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letter at my wife’s typewriter, and I cursed myself for not having fully read it at the start. In despondent grief, I realized that this letter could very well be some sort of ransom note, and that Melony was in danger. I thought impetuously of friends and colleagues, of phoning for help. Indeed, it was as though some fiend had slipped me drugs, for the inner workings of my head grew throbbing and feverish. And I had emerged into hell.
    Rushing up the stairs and returning to my wife’s desk in frantic assault, I grasped the message. And I read it word for word.
     
    URGENT 1/2/95
     
    To Maxwell J. Polito, world
    renown investigator of
    UFO phenomena:
 
    I see you’ve returned to actually read this message now. That’s okay, though; you’re an investigator, and investigators such as yourself have always scurried off in pursuit of critical knowledge when all along that knowledge was sitting right from where they scurried.
    Ever heard of a UFO discoverer?
    All right, then.
 
    I fully understand the overwhelming displacement you must be enduring at the moment, having awakened to find yourself at the desk before you. The steady hum of that obsolete typewriter of your wife’s needs silencing, which I think you’ve failed to notice among the disarray.
 
    I believe you seek an explanation for all of this, and I wish to grant you one. Although it’s not entirely what you’re expecting, you will find yourself with no choice but to accept it.
 
    And you must immediately do so.
 
    Time is but a bothersome sentry where my efforts are concerned, seeking the submission of both of us as we together struggle against it.
 
    Speaking of time, by the way, I believe you’ll find yourself missing some. As you lift your gaze in the direction of the wall calendar – the silly Land of the Lost one your wife pinned up while you were away…you will innocently assume that Autumn is just around the corner.
 
    Being that your reputation is one of a responsible and devoted man, well-recognized and established as among the most credible authorities on UFO research, it pains me to inform you that Winter is now well upon us and Autumn is very much a thing of history. Not to mention, that certain worldwide UFO conference you were scheduled to host last October.
 
    But don’t let all this upset you, dear Maxwell. No one believes you’re a flake.
 
    Despite the popular notion that you are devising some hoax and will soon reappear to announce that you were abducted by aliens, evidence suggests that you were actually murdered when you entered that church attic last August.
 
    Even though nobody has ever been able to find your body.
 
    You awoke from death, Maxy, not from anything as trivial as sleep.
 
    If I had no conception of what all of this was, compared to what I know to be real, I would have right then and there abandoned this insanity and phoned for the police.
    I’m grateful I didn’t give in to that impulse. Knowing what I know now, it would have been the wrong thing to do. Terribly, horribly wrong. Even at that sudden suspension of time, before my eyes contended for the message’s final sentences, my comprehension overpowered me. As the letter stated, I had no choice but to accept its explanation. Its very existence, though cloaked in numbing mystery, seemed so rational yet so utterly impossible.
    I was beginning to recollect fragments of what had happened before the hollow black of sleep delivered me into this present dilemma. I found myself horrified with each recollection that surfaced, with each clue and faded vision.
    I recalled my ongoing attempt to achieve what could have been my crowning glory, the discovery that would earn me a permanent place in the forefront of human scientific history. After twenty-six years of professional research, I was on the verge of providing mankind with indisputable proof that there exists among us a race of nonhuman beings, living as we do, appearing as we appear.
    In pursuit of this