Lonely Nightmare IV: Stone Range
by Justin Glasser
***
“Because it’s cold out on your stone range, let me in.”
***
There was a case, as it turned out.
Lisa Nelson shed her coat, revealing a black and red cheerleader’s outfit with a big red O on the front, and long john pants under her skirt. She flopped down next to him, blond ponytail bobbing, the embodiment of every fantasy Mulder had ever had when he was fifteen. She smiled at him, across the table at Scully, and he could see that she was one of those pretty girls who had “the right upbringing,” the kind of girl who would be polite and friendly at her mother’s funeral. He thought for a second that Samantha would have been this type of girl, too, only with a brunette ponytail, and a blue and gold cheerleader’s outfit.
“I’m so glad you came,” she said. “You have no idea.”
“Why don’t you tell us?” Scully asked. Mulder wondered if she had ever worn a cheerleader’s skirt.
“Okay, um, yeah.” She toyed with the silverware in front of her. “See, it’s not even like I totally believe this, but Alan says that it’s true, and I believe Alan thinks it is true, and weird things have been happening. I wanted him to write the letter, but he thought it would be better if I did, you know, because of this,” --she waved her hand over the O on her sweater-- “’cause I’m more credible, or whatever. No one listens to Alan.”
“Lisa,” he said. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
“Huh?” She turned to him, blue eyes wide. She was a movie teenager, he thought, a stereotype. “Oh, you mean, like what *exactly* is going on. Sure.” She nodded again. Mulder knew she would get good grades in school, not only because of that blue-eyed innocent look, but because she would catch on. Once she got a read on you she would start leaping ahead, understanding what you wanted. Lisa Nelson was a people person.
“Okay, so, here’s the thing. Last year, some of the senior class had this great idea to have a bonfire in the woods on the night of Homecoming. And we did, and it was really cool, kind of like that scene in Grease, where they have the big speeches and the football team gets introduced and everyone has a good time, right?” Mulder nodded. He had no idea what she was talking about. He hoped Scully was a young Travolta fan. “Okay, so, it was all cool and we followed all the safety regulations, like, completely, and everything was good until they found out that Jeremy Stricher and Angela Jameson were there and didn’t come back.” She paused, and took a sip of Mulder’s water.
“So, there was this huge search party, and they didn’t find them, like, at all, like *any* of them, you know? And everyone just kind of assumed that they had run away together, which didn’t make any sense at all, because Jeremy and Angela weren’t even friends, which I know because she was on the squad with me, and we hung out all the time, but everyone just kind of assumed that they did, because that was like, the most *obvious* explanation, you know?”
Mulder glanced over at Scully. She was not looking at him.
“Have there been bonfires since?” Mulder asked. Lisa looked at him as if he had just asked her what she thought of Clinton’s foreign policy, and Mulder suddenly remembered that he had been a dork in high school.
“As if. No way is the school going to let us have bonfires after *that.* But, see, that’s the thing. It doesn’t matter, because kids have still been disappearing and no one is doing anything about it. There was Leroy Williams and Jenny Miller last winter, and Suzie Choy and Brian Farlow in the spring, and John Martinez and Jenny Anderson in the summer, and Bobby Oakes and Juliana Marshall right after school started.”
“It’s always couples?” Scully asked.
Lisa nodded. “Yeah, it’s always boy-girl, but that’s the whole thing, they *aren’t* couples. They’re, like, people that hardly talk to one another at all, like totally different--“ Lisa’s hands were pulling apart, making a motion that was the opposite of clapping.
“Cliques,” Mulder said.
“Yeah, cliques.” Lisa nodded again. The endless movement of her ponytail was making him dizzy.
“I’m not sure why you thought of us, Lisa,” Scully said. “This sounds like something the local police should be investigating.”
“See, that’s the whole thing!” She slammed her hand down on the table. “Every time something like this happens, they do investigate it. They call out the dogs and go through the woods and they never find *anything* and then they say that they were just following the example set by Jeremy and Angela and took off for, like Chicago, or something, but it’s not true!”
“How do you know?” Scully asked. Her voice was low, calm.
“I just do!” Lisa hissed. Mulder could see tears welling up in her eyes. “And Alan thinks he’s going to be next! He’s heard the beast and he’s going to be next and they’re going to say that he ran off to Chicago with some girl, maybe Kim Bertram, or Shelly Potranski, or *whoever* and it won’t be true, just like it’s not true with any of the others, because Alan is gay, but that doesn’t matter because he’s going to be taken and no one will do *anything* about it!”
They sat in silence for awhile, Mulder sipping at his coffee. Scully handed Lisa a napkin to wipe her face.
“Thanks,” the girl said, her voice muffled by the napkin.
“Lisa, where is Alan now?” Scully asked.
“At our house.”
“You live together?” Mulder asked. Times had changed, but--
“Duh. He’s my brother.” She gave him another one of those looks.
“Maybe we should go talk to him,” he said. Lisa nodded and stood grabbing her coat.
“Yeah, he said you’d want to, but he wouldn’t come out because it was getting dark.”
“He’s afraid of the dark?” Scully paused, her hands up around her collar.
Lisa pulled her ponytail out of the collar of her coat, and Mulder was relieved to see that he wasn’t the only one in this partnership who would be getting the “duh” look on this case.
“Wouldn’t you be,” the cheerleader asked, “if you thought the beast would take you?”
***
Lisa Nelson lived in one of the houses on Main Street, one of the big houses with a front porch and a mailbox shaped like a little cottage. The house was wide and white, and still had wreaths and lights on it from the holiday season. It looked like a postcard for small town life. It looked exactly like the type of house Mulder would have expected Lisa Nelson to live in.
Her brother Alan did not look exactly like the type of brother Lisa Nelson would have.
He came out of his room when she called to him from the brightly lit foyer.
“Alan! Alan, they’re here.”
Alan Nelson was a tall painfully skinny boy with dyed black hair and pale, pale skin. Where Lisa looked pale and glowing, vibrating with energy, Alan resembled more of a corpse than an actual living human being. He leaned against the wall in the hallway.
“Hey,” he said. “Nice to meet you.”
Mulder blinked in surprise. He had expected many things from this boy in a ripped black t-shirt and camouflage pants, but he hadn’t expected manners.
“They want to talk to you,” Lisa said. “I’ll call Mom and tell her I need shoes.”
Alan nodded.
“Shoes?” Mulder asked him.
“She needs a certain kind of shoes for cheerleading. They only sell them in the next town. You wanna come in?” he asked, extending is arm toward his room.
Mulder nodded.
The room was . . . black. It was covered with posters from floor to ceiling, bands that Mulder had never heard of, and suspected he wouldn’t have even if he didn’t listen to the classic rock station in D.C. The ceiling had a black sheet hanging from it, and was strung with purple Christmas tree lights. There was one lamp on next to the bed, and a black light over the fish tank. Mulder hoped this was not a typical teenager’s room.
“Here.” Alan moved some stuff of a chair for Scully to sit down. “You can sit on the desk,” he told Mulder. “Just throw that stuff on the floor.”
Mulder scraped a pile of books and magazines off the desk and set them on the floor. They tipped over, but Alan didn’t seem to notice. Surveying the rest of the detritus on the floor, Mulder was not surprised.
“Lisa was telling us about what was going on in town over the last year. Why don’t you tell us what you know?” Scully asked.
Alan flopped back on the bed, grabbing a pillow and curling his arm around it. “I don’t really know anything,” he said. “Things have been happening around here, and I think I’m next. Nothing else to tell.”
“Why do you think you’re next?” Mulder asked. He felt stupid, his feet dangling from the desk, leaning forward to talk to this kid who could only stare at his pillow.
“I heard the beast. Last week outside my window. I heard it sniffing around my window. I heard it asking for me.” He pointed at the window, and Mulder noticed for the first time that there were nails in the frame.
“Did you tell your parents about this?” Scully asked.
Alan laughed. It was a depressing sound, Mulder thought, mostly because no one as young as Alan Nelson should sound so old and hopeless.
“My parents would *not* be interested. They think I have problems.”
“Do you?” Scully asked. She was leaning forward, too, her hands folded in her lap. Mulder loved that voice, the voice that said you could tell her anything, that she would understand, but Alan didn’t seem to feel the same way.
“Lady, does this look like the room of a well-adjusted adolescent?”
“Your sister said that you were homosexual, Alan--“
“Jesus!” Alan sat up, glaring at him. “And you think this is some gay-bashing thing? That I’m a paranoid fag in a small town in rural Wisconsin, and that’s all there is to this? Fuck! I thought you guys were supposed to help!”
“We don’t think that, Alan,” Scully said. She reached out and touched his arm. “We’re just trying to figure out what happened here. We’re looking at all the possibilities.”
Alan shook his head. “I know. But I also know what I heard, and I know those kids didn’t ‘run away’ together.” He made quotation marks with his fingers. “Those kids, they didn’t really know each other, and even if they did, they didn’t like each other.”
“Lisa said something in her letter,” Mulder said, pulling it from his breast pocket. “Something about how the police belong to the beast?”
Alan sighed. “She’s guessing. I mean, we don’t know. Lisa’s not so smart, you know, but she gets people, and she said we shouldn’t tell Mom, and she said the police knew what was happening and we shouldn’t tell them anything.”
“You believe her?” Mulder asked.
Alan shrugged. “Lisa isn’t usually wrong about stuff like that. I figure better safe than sorry, right?”
Mulder nodded. Scully stood, rubbing Alan’s arm once before she let go. “We’re at the Onowani Lodge,” she said. She pulled a card from her pocket. “This is our cell phone number if you think of anything else you need to tell us. We’ll be in touch.”
Alan shoved the card in his pocket, and ushered them out to the foyer again.
“Hey,” he said, watching as they pulled their coats on. Mulder turned. “You aren’t going to tell them, are you? The police?”
“We’ll do our best to keep your name out of it,” he said. Alan nodded, toying with the collar of his shirt. He had black fingernail polish on, Mulder noticed. He could see the thin line of Alan’s collarbone framed by the stretched out collar of his shirt. Alan looked like a sick bird.
“Hey,” he said, just before they opened the door. Alan looked up. “You think it can get in?” Mulder asked.
Alan looked around, at the brightly lit living room and the large bay windows. He shrugged. “I don’t think so, man. I think it has to be invited.”
Mulder nodded. He reached out and clapped Alan on the shoulder. “We’ll be in touch,” he said, knowing Scully was watching him. She opened the door, and they stepped out into the cold dark night.
***end 4/13***
Some people call it a one night stand, but we can call it paradise: