"I'm afraid that's been a little blown out of proportion, Doctor," she said. "I don't think I saw anything but an eagle. The light wasn't very good."
"You maintain scientific detachment. Very good. But an eagle that flies without flapping its wings? An eagle that makes a sound like a baby crying? Or was it a woman screaming?"
She was getting those insects-crawling-down-the-spine sensations again. She searched her memory frantically. How much had the anonymous post from the San Esequiel dig revealed?
"A baby crying?" she asked.
"So what you heard sounded more like screaming to you," he said. "Reports vary. Still, the one seems rather similar to the other, don't you think?"
He smiled at her merrily. His coat had come open. Beneath it he wore a bright red vest and an emerald-green tie. It went beyond aging-professorial fashion blindness almost to the point of deliberate bad taste. Though the combination, she had to admit, lent him a certain cheery premature-Christmas air. And who am I to play fashion fascist anyway? My friends all accuse me of dressing like an archaeologist.
"Wait," she said. "An eagle has a pretty impressive wingspan. They glide pretty well. And while I'm no authority, I believe they have some pretty shrill, piercing cries."
"Could a bird as imposing as an eagle take off without flapping its wings?"
She shook her head. "I don't think so. But if you're familiar with my work on the show you know I'm sort of the house skeptic. I try to resist jumping to any exotic conclusions."
He nodded. "Commendable, commendable. But please, tell me truthfully, do you really think that all that's going on here is childish pranks and misapprehension of natural creatures?"
"Let's leave aside what I think, if we can, Dr. Cogswell. You have a most impressive résumé, I must say."
"Ah, the wonders of Google. You probably don't even remember the days when checking a person's bona fides required at least a trip to a well-stocked library, if not lengthy and tedious correspondence."
"My love for the past does not blind me to the advantages of climate conditioning and antibiotics and the other blessings of modern life. But you said you had some information for me. I'm very eager to hear it."
"Yes. Are you familiar with the works of Charles Fort?"
"I've heard the name."
"In his writings he maintained a careful distance between the anomalies he reported and his own belief system. Nonetheless, whether jocularly or not, he indulged occasionally in speculation."
"Didn't he write at one point that 'we are owned,' presumably by some nonhuman intelligences?" Annja asked.
"Yes. Which may have more merit than we like to believe, but does not bear directly, insofar as I am aware, on our situation here. Rather, I find fascinating his suggestion, later expanded in the sixties and seventies by American monster hunter John A. Keel, that a great many sightings of anomalous beings can be attributed not to undiscovered life-forms from our own Earth, but rather are strays from somewhere else."
"By somewhere else do you mean other planets, Doctor?" She felt her interest begin to slip. UFO conspiracy nonsense was all that needed to be added to the mix to turn it all into a hopeless web of confusion.
"Not necessarily. Rather, I suggest the possibility that some manner of small, localized dimensional shift allows beings to enter our world from, as I said, somewhere else – which for now must remain unspecified owing to a lack of data. Whether these slips are accidental or deliberate, or some mixture of both, is likewise speculative."
"With all respect, Doctor, it all seems pretty speculative to me. Are temporary holes between dimensions really a more plausible explanation than people seeing wild animals or escaped pets – or just shadows magnified by their imaginations?" Annja asked.
"Sightings worldwide, and over a very lengthy period of time – spanning centuries at least – show remarkable consistency. Such as the ability of these anomalous creatures to appear, sometimes do great harm and then simply disappear, even when hunted by professional trackers with dogs."
"Like the Beast of Gévaudan?" she asked blithely.
He chuckled. "Give me credit for doing my research, too, Ms. Creed. I watched that particular episode of your show. You did a most creditable job of getting across your reasoned hypothesis that the beast was some kind of unfortunate mutation of a natural animal, possibly a large wolf-dog hybrid."
She decided that she liked this older gentleman.
"The beast was reportedly killed," he said, "which seems to remove it from our particular anomalies. Not so with others. We have just recently seen another spate of mystery large-cat sightings in England, where no cats of any size have dwelled in the wild since before the last Ice Age. By comparison, in his book Strange Creatures from Time and Space,Keel reports that according to the records, in August of 1577, a beast like a giant black dog killed several worshipers at a church in Suffolk, England. The creature vanished without a trace. Incidentally, the British Ministry of Defense has repeatedly, if discreetly, dispatched experienced SAS sniper teams with the most modern night-vision equipment to chase down the phantom cats that have killed sheep, chickens and household pets. Without result, needless to say."
For some reason his words chilled her. She shook herself, annoyed at being susceptible.
"Certain other phenomena are repeatedly reported in such sightings," Cogswell went on. "One of the most persistent is the frightening sound associated with the creatures, usually described as sounding either like a baby crying or a woman screaming. A sulfurous smell is another. Black color, red eyes, flying without visible flapping of wings – the latter were common features of the Mothman sightings in West Virginia in the sixties, which Keel himself made famous, although they have likewise been reported in myriad cases before and since."
She stared at him. She willed herself strongly not to remember that last evening at the dig site. There was no future in that.
"What about the Santo Niño sightings, Doctor?" she asked, hoping her tone didn't ring as brassy false in his ears as in hers. "Do they bear some relation to these extradimensional phenomena you suspect?"
He smiled his big smile and bobbed his head. "Precisely! How else to account for the fact that our phantom hitchhiker has repeatedly shown a distressing tendency to vanish from people's automobiles? In the Murakami case near Acoma – which is the farthest west and south the Holy Child has been reported in this current spate – the family reported the child vanished from within arm's reach of the two children, sitting in the backseat of a minivan. What else could account for that, but an ability to travel dimensions usually debarred to us?"
He sounded so enthusiastic she almost felt herself going for it. "Well, since we have names and even video of real people who have reported the Santo Niño, it's hard to pass him off as an urban legend," she said. "Still...wouldn't you really think it's more likely that some kind of clever street magician, somebody like David Blaine, has come up with an especially ingenious disappearing stunt?"
"That would seem a high level of conjuring skill for an eight-year-old child."
She shrugged. "Well, then, a very small David Blaine. A little-person David Blaine. Who actually does, you know, tricks."
"Who's grasping at straws now, Ms. Creed?"
"That would be me," she confessed. "But – you've hit me with a lot, here, Doctor. I need some time to assimilate it."
She made what she hoped wasn't too much of a show of checking her wristwatch. "I have to ask you to forgive me. I've got another appointment coming up here – "