Read Joan Hess - Arly Hanks 08 for Free Online Page A

we report. Well, some of them anyway. We merely take what might be called a fresh approach to the subject and expand on the elements our readers find most intriguing. Eyewitnesses may be encouraged to use their imaginations to fill in some gaps. But there are some pretty amazing stories out there in the real world."
    "Like the alien offspring in Brazil?"
    "The mother had the baby during a two-year period when her husband was working on a freighter. When he returned home, all her relatives agreed that she'd been raped by small purple men from a flying saucer. No one can understand the baby's babbles. It could be a foreign language."
    "And I could sprout wings and fly out the door," I said, unimpressed.
    "That might get your picture on the cover."
    Struggling not to giggle at the images that came to mind, I stood up in hopes of ending the conversation. He was attractive, but I needed to finish my diagram of where the body parts had landed. "You'll be the first to know, Mr. Channel. Would you like directions to the cornfield?"
    "I need to find a motel first," he said. "Are you sure you won't make a statement? Otherwise, I'll be obliged to report that the local authorities refused to rule out the possibility that the circles were created by alien spacecraft."
    "Who said anything about alien spacecraft? These are circles of flattened cornstalks, for pity's sake! The director of the county extension office must have rattled off two dozen possibilities, including the corn borer, corn earworm, corn weevil, corn beetle, corn-root aphid, and a very common parasitic fungus called corn smut. You'd be better off interviewing the naked Pentecostals about their brand of clothing."
    "That's why I was in Louisiana," he said as he started for the door. "It seems that only the driver was jailed. His companions slipped away from some minimum security facility and fled into the woods. There'll be a story in the next issue about their exorcism ritual, which they no doubt performed on the banks of a bayou."
    "No doubt," I said, then waited until he was gone before collapsing in my chair and cradling my head in my hands. When the high school basketball team won the conference title, there was nary a word in the area newspaper. When the FHA club won a blue ribbon for its booth at the county fair, there was a single sentence buried in a long paragraph.
    But now we were going to be featured in the Weekly Examiner, right next to demonic toilets and errant Pentecostals. What I needed was a bulldozer and a moonlit night, I decided. The resultant destruction wouldn't merit a mention in a church bulletin.
     
     
    Arthur Sageman shook his head as he looked out the car window at the dismal little town. "I hope this is worth the trip," he said. "The manuscript is late, and I really need to spend more time polishing my keynote address for the conference in Houston next month. Book sales have been slacking off, and the conference may be my last chance to regain international prominence. If only I hadn't fallen for that woman's story and featured her in The Roswell Incident Revisited, but I had no idea she would turn out to have been institutionalized more than a dozen times. Once the reviewers got wind of it, they were merciless."
    His secretary, an exceptionally pale young man named Brian Quint, didn't bother to reply. Arthur had been complaining steadily since they'd left LAX five hours earlier. Brian was aware of the unfinished manuscript (since he was word-processing it) and of the approaching conference (since he'd negotiated the fee and made the necessary reservations). He was also aware of the substantial salary he received in exchange for such duties and therefore managed a sympathetic murmur.
    "Surely Cynthia has her facts straight," Arthur continued in his vaguely British accent, which he'd adopted after deciding a Texas twang diminished the impact of his lectures. He'd adopted a new name, too; Leroy Longspur did not inspire reverence. "If so, I can