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Chapter Text

You Can't Help Who You Are, Part I
A Miracles Fanfic
by Laurel (Sailorhathor)

Chapters: 1 of 2
Rating: Sup13+ (some elements might be too intense or scary for those under 13, bad language)
Word Count: 21,716 total
Dates: Written throughout the middle of 2005 'til the end, and into January 2006. Slight revision in October 2008.
Summary: "We don't choose how things happen, do we Paul? We just adjust." A policewoman from Alva's past comes for a visit, and recognizes Paul. Seems he was there, in a small ski resort town, at the same time Alva was, handling SQ's first supernatural investigation. A case dealing with the infamous Mothman.
Warning: Has a little bad language, including the F word. Contains spoilers for a few of Skeet's movies, including Ride with the Devil and Into the West. Doesn't really spoil The Magic of Ordinary Days although it's mentioned.
Beta Thanks: Thanks to Kaija and Joe for beta'ing this!
Notes: This is my fictionalization of the casefile "The Mothman" on SodalitasQuaerito.com. The story was written in an attempt to give Alva Keel his own experience with the infamous Mothman. It could be called a sort of cross-over with Richard Hatem's film "The Mothman Prophecies" because it contains my own versions of scenes right out of that movie. At the end of this story, I will detail exactly what I took from the film.
The name "Julietta" comes from Evie's dossier in "The Friendly Skies" from a section that seems to detail Evie's siblings.
My friend Kaye typed about a third of this story for me from my handwritten master. Thank you Kaye!
More notes at the end of the story. If I put them all here, you would fall asleep before you could even read the thing. ;)

Part 1: That Night in Mountaineer

        "Keel, we are not taking a chupacabra case."

        "I believe we should."

        "We are not."

        "Paul..."

        Sighing, Evie called from a nearby desk, "You might as well give in, Paul. You know if he really wants to take a case, Alva's going to get his way."

        Alva appeared to see this as a victory, two against one. "So we take it."

        Paul laughed; taking such a case would be ridiculous. "We will not."

        "My, my. Same ol' Alva."

        Both Alva and Paul turned to see a blonde female standing in the hallway leading into SQ; she wore a police uniform and a big, warm smile of familiarity. Alva suddenly grinned back. "Marie. Oh my gosh, what are you doing here?"

        She chuckled as he crossed the room toward her and gave her a fond hug, which she returned. "Hello Alva. Still up to your old, bizarre tricks, I see."

        "What are you doing in Boston?"

        "My sergeant and I are here for a convention on sensitivity on the beat. Cops are still having to look after their reputations these days."

        "It's so good to see you again..."

        While they chatted, Paul ambled over to the desk where Evie was working on SQ's taxes. "Who's that?"

        Evie shrugged. "I don't recognize her."

        "He seems to like her." Paul was reacting to the feelings he gleaned off of Alva through his empathic link. "What is it with Keel and sultry blondes, anyway?"

        "Sultry" was a fairly good way to describe Marie, for though she wore little makeup, she was still quite pretty, with long wavy hair under her brimmed police issue hat. Evie knew all about being a "hot cop;" it was something that sometimes worked against you, and sometimes worked to your advantage.

        Alva brought Marie over to introduce her. "Evelyn Santos, one of my partners in this business."

        "Well, you decided to share the wealth, hm?" Grinning, Marie shook Evie's hand. "Pleased to meet you."

        "Nice to meet you too. I was a cop also, four years with District 8 in South Boston," Evie boasted.

        "Really? We should compare notes."

        Alva turned the introductions to Paul. "And this is Paul Callan, my other co-worker. Paul, Marie."

        He looked at her as if she was vaguely familiar to him. "Pleased to meet you."

        Marie shook his hand while she examined his face quite hard. "Your name is... Paul Callan?"

        "Yes."

        She paused, trying to decide if she should pursue this further. Ultimately, Marie decided to ask, "Have you ever been to Mountaineer, Vermont?"

        Within seconds, Paul's eyes had widened and his face had gone white when that question brought it all back for him. He suddenly knew where he had seen Officer Marie McCann before.

        "Paul? Are you alright?" Alva asked, confused.

        Paul said nothing. He swallowed hard, turned, and retreated to Alva's office to get himself together... or maybe to hide.

        "Marie, what's going on?"

        Shocked and bewildered, Marie turned to Alva. "That's him. I'm sure of it. Alva, he was in Mountaineer at the same time you were. I will never forget Paul Callan, because it was the most bizarre case I ever saw."

        "Oh, Marie..." At first, Alva had been ready to dismiss this as a mistake, but then he recalled Paul's reaction to Marie and Mountaineer, just moments ago. "Are you sure?"

        "Yes!" Marie leaned on a nearby chair, still shaken by the revelation. "I probably shouldn't be telling you about this, but he's your associate."

        Evie cut in, "What went on here? What happened in Mountaineer?"

        "It's the Mothman case, Evie."

        "Oh, that one. You didn't know Paul then."

        "But he was there," Marie repeated.

        "Start at the beginning."

        With a sigh, Marie sat down. "While you were in Mountaineer, and we were investigating this creature that the citizens of my town were seeing, this Mothman, my partner and I picked up a young man wandering the streets in a daze. It was him, Paul Callan. He couldn't speak; he barely responded to us. I'll never forget his eyes... huge, dilated pupils, glassy... so help me, I swear his pupils fluttered."

        "Fluttered?"

        "I've never seen eyes do that before."

        What they heard disturbed them. Evie asked, "What was wrong with him?"

        "We were never able to figure out exactly what caused all the strange symptoms, but we did test his blood, and that explained the daze he was in." Marie looked at the office where Paul had gone. "Mr. Callan's blood was full of barbiturates. The lab technician who did the testing said it was almost like sodium pentothal."

        "Truth serum?"

        "Yeah. It's a barbiturate and an anesthetic. How he got that in his blood, we may never know. Mr. Callan had a serious memory lapse."

        Although Alva was confused by how bizarre this whole story was turning out to be, he still nodded in understanding. "It's also thought it can be used as a mind control drug."

        "Either way, he eventually threw up and came out of his stupor. A priest drove all the way from Boston to pick him up. A Father Ca... Canero?"

        "Father Calero," said Paul from the doorway of Alva's office. He still seemed shaken, but ready to talk. "I recognize you. You were one of the cops who picked me up."

        "Paul, what happened?" Evie gently asked.

        "I don't know." Paul stepped more into the room, moving closer to the desk where Evie sat. "I have no memory of how I got to Mountaineer. Witnesses said I drove, and my car was there. But I just remember being in the Student Lounge at school, and the next thing I knew, I was vomiting in the jail cell." He addressed Alva directly. "I've never spoken of the incident with anyone but Poppi because I was embarrassed. But now I'm hearing that you were in Mountaineer at the same time that this happened to me. That's too strange of a coincidence not to pursue it."

        "You want to know how you got there, and why?"

        "Yes." Paul looked at Marie, then back at Alva. "What was happening in Mountaineer at the time I was found there? What is the Mothman case?"

***********
        Morning sunlight attempted to stream in through the window of Alva's upstairs apartment, finding its efforts blocked by heavy green curtains. Still, a sliver of sunlight snuck around the edge and fell across Alva's chest; he had fallen asleep on his couch again. The phone rang. It awakened him, and he sat up, just enough for the sun to shine right into his eyes. Alva moaned, squinting, and reached for the receiver. "Hello?"

        "Have I reached Sodalitas Quaerito?" asked a female voice.

        He sat up straighter and tried to shake the sleep out of his voice. "Uh, yes, yes. This is Alva Keel. How may I help you?"

        "Did you say Alva Keel?"

        "Yes..."

        "Are you any relation to John Keel?"

        Alva had to pause at the unexpected question. "Actually, no. Who am I speaking to?"

        "I'm sorry for the weirdness, but it's just a very strange coincidence. My name is Officer Marie McCann. I'm a policewoman from Mountaineer, Vermont. Something is happening here that I'd like you to consult on."

        "How did you find Sodalitas Quaerito?"

        Officer McCann replied, "Once the citizens of Mountaineer started seeing all the weird things, I read up on it, and I found the parapsychological association's listing of groups that investigate strange phenomena. I've already called three teams from the New York area, and..." she paused; embarrassment crept into her voice. "I'm sorry, you weren't my first choice. But the others were either already busy with other cases or they thought I was a crackpot. I was trying to find a group close by. You're in Boston?"

        "Yes. What's going on out there?" Alva asked.

        "This is a ski resort town. Most of our revenue comes from tourism. Nothing this bizarre has ever happened here before. People have been seeing a weird man lurking around. Their descriptions match the eyewitness reports of incidents from years ago in Point Pleasant, West Virginia."

        Alva recognized the name of the city. "You're saying..."

        "I think Mountaineer is being visited by the Mothman."

        There was a long pause as Alva took that in. "You're quite serious?"

        "Yes. I read up on it. The Mothman is described as a six foot tall grey humanoid with a wingspan of ten feet; instead of a head, he has two glowing red eyes spaced between his shoulders. That matches the descriptions I have taken from eyewitnesses in my reports. It's happening again." Officer McCann sighed. "Will you bring your team to investigate?"

        Now it was Alva's turn to be embarrassed. "I... don't exactly have a team." The fact that he was speaking to a woman, and a woman who sounded quite attractive, had flustered him. Alva wondered how what he was now saying must sound to her.

        "How many investigators can you bring?"

        He paused. "I'm really quite capable of doing it on my own."

        "There's just you?"

        "Well... Sodalitas Quaerito began only recently."

        "Oh." Officer McCann ruffled some papers on her end. "How many cases have you investigated?"

        "Technically? This would be Sodalitas Quaerito's first," Alva said a little sheepishly. There was that flustered babbling again. But it went against his personal principles to lie to a woman who was asking for his help.

        Clearing her throat, Officer McCann finally asked, "This is pretty big for a first case, huh?"

        "The return of the infamous Mothman? A bit, yes."

        "And you could have it all to yourself..." she said teasingly.

        Alva had to grin. "I could."

        "So you'll come?"

        He checked his calendar. "I don't have any other pressing appointments. I'll get there as soon as I can."

        "You want me to pick you up at the airport?"

        "If you don't mind. I'll call you once I know when I'll arrive."

        Officer McCann gave him her cell phone number. "I'm glad I have a real paranormal expert on the way to help me sort this out. The weirdest thing we cops usually see is naked drunk people fighting in the street."

        "This is quite a switch then."

        She laughed. "You could say that. Except this time, it's a naked moth." Marie didn't usually make jokes like this; she was, for the most part, pretty no nonsense. But that accent... why were women always so charmed by European accents?

        They said their goodbyes and hung up. Alva had to wonder if any of that could have been classified as flirting; it felt like it in a twisted way. Then he wondered what he'd gotten himself into. The Mothman? It was quite an amazing thing to claim - no wonder other investigators had called her a crackpot. But what if her claim panned out? What if the Mothman was being seen in Mountaineer? Alva wanted to be in the middle of that. Last time, the sightings had ended in death when the Silver Bridge collapsed into the Ohio River, sending many motorists to their death. How would this one end?

        Before he got up to get himself ready for the trip, Alva checked the calendar once again. It was January 23, 1998.

***********

        "SQ's first case?" Paul had momentarily forgotten his own place in this and whistled at the gravity of the situation - the first case of the group to which he now belonged. Just the idea of the story he was about to hear impressed him. "January 23, 1998? That was around the time you met Evie, wasn't it?"

        "A few days after, yes. She hadn't yet joined SQ," Alva said, and looked at Evie.

        "Wow. It was a monumental time for the group, then." And what part had Paul played in it? He brooded over that for a few seconds, his face troubled.

        Like her mother, Evie always played the matchmaker, attempting to be subtle, but failing miserably. "Well, Marie, when you first met Alva, what was your initial impression?"

        She didn't expect the question. Marie glanced at Alva, then smiled. "Eccentric."

***********

        The first thing Marie noticed when Alva stepped through the door into the terminal was his eyes. The light caught them in such a way that they seemed to glow bright grayish blue. She was instantly, unprofessionally attracted to him, but would have to put that aside. Marie waved to him. "Mr. Keel?"

        He smiled, closed-mouth, as he walked over with a small suitcase in one hand and his other extended in greeting. "You must be Officer McCann." There seemed to be some surprise in his expression, as he hadn't expected a police officer to be so lovely.

        "That I am. As long as we're going to be working together on this truly bizarre case, I think we can drop the formalities, don't you? Please call me Marie."

        Nodding, Alva said, "I agree. I'm Alva. My father is Mr. Keel."

        "Well, Alva, follow me, and I'll take us back to the station."

        On their way to the squad car, Alva started asking questions to get a feel for the case. "How did this whole thing start?"

        "People call the police for all sorts of ridiculous things. But really, who do you call when you see an enormous creature with wings flying alongside your car?" Marie shrugged at him.

        "Is that what happened?" Alva asked in an amazed tone.

        "The first sighting, yeah. I'll let you talk to the witnesses. They said this 'Mothman' pursued their car like it was racing with them. No matter what they did, they couldn't shake it. It was fast. It finally flew off once they reached the parking lot of the Cold Hollow Lodge."

        "Very, very similar to the Mothman's behavior in Pt. Pleasant all those years ago." Alva held the door open for her as they stepped out into the cold mountain air. "How did you happen to connect this creature with Pt. Pleasant's Mothman?"

        Marie grinned and replied, "I have a cousin who likes reading about UFO's and other weird stuff. He subscribes to 'Fortean Times.' Once all this started and the story hit the papers, he called me."

        "How much of the original story did he tell you?"

        "The basics. I did a little reading, enough to understand what happened, but I was hoping you could fill in the rest."

        Filling in the rest was exactly what Alva did on their way back to the police station. He spoke of the Mothman with such enthusiasm that one might think he studied Fortean creatures for a living, but it was the wonder and the sheer lack of embarrassment with which he spoke that really made the story so fascinating, coming from him. Some people would have found the telling of such a story about sightings of a giant half-man half-moth to be embarrassing and silly, but not Alva. He spoke with an intensity, a flair for the theatrical, that made nothing about the story seem silly; instead, Alva's mere tone imparted how mysterious and scary the tale really was. Marie could finally imagine how frightening it must've been to encounter that huge, strange beast, to be pursued by it, and not be able to communicate with it.

        When he finished the story by describing the collapse of the Silver Bridge, they were sitting in the Mountaineer police station, she on the edge of her desk and Alva in a wooden chair, his arms resting on the rail-like arm rests. "Many people died when that bridge collapsed into the river. To this day, no one knows if the Mothman was there to warn everyone of the disaster, or if he caused it."

        "Wow..." Marie shook her head in disbelief of how amazing the story was. "The way you tell this story, you'd think you were there when it happened."

        Alva only shrugged. "I do my research."

        But she knew it was more than that. His desire for knowledge of the paranormal had become so intense that the curiosity consumed his life - but the enthusiasm he felt was not necessarily bad. He possessed a certain contentedness within this odd lifestyle, along with a prevailing feeling of loneliness. Alva needed comrades in this business; she hoped someday he'd find them. Marie doubted he had such a willing audience to "perform" to often. His eccentricity only made him more attractive. More interesting.

        "Do you want to talk to some of the witnesses now?"

***********

        The stories were all very similar, not only to each other but to the sightings of the Mothman from Pt. Pleasant in 1966-67. People were chased from their cars to their homes by a giant moth-like being that squeaked. The creature pursued their cars at speeds of up to 100 miles per hour. People saw this "Mothman" flying over the Cold Hollow Lodge performing aerial stunts. Alva found all of the witnesses to be sincere and believable beyond reproach. They had obviously seen something real, something that terrified them. But was it really the Mothman? Or, the more important question, was the Mothman real?

        The day ended with a news report hastily put together by a friend of Marie's at local TV station, featuring a live interview with her and Alva. They spoke of the sightings and encouraged anyone who had seen the Mothman, but not yet reported it, to come forward. The number of the police station and Alva's cell phone number were given out for people to call.

        The two of them chatted into the late hours back at the station. Marie had to clean the sinks in each of the holding cells; they were a small police force and they had no cleaning staff. Alva stretched out on one of the bunks to chat with her while she performed the menial task. "This city is so close to Lake Champlain..."

        Marie laughed as she scrubbed at a drain stopper. "The home of the lake monster, Champ. I've heard all about it."

        "Some think he's related to Nessie, from back home."

        "Back home?" She grinned at him, lying on his side with his head propped up on his hand. "Is that where your accent comes from? Scotland?"

        He nodded.

        "What is your professional opinion on this case so far, my Scottish friend?"

        Marie's tone was so playful, Alva knew she was half serious about discussing the case and half flirting with him. He didn't mind. He just grinned back at her. "Something is happening here. Something real. It's unclear whether the same creature from Pt. Pleasant is at work again, here in Mountaineer, or if it's a copycat event. I'm hoping those details will become clearer as the story unfolds."

        "You think they really saw something?"

        "Most definitely."

        Marie trusted him at his word; he knew more about this stuff than she did. She pretended to be engrossed in the cleaning as she casually turned the conversation over to more personal details. "Do you ever wish that you had a full team of investigators to help you?"

        Alva shrugged. "It would be a lot of help. But I'll have that someday."

        "Do you have a lady friend?"

        He smiled at her quaint phrasing of the question. "Not currently."

        "Don't you ever get lonely?"

        "Everyone gets lonely. Even those who do have lady friends."

        They just smiled at each other for a moment. "I suppose you're right."

        "I have loved ones out there. People I will work with, side by side." Alva turned over on his back and stretched. "Just haven't found them yet."

        Marie stopped cleaning, took off the rubber gloves, and walked closer to Alva, standing over him. "How do you know that?"

        He looked up at her. "You don't have to be a psychic to get feelings about your fate."

        Marie put one hand on either side of him, leaning down on the bunk, and said, "That's poetry."

        "You've been reading some pretty bad poetry, then."

        She grinned as she lowered her face closer to his... and his cell phone began to ring.

***********

        They were leaving out details of the story; Evie knew it, and Paul knew it. Evie knew because of women's intuition; Paul knew because he could feel the remembered sparks between them as they recalled what happened. Time had turned the sparks to faded embers, but there was still a great affection between them. He didn't know why it surprised him that Alva had real, human, carnal feelings; he supposed it was sort of like knowing that your parents had sex.

        But those details were not important to the telling of this story.

        "I began receiving phone calls in response to the news spot," Alva explained. "A few were pranks, but we did get some new reports of Mothman sightings. Marie and I recorded all the calls we received to make the transcription process easier."

        "I gather some of the calls were interesting," interjected Evie.

        Raising an eyebrow, Alva replied, "Extremely. I got a call from the Mothman himself."

        Evie and Paul froze before reacting. "What?"

        "When I got back to my hotel room, a man called me claiming to be the Mothman. His voice sounded very peculiar."

        Paul leaned forward. "You recorded this call?"

        "Of course."

        "Let's hear it," Paul requested.

        "I knew you'd say that."

        "You don't have to be a psychic..."

        A few minutes later, Alva had the tape player set up with one of his old cassettes ready to play. It was labeled "Mothman 1." He glanced uneasily at Paul. "Before I play this, Paul... there's something you should know."

        "Yes?" Paul's dark eyes darted over Alva's face, reading his body language. Another secret.

        "The Mothman brought up the word 'hemography' and told me I should pursue it, that it would lead me to you."

        Paul, letting out a held breath, said, "Wow." The way he felt could hardly be expressed with words. He was glad that this secret hadn't been quite as explosive as the one about the "God is Nowhere" people; it was almost the same, really. What shook Paul up was knowing that this bizarre, infamous creature knew who he was, and had been concerned enough with him to put Alva on the path to him. The reality of that was too creepy to be understood.

        "Are you ready to listen?"

        His hands folded as if in prayer before his lips, Paul closed his eyes for several seconds and nodded.

        Alva started the tape. His voice came on as he answered his phone. "Alva Keel."

        "Hello."

        The sound of the voice brought troubled looks to both Paul and Evie's faces. Alva and Marie had heard it before. Evie had only looked over the basics of the file, but had not had the time to read it all the way through, nor listen to this tape. The voice sounded unnatural. It was decidedly male, but fluttered, as if mechanically altered. The voice most reminded Paul of someone speaking into the wind of a fan, or what a voice would sound like if it had been interposed with the fluttering of insect wings.

        "Hello. To whom am I speaking?" Alva asked on the tape.

        "I am your 'Mothman,' " the voice replied.

        On the tape, Alva paused because the claim the caller had made was quite outlandish; it took him a few seconds to realize he was serious. During that pause, Paul had a flash of his own terrified face in the mirror with those fluttering pupils that Marie had described. He put his hands to his throat as he started to cough horribly, trying to clear an obstruction that choked him. Paul realized the vision was now happening to him in real life when he saw Alva and Evie standing over him, concerned. He coughed and gagged as if there was something lodged in his throat, but as the vision faded, he realized there was nothing there.

        "Paul?! Are you alright?"

        He found it hard to speak for a moment. "I... I couldn't... breathe."

        "What happened?"

        "I saw something, and suddenly - "

        The tape was still playing. As the others went silent to listen to Paul, he heard a little more of the Mothman's voice. "...The other man named Keel was skeptical too, at first."

        Gripped by another violent coughing fit, Paul doubled over, trying to clear an object that only existed in his memory. Alva clapped him on the back in hopes that it would help.

        Acting on a hunch, Evie turned off the tape player. Paul's coughing fit cleared up within seconds.

        Marie had stood up in surprise when Paul started coughing; she looked at him, then at the tape player. "He's reacting to the voice of the Mothman. It's just like when he threw up in the jail cell. He couldn't breathe, and he coughed up this sludge..."

        Alva fully understood now. "The sound of the Mothman's voice brought memories of what happened in Mountaineer out of your subconscious. Have you ever tried to remember what happened while you were drugged, Paul?"

        He shook his head. "No. I was ashamed." This subject made Paul grow sheepish. "Poppi came to get me. He thought what everyone else thought - that I had deliberately taken the drugs. I didn't, but it still felt like a failure. I just wanted to forget it. Poppi suggested that maybe someone had slipped the drugs into my food as a prank, and that sounded as good a theory as any. We both eventually accepted it as the truth."

        "But it might not be the truth. You see that now, don't you?" Alva said.

        Paul nodded, resigned.

        "Your body is trying to get you to remember what happened. Are you ready to remember?"

        He nodded again. "I can't pretend it didn't happen anymore. I really want to know."

        "Then we should find someone to hypnotize you. I'm not sure how long it will take to find one."

        "We can get it done today," Evie interjected. "Alva, you're forgetting, I have a shrink in the family."

***********

        Having never been hypnotized before, Paul was understandably a little nervous about it, but as soon as he saw Evie's older sister, he relaxed somewhat. She looked a great deal like Evie, with the same long black curly hair and lovely appearance.

        "Paul, this is my sister, Dr. Julietta Santos. She's a professional psychiatrist and she hypnotizes people all the time, so you don't have to worry about her damaging your brain any," Evie said mischievously.

        Julietta added, "No, I stopped doing that after that nasty malpractice suit." Although she was dressed professionally for the session, with her hair pulled back on the sides and her reading glasses firmly on her nose, she still had a sense of humor for her younger sister.

        Paul let out a laugh. "You really know how to instill confidence in a guy."

        "Julietta's your age, Paul, but I swear her degree is real. Only cost her six box tops." The two sisters snickered at that one.

        "I ate so much Captain Crunch, the roof of my mouth was in shreds," Julietta snickered.

        "Paul, I know we're making Julietta seem really unprofessional here, but trust me, she's great at what she does. It's just impossible for me to keep from teasing her. I have to get my revenge for all the things she did to me in childhood somehow." Evie nudged Julietta with her elbow.

        Grinning, Paul replied, "No, it's really okay. Watching you two together is putting me at ease." He noticed another woman standing shy and quiet behind Julietta. "Who is this?"

        "Oh!" Evie dragged the girl out to introduce her. "This is my other sister, Gabriella. She's doing her internship as older sis's office assistant. She'll be here to observe and take notes."

        "Hi." Gabriella held out her hand. She tried to hide it, but the look in her eyes said she found Paul just dreamy. He smiled and shook her hand with both of his own.

        "The Santos family is just full of lovely women with beautiful names. Which parent has the romantic flair?"

        Julietta replied, "Mama."

        "What do you think our brother's name is?" Evie asked.

        Paul looked to Gabriella for clues, but she only blushed at the fact that he'd said she was lovely. "I couldn't guess."

        "Hector."

        "Julietta, Evelyn, Hector, and Gabriella."

        "We're convinced he's adopted," laughed Julietta. "And you've almost got the order right. It was me, then Hector, then Evie, and finally Gabbi a few years later. Mama and Papa were like rabbits for most of the 70's."

        Paul chuckled. All his nervousness was currently gone. This is exactly the angle Julietta had been aiming for, to relax Paul for his first session by making him feel a part of the family. "Gabriella, how did you get the red hair when your sisters both have the black?"

        Now she really blushed in embarrassment. "Umm..."

        Julietta put an arm around her. "She inherited her shade from Miss Clairol, Paul."

        He cringed. "Oh, gosh, I'm sorry..."

        Evie and Julietta chuckled at their little sister's expense. Gabriella wanted to kick them both in the shins for embarrassing her in front of Paul.

        Alva and Marie came down the stairs from his apartment. "The room is ready."

        "Paul, you head on up and get comfortable. We'll be right along," Julietta instructed. She waited for him to head up with Alva and Marie before playfully hugging Gabriella closer. "Sorry about that, kid."

        Gabriella ran a hand through her shoulder-length colored hair. "I'm going to murder you in your sleep."

        "He's cute, huh?"

        Evie barked, "No. No, he's not."

        "Uh oh, Evie wants him for herself," Julietta teased.

        "No, I don't, I just don't think he's right for Gabbi."

        Julietta spoke to Gabriella again as if Evie wasn't standing right there. "Evie doesn't like the idea of her co-worker pawing her sweet little sister."

        Gabriella hid her face behind the little notepad in her hand. "Juli..."

        "He had some nice hands too. Good for pawing."

        Now Evie said, "Juli..." She pushed both her sisters toward the stairs. "Time to stop messing around and get professional."

***********

        Alva had prepared his living room the way Julietta had told him to on the phone. The couch had a few extra comfortable pillows on it, the lights had been dimmed, and some incense of a scent Paul liked burned nearby, all to set a relaxing mood. A person could not be hypnotized if they were nervous and uptight. Paul laid down on the couch as instructed, his hands folded over his abdomen. Alva, Evie, Marie, and Gabriella stayed in the background to observe while Julietta pulled a green patterned chair up beside the couch. Evie carefully set up the video camera and tripod that divided their time between being the official capturer of Matty's formative years and SQ's visual archivist.

        "Alright Paul, you'll want to close your eyes. Most people find it easier to drift into a hypnotic state with their eyes closed," Julietta said.

        Paul closed his eyes. Evie checked the angle through the camera's viewfinder to make sure his face and upper torso were well framed.

        "I want you to relax your mind. Relax your muscles. Take deep, slow breaths." Julietta spoke in a slow, soothing tone. "Let my voice guide you down. You will from time to time hear other voices, like Alva's, as he fills in details for me. This session was spur of the moment, so I didn't have time to get your full history. Alva and my sister filled in a bit over the phone..."

        "I understand," Paul replied. "Keel probably knows more about me than I do, he's so good at stalking." He grinned when he said that.

        Alva snorted.

        Julietta didn't know what that meant, but she still chuckled. "Okay, deep breaths." She let him do that for a minute, waiting for the telltale signs. If Paul didn't respond well to this method, then next, she'd have him focus deeply on an object, which was the most like the "watch the watch" stuff always used in the movies. Once he seemed more relaxed, Julietta instructed, "Inhale through your nose and exhale through your mouth. When your breath leaves your mouth, I want you to watch it slowly drift past your lips. Do that for me until I give you further instruction."

        Such an instruction would give most people pause, but not someone who was already drifting into a deep hypnotic state. Paul breathed as he was told, imagining his breath leaving his mouth.

        Soon, Julietta added, "Now add colors and patterns to your breath. The colors represent all of your current worries... inhibitions... fears... everything weighing on your mind. See it all floating away on your breath. I see red... blue... green... now look, it's even rainbow colored. There go some black thoughts. Those are your worries."

        Evie yawned, then blinked several times. That soothing voice was going to put her to sleep if she wasn't careful.

        Paul slowly exhaled, his brow furrowed, as if he was glad to be rid of these thoughts.

        "There are more you need to be rid of. Do you see them leaving your mouth, Paul?"

        After exhaling, he answered, "Yes," in a slow, trance-like voice.

        Gabriella smirked behind her pad. "Do you see them leaving your gorgeous mouth with the soft, kissable lips, Paul?" she thought to herself.

        Julietta smiled lightly, because this method seemed to be working. "Exhale again, and tell me what color it is now."

        Paul did. "Blue with yellow dots."

        Chuckles and grins passed through the room.

        Julietta smiled with them. Very imaginative. He was responding beautifully. She loved it when they were this easy to hypnotize. In fact, she couldn't remember the last time she dealt with a person so open to it. "Very good; yes it is. Now, as you continue to exhale all your worries, and other things cluttering up your head, your body will begin to fill with liquid. Warm... soothing... like a hot bath."

        A calm expression, like he enjoyed that thought, spread across Paul's face.

        "The liquid starts at your toes, moving up your legs very slowly. It's your favorite color. What's your favorite color, Paul?"

        "White."

        "The water is white - "

        "Like milk?" Paul suddenly asked inquisitively.

        Julietta grinned again. "Sure, like milk. It has the consistency of milk. Feels like milk too." She had Paul imagine the liquid moving up his entire body. "So soothing..."

        Evie had to hold back a laugh when she saw Alva almost nod off and blink hard, then rub his eyes. Good, so she wasn't the only one.

        "The liquid keeps flowing up, and up, until it reaches the top of your head. When it touches the crown of your head, you will feel completely relaxed and at ease, and respond to all my questions truthfully." Paul seemed to be responding perfectly, but Julietta had to test that he was as deeply hypnotized as possible, so he would respond to the regression. "Paul, can you hear me?"

        "Yes." That slow, relaxed voice.

        "Slowly lift your arms up above your head."

        Paul did as he was told, keeping them up.

        "Now quickly put them down."

        Abruptly, Paul snapped his arms down at his sides.

        "That's good, Paul. You can rest your arms any way you like now."

        He folded his hands together over his chest again.

        Evie, joking, leaned over and muttered to her sister, "You're not supposed to play with your patients, Juli."

        Julietta whispered back, "He's not an official patient." She put her attention back on Paul, satisfied that he was ready. "I'm going to take you back to a day from your past now. You will feel relaxed as you recount for me what happened on this day. Do you want to go back, Paul?"

        "Yes."

        "Fine. Then let's go back a few years. See the seconds ticking backward. They're moving faster... becoming minutes... hours... now days. Months are passing like seconds. We're now in the year 1998. You remember 1998?"

        "Yes."

        "Go back to January. Late January. Where were you then in life?" she asked.

        "Going to Tufts University. And seminary school," Paul said.

        Julietta glanced back at the others. Alva hadn't had a chance to mention that. "This character almost became a priest?" she questioned quietly.

        Alva nodded, confirming it.

        That was interesting. He obviously wasn't a priest now. What changed his mind? "How do you feel at this time in life?"

        "A little down."

        "Why?"

        "Rebecca and I broke up before Christmas. She was my true love... but she was seeing someone else. I know it," Paul said with some bitterness to his tone.

        Again, Julietta turned with confusion to Alva. "He was going to become a Catholic priest?"

        "Yes," he replied.

        That was also interesting. Julietta's natural tendency to analyze people was coming out strong. Why was he dating a woman seriously when he knew he was eventually going to have to take a vow of celibacy? How long had he had doubts?

        Gabriella frowned. How could anyone cheat on someone so cute?

        "Well, it's understandable you would be blue, then," Julietta said to Paul, putting her attention back on him. "Why don't we focus on one particular day in late January? I want you to go back to the night you drove to Mountaineer, Vermont."

        Paul's brow creased, and he looked quite apprehensive, almost scared, in reaction.

        "You will be able to observe everything that happened and describe it for us. Take us back a few hours before you started your drive." Julietta leaned forward slightly, eager to guide him headfirst through these memories.

        Paul seemed to relax again. Whatever made him apprehensive before hadn't happened yet.

        "What are you doing, Paul?"

        "Eating dinner in the dining hall."

        "How's it taste?" asked Julietta.

        "Eh."

        A tremor of chuckles passed through the room.

        "So what are we doing after dinner?" She tried to sound a little younger, to relate to younger Paul.

        "I have some studying to do," he replied.

        Alva was amazed to hear Paul's voice actually sound more youthful, somehow, as he recounted these past memories. How old would he have been at the time? Almost 25?

        "Where are we going to study?" the psychiatrist questioned.

        "There's a lounge on the second floor with a balcony, in my dorm. My favorite. I like to leave the doors open, smell the air and stuff. Helps me think." Younger Paul shrugged and smirked.

        "Ah, I can understand that," Julietta began, and started to ask, "Which subject - "

        A look of disbelieving terror contorted Paul's face so suddenly that it took everyone by surprise. He took in a deep, loud, gasping breath.

        Taken just as aback as the others, Julietta took a few seconds to ask, "What's wrong, Paul?"

        "What is that thing?!"

        A chill swept up Alva's spine. The pure terror in Paul's voice, the way he whispered that question so desperately, as if he needed to know, but was afraid the "thing" would hear him if he spoke any louder.

        Julietta listened to her instincts, and acted quickly. "Freeze the moment in time. Whatever you're seeing, Paul, I want you to freeze it in time and describe for me what you see. What does this thing look like?"

        "It's on the balcony. It's right there!"

        "There's no reason to be afraid - "

        Paul hissed through his teeth. "It's coming in here..."

        He was too gripped by fear to listen. "Paul - "

        "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done..." His voice was utterly terrified, as if he was right back there in the same room with whatever was scaring him so.

        No one was laughing now. They all looked at each other in alarm. Alva started toward Paul and Julietta, to help calm the man somehow. Just to do something to help.

        Julietta took hold of one of Paul's hands to ground him. She spoke in a commanding, loud voice. "Paul! Freeze this event in time! It is NOT happening again. You are only observing what happened that night. You are only observing!"

        Paul finally seemed to hear her. He relaxed quite a bit, though he still appeared to be on his guard. His eyes moved back and forth underneath his eyelids, like the Paul of the past was scanning the room.

        Alva also stopped where he was, and moved back. He looked down at the seated Marie, who looked back at him, swallowing hard. They exchanged theories with their eyes. They both knew what was in the room with Paul that night in 1998. The mystery was coming together.

        "Good, Paul. Good." Julietta patted his hand. "Now that you've frozen the moment, tell me what's happening. What do you see?"

        Paul swallowed down his fear as if it was so thick, he could taste it. "Something landed on the balcony. I think it flew in, because it has wings."

        Alva put a hand to his mouth and paced the room for a few seconds. It was just as he and Marie had begun to suspect; that was all the confirmation he needed. The real question was why? The answer would likely be fleshed out as Paul told them more, but Alva wasn't sure he could stand to hear it, knowing how it horrified Paul. How it would have horrified anyone.

        Julietta looked confused, listening to Paul's story. Something with wings landed on the balcony? What terrifying flying thing could have flown in? A giant bird? "Describe it for us."

        "I'm not even sure it has a head. It's at least six feet tall, with huge wings - a ten foot wingspan, at least. It's got these red glowing eyes in the middle of its chest. I... I have no idea what it is, but it's massive compared to me," Paul said with repressed hysteria.

        "Oh, God," Marie muttered to herself, her hand over her mouth. Alva started to rub her shoulders. They were all feeling the horror that Paul must've felt.

        For several seconds, Julietta said nothing. She stared at Paul in confusion and tried to figure this out. People normally did not make up outlandish details when repressed to a past event in their lives, nothing like this. She suddenly asked, "Did you take any drugs earlier in the day, before you saw this thing?"

        Alva and Evie glanced at each other. They knew, because of the events, that Paul wasn't hallucinating, but of course, Julietta had to eliminate all the mundane possibilities.

        "No!" Paul barked, his tone annoyed and offended at the question.

        "So... you believe you really saw this... would you call it a man?"

        "It's too big to be a man. It's almost like a giant butterfly, or a moth."

        She opened her mouth to ask him if there was a history of mental illness in his family, but realized quickly that such a question was better saved for later.

        Marie and Alva exchanged looks again. They could have spoken those words, or a moth, with Paul, because they were realizing that the reason why Paul had been in Mountaineer is because the Mothman had wanted him there.

        "You said it came into the room with you. Was anyone else around to see it?" Julietta asked.

        "No, I was alone."

        How unfortunate. And coincidental. "What did you do?"

        "Pray."

        Julietta shifted anxiously in her seat; this was about to get even more bizarre. "What did this moth person do?"

        "He... he advances toward me. I have no idea what this thing is going to do - I don't even know what it is! So I started to scream and - " Instantly, Paul stiffened, arched his back, and threw his hands up over his head. He made very realistic sounds of gagging and choking. Horrible, scary sounds.

        Everyone reacted with alarm and concern once again. What was happening to Paul? Before anyone could rush in, Julietta again grabbed up one of his hands and assured, "Whatever happened to you that night, it is not happening now! Listen to me, Paul!" He thrashed in fear on the couch as she continued, "Remember, you can observe what happened without feeling it. Observe, Paul! You are not experiencing it again. Only watching."

        Breathing hard, he stopped making those choking noises, and began to relax.

        "That's it. That's it. You have the ability to watch what is happening to your past self, but you will not feel it again." That seemed to do it. This Paul Callan character really believed he had been attacked by a moth monster. Either he had tripped out on drugs or experienced a mental breakdown that caused him to hallucinate the whole episode. Or he was the best actor she had ever seen.

        Of course, Alva and Marie thought Paul had been attacked too, but not by a hallucination. Alva looked as if he'd been put through a wringer, watching Paul act as if he was really choking to death. Evie's expression was quite troubled also.

        Once the man relaxed again, Julietta put his hand back across his chest. "Why did you start choking Paul?"

        "It... it... oh God." He was shaking.

        "Paul of today can step into the scene and observe what is happening to Paul of the past without feeling it. Do you understand?"

        "Yes."

        "Alright." Julietta was finally satisfied that she could get this story out of Paul without him having another dramatic physical reaction. "What did the moth thing do to the Paul of the past?"

        "I tried to scream, and the thing rushed at me and grabbed my arms, pinning me to the wall. This tube came out of its mouth... I guess it was its mouth... and..." He swallowed hard. "...it shoved the tube down my throat. I could hardly breathe... couldn't talk at all. Couldn't scream." Paul ended that sentence at a harsh, frightened whisper.

        "Why did it insert the tube in your throat?" Julietta queried, keeping the amazement out of her voice. The things he was coming up with...

        "It put a pod in there. Attached to my vocal cords," said Paul.

        Everyone looked at each other uneasily.

        "Why?"

        "To take control of me and speak through me."

        Julietta was glad Paul had his eyes closed and could not see the utter disbelief on her face. Her eyebrows were furrowed, her mouth slightly open in shock. She had counseled, and still treated, many people who used various methods to get attention, most of them bad for them. Julietta had never treated anyone who used being molested by a supernatural being as a way to feel special. "Why you, Paul? Why did it pick you?"

        "Because I'm so open. So susceptible. It's just how I am. Plus, the Mothman appreciated the irony of using me for this task."

        No one fully understood yet what that meant, but some understood it more than others.

        "Oh? And just how did this seed pod work?" Julietta said, hoping that tougher questions would trip him up. The only way to help him was to break through this elaborate hallucination he had created. She would build up to what Paul meant by being "open" and "the irony."

        "It secreted controlled doses of a drug that the Mothman produces naturally, but when introduced into the human system, acts as an anesthetic and mind-control agent." Strangely, Paul's voice had changed subtly while he rattled off this explanation. It became slower, deeper, more clinical. Hearing it, Evie shuddered. "The process was necessary to gain control."

        "How do you know all this, Paul? Did the Mothman tell you?" asked Julietta.

        "No." That deeper voice again. "Paul does not know how the pod worked."

        With a bewildered pause, she said, "Then who does know?"

        "The forces within Paul."

        The entire room fell silent. Alva almost cringed as he shot Evie a look; he hated that outsiders had heard that. What they must think... there was so much they never would know. All they could do was sit back and judge Paul's sanity with ignorance.

        Julietta's head spun. It took her several seconds to form her next question. "Are we talking to those forces now?"

        "They are always here, to clarify."

        My God... was she talking to a genuine Multiple Personality Disorder sufferer? What had her sister gotten her into? Either way, he had pretty much just admitted that drugs were involved, even if it was through a "pod." That was a good beginning on the road to recovery. "Thank you for stepping in. Can you describe the pod a little better?"

        "It was black on the inside, with a lime green skin."

        Marie looked up in shock and recognition, staring at Alva. "The sludge Paul vomited up in the jail cell..."

        Alva nodded. "Black and green?"

        She just nodded back.

        It suddenly occurred to Evie how all this must sound to her sisters, how insane it must seem. She turned to Gabriella, to check on her, and her stomach sank at the expression on her little sister's face. Being the youngest, Gabbi had received the most sheltering and doting parental attention. It made her unprepared for such suffering in another human being, especially one she was attracted to. Sure, she'd suffered herself, they'd all suffered when their father died, but the girl had never seen anything like this. Her face looked absolutely stricken. Gabriella gazed at Paul with such sympathy one thought she might cry. "Did those things really happen to him?"

        Evie sighed. They spoke softly, as to not disturb the hypnotism session. "After some of the things I've seen, I'm inclined to believe it."

        Gabriella stared at Paul for a good ten seconds. She obviously swallowed back tears for him. "God... what he went through..."

        "Hey..." Evie rubbed her younger sister's back. "Calm down, it's okay."

        "How could it ever be okay?" Gabriella's eyes filled with anger. "It's almost like that thing raped him. How could it ever be okay again?"

        Julietta had continued her questioning with the query that revealed the Mothman's entire plan. "What was the purpose of the Mothman's attack, Paul? Why did it want control of you?"

        Paul instantly replied, "The Mothman wanted to force me to go to Mountaineer, to use me to make phone calls to Alva Keel."

Chapter Text

You Can't Help Who You Are, Part II
A Miracles Fanfic
by Laurel (Sailorhathor)

Chapters: 2 of 2
Rating: Sup13+ (some elements might be too intense or scary for those under 13, bad language)
Word Count: 21,716 total
Dates: Written throughout the middle of 2005 'til the end, and into January 2006.
Summary: "We don't choose how things happen, do we Paul? We just adjust." A policewoman from Alva's past comes for a visit, and recognizes Paul. Seems he was there, in a small ski resort town, at the same time Alva was, handling SQ's first supernatural investigation. A case dealing with the infamous Mothman.
Warning: Has a little bad language, including the F word. Contains spoilers for a few of Skeet's movies, including Ride with the Devil and Into the West. Doesn't really spoil The Magic of Ordinary Days although it's mentioned.
Beta Thanks: Thanks to Kaija and Joe for beta'ing this!
Notes: This is my fictionalization of the casefile "The Mothman" on SodalitasQuaerito.com. The story was written in an attempt to give Alva Keel his own experience with the infamous Mothman. It could be called a sort of cross-over with Richard Hatem's film "The Mothman Prophecies" because it contains my own versions of scenes right out of that movie. At the end of this story, I will detail exactly what I took from the film.
The name "Julietta" comes from Evie's dossier in "The Friendly Skies" from a section that seems to detail Evie's siblings.
My friend Kaye typed about a third of this story for me from my handwritten master. Thank you Kaye!
More notes at the end of the story. If I put them all here, you would fall asleep before you could even read the thing. ;)

Part II: Functionally Insane

        His College Trig book in one hand and The Bible in the other, Paul entered the second floor Student Lounge, determined to settle in for the night and do some cramming. A couple of his buddies had invited him to go out for pizza and beer, but he had declined because Trig was putting him through the wringer. They were supposed to go over passages of Revelations in Bible Study this week also; if he didn't get caught up in both subjects tonight, it would be embarrassing how far behind Paul would be. With a resigned sigh, he put his books down and started to sit at the table.

        A noise behind him made Paul turn to look. The French doors leading off onto the balcony were wide open. The students used this balcony for smoking and the occassional weekend barbecue. Few dorms had them; this one was lucky in that respect. Paul hadn't closed the doors when he came in because he liked the fresh, crisp winter air, especially while he studied. The noise had been very peculiar - a loud swooping and a bump, almost like a large bird had landed out there on the balcony. When Paul turned, what he saw was most definitely not a bird.

        There stood the creature that had been terrifying the residents of Mountaineer for almost a month, the beast they called the Mothman. It had taken a little vacation to come to Boston and pay Paul this visit, because it knew he would be useful.

        He stared in disbelief for so long that his eyes went dry from not blinking. Finally, Paul rubbed his eyes and expected the creature to have disappeared when he looked again. It was just stress. He'd taken on too many classes, was seeing things.

        But the Mothman remained.

        This thing couldn't be real. Red eyes, wings, it was huge! What was it? What was it?!

        I must be cracking up, Paul thought just as the Mothman ducked into the room. Paul stepped back, unsure of what to do, unsure if what he was seeing was real or hallucination. The Mothman advanced toward him, wasting no time. Paul's mind had been frozen with fear and shock, but it finally unlocked, and he started to scream. The sound had barely made it past his lips when the Mothman rushed at Paul, grabbed his arms, and slammed him against the nearest wall. It pinned his arms over his head. He struggled to free himself to no avail; the Mothman was stronger. Paul panted with the effort, and fear. His eyes darted from its red eyes to its softly flapping wings as he wondered what was going to happen next.

        He began to pray in his head. Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done...

        Only a few seconds had passed, but it felt like much longer. Paul finally found his voice and tried to scream again. A proboscis tube emerged from a small slit-like mouth positioned under the red eyes and was quickly rammed down Paul's throat, shutting off his scream. He made horrible strangling, choking sounds, and his eyes went wild with fear. What in God's name was it doing to him?

        Paul, struggling to breathe, felt the creature insert something in his throat. It didn't take long, and then it let him go.

        He fell to the floor, sitting against the wall with his legs partially underneath him. The Mothman stood over him silently. Paul looked up at it with terror, confusion, and the beginnings of anger, but it knew he cowered from it, and just stared down at him. Paul pushed himself into the corner frantically with his legs; he opened his mouth and began to scream for help, but to his shock, no sound came out. He only expelled heavy breaths. It was the object the Mothman had put in his throat. It robbed him of his ability to speak.

        With one last look, the Mothman turned and took flight out the doors, leaving Paul alone. His thoughts immediately turned to the object in his throat. Scrambling up and bolting for the bathroom, Paul found a paper cup and attempted to drink down the pod. He refilled the cup several times, but the object simply would not be swallowed. It was as if it was fused to his vocal cords. Next, he tried sticking his finger down his throat to make himself vomit it up. The pod was immovable.

        Paul stared helplessly at his reflection in the mirror, frustrated, beside himself with panic. He realized that his eyes were beginning to pulse in a most unnatural way - they appeared to flutter as the pupils rapidly contracted and dilated in succession. This horrified Paul to the point that he ran from the mirror, out into the hall. The Student Lounge was still deserted.

        This was crazy. No one would ever believe this story! But either way, Paul had to get help, because he had something lodged in his throat, and he needed a doctor to remove it. Before anyone could come, he felt his hold on consciousness fading away.

        No, no! He had to get help! If someone found him unconscious on the floor, surely they would get him a doctor. Still, Paul felt he had to clue whoever found him in to the fact that there was something stuck in his throat. As his vision started to gray, Paul grabbed a piece of paper and tried to write a message.

        Help me! I have something... He attempted to keep writing, but the table swayed horribly, and he realized as the floor came up even with his face that, unfortunately, he was the one swaying, and falling. Paul suspected the pod had caused this. The blackness moved in until he saw only a pinpoint of light, and then nothing but dreams of a far away, alien place.

        Paul had been lying on the floor for only a few minutes when two of his buddies wandered by on their way to the stairs. They noticed him lying there and came over to investigate.

        "Is he drunk?" Jason remarked.

        "I don't know, turn him over on his back. Doesn't smell drunk." The second student was a guy known to his friends as Bennie the Snitch; Paul had grown up with him in the orphanage.

        Once Paul had been laid out on his back, Jason said, "Woah, it's Callan. Is he sick or something?"

        Bennie found Paul's note. "'Help me! I have something.' Huh. I don't think he finished it."

        "What tipped you off, the fact that it wasn't finished?"

        Bennie sneered at Jason. "He does all that volunteer work at the church, always talking about Father Calero. You think we should go get him?"

        "I think we should just call an ambulance," Jason replied.

        "But what if it's drugs? He could get thrown out of school. We should get Father Calero before we do anything else."

        Jason disagreed. "In the meantime, he could die of an overdose or somethin'."

        Paul stirred with a breathy sound. The two students put their attention back on him. "Paul? Hey Callan, you okay?"

        As Paul's eyes opened, the two young men gasped. His pupils were vibrating again, fluttering, just as Officer McCann would later see them do in Mountaineer.

        "I've never seen someone's eyes do that," Bennie muttered.

        "Paul... you... you okay?" Jason asked again.

        It appeared that Paul wasn't even seeing them. He was detached, out of it. Without saying a word, he got up off the floor and walked toward the stairs.

        "Paul? Where ya goin'? You alright?"

        He did not answer.

        "We should get Poppi," Bennie said again. "Something is really wrong."

        "Okay, but first, let's get Paul." Jason took off after Paul, followed quickly by Bennie.

        When they entered the stairwell, Paul was nowhere to be seen, but the door at the bottom of the stairs that led out into the parking lot was just swinging shut. The two boys bolted down the stairs and out the door.

        Paul was running toward his car. They pursued him, catching up just as he laid his hands on the doorhandle. "Wait, Paul, wait!" They wrestled with him.

        Bennie spotted something out of the corner of his eye. He glanced up, then looked again in shock. "What's that?!"

        Both students looked up at the Mothman, flying overhead, performing flips in midair. They had no idea what they were looking at, and so stared in awe. Paul took advantage of the distraction to get in the car.

        "What is it?" Bennie asked.

        "I don't know," Jason replied.

        "You see it too?"

        "Yeah."

        "Good. Thought I was losing it."

        The sound of the door lock being slapped down brought Bennie and Jason out of their trance. They yanked on the door handle and banged on the window. "Paul! Open the door!"

        Ignoring them, Paul drove away with a squeal of tires. They stood there, staring after the car, hoping he would be alright. "What's wrong with him?" Bennie thought aloud.

        "I don't know. Let's go tell Father Calero about it and see what he thinks should be done."

        As they were walking away, Bennie nervously scanned the sky.

***********
        Julietta turned to look at Alva. "He called you?"

        "I received two phone calls from the Mothman," he confirmed. "I'd like to ask him something." Alva walked over to the side of the couch. "Paul, I consulted an audio expert to analyze the tapes of those phone calls. He didn't think the voice of the Mothman could have been produced by human vocal cords. How can that be true if you made the phone calls?"

        Paul replied in that deeper, slower voice, the voice of the Forces, "Paul was used as a vessel. The pod held a conduit between the Mothman's dimension and ours. The Mothman cannot speak in normal human languages; that is why he only makes animal-like noises. Therefore, he must speak through the conduit from his place of origin, in the language of his own dimension. By routing that speech through Paul, he acts as a speaker, and it could then be understood by human beings. Paul's vocal cords were not used for this action. Only the pod."

        Julietta tried not to gawk, but she did stare at Paul.

        Alva nodded. "I believe I understand."

        She couldn't help it this time; Julietta turned and gawked at Alva as if he'd grown a second head. Was everyone in this outfit crazy? "You said there were tapes?" she managed to ask.

        "Yes."

        "Let's have a listen."

***********
        Alva arrived back at his hotel room alone, although part of him wanted to be back there with Marie, or have her here with him. This could be a lonely business, and to find a little company in a woman who actually took him seriously... it was rare. Many thought he was handsome, many liked his eyes or his accent, but once they heard some of his theories on the paranormal, they backed away. Some could keep up and relate for a little while - everyone had a weird story to recount - but once he got to the really bizarre beliefs, the demonic, the dark, the frightening, the end of the world, they found reasons to leave. Few found it "quirky."

        Even fewer believed.

        Alva had no idea that as he sat on the edge of the bed, at the phone booth across the street, Paul had arrived in Mountaineer. He stepped out of his car, inserted some change, and dialed the number of a current stranger, all robotically.

        Alva's cell phone rang. He made sure the tiny portable tape recorder was ready, and answered it. "Alva Keel."

        Paul opened his mouth slightly, but did not move his lips. The voice of the Mothman emerged from his throat. It was inhuman, decidely male, but unnautural, as its tone fluttered, like insect wings. "Hello."

        Alva, taken by surprise by how the voice sounded, took a second to reply. "Hello. To whom am I speaking?"

        "I am your Mothman," the creature said through Paul.

        This was followed by a long pause before Alva said, "You have a sighting to report?" He had grown weary of people playing jokes on him, even if this one was elaborate. A voice-disguising mechanism... what would they do next? Dress up as a moth and gad about the hotel's parking lot?

        "Every time I look in the mirror." The Mothman sounded amused with himself.

        "You're saying that you really are the Mothman?"

        "Yes."

        Alva looked to see that his Caller ID could not identify who the call came from. The number was blank, and the name field said UNAVAILABLE.

        The Mothman suddenly said, "The other man named Keel was skeptical too, at first."

        Alva knew he was talking about John Keel, the journalist who covered the Mothman sightings in Pt. Pleasant, West Viriginia. The man was no relation to him; it was just a wild coincidence that the two men contacted by this creature were both named Keel. If this truly was the same being. "Well, it's not often that giant moths figure out how to use telephones, much less exist."

        The Mothman snickered. "I know much more than that. I will prove it to you."

        "Oh?" He grew more tired of this game. "Will you first explain to me why you are terrorizing the people of this town? What purpose does it serve?" Maybe he could trip the caller up with some more specific questions.

        The Mothman immediately shot back, "How would you explain your existence to a cockroach?"

        Alva almost scoffed out loud. Such conceit. "You are a superior being to the rest of us?"

        "On this plane."

        What was he saying? That he came from some other dimension? "Provide me with some of this superior knowledge."

        "I will. I can see you right now," the Mothman declared. "Receive your thoughts."

        Ah-ha! "Really? Where am I?" His hotel room had two full-size beds; Alva sat on the edge of the one furthest from the door.

        "In your hotel room. There are two full-size beds. You are sitting on the one furthest from the door."

        At a loss for words, Alva paused for a moment to regroup. The fact that the caller had gotten that right, it meant nothing. "Lucky guess." Lots of hotel rooms were set up that way. He was so focused on the phone call that he barely noticed the brief feeling of cold pin-pricks in his brain. "What am I wearing?" The words were out of Alva's mouth before he realized that it wasn't a good test. This person on the phone could have seen him on his rounds through town, performing interviews. But, if he could remove something that he had on earlier right now, it would prove whether or not this person could really see him. As the Mothman began to describe what Alva had on, he removed his watch.

        "Black slacks, a green sweater with a white dress shirt underneath..."

        In an effort to really confound the caller, Alva put his watch in one of his shoes and pushed it under the opposite bed.

        "...black socks, but no watch."

        There was another pause as Alva swallowed hard; he didn't know what to say. Could this person really see him? Was it possible that they had planted cameras in his hotel room? That was crazy. Why would anyone do that? "I do own a watch."

        "You are no longer wearing it. You just took it off."

        A chill ran up Alva's spine. "Where is it?"

        "In your shoe. Under the bed. 'To Mango on his 18th birthday,'" announced the Mothman.

        Alva's eyes went wide. The Mothman had just quoted what was engraved on the back of his watch. His mother had given it to him on his 18th birthday. "How did you..." He was astonished. Even if he could accept the notion that there was a camera planted in his room, how did they ever see the inscription on the back of his watch? Still, Alva began looking for a camera. "Well, you do know things, don't you?"

        "Yes." A confident, smug look came to Paul's face as he mimicked the Mothman's emotions. "You won't find any cameras in your hotel room."

        Again amazed, Alva stopped looking behind all the framed pictures on the walls and moved back to the bed. He was almost convinced at this point that he was speaking to a real clairsentient. But he had to test this person to his full satisfaction. Alva reached into the top drawer of the nightstand, into which he had placed nothing, and grabbed the first thing his hand fell on, something a previous guest had left there. He didn't even know what it was himself, although he could guess from what it felt like. Still, Alva tried to keep his mind blank. "What do I have in my hand?"

        The response was immediate. "Chaaaap-stick," the Mothman hissed.

        "What flavor?" Alva asked, not yet opening his hand.

        "Cherry."

        Alva finally looked. He indeed held a tube of Cherry Chap-stick. Always a realist, he quickly resigned himself to the fact that he was talking to someone who had real psychic powers, who could actually see him using these abilities. Alva was struck by a strong assertion that this "Mothman" had important things to tell him, maybe even the world. What else did he know? This might be Alva's only chance to ask. "What is it that you want us to know?"

        At this point, it seemed the Mothman stopped playing games and got down to the business of what he had called to tell Alva. "Once this is all done, you must look up hemography. 'God is Nowhere.' It will lead you to him."

        Alva was very glad that he was taping this call. "Who?"

        "Danielle will tell you his full name."

        A second chill ran up Alva's spine. "Danielle?"

        "It's a pity how it all ends up for her," the Mothman lamented.

        Now that was really baffling, and more than a little scary. "I don't know what you mean." He hoped the Mothman would explain.

        But of course, he didn't. He simply stated, "You will."

        "Anything else? Alva asked, exasperated.

        "I have a message for Marie."

        "Officer McCann?"

        "Oh, but you call her Marie, don't you?"

        The teasing and smugness in his voice was unmistakable; how did he know that Alva and Marie had attained any closeness beyond their business relationship? The clairsentience?

        "Tell her, 'Look out, number 37.'"

        Another chill crawled up Alva's back. That almost sounded like a threat. His voice was intense and angry when he asked, "What does that mean?"

        "All will make sense in time. I will call again." Click.

***********
        As Alva pressed the "Off" button, Julietta said to Paul, "How do you feel when you hear that tape, Paul?"

        He frowned, his brow knitting. "Sad and scared."

        "I get the 'scared,' but why does it make you feel sad?"

        "Because I had no control over my body. It felt like being tied up inside my own mind. I was screaming inside, but no one could hear me." Paul's voice wavered with emotion.

        Troubled and sad looks passed through the group. It was hard for people who knew Paul, even for people who didn't know him so well, to hear that he had experienced such raw, painful feelings.

        "The whole thing was so violating," Paul added disgustedly. It was like he finally had an audience to tell about his harrowing ordeal, and he wasn't going to waste the chance.

        "That's understandable." Julietta continued, "After you made this phone call to Alva, what did you do? Head home?"

        "No." Paul licked his dry lips. "I stayed in Mountaineer until it was time to make the next phone call. Spent most of the time unconscious. Sleeping in my car. Dreaming of his world."

        "The Mothman's world?"

        "Yeah."

        Julietta turned to Alva again. "There's another tape?"

        He nodded. "I got a second call the next day. A message was left on my voice mail."

        "What did it say?"

        "Ah... the message was all feedback whine and strange sound effects. Sounds like insect wings fluttering. Marie put me in contact with a sound expert from the local TV station, a friend of hers, to analyze the tapes." Alva sighed. "The first tape, Mr. Vasquez said could not have been produced by human vocal cords. Some sort of sound thing; he'd know more about it than I would. He thought the voice had been artificially made. The second tape, he played around with until he thought he heard voices."

        Julietta questioned, "What do you mean, played around with?" You mean tampered with, she thought.

        "Mr. Vasquez slowed it down. He did, indeed, find voices."

***********
        "It's good to see you again, Mr. Vasquez. Marie said you found something on the new tape?" Alva took a seat at the sound console.

        Sancho Vasquez shook Alva's hand. "Hello, Mr. Keel. Yeah, I slowed the tape down. There are voices on it." He moved the bag of Doritos he was snacking on because it was in the way of the controls. "Where are you getting these weird tapes? I mean, they're real, right? Shouldn't we make them part of the news story about the Moth creature?"

        "No, I'd rather you didn't. Some of the information contained in them is too personal to put on television."

        "We could edit what we use..."

        Alva almost sighed out loud. He didn't like people prying into what was personal to him. "I'll think about it. Now, what about these voices you found?"

        It only took a few seconds for Sancho to cue up the first section where he'd found a voice. A woman's voice said, "Mango," in a tone that was almost pleading. Alva looked shocked.

        "Play it again," he commanded.

        "You know that voice?"

        "Play it again," Alva repeated, his voice full of intensity.

        Sancho stared at him for a moment before turning back to the console and cueing it up again. Alva listened intently. His eyes were full of disbelief and sadness. "She came back," he said so quietly that Sancho barely heard it.

        The sound man asked again, "Do you know that voice?"

        Alva let out a long, held breath. "It's a long story, but it sounded like my mother, saying a nickname she had for me when I was a child."

        "Not such a long story." Sancho sat back, considering Alva's reaction. "She's dead, isn't she?"

        "For many years."

        "So this is some really weird shit we got here." He started cueing up the next portion of the tape. "I mean, there aren't tapes of your mother speaking this nickname floating around, are there?"

        Alva had to consider that. Could the "Mothman" have gotten ahold of his tapes from college? "Well..." He shrugged. "Like I said, it's a long story."

        Sancho fiddled with the buttons on the console. "Hm. There's more to this than meets the eye? Or, uh, ear?" When he saw Alva's disapproving look, he put up a hand in surrender. "Never mind, I'm being nosy. This is the next voice." He pressed the "Play" button.

        Among the other noises, a male voice asked, "Why am I different?"

        Alva's brow furrowed. "Huh. I don't know this voice."

        Just in case, Sancho played it again.

        "Why am I different?"

        Alva just shook his head. "You'll make me a copy? Maybe this voice will make sense in time."

        "Sure. Now I think this last message is the most dramatic, the one you need to hear the most."

        "Why?"

        Sancho cued up the tape again. "Because it's a prophecy."

        At first, there were more feedback and fluttering noises. Then the Mothman voice from the first phone call said, "Tragedy at the Cold Hollow Lodge, on the last day of January. All inside will be buried."

        "My God," Alva exclaimed. He and Sancho looked at each other, Alva wondering if he should take this seriously, Sancho considering if they were on the tail of a hot news story. "Is this a prophecy... or a threat?"

        On second listen, Alva listened to the male voice he didn't recognize a little more carefully. It irritated him, how much he couldn't place that voice, because something in the pit of his gut told him he should know it. Keeping silent, Alva played it back until he made Sancho sick of it, and then he listened again to his own copy, back in his hotel room.

        "Why am I different?" the stranger said over and over. The stranger who would change Alva's life.

***********
        Falling silent herself, Julietta blinked in disbelief at the voice coming from the tape Alva was now playing for them all. "That's Paul, isn't it?" The voice on the tape sounded like Paul's normal speaking voice. The fluttering voice, the Mothman voice, that didn't sound anything like Paul. But the taped voice did. They were playing a joke on her.

        "Yes, it's Paul." Alva looked her full in the eyes, so she could see how serious he was. He was getting the idea from Julietta's body language and facial expressions that she was trying to hide the fact that she thought they were all crazy. "He said those exact words to me after we met in 2003. 'Why am I different?' About five years after this tape was made."

        Julietta wasn't sure she wanted to hear anymore. This story just got more convoluted and hard to explain. She would rather concentrate on Paul - his mental problems alone were fascinating enough. She could probably write an entire book just about him. "Yes, Paul, tell us. Why are you different?"

        "I don't know." Such anguish in his voice. "I don't know."

        Going on a hunch, Julietta asked, "Does the force inside Paul know?"

        "Yes," Paul's other voice, Forces-Paul, replied. "The forces inside Paul are the reason why he is different."

        "I should have figured that out for myself. Now, tell me more about this force, Paul. How does it work? What does it do?"

        Paul, although his eyes were still closed, turned his head toward her. "You will not be told," the voice of Paul's Forces said.

        She recoiled, taken aback by his reaction. "Why not?"

        "Because you do not believe."

        Julietta looked shaken and surprised at having been found out; she thought she had been so good at hiding it. But even Alva and Evie looked at each other and grinned at the fact that Julietta had been called on it.

        The psychiatrist tried to regain her ground. "It's important that anyone hearing an amazing story such as this be skeptical and questioning at first, isn't it?"

        "Your mind is completely closed to any amazing possibilities," the Forces-Paul voice replied.

        "Oh? And how can you be so sure?" Julietta feigned that she was offended. She had to keep his trust. "For your information, I believe in the possibility of past lives."

        "Hmm. Isn't that something?" Forces-Paul said sarcastically. Alva smirked.

        "In fact, I'd like to do a little past life regression, if you don't mind."

        Alva was the one taken aback now. "What about the Mothman?!"

        "We'll get back to that." Julietta waved him off, and leaned forward to pick Paul's brain some more.

        Alva cut a look to Evie, as if to say, "You're the one who brought her here." He would have put a stop to Julietta's self-serving prying if Evie hadn't given him a pleading look back, a look that said how torn she was between family and friends. Because of that look, Alva stayed in the room and watched the hypnotism session, but he didn't put a stop to it.

***********
        "I think we've done a lot of work today, Paul," Julietta said when she felt he'd had enough. She herself had to stretch mightily to work out the kink in her back from sitting so long. "You have a decision to make. If you want, you can remember what we learned here today about your experiences with the Mothman. Or, I can put the memories back where I found them, behind the wall that you built. What do you want me to do?"

        "I want to remember," Paul declared immediately.

        "Alright. Then let's do this gently, so you won't be too overwhelmed. I want you to take a nap for a couple of hours. Over that time, these memories will come to you slowly, integrating themselves into your regular storehouse of memories. When you awaken, you will remember what happened the night you drove to Mountaineer. Do you understand?"

        "Yes."

        They left Paul in the dim room to sleep and all went downstairs to digest what they'd heard. Julietta asked Alva for more of Paul's history. When she was finally able to take Gabriella aside for a personal meeting, she was buzzing with excitement. "Did you take good notes?" she asked, closing the door to Alva's office. He let them use it for their meeting, trying to make nice for Evie's sake.

        "Of course. We have the tapes too." Gabriella took a seat; she was frowning. "We've never encountered anything like this before. It's so sad, what he went through."

        Now that they were alone, Julietta could let her hair down. "Gabbi, that man is a psychiatrist's wet dream. And it's no wonder Paul Callan made up all that stuff. You were listening in on his history. Abandoned by his father, mother dies when he's barely old enough to remember her, he grows up in a Catholic orphanage with a hundred other kids who all want the same attention... it doesn't surprise me at all that Paul would concoct all this." Julietta shook her head, musing over it.

        Shifting uncomfortably in her seat, Gabriella meekly asked, "You don't believe there was any Mothman?"

        Julietta glared down at her sister and really saw her for the first time that afternoon. "You think he was really attacked by some sort of monster?" She started to laugh, shaking her head. "Gabbi, Gabbi, Gabbi... you have so much to learn about this profession."

        Gabriella's face burned with the humiliated blush that crept into her cheeks.

        Julietta knelt in front of her. She patted her sister's cheek patronizingly. "Gabriella, you can't be so easily swayed by a pretty face."

        Now angry, the girl replied, "That is not what is going on here. I don't believe him because I want to date him - "

        "Ohh no, you are never dating him."

        "- I believe him because he was so sincere. You didn't think Paul was sincere?"

        Julietta laughed again, a snickering, incredulous laugh. "I never said Paul was lying."

        She rolled her eyes. "I don't get it."

        "Of course Paul thinks it really happened. But he hallucinated the whole thing." The frustration she felt at having to explain all this to Gabriella was evident in Julietta's voice. "Do the work, Gabbi."

        Gabriella responded with only more frustration. "What was all that stuff about believing in past lives and the past life regression you took him through? Did you even believe in that?"

        "Hell no. It's just a good way to get an idea of how a person views himself," she answered immediately.

        The reply was so quick and unexpected that Gabriella just stared at her sister for a few seconds, speechless. "What?!"

        "Let's take a look at Paul's past lives, shall we?" Julietta ticked off her points on her fingers. "One life, he's a rebel fighter of the Civil War with a colorful name like Jack Bull Chiles. He dies of a botched amputation and is heavily mourned to the point that his best friend takes over the fathering of his illegitimate child, even marries his woman. Though he fought on the side of the South, you could say Mr. Chiles is a hero, couldn't you?

        "Then we've got yet another life, some farmer named Ray Singleton who marries a pregnant woman and raises her little bastard as his own. What a heroic thing to do. A man might feel pretty important if he had such romantic past lives, hm?

        "And look, there's Mr. Jethro Wheeler, who gallantly takes over the parenting of his brother's children when ol' bro is presumed dead. Are you noticing a pattern here Gabriella? Do you see all the children abandoned by dead and absent parents and how past life Paul always saves them from the pain he had to grow up with? Do you think there may be a little wish fulfillment going on here, a little self-rescue?"

        Gabriella nodded reluctantly. "Alright, stop it, Juli, I see your point. But there's still such a sincerity about him; I just can't understand how he could have hallucinated such an elaborate scenario."

        "Hey, he dreamed up all those past lives. He's very creative."

        "But a Mothman?!"

        Shrugging, Julietta explained, "Mr. Keel said himself that books have been written about this creature. Paul probably read one, experimented with drugs, and went on a wild trip. The simplest explanation is usually the best."

        Julietta had barely finished this sentence when the door flew open and Alva barged in with the others behind him. "That will be quite enough, Dr. Santos! I didn't ask you here to provide your pop psychology analysis of Paul."

        "What? How do you know what I said?"

        Caught in the middle, Evie commented, "The window of the office is open. We heard everything."

        "Oh." Julietta seemed a little offended to know they'd been eavesdropping. "May I remind you that I am here as a favor to my sister, and you did not pay me for that session? Did you really expect me to listen to all this amazing stuff and not analyze the man?"

        "But you don't even know him," Alva said, exasperated, but still willing to reason with her. "Paul is not the type to take drugs and go off on a jaunt. You're also completely ignoring the fact that there were witnesses who saw the Mothman in Mountaineer, none of whom knew Paul."

        Julietta, shaking her head, said, "Mr. Keel, you seem like a reasonable, intelligent man. You can't possibly believe in all this Mothman stuff. Not really."

        "Dr. Santos..." Alva leaned in closer to her. "...I most certainly do."

        The office fell silent for several seconds.

        "So do I," Marie added.

        Being that Marie was a policewoman, in a position of authority, Julietta felt she'd lost her last possible skeptic. "You can't be serious."

        "I saw him," Marie confirmed.

        "You... you saw the Mothman?"

        "Yes." She looked at each of them, sharing a particularly long look with Alva, who knew all about it. "Alva went out of town to see John Keel. I - "

        Gabriella interrupted, "Wait wait wait, you're not just going to gloss over that, are you? He went to see John Keel? The man who dealt with the Pt. Pleasant Mothman case?"

        "Oh yes. We thought he might have some special insight into what the people of Mountaineer were experiencing, but he didn't," Alva sighed. "He did have his own fascinating theories about the Mothman, but nothing that would help us prevent what was to come. Although, John Keel did say something quite interesting." Looking at each of them, he revealed, "I asked him why he thought the Mothman imparted his messages the way he did, without explaining himself better. John Keel replied, 'How would you explain your existence to a cockroach?' Sound familiar?"

        Julietta, rolling her eyes, said, "Let me guess. At that time, he hadn't even heard your tape of the Mothman's first call."

        "You catch on fast."

        "You said that while Alva was gone, you saw the Mothman?" Gabriella reminded Marie. She was quite riveted to the story now.

        "Yeah... I saw him the same night we found Paul, after Father Calero had taken him home," Marie said. "My partner at the time was Chuck Sullivan. One of the locals called to have us check out a man in a car who had been parked in front of her house for at least 12 hours. She said he hardly moved, just sat there for hours upon hours, when he wasn't sleeping. Creepy stuff. It was getting dark, so it was important that we check the guy out before the sun went down, incase he ran.

        "Now that I think about it, Alva, this house where Paul Callan was parked was diagonal to the hotel where you were staying. He must have been keeping tabs on you."

        Alva had to chuckle; the tables had been turned. "I think it'd be more correct to say that the Mothman was keeping tabs on me. Paul was just his conduit."

        "What happened when you confronted Paul?" Gabriella asked Marie.

        The policewoman continued her story. "By the time we got there, he had gotten out of the car and was wandering down the street. In ways, it was like he was running from us, but didn't want to. I think that Paul didn't want to run... but the thing controlling his body did. There must've been an inner fight. There was something reluctant about how he moved away from me.

        "I caught up with him and he stopped walking, and looked at me. The way his face looked... I'll never forget it. Completely lost. Paul's eyes were pleading, full of fear, like he wanted to start screaming right then and there. But he couldn't." Marie swallowed down the emotion that welled up at the memory, at the sympathy she felt for that lost young man. "He couldn't make a sound. Paul's mouth opened and closed, and I thought he was going to speak... it was like he had lost the ability to talk.

        "The encounter chilled me to the bone. The way he strained to communicate with Chuck and I. Pointing at his throat and shaking his head. While we were questioning him, he passed between these attempts to explain and zoning out, his eyes going all vacant. He swayed dangerously on his feet. We put him the back of the squad car and he instantly passed out.

        "When we got him to headquarters, Chuck grabbed him by the shirt and shook him, and Paul opened his eyes. I literally shrieked."

        "The fluttering pupils?" Alva added.

        "Yes. Again, he reacted to the world uncomprehendingly. We got his fingerprints, but he couldn't handle the breathalyzer. It was like he couldn't stay awake long enough to understand my directions. Very detached from the world." Marie paused to sigh. "We called Beth to come take some blood. She's a nurse who's a friend of the force, and does this work for us on the side. If we couldn't get a breath test, at least we could take a blood sample before any drugs left his system."

        "And that was how you found that junk in him," Julietta stated.

        "Yes, the barbiturates that were like sodium pentothal."

        "You know he had drugs in his system, yet you still believe he wasn't hallucinating?" asked the psychiatrist in frustration.

        Scowling, Marie had to hold back the urge to lash out at Julietta for the way she was being. She had just about lost all of her patience with Evie's sister. The woman picked and chose what she wanted to believe, ignoring facts that didn't fit her theories. "The drug in his system wasn't a hallucinogen. Besides, many more nondrugged people saw the Mothman - including me!"

        "How did that happen?" Evie asked.

        Marie huffed out a breath of anger before turning from the psychiatrist and answering Evie's question. "A few hours after Paul had gone home, we got a call that someone had spotted the Mothman lurking out by their garage. I investigated, and I saw it, plain as day, just as Paul described it. I pointed my gun at the creature and it flew off." She spoke directly to Julietta. "When I took a look at the side of the garage, I saw that the Mothman had scratched the number 37 all over it."

        Julietta questioned, "Why is that significant?"

        "We'll get to that. First you have to hear how Paul came out of his stupor. We were able to find out his identity from his fingerprints, and that led us to an emergency contact person - Father Calero. He was called and said he'd come for Paul. While we were trying to decide if we should transport him to the hospital, Paul threw up."

***********
        Another man in the jail cell with Paul waved a hand in front of his eyes to see if it would get a reaction. Paul stared down at the floor without a flinch, unresponsive to the world around him.

        "What's he on?" a second man in the holding tank wondered.

        The first man just shrugged and walked away.

        Chuck nudged Marie's shoulder. "The Father is on his way."

        "Paul Callan's father?"

        "No, the Father. Father Calero."

        "Oh, yeah." Marie sighed heavily. "So he really has no parents and no blood family?"

        "Looks that way," Chuck said.

        Leaning on the counter, Marie looked across it at the big holding tank, at Paul. "Poor guy."

        The man who had been gawking at Paul earlier approached him again, sauntering across the cell. "Hey man, you should be more careful what you put in your mouth. You agree at this point, college boy?"

        A few of the other prisoners, arrested after a football game for public drunkenness, chuckled and snickered. "Stupid college boys can't handle the hard stuff. Look at 'im." The other man imitated Paul by sitting open-mouthed and staring blankly, an exaggeration of Paul's actual condition, although it was rooted in truth. The imitation got a laugh.

        "We got some better things you can put in your mouth," the first man leered. "You wanna be my bitch, pretty boy?"

        The holding tank erupted in laughter.

        Marie was heading for the cell to tell them to leave Paul alone when Paul slowly turned his head and gave the guy standing before him the darkest look he had ever seen. Then he made a horrible gagging sound and vomited all over the man's legs.

        Everyone recoiled in sudden horror and revulsion, especially the prisoner who was unlucky enough to be standing that close. "Aw FUCK!"

        Paul lurched forward and threw up again, violently, almost projectile vomiting the last of whatever had been stuck in his throat. A sludgy lime green and black substance that resembled a giant pea plopped to the floor; the shade of lime was so bright, it almost seemed to glow. The "pea" looked like some bratty child had mashed it up in protest of eating it; all that time in Paul's throat had dissolved most of the pod. Barely done making those awful retching sounds, he immediately followed them up with a blood-curdling scream. "GUUUUUHYAAAAAAAH!"

        The prisoners pressed themselves into the corner opposite Paul now. "What the hell's wrong with him?!"

        Marie cringed at the scream. "Chuck!"

        They had been partners too long for Chuck not to be able to almost read her mind in a situation like this. He rushed to the door, unlocked it, and went inside to control the other prisoners while Marie took charge of Paul.

        Before she had gotten inside the cell, Paul took a deep breath and screamed again, a scream of fear and gut-wrenching terror. "AHHHHHHELP! Get it away! Ohhhh holy Christ get it away from meeeee!" He saw Marie coming into the cell. His eyes pleaded with her; she hadn't seen someone so terrified since they picked up that rape victim off the highway service road. "Where is it?!" Paul yelled at her.

        "No one here is going to hurt you," Marie assured, pulling her handcuffs. "You're safe now. Do you know where you are?"

        Paul's panicked eyes searched the cell. "No," he almost whined.

        "You're in Mountaineer, Vermont, Mr. Callan."

        "Vermont?!" he cried back in disbelief. Then he spotted the handcuffs and shrank against the wall. "Please, no, I can't defend myself with those on! Don't!" Like he'd defended himself so well before?

        "I have to put them on for my own safety, son. Just until the Father comes for you."

        "Then leave me in here." Paul peered cautiously out through the bars. "Maybe it can't get in." His breath came in quick gasps. He suddenly snapped his head back around to glare at Marie. "The Father?"

        "Yes, Father Calero. He's driving in from Boston."

        "Oh. Oh, good." Paul sounded so relieved and grateful to know that.

        Marie still thought he needed to come out of the cell. "Whatever you think you saw, it wasn't real, Mr. Callan. You took a lot of drugs." She wasn't currently considering at all that maybe Paul had seen the same thing many people in Mountaineer had seen. After all, he was from Boston. "Do you remember that?"

        Paul again glared at her, but this time, it was incredulously. "I didn't take any drugs. No, it was... it put..." They'd think he was crazy if he told them the truth.

        One of the prisoners being held back by Chuck muttered, "You think he saw that monster that's been seen around town?"

        "What, the moth thing?" another asked.

        That horrified look came to Paul's face again. "It's here?"

        Marie took one of his arms. She didn't make the connection between what he had said and what everyone had seen. The policewoman was too focused on getting a handle on him before things got out of control. "You'll be fine, just come - "

        "No!" Paul jerked his arm from her grasp. "Don't you understand?!"

        "Don't make this harder on yourself, Paul. I can't take you out of this cell without handcuffs on. They're going on one way or the other." Marie forcibly grabbed his arm. He struggled with her, but she managed to slap one handcuff on Paul's left wrist.

        "No, no, God, stop!" He pressed himself into a corner, prolonging the inevitable.

        "Marie - " Chuck began.

        "I got it," she quickly replied. Marie yanked hard on the handcuffs, which brought Paul out of the corner, and with one quick, fluid motion, pulled his arm behind his back. Before he could twist himself out of it, she shoved him down to the floor, on his stomach, with his arm pinned behind his back.

        Paul cried out, "Oof!" Although she had surprised him, he continued to struggle. "Please, you don't know what you're doing!"

        "Give me your other arm! I don't want to pepper spray you, Paul," warned Marie.

        There was nothing else he could do. The policewoman meant business. He put his other hand behind his back, and within seconds, was handcuffed.

        "Alright, now up. You'll be fine."

        Paul wasn't so sure; his dark eyes darted about nervously as they exited the jail cell.

        By the time Poppi arrived, Paul was back to his old self. The handcuffs had come off a couple hours before, since he behaved himself. He seemed more like the responsible young student that everyone back home knew. No charges would be filed as long as Paul agreed to be released to Poppi's custody.

        When Father Calero came into the police station, Paul could hardly keep himself from leaping to his feet and crushing the man in such a big bear hug that people would have been talking. He contained himself quite well, but still got up and embraced his mentor and father figure a little too desperately.

        "Hey kiddo, you okay?" Father Calero asked.

        "I'm alright. A bit bewildered."

        "Well, let's get you squared away and out of here."

        The first thing Father Calero asked when they got in the car was, "Okay kiddo, what did you take?"

        Defensive and frustrated, Paul rolled his eyes to one side and said, "I didn't take anything, Poppi."

        "Then how do you explain what happened? You've been missing for days, Paul. We thought you might be dead."

        Paul, humiliated by the things he was just learning, sighed heavily. "I'm sorry I worried everyone. But I didn't take any drugs. I'm not sure what happened."

        "They towed your car," Father Calero informed him. "You're going to have to get together the impound fees and come back for it some day. I'm not paying it." Poppi was using the tough love approach.

        "I don't expect you to." He was mortified, but most of all, Paul was mystified. In the hours he'd spent waiting for Poppi, Paul's mind had locked away the horrific memories as a defense mechanism. "Poppi, I really don't remember what happened. I was in the dorm lounge, and then the next memory I have is of throwing up in the jail cell. The last few days are a blank."

        Silent for several seconds, Father Calero thought it over and suggested, "Maybe you should see a doctor, Paul. An incident like this..."

        "I know what it could mean. Getting checked out is the best idea." The thought that he could be ill made Paul brood, actually bringing a pout to his lips.

        Poppi couldn't stand to see such a dejected look on Paul's face; he tried to make it better for him. "Witnesses saw you eat in the dining hall before you ran off. Could someone have slipped something into your food?"

        Paul did brighten up a bit at the thought that it could be that simple. "That's certainly possible." Was it feasible for a person to sound relieved by the revelation that someone could have drugged him?

        "We'll look into it. The important thing is, you're okay." Poppi reached over and mussed up Paul's hair playfully, and gratefully.

        "Poppi!" he laughed. "Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for coming to get me. I know it was a long drive." Paul looked over at him with boyish admiration.

        "No problem, kiddo."

***********
        "That was the last time I saw Paul Callan until today," Marie told the group. "I saw what he was like, how terrified he was." She spoke directly to Julietta. "I don't care what you say. You weren't there. I fully believe what Paul says he experienced was real, not a hallucination."

        Julietta, sighing, had just about given up. "Fine, whatever. You asked me to come here and analyze the man's experiences. I'm just doing my job. All that stuff about the Mothman and the 'forces' within him? I'm telling you, Paul Callan is functionally insane. He would greatly benefit from some very extensive therapy." She turned to Gabriella then and began a hushed conversation. Gabbi looked uncomfortable as she listened, occasionally glancing at the others like she wanted them to save her.

        Evie had her own reasons to look uncomfortable, hands in her pockets, when she leaned over to Alva and said where only he could hear, "Um, Alva, are we completely sure that my sister doesn't have even an inkling of a point? There was that incident with Rebecca. Paul was drinking and smoking, heavily. Totally changed his personality. That doesn't make you question the possibility that Paul could have taken drugs and tripped out?" The second the words were out of her mouth, she felt awful for saying them. Deep down, she knew the Mothman was real.

        Alva's eyes sized her up. He whispered, "Paul may have been drinking, yes, but he was also possessed. Evie, I understand you are conflicted because she's your sister. You love her. But you know as well as I do that Julietta is also wrong."

        Everyone was too involved in their own secret conversations to notice Paul plodding into the office. Marie saw him, though, and cleared her throat extra loud. Alva turned.

        "You all whispering about me?" he asked jokingly, though he knew they were.

        They fell silent. No one knew what to say. Alva spoke first. "Are you alright?"

        Paul let out a small, derisive laugh. "Physically," he replied in a quiet voice. His face was troubled, his eyes disturbed over the newly recovered memories. "I don't want to talk about that right now." He looked from Marie to Alva. Paul took a seat on top of one of Alva's low wooden filing cabinets, one that would support his weight; the office was so full, there was no where else to sit. It was a habit of his anyway. "What was the tragedy at the Cold Hollow Lodge?"

        Alva peered over at Julietta; even she was paying him rapt attention now. Clearing his throat, he began, "The avalanche started at 2:27 PM."

***********
        Marie could tell by the defeated look on Alva's face that he hadn't been successful. "They said no?"

        "They said no." He let out a sigh and sat across from her at the table in the Cold Hollow Cafe, part of the lodge. "The owner of the lodge spoke to me personally. He laughed, said they'd lose too much money if they closed for a whole day during ski season, and asked me to leave. I'm lucky he didn't have me thrown out, but my story about prophecies and Mothmen amused him so..."

        "Well... at least you got past the General Manager this time."

        "For all the good it did." The waitress came by, and Alva ordered some coffee.

        "So what are we going to do?" Marie asked, offering him the cream.

        "We're going to stay here all day and keep an eye on things. If there's going to be a tragedy here, maybe we can prevent it." He looked across the table at her. "Are you up for that?"

        "I'm in this for the long haul, Alva," the policewoman replied.

        He reached over and took her hand in his own, looking seriously into her eyes. "Are you sure? Because this could be dangerous."

        With a tiny laugh, Marie patted his hand. "Alva? I'm a cop." That reminded her of another strange incident... she sat back and blew out a loud breath. "This has been some week. First all these phone calls you got, then we pick up this poor kid on the street for public intoxication, and he is so drugged up, you should have seen him. So spaced out he couldn't even talk. Eventually he threw up this glowing sludge and was okay again." She rubbed at her sleepy eyes. Both she and Alva had lost sleep that week. "Strange times..."

        "Hm." Alva did not make any connection between what Marie was talking about and the Mothman. After all, why would anyone? He did, however, perk up a bit. "Glowing sludge?" He looked up from his coffee. "Did you save any of it for me?"

        This started Marie chuckling until she couldn't stop. "I love our peculiar breakfast chats."

        Hours later, both were bored to distraction as they watched over the Cold Hollow Lodge from their appointed posts. Alva was in the main lobby, and Marie was stationed in the Cafe. The manager eyed Alva with annoyance. He came out from behind the desk and approached the Scotsman.

        "Can I help you, Mr. Keel?"

        "No. Just hanging around," Alva said in his best contemptuous slang, flashing a fake grin.

        "Do you have to hang here?"

        Several miles up the mountain, two skiers looked at each other with furrowed brows. "Do you hear that?" one asked the other.

        The female had just glanced at her watch to see that it was almost 2:30. She shrugged. "Sounds like a freight train."

        "Are there tracks around here?" her husband wondered aloud.

        "I don't - " The woman skier looked over her husband's shoulder at a place far up the mountain, miles north of them. The expression on her face slowly turned to that of horror.

        "What?" he asked his wife. He looked where she was looking, and saw the approaching avalanche. It was a huge wall of barreling snow, sure to crush everything in its path. "Oh my God..."

        "It's an avalanche!" she screamed. The sound of her screech echoing off the mountain made him jump. "It's heading for the lodge!"

        "We have to warn everyone!" he declared, lifting his ski poles and waving them. Within seconds, they were speeding across the snow and down the mountain to the lodge.

        The Cold Hollow Cafe was on the east side of the lodge; they reached it first. The two skiers simply threw the door open and began to scream, "Avalanche! Avalanche!"

        Marie had been hearing the sound like a freight train for a few minutes, but she couldn't place what the sound meant. This all connected for her when the couple opened the door.

        "This is the tragedy," she whispered to herself.

        The skiers crowded in the door with their skis clacking on the ground. They went right for Marie, the cop, the authority figure, as if she could yell for the avalanche to freeze or she'd shoot. "Avalanche!" they cried, panicking, trying to put it all in her hands.

        The cafe patrons started to jump out of their seats and rush to the windows to see. Some let out screams. Some stood and just glanced around in confusion.

        Marie tried to keep order. "Everyone, stay calm! I'm Officer McCann of the Mountaineer Police Department. If we just move out of here in an orderly fashion - "

        "I see it!" a man at the window cried. He strained to see the upper portion of the mountain. "I see the snow coming down. A huge wall of it!"

        "It will bury us all!" a woman shrieked.

        "Stay calm!" Marie tried again.

        But the woman's shriek had set them off. The patrons started screaming, and broke into a run for the door all at once. The skiers got out of the way, but Marie tried to control the crowd. They rushed past her in a panic, and then were rushing over her. Marie was thrown against the window, her hand still on the handle of the door, which was tossed wide open. There was a sickening pop as her shoulder dislocated. Next thing she knew, she was on the floor just inside the door, feeling the feet of the cafe patrons running over her body. Marie tried to stay conscious, but the pain was too great, and she fainted.

        Back at the lodge, Alva was still going rounds with the manager. "You know I could call the police," he said to Alva.

        He just shrugged, hands in the pockets of his coat. "You mean Officer McCann? Why don't you go talk to her; she's in the cafe this very minute. She will probably tell you that there's nothing illegal about standing around a hotel lobby just minding your own business."

        "Mr. Keel, there is such a thing as loitering. My patience with you has run out. I want you to - "

        The front doors flew open. "Avalanche!" a skier screamed.

        Outside, the operator of the gondolas that took people up the mountain for sightseeing and skiing quickly herded the cafe patrons into the cars. Each gondola, bearing the logo Brushing Transport, carried 20 guests of the Cold Hollow Lodge above the path of the approaching avalanche. When the manager ran off to help with the evacuation, Alva could sprint upstairs and attempt to light a fire under the straggling guests who had not yet run outside to get on a gondola. The evacuation had been going on all of three minutes when it occurred to him that he hadn't seen a sign of Marie yet. He should have seen her, helping with the evacuation, by now. It didn't cross his mind that she might've already taken a gondola to safety. He was only thinking of losing her.

        "Look out, number 37."

        Those words going through his head again, Alva ran outside, scanning the crowd for Marie, and when he didn't see her, headed for the cafe. She had been with him through this whole bizarre ordeal; he wasn't about to leave her to die just because the biggest wall of snow he had ever seen was coming right for the lodge and cafe at this very moment. The sound of the avalanche was much closer now, almost blocking out all other sound.

        "Hey buddy, we need to leave!" the gondolier yelled to him.

        Alva stopped long enough to yell back, "Has a Mountaineer policewoman gotten on one of your gondolas?!"

        "No man, I haven't seen anyone like that!" he answered.

        Alva immediately resumed running for the cafe. He hoped the gondolier would wait for them, but knew that he might not be able to.

        The cafe had two entrances, one connecting it with the rest of the lodge, and one that led outside. He found Marie lying near the doorway that led outside, still unconscious. There was so little time, and he didn't need a labeled diagram to tell him what had happened; she was covered in cuts and forming bruises, even a few dusty footprints. Alva simply gathered Marie into his arms and carried her out of the cafe.

        The gondolier craned his neck, looking for Alva, not wanting to leave him. He was seconds away from starting the gondola and jumping on himself when he saw Alva running his way with the policewoman he'd been looking for in his arms. The man sighed loudly with relief; they'd probably just get out of there in time. "Hurry!"

        Alva ducked through the door, careful not to bump Marie's head, and found a seat among the frightened lodge guests. He cradled her, shielding her obviously injured arm, as the gondolier took the cable car up into the air.

        "Alva?" Marie said weakly.

        "I'm here." He looked down at her. "Just rest. We're going to be okay. We're in a gondola, moving above the avalanche."

        They had been moving up for maybe a minute when the snow brought its crushing, smothering wave down on the Cold Hollow Lodge. The people in the gondola screamed out in horror, and some began to cry, as they watched the avalanche blanket the entire building. The sound was horrifying and final. Alva and Marie felt the weight of how close they had come to death while watching as the snow buried the cafe, where they had just been only a minute before.

        "My... God," she breathed.

        The Cold Hollow Lodge looked so tiny as it was buried to each peak of its roof in snow, the windows that formed its eyes breaking out under the pressure of wave after wave of blinding white, finally disappearing as if it had never been there.

        Before putting his attention on caring for Marie's injuries, Alva allowed himself a nice long stare with a man standing on the other side of the gondola. The lodge manager. He appeared completely broken, wide-eyed, and shaking in fear at the inevitable aftermath.

***********
        Bringing Marie a cup of coffee, Alva looked down at her in her pajamas, sitting in a comfortable chair in her home, her arm in a sling, and prepared to deliver the unpleasant news. "They've finished all the rescue efforts. The search for anymore survivors has been called off."

        She sipped the coffee, looking up at him with interest. "Oh? They found that one woman alive the first day... how did the rest of it turn out?" Her injuries had kept her from staying current with the rescue efforts.

        Alva sat down and touched her hand. "They didn't find anyone else alive."

        Marie winced. "There were skiers... people who didn't evacuate the lodge fast enough."

        "Yes. People who were caught off guard, or thought they had plenty of time."

        With a nod of understanding, she asked, "How many died?"

        Alva took the time to pause. He looked at her with sympathy, knowing this was going to shock her, and replied very seriously, "Thirty-six."

        The gravity of that truth dawning on her, Marie swallowed hard. She looked stunned as she repeated, "Look out, number 37."

        Alva only nodded.

***********
        Back in the present, Alva put his hands on Marie's shoulders. "To this day, we don't know if the words the Mothman said to Marie were a threat or a warning. But he was clearly saying that if she didn't escape the lodge, she would be the thirty-seventh person to die."

        "We don't know exactly why he came to Mountaineer, either," she added. "Was he trying to warn everyone of the avalanche, or did he cause it?"

        Alva suddenly looked at his watch. "Marie, you said you needed to leave by..."

        "Uh, yes. I've got to get to my seminar. It was nice to meet you all," she said to the others.

        They were glad for the distraction, and said goodbye to her.

        Marie approached Paul, who now had his feet in a free chair, and, with sympathetic eyes, leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "You take care of yourself, okay?"

        His mouth was covered by his cupped hands, but she could hear him almost whisper, "I'll try."

        Marie handed him a small slip of paper. "That's my cell phone number. If you ever need anything, don't hesitate to call. This thing touched me too. Not like it... well, you know what I mean."

        He nodded, his eyes closed. "Thank you."

        "I'll walk you out," Alva said, following Marie out of the office.

        Paul became acutely aware that he was being stared at by Evie's sisters, one because she thought he was a disturbed curiosity, the other because she felt horribly sorry for him. This is what he hated about the psychic abilities and the odd things they drew to him.

        Gabriella was staring; she wondered what it must be like to be so open to the supernatural that a monster like that would invade your person and use you for its whims. She loved her older sister, but she knew Julietta was wrong. Gabriella wanted to go over and hug Paul, but his body language told her he didn't want to be touched right now. A more careful look at his clenched hands brought a lump to her throat; around his right hand and fingers was wrapped a rosary.

        In the doorway leading outside, Marie stood with the waning sunlight behind her. She and Alva shared a goodbye embrace. "It really was good to see you again."

        "I concur."

        She looked in the direction of the office, where they had left Paul. "Take care of him. What that creature did to him... it must've been Hell."

        Alva could only nod.

        "And take care of yourself." Marie smiled at him, and he smiled back, something he didn't do all too often.

        When he came back to the office, Paul had his eyes closed again, lost in brooding thought. "Paul... what can I do?"

        Without opening his eyes, Paul replied, "Give me a ride home."

        "Are you going to be okay?"

        "I just need some time alone."

        Shifting uncomfortably, Alva said quietly, "Are you sure that's such a good idea?"

        Paul repeated, "I just need some time alone."

        When they had left the office, Julietta turned to Evie. "If he decides he wants therapy, you give him my card, okay?"

        Evie wasn't sure if she wanted to respond with a nod or a punch in the arm. Conflicted, indeed. Dealing with Gabriella was easier right now. She looked about to cry. "Sis, he'll be alright," Evie told her. "Paul's a very resilient guy. He'll bounce back." She gave Gabbi a hug. "You'll see."

***********
        Standing before Paul's door, Alva was obviously reluctant to leave him. "You shouldn't be alone after finding out something like this. The thing attacked you."

        "I know what it did to me, Keel." Paul unlocked his door.

        "Then you understand why I - "

        "Please, just leave me alone. I'll be alright!" He opened the door, entered quickly, and locked it behind him, not letting Alva follow. Shutting him out. Alva stood out in the hall for a minute, too concerned to leave just yet.

        Paul looked at the rosary he still had wrapped around his hand. His mother's rosary, saved for him by Poppi. Although he was a grown man, he needed his mother more than anything right now. What was the use of being a seer of the dead if he couldn't see his own dead mother when he needed her?

        It was no wonder he had repressed these memories. The anger welled up anew as Paul remembered the fear, the terror, the violation... what right did this "Mothman" have to use him the way it did?

        He had a sudden need to hurt it, to make it feel the way it had made him feel, but the beast was nowhere to be found. The need was, however, overwhelming, and left Paul looking for something to take his anger out on.

        The coffee table. What did he need with a coffee table anyway? Letting out a growling cry, Paul began to beat it with his fists, not even realizing that he was snarling and yelling as he tried to destroy the piece of furniture. The wood let out loud cracks of protest.

        Alva had started to leave, giving up, but the noise inside the apartment brought him back. He tried the doorknob, then pounded on the door. "Paul! Are you okay? What's happening?!"

        He heard Paul yelling. "What right did you have to do that to me?! I just want a normal life! I have a right to a normal life!"

        Somehow, Alva realized what Paul was doing. Paul was not being attacked again. He was just having a well-deserved breakdown. Alva sighed and stood with his forehead against the door, his hand on the knob. "You let me in once. Why won't you let me in this time?" he said quietly to the closed door.

        At some point, Paul had given up destroying the table, although he'd damaged it, and found himself lying on his side on the floor, weeping, sucking on his bruised, bloody knuckles. The rosary had made a pattern of injuries on the backs of his fingers and hand, as he had done the punching with the necklace still wrapped around it. Desperately he looked the rosary over, finding some scratches, and that made him cry harder - he had damaged his mother's rosary.

        Paul slowly became aware that he was no longer lying on the floor, but now had his head resting in a woman's lap. Her delicate hands stroked his hair soothingly. Full of hope, he looked up, pleading with God to make the woman his own mother.

        But it was not. The woman was definitely someone's dead mother, but not his. She smiled thinly down at him, shaking her head at the sight of his hands. "Look what you've done to yourself, love. There now, do you feel better? You proved to that coffee table what a big man you are." She smiled with a bit more humor.

        Paul looked at her dark blonde hair, the crystal blue eyes, and listened to the unmistakable Scottish accent that hadn't been softened by years of living in America. But why? Why?! Why did she come to him?

        A youthful voice thrust her name into his head. Vivian Keel.

        Alva's mother.

        "There there, Paul. You have such a weight on your shoulders, now don't you?" She continued to stroke his head.

        "Wh... why are you here, Mrs. Keel?" Paul asked, too quietly for Alva to hear on the other side of the door. "Why you?"

        The woman shrugged. She appeared at the age she had been when she died, somewhere in her forties. "We don't choose how things happen, do we Paul? We just adjust."

        Not understanding this turn of events, Paul returned to resting with his head in her lap, stunned by his memories and stunned by the identity of this latest visitor.

        Vivian Keel looked into his familiar features, stroking the dark hair with wicked interest. "You can't help who you are," she said. Her eyes took on a far-off look, and she started petting Paul's hair a little too hard. "You can't help who you are."

More Story Notes: Jack Bull Chiles comes from the book Woe to Live On aka Ride with the Devil by Daniel Woodrell. Skeet Ulrich played the character in the film version.
Ray Singleton is a character from the book/film The Magic of Ordinary Days. Skeet Ulrich played this character also.
Jethro Wheeler is a character from the mini-series Into the West. Guess who played him? ;)

Stuff that was taken right out of the The Mothman Prophecies movie:

1). A female police officer being involved in the Mothman case.
2). Alva receiving phone calls from the Mothman that predict a tragedy that causes great loss of life. In the movie, a bridge collapsed, just like in the real life story.
3). "How would you explain your existence to a cockroach?"
4). Alva putting his watch in his shoe and shoving it under the bed.
5). "Chaaaap-stick..."
6). In the movie, the policewoman had a dream in which someone said, "Wake up, number 37." (I think it was 37; the number could be different. I haven't watched the movie in a while.) It had the same meaning as, "Look out, number 37," does in my story.

Why did I use stuff from this movie in my story? Because the movie kind of sucked, with a few really brilliant, cool things thrown in and basically wasted on the rest of the filler. I wanted these cool ideas to be given further meaning by putting them in a context I liked better. Besides, Richard Hatem created both The Mothman Prophecies movie AND Alva Keel. It's a natural that Alva meet ol' Mothy, don't you think?

Other Notes:

1). I knew a girl in sixth grade who actually dislocated her arm the same way. It was excessively windy that day, and she had her hand on the handle of a door that opened out. When she opened the door, the wind threw the door open very suddenly and dislocated her arm. I always wanted to use it, for some reason.

2). Naming the cop "Chuck" and Marie's last name "McCann" is a little joke on my part, because Chuck McCann is one of my favorite comedy actors/writers. :D "Hi guy!"

3). The reason why I had Paul in seminary school at the same time he was attending Tufts is because of his dossier from "The Friendly Skies." It stated that Paul graduated high school in 1991, earned two degrees from Boston University and Tufts University, and started seminary school in 1997. Which would mean he earned those two four-year degrees in six years? The guy may be smart, but he never struck me as a genius. It makes more sense to me that Paul started seminary while he was finishing up his Theology degree from Tufts.

You Can't Help Who You Are is (c) 2006 Demented Stuff
Miracles is (c) 2003 Spyglass Entertainment and Touchstone Television