B (3:13)
All right. Little red lights on. I reckon I'll just start talking. I got no real plan here, so. Well, it's 1996. Does this thing record a date? Whatever. And it sure is truly Calvin Parker. If you know that name, you probably already got your opinion. People always do. But this ain't for them. This is for me to just get it out before it all slips away again. Because something happened today. I know it's been years, but I think it happened again. I went fishing off Cat island this morning. Same as I've done for years. Trying to just keep my mind straight. Most days out there I catch a few fish. Maybe drift a while, clear my head. But today. Well, today wasn't like most days. I was floating. Threw my line in early, sun barely up. And next thing I knew, the sun was low. The whole sky changed color. The cooler was packed full of fish that I don't remember catching. And then there was that smell. Weird. And antiseptic. Took me right back to 1973. Right back to that night in Pascagoula when everything went to shit. And this time I remember details. More vivid, you know? So here goes. October 11, 1973. I was 19. Just started a new job in the shipyard. Charlie Hickson helped me get it. He was a foreman there and he was like family. More than family, actually. Like the uncle you actually listened to. And man, damn, he could tell stories. Korean War, mostly. But he always had a way of making you believe the unbelievable. I remember it was hot that day. Sticky hot. But Charlie thought it would be a good night for fishing, so he. He asked me along. I wasn't really feeling it, but he insisted. So we drove out to the old shipyard around 6 and found ourselves a spot on the little pier. I don't think it was technically legal to fish there, but that never stopped Charlie. And he was right. It was a perfect night for fishing. Full moon, clear skies, barely a breeze. So we just sat there, lines drifting loose, talking on and off about nothing important. I think we were the only two on the whole river that night. Until, of course, we weren't. I was first to notice this blue light on the banks upstream. And my first thought was police. And I worried we'd get caught trespassing or something. But the problem with these lights were they weren't moving. Like they were on a cop car or nothing. Instead, they were floating. And then came this sound. This. This high pitched electric whine. Not loud, but heavy. Like it was smack in the middle of my chest. Charlie heard it too. And he Stood right up. And then I saw the thing for real. It was a craft of some kind. I don't. I don't know what else to call it. Maybe 30ft long, football shaped and hovering just off the bank of the river. I looked at Charlie, trying to ask him if he was seeing what I was seeing. But I couldn't speak, couldn't move. It was like. It was like someone had unplugged my brain from my body. And the craft stopped about 20 yards away, just hanging there above the water. And then a section of it opened up and this white light poured out. And. Boy, oh, man, so bright it hurt to look at. Like a. Like a welder's torch, but even brighter. Brighter than that. And then three figures emerged from that light. Now, I say figures because they looked kind of human shaped, but not, I guess they were 5ft tall with rankly gray skin like an elephant's. And where their faces would have been, there were just these. These weird slits. And as they glided closer to us, I saw they had arms, but instead of hands, they had these long crab like claws. And I wanted so badly to run, but again, I was frozen. You know, my body just. It just wouldn't respond. And those things came right up to us. And one of those things reached out with its claw and touched my arm. And then everything went completely black. Like. Not like sleep, but like. Like something emptier. Like I just stopped existing entirely. Oh, shit, man. I need a Coke or something. I'll be right back. Okay? I'm back. And I know how all this sounds. Hell, I've been wrestling with it over 20 years now. But after everything went black, I came to standing on the riverbank with my arms out like I was trying to catch something. The craft was gone, but Charlie was there. And he ran up, grabbed my shoulders and said I'd been out cold the whole time. Then he said they took us. Those beings from the craft. They took us inside the ship. And though I couldn't seem to recall any of it, Charlie remembered everything. He said they floated us inside the ship and into separate rooms. He said his room had glowing walls and some kind of table and he wasn't able to move as some kind of silver device, he called it a floating eye, scanned him from head to toe. He couldn't move, couldn't scream and was terrified they were going to cut him open and probe his insides like something from a movie. But they hadn't hurt him. And after they scanned him, they simply floated him back out to the riverbank and released him, he says. And when they dropped him back by the river, he'd heard a voice inside his head. We are peaceful. We mean you no harm. I didn't hear that voice. I didn't see that silver eye. I remembered nothing except the blue lights than standing there with mud on my boots. But as I sat on the riverbank, I had this nagging feeling. There was more like. Like flashes of images that made no sense and sounds that seemed familiar but impossible to place. So we sat in Charlie's truck for a while, sharing a bottle of whiskey he kept under the seat and trying to figure out what to do. Do next. I mean, part of me just wanted to drive home and pretend none of this had happened. But Charlie, he wanted to report it. He said if these things were taking people, the authorities needed to know about it. But man, all I thought was, who the hell would believe us? Next thing I knew, we were parked outside a pay phone with Charlie in there calling the Air Force. But this is funny. The woman on the other end actually laughed at him. She told him the Air force stopped investigating UFOs years ago when what's called Project Blue Book or some shit shut down. She said if we wanted to call anyone, we ought to call the police. So, yeah, that's what Charlie did. Sheriff diamond answered the phone himself, and to his credit, he didn't hang up on us. And after Charlie tried to explain what had happened, diamond told us to come down to the station. He said he couldn't promise he'd believe us, but he'd listen at the very least. When we got there, he sat us down in a windowless interview room and asked us to tell him everything from the beginning. So Charlie did most of the talking, and when he finished, diamond asked if I had anything to add. And you know, I felt real silly. I mean, I'd seen the light and the creatures and all, and I know I'd seen it, but I still felt disconnected from everything, like I was watching it all happen to someone else. So I didn't say much at all. And diamond nodded and said he'd need to ask us some follow up questions. Separately. He said he was going to step out for a few minutes to make some calls, talk things over. And he suggested we might want to get our stories straight if we planned on sticking to them. Then he walked out and Charlie and I just sat there in silence for a long time. Finally, Charlie asked if I thought we were doing the right thing. And I told him I didn't know what the right thing was anymore. So we started going over details again, trying to make sense of the timeline. The lights, the beings, creatures, whatever. Charlie kept asking me if I remembered anything else, any detail that might help explain what had happened. And No. I mean, no, there wasn't. There wasn't. I mean, I was still getting these weird flashes, like. Like the sound of wind chimes made of metal or a quick view of a curved wall that seemed to breathe, if you can imagine such a thing. But no, every time I tried to focus on them, they'd slip away like smoke or like those floaters in your eyes. I mean, I couldn't even be sure what really happened to me. And to be totally honest, right then, all I wanted was to get the hell out of that room and never look back. Shit. Well, so much for that. So diamond came back to the room, of course. But this time he wasn't alone. This time he had two deputies. And when they all sat down, they told us the room had been bugged. They'd heard everything we said in here, and they said they did it because they needed to know if we were running some kind of con, some kind of act. But we didn't drop the act when we were alone, because there was no act. And diamond said what he heard was either the performance of a lifetime or the real deal. And he believed it was real. And that should have made me feel relieved, I guess, but it didn't. Hell, no. Instead, I felt this weight on my chest. I could barely breathe. Because if diamond believed us, well, that meant this probably really happened. And I knew right there, right then, there's no going back to normal, I just knew it. And, damn, it sucks to be right.
