Once More Into the Abyss by Dennis Danvers Page B

She’s devastated. May I ask how did this happen?”
    He tells me in a deadpan cop voice from a thousand miles away: “We have him on security cameras breaching the perimeter of an archeological site known as the abyss, and at exactly noon our time, he jumped.”
    â€œHas the body been recovered?”
    Is that a chuckle ? “You can’t recover nobody from the abyss. Too deep. Too dangerous. I’m terribly sorry for your loss. Would you have your wife call us when she feels ready?”
    You bet, Chuckles. “I’ll pass that along.” I take her in my arms and hold her. After a while, I put her into bed, continue to hold her, and she cries herself into a fitful sleep. Every once in a while she wakes up and cries some more, clinging to me. Dylan, who never knew his grandfather, takes care of us with tea and snacks. I read, look out the window, watch the beautiful day’s progress, reminisce. The day I was told my folks had disappeared into the abyss, I wanted someone to hold me, but there wasn’t anyone. There’s nowhere I would rather be than holding her. Dylan pops in to check on us, and I tell him to go to bed. It’s been a long day.
    â€œWas it a good anniversary?” he asks.
    â€œThe best,” I say.
    He glances nervously at his sleeping mother. “What was he like?” he asks me. “Was he…”
    â€œCrazy? Good question. I wish I knew. Crazy or not, I think he was right about some crazy things, like aliens.” Dylan’s familiar with my weird notions and remains undecided about them, but Simon Deetermeyer was way weirder than me. He was on a mission. Some would call it obsession. Like John the Baptist , he said once in a story Katyana narrated to me: the night her father shared his theories with the assembled family for the first and only time—that aliens had come to Earth and taken on human form, then fled en masse leaving behind a network of adult children of alien beings struggling to understand their enigmatic identities. It was his mission and purpose in life to set them free, so that they might return to their home planet.
    You don’t get any more wackadoodle than that. Unless you become one of his followers. Like me.
    â€œHe was incredible,” Katyana said. “He was on fire!” That night her mother packed the three kids in the car and left him. Katyana’s the youngest, the only one who ever had anything to do with him after that night. He was crazy. Whether it was John the Baptist crazy or not, you can decide for yourself.
    As for me I’m an old man child of aliens. I’m past adult. It’s okay to be childish again and believe in nonsense when you look like me. People practically expect it. An old man who isn’t totally daft and frail is a bit scary to most folks. Dodder and dither, and they know who you are and treat you like a child.
    Dylan asks, “Is that why Mom never went to see him, and he never came to see us? Because of the alien stuff?”
    â€œNo. It was just better that way. He needed to hide, and not just because he was a hermit by nature. He had a habit of getting himself into trouble. He would do things to serve the cause that weren’t always wise, like lying about his academic credentials. Your mom was always the one to help him get through it all. She reached a point where she needed peace, time with us, you especially. She enjoyed the silence, because it meant he was okay, that he’d finally found his niche, that he was finally happy. That’s where he wanted to be, just down the road from the abyss, where he believes aliens came and went, and just might come back again. Now she may feel guilty for letting him live out his dream, but it was really the best thing for both of them. Your mother’s a wonderful daughter.”
    â€œI think Mom’s awake,” Dylan says. “She just squinted.”
    â€œBusted,” Katyana says without opening