NOTE: Written for the Science Fiction Writers of Earth Short Story Contest for the year 2000 contest. This originally started as a story-telling project for creative writing class, written the very afternoon it was due. Detective Angel Morgan will appear in my future anthology "Heartwellville Postcards", a collection of stories from my childhood while living in Missouri. (Have to type it all up, since about half is already written out in longhand … ugh … ) -------------------- Cerealology By Jillian Staik -------------------- Middle of nowhere, Missouri. Oceans of amber grain and soybean patches surrounded me as I stared out over the flat horizon behind my ninety- nine cent Taiwan-made kiddie sunglasses. By all standards, it was not normal for a Kansas City bred Amazon like me to show up in the rural areas. I would have been more content hanging out in the Key West- inspired lounge in downtown K.C., sipping margaritas, and singing Jimmy Buffett hits on the karaoke. Unfortunately, I lack the cash to enjoy such luxuries. Being a freelance detective earns squat, especially during the summer when it's too hot, humid, and brightly lit by our indecisive sun. I took any case I could, involving getting myself beaten by an angry mob of meat plant workers wielding deadly slabs of hard salami. Never get plastered on the job and sing "Have a Little Priest" from the operetta Sweeney Todd, it ain't fun. "God, it's hot," I mumbled, wiping the clammy sweat from my forehead and upper lip with the back of my calloused hand. I glanced back up at the road to the east, then opened my one quart thermos full of orange juice. Freshly made from concentrate some three hours ago. Tastes like it, I thought, after a swing of the warm acid. Damn thermos bottles, never keeps the cold stuff cold. Gravel dust flared up in the east, the dirty white clouds billowing up in the wake of an ancient aqua green and white Ford truck. As it rumbled closer, it was hard to ignore the side mirrors stuck out in the air like Alfalfa's ears. The truck slowed to a halt, turned into the road toward Heartwellville, and the engine faded to a slow death. The man leaned out the window, surveying me as I did mutually. A man in his mid-thirties, I estimated. His shoulder-length carrot orange hair was stirring in the gentle breeze, his amber eyes twitched nervously in their deep sunken sockets behind coke bottle glasses. He was clean-shaven with sun burnt toasted skin, predominate nose, and thin lips parted to allow his tongue to wet his lip every few seconds. A slender hand clutched and released the bar attached to the Alfalfa mirror. "You don't look like Dana Scully," he spoke, his voice in a raspy whisper, years of cigarette abuse grating on his vocal cords. "Yeah, well, you don't look like Doctor Quest. Where's Johnny and Hadji?" "Dr. Matthew Kane," he extended his hand out the window. "Angel Morgan," I accepted his hand gingerly; God knows where it might have been. He looked like the type to stick his hands in a pile of manure. "Good to meet you. I called you out here to help me with a … problem I have." He wetted his lip again. "What sort of problem?" I asked, gamely taking another mouthful of sour citrus. "Um … well, I study crops. I'm what the public calls a 'Cerealologist'." (Oh, God, not another, not another one!) "I mean, I study crop circles for the Mutual UFO Network, Missouri Chapter." (You really like to screw around with me, don't you, God? So I always have to play straight man to your freaking lame jokes?) I giggled, brushing a bright blonde lock of hair out of my eyes. "I'm sorry, honey, but UFO's are out of my league. Go ask the Burroughs, they specialize in alien conspiracies." "I did," he sighed. "Some crazy teenage girl waved a shotgun at me." "Then I suggest you call the Cass County UFO Hotline and use up your one call for the day." "I'm serious, Ms. Morgan!" He slammed his skinny fist against the door, a slight dent appearing in the aqua finish. "There is something unnatural at work making those circles!" I leaned against the door of my beat-up black El Camino, my jeans absorbing the blistering heat. "So? Around here it's probably the country boys playing pranks on UFO enthusiasts like you." "I need your help." "In what? Watch and see if they steal any missile silos? Everyone knows it's the black helicopters." "No, I need an unbiased witness for my project tonight. Your credentials are enough to prove my research. Unfortunately, Heinlein's 'Fair Witness' does not exist in our world." "No, out of the question. I am not going to hang out here with the lightning bugs and mosquitoes and you to chase down flying saucers with aliens trying to find Margaritaville." "Ms. Morgan – " "No," I replied firmly as I twisted the thermos lid tighter and turned toward my car door. "I can pay you well," he called. "Name a price!" I stopped, turning around to look back into his amber eyes. I pulled off my kiddie sunglasses to get a better look at the expectancy on his face. I named a number. "Yes, yes, I can accommodate that." "Okay, Spielberg, you got yourself a witness." What else could I say? I was broke. * * * As a small child two decades ago, I would visit my grandma and grandpa Ott out in the country on their pre-Depression Era farm. The lights along highway two were few and far between, allowing the most spectacular view of the stars and Milky Way anywhere. I would lie out among the broken stalks in the freshly harvested wheat field and stare up at the eternal sky for hours on end, identifying the constellations and galaxies. Deep down I always knew others were out there, sailing the sea of stars and discovering and charting new worlds. I waited for them to pick me up; I knew I didn't belong here. I'm not sure why I always felt like I didn't belong. I suppose it was because I naturally had two shades of hair, my bangs being bright blonde and the rest being raven black. I was also more physical than most other girls, and stood at nearly six feet tall with an Amazon frame to boot. I was … too odd for this world. Still, I remember I fell asleep one night out in the field. I awoke to the sound of feet shuffling through the dry stalks. Thinking it was daddy come to take me in, I opened my eyes … That is all I remember. Later on that night, I was found in a crop circle on an abandoned farm. I was violently sick the next few days; my parents believed Satanists had something to do with it. Whatever it was – the trauma – I knew we weren't alone … and some of them weren't nice. So, what the hell was I doing this for? I guess to find out who … or what. * * * Several hours after my initial meeting with Kane, I found myself parked in the middle of a field deep in the heart of crop circle country. Kane had shown me pictures of the usual marks: full circles or rings some hundred feet across etched into the ripening wheat in clockwise patterns. I even looked over a few, walking within their boundaries. I cannot explain it, but I fell sick, waves of nausea welling up from the pit of my stomach. Years since I experienced it. Then the time I heard my named called. I asked Kane what he wanted, and he denied calling for me. So, here we were, on the property of a Henry Daisyhill, feeling like I was on an endless blind date with Dr. Frankenstein. We sat in complete darkness, silently staring at the ethereal wheat. I recall A.C. Nolan joking about his fictitious American Weasel Vision cable company and having a "Hay Cam". It was the heart-stopping program of hay growing. I never thought I'd end up doing it live. I rubbed my burning eyes and yawned. "Nodding off, Ms. Morgan?" "Oh, hell, just call me Angel." He clicked on a night vision flashlight and amber light filled the cab. I know too many guys who would take advantage of this situation – and Kane turns on a flashlight. "You're not normally up at three in the morning, are you?" he asked, locating a tan rubber band. He pulled his orange hair back in it. He met my eyes at last. "Yeah, I am," I answered, tilting my head to the left to rub my stiff right shoulder. "I'm normally pasted out of my gourd and dancing the Macarena on someone's table top while swiping their drinks. I hate the mid-west." "Why?" He pulled his thick glasses off to clean them. "Because the winters freeze my ass off and I want to find Margaritaville. Honey, there isn't an ocean out here. What's your story?" "I'm trying to escape Margaritaville," he replied. "Visited once, didn't like it. Too many hurricanes. I thought aliens would be easier to find." He snorted. "You want to find Margaritaville and I want to find aliens. I guess we're both looking for the impossible." A fishtail of light caught my eye and I turned to look out my window at the flash. A single beam of light swung crazily around over the other side of a hill. "No, Matthew, ethereal lights are not impossible." "What the hell?" He crawled over the seat, using both hands to slide his glasses back on to look. "Well?" I said expectantly. "Let's go take a look." He sank back to his side and clicked the door open. "Are you crazy?" I asked. "What? I thought you didn't believe in aliens?" "Shut up, smartass, I'm coming with you." With a single covered flashlight, we made our way as silent Indians across the plump grasses and up the hill, crawling on our stomachs. We saw a figure crouched among the wheat stalks, a flashlight stuck in its mouth. "What now?" Kane whispered, his voice almost cracking in disappointment. "Run down and grab him. Ask the kid what kind of a sick joke he's playing." I stood and dashed down the packed earth hill, springing off and landing the figure in a flying tackle, rolling through the wheat for several yards. "HEY!" the figure under me screamed. Kane ran down the hill after me, shining the flashlight beam at us on the dirt. A two-by-eight board lay on the ground, slightly raised from the half-pressed wheat under it. Attached to the board was strong twine tied to a stake set in the middle of his ring project. "Okay, honey bun," I said, holding the boy in policeman's lock. "Why aren't you out tipping cows with the rest of your buddies?" He turned his face toward me. All I could see were large black eyes, unblinking and eerie in the yellow flashlight. "I'm not the one causing trouble, Angel," the boy replied in a strangely accented voice. "Talk to Daisyhill, he's the crazy one! Look in the center of the circles, Angel, it's the boy asking for help and that's what makes you sick! Let me go!" A burst of strength erupted from the boy as I was suddenly thrown off and sent through the air, landing at Kane's feet. The boy scrambled toward the north end of the property. "Wait a minute!" I cried as I staggered to my feet. "How the hell do you know my name?" He turned, his oval freckled face flushed and his straw colored hair flying from his inhuman run. "A long time ago, Angel! Look for the one like me in the center of the circles!" He was suddenly gone. Kane placed a hand on my shoulder, silently mulling over what the boy said. "You don't think?" I shrugged. "Couldn't hurt." * * * "Detective Morgan, Henry Daisyhill confessed to a murder over fifty years ago when we questioned him this morning," the county sheriff handed me a manila file folder, browned with age. "Really?" I asked, taking my kiddie sunglasses off and rubbed my eyes. I glanced over at Kane directing the diggers to the ghosts of crop circles around the Daisyhill property. "Sure did. You and Dr. Kane solved a fifty-year-old murder case. Remains of Johnny Ackwell are being discovered all over the property in the center of those circles your friend has been investigating." The sheriff sucked through his teeth. "Nasty way to die, too. Poor boy was beaten to death with a smith's hammer and then butchered up." I nodded in agreement. "Did Daisyhill give a reason for murdering the boy?" "Said he did it because he had no way of paying the boy for farm work he did." "So, he felt it was easier to kill the boy, instead." "Right." "This folder has the original reports?" "Yes, ma'am." "Great. Thanks, sheriff." I strolled over to Kane's truck, reading over the sheriff's reports from over half a century ago. I flipped a page over and saw the photograph. My heart skipped two beats and I stopped breathing. "What is it, Angel?" Kane asked. "You look like you saw a ghost." "Almost but not quite. Take a look at this!" I shoved the picture of the murdered boy in his face. "Looks almost like the boy we saw last night, right?" "Almost." The smiling oval face was splattered with dark freckles and light hair fell in his pale eyes in the black and white photograph. But the boy we saw last night had large black eyes. "I think your aliens exist, Matthew," I stated. He nodded slowly. "You know what else this means?" I began grinning. "What, Angel?" "There may be a Margaritaville after all."