tack on two intriguing cases of missing time, spontaneous visual images, bruises, unexplained public vandalism up and down Second Street and in Elise's apartment, a phobia of clowns....”

  “Pierrots, to be exact,” I corrected her, as if by doing so I would add credibility to the seemingly nonsensical. “Like the ones you see on those early twentieth century French circus posters. They were driving Volkswagen Buses.”

  Barbara was somehow both deeply concentrated and simultaneously relaxed as she spoke. “Yes, Pierrots driving German engineering. There are also these devilish people, as you described them, the Lost Boys. I must admit, it’s very original on several levels, especially the part where everyone else in the world except for you and your friend Michael and these aggressors driving Volkswagen Buses simply vanished for a time. However, your encounter, particularly the first one, was filled with odd noises, the feeling of being trapped or bound, and now I'm seeing early signs of PTSD, sleep paralysis, and you've even commented on a rapid fingernail growth.”

  I discreetly slid the tip of one finger from between my teeth and returned it to my lap. Barbara pretended as if she hadn't noticed.

  “I'm certainly no expert on the subject, but all of these observations have some striking similarities. I think we should pursue that thought a little longer.”

  “You mean little green saucer men from Mars and all that.”

  “This would probably astound most people, but an estimated 2.5 to 3 percent of America's population believes they've been abducted by aliens. We're talking millions of people here; sobering numbers that can't be ignored. A person in my profession is bound to encounter them, and I have. Suffice to say yours is clearly different. I mention this because people with these sort of experiences have always resided at the furthest fringes of science. They struggle alone with unintelligible, sometimes even contradicting accounts. Their stories don't always check out.” She leaned in. “But their minds do.”

  “So you're saying you do believe me,” I sighed.

  “I guess what I'm trying to say is, psychologists have mostly agreed on one thing, that these experiences are true, to an extent. The far more interesting question is, how do we explain them? I could go on and on about sleep paralysis and waking from REM, two very probable and popular explanations. But does it really matter if I believe you or not?”

  I hugged a pillow as I considered the matter. “Yes. I think it does.”

  “Your friend Michael believes you. Isn't that enough?”

  “Michael and I experienced both encounters together. It couldn't have been sleep. Two people can't dream the same thing, can they? It just isn't logical.”

  “A gang of demon-like people arise out of nowhere to torment you while the rest of the world, myself included, are whisked away into unconscious oblivion. If I had to rely on one illogical account over the other, I'd pursue two combined dreams as the more likely scenario.”

  “I liked your previous description of missing time better.”

  “I haven't interviewed him yet, but we'll assume both stories line-up?”

  “I'm certain they will.”

  “It's nice to have that sort of affirmation, particularly from your closest friend. And I must say, it does lend to the likelihood of your experience. Don't expect to convince anyone, though. The majority of the population almost always assumes that someone who experienced the sort of traumatic episode that you did must be crazy. It's the easiest go-to response, otherwise they're forced to rectify the possibility that reality is so very different than what their own moats and security turrets allow for. But countless studies have proven that people with abduction stories are rarely crazy, and they're not lying or seeking attention either. Many to most are college educated with a sound professional mind, with nothing but credibility to loose. Argumentatively speaking, abductees also have another thing going for them. They're often plagued with guilt. Imagine the secrets they carry.”

  “I'm kind of a what you see is what you get sort of girl. I don't like secrets.”

  “Seeing as how your wife is working towards her doctorate in psychology, what I assume you're looking for is affirmation from the academic, maybe even religious community. Has she warmed up to your claims?”

  “Religiously, yes.”

  Barbara knew sarcasm when she heard it. “I guess that doesn't say a whole lot then, since Elise has confided with the both of us that she's straying away from a literal belief in the church. I'll go out on a limb here. I think you and I would also agree that we're dealing with something very spiritual, not extra-terrestrial.”

  “So you do believe me then.”

  “I can't say I've heard anything yet that would lend to the contrary.”

  “Elise says she believes me to an extent, that I did experience one thing or another. She just thinks Michael and I are both very misguided in our interpretation of events, perhaps overly confident in our spiritual assessments. She's recently summed up religion by pointing out that the most primitive of tribes can dance around a flame long enough until the faces within collectively sp
eak to them. She said something about all five senses of our brains being on fire or something.”

  “Mm-hmm,” the doctor looked at me for a time, keeping two fingers pressed against her freckled cheek. “As you know, I first met your wife at a conference in Washington several months ago. I think she's a splendid woman with first-rate knowledge on a series of subjects, and we'll make for great colleagues. Psychologically though, I see us splitting in left and right directions on very core beliefs.”

  “Which are?”

  “A Harvard colleague of mine argues that these experiences, and again, forgive me for throwing your encounters into the traditional alien abduction camp, cannot be explained or understood in a western rationalist tradition of science. As a religious person myself, I'm inclined to believe him. And I'm positive you would too. Another words, there's a clinical and an experimental literature which doesn't always refer to each other. Your wife has been heavily influenced by the scientific school of cognitive behavior, whereas if you can't measure it in a lab, then it must not exist.”

  Barbara interwove all ten fingers and reclined her chin on them in considerate contemplation. She said: “It's not just recognition you're after. Something else is bothering you.”

  “I don't like how our last meeting ended.”

  “Are you referring to the man with the tattoo under his arm; it was a Latin word, EMINOR, meaning menace, correct?” Barbara had a seemingly spotless memory. “And the fact that he and these other.....let's just stop beating around the bush and call them devils.....blocked you from entering Elise's hotel last Saturday night?”

  Devil was right. They weren't human, at least not in any practical sense of the word. The first time I encountered the nameless person I'd soon come to refer to as EMINOR I was strolling lazily down Bourbon Street, a glass of whiskey and a cigar hung from my fingertips. He could best be described as a droog from that Anthony Burgess novel. At least, that's how he revealed himself to me, though I was beginning to think that most of what I saw of him was a purposeful illusion, similar to how Zeus appeared to Europa as a bull. He dressed in a white button-up pajama-like shirt, sleeves rolled high, with equally white pants, red suspenders, leather gloves, steel toed Caterpillar boots, and black bowlers cap to top off his pale flesh and scruffy head of sandy hair. He carried a cane too. And he wasn't human. No human could pull off the sort of cosmic pandering that he and his fellow socialites did.

  I said: “That hotel was supposed to be for us. We were going to kick start our marriage again. No more lies. No more affairs. And then the congressman showed up to ruin everything, play into her addiction.” His name was Tom Phillips, a 47th District U.S. Congressman; the actual person she'd been seeing, not to be confused with missing time, bright lights, and spiritual visitors. Let's see a politician, with all his lazy campaign promises, pull something like that out of his hat. “He consciously stole her right out from under me. I don't like that.”

  “Addiction isn't so easy as saying Never again. Relapses are almost always in the deck, especially since she has obvious dependency issues with him.”

  “So you're saying she is a nymphomaniac.”

  “The more accepted clinical term is hyper-sexuality. And yes, I have no doubt about it.”

  “It's not Tom so much that bothers me. I can stand my ground with that political sleaze. It's EMINOR and his Lost Boys, this whole abduction thing, and the fact that they only seem to show up when Phillips is around. I kind of wish I could hit the rewind button on my weekend and face him again.”

  “This EMINOR, by all personal accounts, sounds extremely dangerous.”

  “If I could do it all over again, revisit my weekend in San Francisco, I would have stood my ground, fought for Elise. And yet I just walked away.” Oddly enough, the scenario I imagined (as I sat there on Dr. Kennedy's couch) involved the devil with the tattoo and his loyal Lost Boys beating both Michael and I to a bloody pulp in the streets of San Francisco. We didn't stand a fighting chance against them. Maybe we even died, I wasn't sure, but either way I didn't care. “What happens after doesn't really matter.”

  Barbara's eyes sunk to her shoes. She cleared her throat, and then delivered another pass with her eyes. “Joshua, you can't force Elise to be saved. It doesn't work like that. You did what you could.”

  “By walking away, where's the chivalry in that?”

  Barbara's mouth spoke of discipline and her eyes of compassion. “Perhaps Elise doesn't want chivalry.”

  “I'm not so much afraid of otherworldly tormentors, as strange as that sounds. That's completely secondary. I'm afraid that I'll never see EMINOR again, that I'll never have the opportunity to stand my ground and let him know he can't dictate my relationship with Elise.”

  “Do you believe Tom Phillips and EMINOR are in some way related?”

  “No, of course not. Like a politician would ever sell his soul to the devil.” I laughed at my own joke, something I wasn't in the habit of normally doing. And it wasn't just sarcasm. I was totally convinced that Tom had absolutely nothing to do with my otherworldly tormentors. They were two completely separate issues and yet somehow so interwoven at the seams. That would be another riddle for another time.

  The doctor smiled courteously. “Had you stood your ground, as you put it, you might be dead, and she'd be no better off for it. Elise made her choices, and I'm helping her work through them, but she has to be willing to receive your help. Salvation is foolery to the proud.”

  I said: “God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong.”

  “From First Corinthians, yes; only the fools need saving.” Her eyes suddenly glistened, as well as her teeth. “As a counselor I wish I had happily ever after endings to hand out to all of my patients. But all I can do is help guide them as they fumble for a light switch in the dark. And all you can do is hold your hand out for her, if the opportunity should present itself.”

  “It's rather ironic, don't you think, that she's so dedicated to helping others and yet she can't even diagnose her own problems.”

  Barbara lowered her head. When it raised again the doctor was attempting not to laugh, though I never once suspected she was anything less than self-contained at all times. Even her smile was calculated as part of the healer performance. “In a long tradition that started with Sigmund Freud, psychologists are the craziest people I know. They should probably be on the couch, not you.”

  I said: “Freud struggled with cocaine addiction.”

  “Not to mention his thirty operations to correct the extensive damage he suffered due to cancer in the jaw, a habit he willingly chose to overlook.”

  “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” I shrugged my shoulders.

  “I don't want to sound unsympathetic over your current marriage situation, but to Elise I say, Welcome to the club.” She produced another smile as a way of emphasizing the irony. “You need to understand, one of the problems with health professionals is that they're so concerned with observing and helping others that they often completely fail at monitoring their own condition.”

  “Surely practicing therapy can't prove any more stressful than being, say.... a lawyer.” I thought of Elise's twin sister as I said it, who was a lawyer.

  “Perhaps people enter the mental health field because they themselves have a history of psychological difficulties. And maybe, just maybe, they're trying to understand their own dysfunction.” She playfully lifted the palms of both hands. “Not that I'm at all implying myself in this equation.”

  “Certainly not.” I grinned.

  “How's the drinking?” Her candid comment, the way she just slipped it into the conversation, caught me off guard.

  “It's fine,” I said.

  I wasn't sure she believed me. Then again, now that I thought about it, I wasn't so sure I believed myself either.

  “Well, will you look at the time?” Barbara said it before advising the clock for assurance to her claim, exc
ept when she did turn to face it, just to make a point of how correct she really was, the minute was spot on the hour. “Seeing as how I'm a parking meter, you've run out of quarters.”

  “I think you mean hundred dollar bills.”

  “Let's keep our fingers crossed that we don't have any more interesting encounters this week, before our next appointment, that is. In the meantime, if you can manage to stay away from a Rod Serling narrative, I think you'll be just fine.”

  I stirred only a little on the couch, and remained seated where I was. Dr. Kennedy waited on me to make the next move.

  “I do have one more question,” I said.

  Barbara fell back into a listening posture.

  She said: “I'm listening.”

  “Do you think my wife is going to make a good psychologist?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I think Elise is going to make one hell of a good doctor.”

  Kennedy smiled.

  “I do too.”

  GOODNIGHT SOMETIMES MEANS GOODBYE

  1

  I FIRST SAT DOWN to write about Elise and Leah and the story of Alex and Gracie Parker, my strange encounters with the devilish society of Lost Boys (I've confessed this particular episode of my life to very few insiders), the homeless man, and everything else that happened to me in the summer of 2008 about a year ago. It all started in a manuscript I now call Wrong Flight Home, and sits in the back of my filing cabinet waiting to be read somewhere down the line by my grandchildren or whoever else discovers it, probably when I'm old and retired or after I die. Perhaps it will even get published someday. I don't really care either way. Authoring isn't my profession. Photography is. But I have a lot of time on my hands in between the shutter clicks of my camera, and I guess writing has always come easy for me. My point is I thought I could tell the story from beginning to end in three or four hundred pages. How so very wrong I really was. I mean, here I am clapping the keyboard at the dawn of a second volume and I've barely even begun to chip away at the overarching story.