so it would throw as broad a beam
as possible. Then I set to work on the crate.
The top was already loose. I was right - this one had just
been opened. I jimmied the top back and forth, continuing to loosen the
nails that had been pried up with a nail claw, until I felt them come
out of the wood. Then I worked along the sides of the five-or-so-foot
box until the top was loose all the way around. Not knowing which end
of the box was the front, I picked up the top and slid it off to the
edge. Then I lowered the flashlight, looked inside, and my stomach
rolled right up into my throat and I almost became sick right then and
there.
Whatever they’d crated this way, it was a coffin,
but not like any coffin I’d seen before. The contents,
enclosed in a thick glass container, were submerged in a thick light
blue liquid, almost as heavy as a gelling solution of diesel fuel. But
the object was floating, actually suspended, and not sitting on the
bottom with a fluid over top, and it was soft and shiny as the
underbelly of a fish. At first I thought it was a dead child they were
shipping somewhere. But this was no child. It was a four-foot human
shaped figure with arms, bizarre-looking four-fingered hands - I
didn’t see a thumb - thin legs and feet, and an oversized
incandescent lightbulb shaped head that looked like it was floating
over a balloon gondola for a chin. I know I must have cringed at first,
but then I had the urge to pull off the top of the liquid container and
touch the pale gray skin. But I couldn’t tell whether it was
skin because it also looked like a very thin one-piece head-to-toe
fabric covering the creature’s flesh.
Its eyeballs must have been rolled way back in its head
because I couldn’t see any pupils or iris or anything that
resembled a human eye. But the eye sockets themselves were oversized
and almond-shaped and pointed down to its tiny nose, which
didn’t really protrude from the skull. It was more like the
tiny nose of a baby that never grew as the child grew, and it was
mostly nostril.
The creature’s skull was over grown to the point
where all of its facial features - such as they were - were arranged
absolutely frontally, occupying only a small circle on the lower part
of the head. The protruding ears of a human were nonexistent, its
cheeks had no definition, and there were no eyebrows or any indications
of facial hair. The creature had only a tiny flat slit for a mouth and
it was completely closed, resembling more of a crease or indentation
between the nose and the bottom of the chinless skull than a fully
functioning orifice. I would find out years later how it communicated,
but at that moment in Kansas, I could only stand there in shock over
the clearly non-human face suspended in front of me in a semi-liquid
preservative.
I could see no damage to the creature’s body and no
indication that it had been involved in any accident. There was no
blood, its limbs seemed intact, and I could find no lacerations on the
skin or through the gray fabric. I looked through the crate encasing
the container of liquid for any paperwork or shipping invoice or
anything that would describe the nature or origin of this thing. What I
found was an intriguing Army Intelligence document describing the
creature as an inhabitant of a craft that had crash landed in Roswell,
New Mexico, earlier that week and a routing manifest for this creature
to the login officer at the Air Material Command at Wright Field and
from him to the Walter Reed Army Hospital morgue’s pathology
section where, I supposed, the creature would be autopsied and stored.
It was not a document I was meant to see, for sure, so I tucked it back
in the envelope against the inside wall of the crate.
I allowed myself more time to look at the creature than I
should have, I suppose, because that night I missed the time checks on
the rest of my rounds and believed I’d have to come up with a
pretty good explanation for the lateness of my other stops
as possible. Then I set to work on the crate.
The top was already loose. I was right - this one had just
been opened. I jimmied the top back and forth, continuing to loosen the
nails that had been pried up with a nail claw, until I felt them come
out of the wood. Then I worked along the sides of the five-or-so-foot
box until the top was loose all the way around. Not knowing which end
of the box was the front, I picked up the top and slid it off to the
edge. Then I lowered the flashlight, looked inside, and my stomach
rolled right up into my throat and I almost became sick right then and
there.
Whatever they’d crated this way, it was a coffin,
but not like any coffin I’d seen before. The contents,
enclosed in a thick glass container, were submerged in a thick light
blue liquid, almost as heavy as a gelling solution of diesel fuel. But
the object was floating, actually suspended, and not sitting on the
bottom with a fluid over top, and it was soft and shiny as the
underbelly of a fish. At first I thought it was a dead child they were
shipping somewhere. But this was no child. It was a four-foot human
shaped figure with arms, bizarre-looking four-fingered hands - I
didn’t see a thumb - thin legs and feet, and an oversized
incandescent lightbulb shaped head that looked like it was floating
over a balloon gondola for a chin. I know I must have cringed at first,
but then I had the urge to pull off the top of the liquid container and
touch the pale gray skin. But I couldn’t tell whether it was
skin because it also looked like a very thin one-piece head-to-toe
fabric covering the creature’s flesh.
Its eyeballs must have been rolled way back in its head
because I couldn’t see any pupils or iris or anything that
resembled a human eye. But the eye sockets themselves were oversized
and almond-shaped and pointed down to its tiny nose, which
didn’t really protrude from the skull. It was more like the
tiny nose of a baby that never grew as the child grew, and it was
mostly nostril.
The creature’s skull was over grown to the point
where all of its facial features - such as they were - were arranged
absolutely frontally, occupying only a small circle on the lower part
of the head. The protruding ears of a human were nonexistent, its
cheeks had no definition, and there were no eyebrows or any indications
of facial hair. The creature had only a tiny flat slit for a mouth and
it was completely closed, resembling more of a crease or indentation
between the nose and the bottom of the chinless skull than a fully
functioning orifice. I would find out years later how it communicated,
but at that moment in Kansas, I could only stand there in shock over
the clearly non-human face suspended in front of me in a semi-liquid
preservative.
I could see no damage to the creature’s body and no
indication that it had been involved in any accident. There was no
blood, its limbs seemed intact, and I could find no lacerations on the
skin or through the gray fabric. I looked through the crate encasing
the container of liquid for any paperwork or shipping invoice or
anything that would describe the nature or origin of this thing. What I
found was an intriguing Army Intelligence document describing the
creature as an inhabitant of a craft that had crash landed in Roswell,
New Mexico, earlier that week and a routing manifest for this creature
to the login officer at the Air Material Command at Wright Field and
from him to the Walter Reed Army Hospital morgue’s pathology
section where, I supposed, the creature would be autopsied and stored.
It was not a document I was meant to see, for sure, so I tucked it back
in the envelope against the inside wall of the crate.
I allowed myself more time to look at the creature than I
should have, I suppose, because that night I missed the time checks on
the rest of my rounds and believed I’d have to come up with a
pretty good explanation for the lateness of my other stops
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