The phone rings once, twice, three times. I roll over to check the red glow from the digital clock on my nightstand. It reads: Three A.M. Lifting the receiver from its cradle and without waiting for the late night caller to reveal her identity I mumble, “Pamela? Is that you?”
“Yes. It’s me,” Pamela answers quickly.
It’s late, even for Pamela, and my voice conveys my annoyance. “If you are calling me at three in the morning, you better be in a desperate situation or--”
“I’m okay,” is her response. “But I need you to do me a favor.”
I sigh heavily into the phone while expecting to be asked to please come pick her up from the parking lot of some club or apartment complex where she went to party and now can’t remember where she parked her car, or where she left her keys.
Pamela has burned her bridges with most of our other friends. They either hang up or tell her to call a taxi. But I can’t do that. She was there for me when my husband took off with our dental hygienist, and because of that, I am willing to listen when she calls. Usually, she just needs transportation. However, this is not her request tonight.
“Beth, there’s this guy in a neon blue suit,” she begins, “and he’s standing in my yard outside my bedroom window.”
“What?” I am suddenly wide awake. “Have you called the police?”
“No, no. You don’t understand. He’s not going to hurt me,” Pamela starts, but I quickly interrupt.
“Are you crazy?” The panic is evident in my voice. “Grab something to use as a weapon while I call the police on my cell phone.” My heart is pounding. “I’ll stay on the line with you.”
I tightly grip the cordless phone in my hand as though my strength could travel through our transmission and offer my friend some real support as I try to think where I left my purse with my cell phone in it.
Pamela ignores my concern as she speaks in an unruffled, instructive tone. “Look out your window, Beth. There’s supposed to be another man waiting there for you.” Her voice is as calm as though she were reading a recipe aloud.
“What man?” I shriek as I duck down below the window sill. Carefully, I part my curtains to peer out into my yard.
“Is he there?” Pamela asks.
Sure enough, there is a man standing there. “Yes,” I whisper. I can’t make out his eyes; still, I can feel him staring at me. Instinctively, I avoid focusing on his face. I fear his eyes might lock onto mine. It is an irrational fear, but it is strong enough to keep my gaze on his torso.
“Is he wearing a blue suit, too?”
It is not a suit-and-tie getup, which is what I thought Pamela meant. It is more like a scuba suit, snug fitting, including the head, outlining the basic structure of a man.
“He’s in some sort of suit, but it’s so dark I can’t see the color.” As I say that, though, I make out a slight glimmer from the being in my yard. His suit appears to pulsate, and it is, in fact, a luminescent blue.
“That’s exactly what he told me. He said, ‘Call your friend and she will confirm that I am telling you the truth.’ He explained that since I trusted you, he would send a testimonial to your yard, one that looked just like him.”
“What are you talking about?” I ask while sliding down beneath my window, groping all around me in the dark for my purse.
“He is speaking through the window to me. Beth, this guy is incredible. He knows me. It’s like he is the man I’ve been looking for all my life, and finally, he shows up right outside my window.”
“Pamela, listen to me,” I interject as forcefully as I can, but to no avail. Pamela carries on as though she doesn’t hear me at all.
“I think he is using telepathy or something,” she speaks softly into the receiver, “but he assures me that I have nothing to fear. I believe him. He just wants to be my friend, not like all the jerks in this town. Interlopers, that’s his word for the clowns around here. He’s different from them. He’s trustworthy, I can tell.”
Pamela’s naiveté has always astounded me and never more so than now as she continues describing her visitor. “He promised that confirmation was waiting in your yard. He wasn’t lying to me, was he?”
“We must call the police,” I whisper. I don’t dare turn on the lights for fear of being seen by the blue man in my yard. Instead, I crawl across the carpet until my fingers make contact with the strap of my leather bag. Feverishly, I pull it to me, unzip it, and grab my cell phone. “I’m dialing 911 right now on my cell,” I tell Pamela.
Pamela’s voice seems to drift off as she murmurs, “Don’t bother them about this. He merely wants me to come outside so he can show me something.” I hear her phone drop to the floor.
“Pamela!” I scream. “Don’t go!” I listen, but she doesn’t respond. Pulling back the curtain panels, I peer out into my yard only to discover that my blue stranger has disappeared. I punch 911 on my cell phone while holding the land line to my other ear, listening desperately for Pamela to return.
When the 9ll operator answers, I blurt out, “My friend Pamela Freeman needs a police officer right away. She lives on Concord Circle. I don’t know the exact address, but it’s the third house from the corner, on the south side of the street, the one with the crape myrtles in the front yard. Please hurry. There’s a man in her yard in a glowing, blue suit, and he told her to come outside, and she dropped the phone and—” I begin to sob.
The operator asks for my name and address. I suspect she thinks I am lying or drunk or crazy. Her tone only increases my anxiety. My voice trembles as I say, “I’m Beth Weissman. I live at 1703 Westlake Drive, and I need a police officer, too. There was a man in my yard, but he left. But he might still be out there, only…not where I can see him.” I part the curtains again and survey my yard.
“Miss Weissman, there was a man in your yard and in your friend’s yard?”
“Yes!” I practically screech in reply. “My friend’s in danger. Please believe me. Tell the officers to hurry. That guy may be a psychopath or a hypnotist. I mean, he’s blue, and he’s talking to her in her mind, somehow.”
I know I am sounding insane, but I can’t seem to stop myself from blathering. “Telepathy. That’s what she said, or I think that’s what she said. Something like that, anyway. I can’t believe this has happened! Are the police on there way yet?” I am too terrified to get angry at the operator’s somewhat cynical response. Instead, I beg her to stay on the line until the police officers can get to my house.
Pamela’s door is standing wide open when the police officers arrive on the scene. There is no sign of forced entry and no sign of Pamela either. Someone picks up the phone and I am still on the line listening. With a phone in each of my hands, I hear police personnel on both lines talking to me simultaneously.
When the dispatcher confirms that a police cruiser is now in my driveway, I hang up and rush to my front door. There I find two, uniformed police officers standing on my porch. The sight of them causes me to break into grateful tears as I begin sputtering details about glowing, blue-clad men mysteriously appearing and then disappearing, taking my friend with them at three in the morning.
I catch the glances between the officers. “I know this sounds strange, but I’m not making it up. My friend may have been abducted. She needs somebody to search for her. Don’t you have some dogs or something? Oh, stop looking at me like that. Just do something, please!” I jabber on hysterically, acutely aware that these officers, my rescuers, are viewing me warily while I helplessly plead with them to search for my friend.
***
It has been three weeks since Pamela’s disappearance and still, no leads. The police conducted a series of interviews with all those who knew Pamela. Their inquiries produced an unflattering profile of a single woman with a few too many unsavory acquaintances from the clubs she frequented. The list of suspects is long.
“Possible foul play,” is their favorite response to any inquiry about the Pamela Freeman case. They discount my story of another man appearing in my yard at the same time Pamela called me to describe the man in her yard, both wearing blue, glowing suits. They suggest I had an episode of hysterical vision, something like hysterical blindness, they explain, only the opposite. I am inclined to think they made that term up.
“Why don’t you just follow up on my lead instead of attributing it to psychosis?” I inquire angrily of the detectives assigned to the case. “Costume shops, party apparel merchants, or some such business would surely have a record of two blue, electrical suits being rented. Or if not, then at least, they might know where a person could possibly purchase such items.”
The lead detective, one Lyle Meriwether, a sixteen-year veteran of the force who doesn’t appreciate being told how to do his job, smirks at my suggestion. “Nobody has ever heard of glowing, blue suits around here, and frankly, I am a little skeptical about your account, Miss Weissman. Please don’t take this the wrong way,” he pauses and smiles, giving me ample time to take it “the wrong way” before he resumes. “Sometimes, eye witnesses confuse details, mixing up the facts, because of the urgency of the situation. Your friend calls and tells you there is a man in her yard. Then, you see a man in your yard. Your friend claims she sees a blue suit and suddenly, your yardman is in a blue suit, too.”
“He wasn’t my yardman.” I hiss.
“Look, Miss Weissman. You believe you saw little blue men, and we believe you might have been mistaken.”
Though I know it is the wrong thing to do, I react defensively. “I never said they were ‘little’ and I never said they were ‘blue.’ I said they wore blue clothing. There is a difference, one that an astute police officer would have noted.” I glare at Meriwether, and he sighs heavily in response.
“Thank you for all your help, Miss Weissman. We’ll be in touch if we need anything else.” He stands and opens his office door for me. I have officially been dismissed. I believe I hear the word, “fruitcake,” as the door closes behind me, but then again, it could just be my mind playing tricks. Apparently, that is the consensus of what has been happening to me lately.
It is obvious that I will never be believed. The very thing, the glowing blue suit appearing first on the man in Pamela’s yard and then, on the man in my yard, convincing Pamela that her late night caller was trustworthy, has now convinced the police that I am nuts. It seems diabolically clever to me. It also seems incredibly sad. My friend is gone, and all I hear the police do is insinuate that I am an unreliable witness, and that Pamela is somehow responsible, at least in part, for her own disappearance due to being “a female engaged in high risk behaviors.” Their words, not mine.
I’ve consulted the Internet and a few costume shops since Pamela’s disappearance. Not that I really expected to find blue suits that lit up in the dark and glowed in a pulsating rhythm similar to the one I reported seeing outside my window. I didn’t actually expect to find anything like that at all. But I wanted to make sure that the next time I spoke with Detective Meriwether, he would know I was still on the case. If he has the slightest bit of a competitive nature, and I’m sure with his ego, he does, then my persistence should inspire him. He might expand his investigation to include the possibility that there is more to the disappearance of my friend than the run-of-the-mill pervert following her home from some sleazy bar.
I keep repeating the story of Pamela’s abduction. Detective Meriwether claims that I am trying to frighten people. He suggests that I am craving attention at the expense of a serious investigation. I’ve been labeled Wacky Weissman by some, and Miss Blue-Clue by others, but I refuse to be intimated into silence. It’s possible that Pamela is still out there somewhere. Maybe she has amnesia or is being held captive by lunatics. So, I post flyers to keep her face before the public. Yet even as I continue my crusade, I fear her unusual abductors may not have left any clues behind.
Yesterday, I was contacted by a newspaper reporter to respond to Meriwether’s dismissive remarks regarding my account of the man in blue standing in Pamela’s yard the night she disappeared. I countered with, “I’ve personally called every costume shop in three counties to check on the availability of neon blue costumes. I’m also looking into alien abduction organizations. I’ve contacted MUFON. That’s the Mutual UFO Network,” I explained, before concluding with my familiar, accusatory question: “What’s Detective Meriwether and his band of merry men done to follow up on the only lead they have?”
That didn’t set well with him or the police department. They were the first men in blue, and I guess they don’t want any competition. “Unsubstantiated” is a term they toss around about my version of events. “Extraordinary,” is another label they attach to my account, though they say it mockingly.
If anything were to happen to me, the police would label me an overwrought, hysterical female, and most likely, that would be explanation enough not to pursue my case with much more gusto than they have shown in Pamela’s disappearance. It’s both frustrating and frightening. I’m considering having an alarm system installed. I recently purchased a snubnose .38 which rests in a holster slung over the headboard of my bed. I fully understand that I am my own first line of defense.
Whoever showed up that night in Pamela’s yard actually claimed two victims: Pamela and me. Though I still live in my same house, in the same town, nothing is the same. Pamela was just the first of my friends to disappear. My other friends have begun disappearing, too, though not from the planet, just from my presence. They must be embarrassed to be considered an acquaintance of someone who insists that she saw what she saw.
I resent their desertion, and I have, on occasion, retaliated with hostility. “Fickle friends are worse than blow flies!” I hollered recently when I noticed two former pals turn to avoid me in the grocery store. I suppose that remark got quoted a few times, which probably hasn’t helped my popularity much.
The unknown that never disturbed my sleep before Pamela disappeared, now wakes me frequently. Beyond the usual rapists, murderers, thugs, and psychopaths of our world, do others lurk in a realm just outside our boundaries? Do they occasionally rent the veil and snatch a specimen from our midst? How do they select their prey? Questions like these have begun to trouble me when my room overflows with the stillness of late night.
In my bed with the lights out, I contemplate law enforcement lingo such as, “missing persons,” “foul play,” “cold case,” and “police procedures.” I figure Pamela is as much a victim of cop jargon as she is of the other men in blue. Perhaps, wherever she went isn’t so bad. Maybe she could come back if she wanted to, but she just doesn’t want to. Why couldn’t that be a possibility?
I wish she would contact me and let me know that she is okay. If she is staying voluntarily with her abductor, I wouldn’t even report it to Meriwether. I’d just be so relieved if “foul play” could be scratched off the list of potential scenarios that I’d actually cheer for alien abduction or amnesia or running away. “Where are you, Pamela? Can you, please, let me know if you are okay?” I sort of mumble this request aloud, repeatedly, like a prayer or a mantra. And when I cease my request, I listen with an absorbing anticipation, waiting in the dark for the phone to ring.