“Hey, that’s deep, Rudster,” Beauford said from off-screen. Apparently, he was the one shakily operating the handheld camera.
“Beauford, dang it, don’t interrupt my talking!” Rudley scowled at the camera for a minute.
“What are you waiting for?” Beauford asked.
“Just waiting to see if you’re done running your mouth or not.”
“I’m done.”
“Because if you got something to say, Beauford, go ahead and say it so we can get on with the dang show.”
“I ain’t got nothing say.”
“Yeah, you didn’t have nothing to say when you ate the last Twinkie in the box, either, did you? Remember? Right about the North Carolina state line? Didn’t even ask me if I wanted that last Twinkie.”
“You been sore about this since North Carolina?”
“That was my Twinkie! You ate two more than I did! Can’t you do no math?”
The video jumped again, showing Rudley from a different angle, calm again, still on the town green. “Anyway, sad little town. And, according to some stuff I read on the internet, it was right here that all two hundred people just vanished into thin air. No explanation. Homeland Security even took over the town for a while. And guess what the official story was? This is the kicker, listen! They said there was a little toxic leak from some old dye factory, which had been closed for like, what, forty years?”
“Fifty-six,” Beauford told him.
“Dang it, Beauford....Think about it, folks at home. Two hundred people, vanished all at once. A government cover-up. No explanation. Are you thinking what I’m thinking? Because I’m thinking...abduction. I’m not saying it’s aliens...” Rudley glanced around nervously. “...but I think it was aliens.”
“Oh, that’s a relief,” Jenny said. “Nobody’s going to take this seriously. How did you even find this?”
“Somebody linked it to Fark. Mainly to make fun of these two guys, but still. If they know something strange happened, other people could, too. And watch this next part.”
Rudley sat in a front parlor, the sort of room some people’s parents kept well-decorated and unused. He was facing a very unhappy-looking couple in their late forties or early fifties.
“Wait a minute!” Jenny said. “Aren’t they...”
“Mr. and Mrs. Daniels,” Seth said. “Bret Daniels’ parents. I’ve spent the night at their house before.”
Jenny briefly remembered killing the jock using a cloud of pox spores in front of the courthouse.
“...never made any sense to us,” Bret’s mother was saying. “He just drove off on Easter, and we never saw him again! They said there was an accident...some people died...but we never saw him or his...his...”
“His dead body?” Rudley asked helpfully, and Bret’s mother cried out as if stabbed. The father just stared at the floor, stone-faced.
“Nobody would tell us anything,” Bret’s father said, without looking up. “Not a thing.”
“Did you see any strange lights that night?” Rudley asked. “Were there any crop circles in the morning?”
“He left a daughter behind,” Bret’s mom added. “With his high-school sweetheart, Darcy Metcalf.”
“They weren’t exactly sweethearts,” Bret’s dad mumbled.
“Don’t say that! He wouldn’t have done that with a girl unless he really loved her. He was such a sweet little boy.”
Bret’s dad shrugged.
“We almost never see our grandbaby,” Bret’s mom continued. “Darcy up and moved to Columbia, and now she’s living with a...” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “...a Mexican. Our little granddaughter, growing up in the city with a bunch of Mexicans. Probably eating burritos as we speak!”
“Judge says we can’t do a thing about it,” Bret’s dad said.
“Back to the bright lights over town,” Rudley said. “Did you see any? Or any glowing objects at all, perhaps parked in a cow pasture?”
“Didn’t see nothing like that,” Bret’s dad mumbled.
“Well, I do have a little self-help brochure I wrote, for people who’ve been abducted, and for the families of the abducted, too. It’s normally $5.99, but I’ll let you folks have one for free.” Rudley handed over a thick booklet with a flying saucer on the cover.
“What is this?” the crying mother asked.
“Aliens?” Bret’s dad scowled. “Is that it? You come here to talk to us about aliens?”
“Well, yes, sir,” Rudley told him. “There’s an epidemic of Americans being abducted and studied by extraterrestrial visitors, you see...they’re not from our dimension. They’re from a different Earth, in the ninth dimension.”