Roland didn't expect this response at all.
"I'm sorry…. What?"
Felix stood up from his feet, gripping his hair with his cuffed hands.
"IT'S THE ALIENS! It's them! They knew I was onto them, and they tried to shut me up!"
The policemen rushed out from their post, but just one look from Roland and they went back. All it took was one look, and these buff men felt frozen in place.
Roland then turned his gaze unto Felix. But he was too far deep into his sudden outburst of fanaticism over aliens that he was chattering now like a mad man. His words didn't even string together as something comprehensible. They kept going off tangent, and it took several tries for Roland to get him to calm down.
"Felix! Look at me! I'm right here!" He exclaimed.
"Blue light, false light, red eyes, evil eyes…. must have been a…. or without it…. never see… unseen…"
"Felix!"
Felix finally looked up. "The aliens….. They are trying to replace..."
He slowly calmed down as he looked into Roland's concerned look, and slowly sat back on his chair.
"I'm here, Mr. Garcia." Roland repeated, as if coaxing him. "You can tell me. You can tell me everything."
Felix' lips were still moving into a mumble, but no words came out. Eventually he cleared his throat.
"It's the aliens who killed her. Or at least one of them…. I don't know. They possessed my body to frame me for it. They're onto me because I have seen them since I was a kid. That's why I wanted to be an astrophysicist, you know? I needed to know how the meteor would have fallen down….. and when more of them would return."
Roland frowned. "What meteor?"
"I.... When I was a kid, I saw this star. It was strange because it had different colors, like blues and reds, and had an irregular shape. I can't describe it well….. I just thought it must be an airplane."
He then chuckled. "But it didn't move. It stayed there, twinkling. No... Flickering was the right word. And as I watched it, I got this strange feeling that it was watching me back."
"Then, something crashed right next to our house. We used to live on a small farm in Mexico, until our crops got burned from that crash. Since then, other problems came that led us to live in a cul-de-sac in Manhattan. I know what caused the fire, but nobody believed me. The star, that meteor… It crashed into our fields, and then I saw them."
He drew on the glass with his finger. First the shape of a rather triangular head with a very pointy chin, then two perpendicular lines indicating arms and legs. Finally, he drew a single eye that occupied most of the weird head.
"I thought that from the fog and the darkness, they wouldn't have seen me watching them from my bedroom window. But they must have. And now they're after me."
Roland considered this. Before, he would be quick to dismiss this as some conspiracy rambling from a very disturbed boy. After all, he had experienced quite a lot of mental trauma.
But after everything…. It could have been another supernatural thing.
Roland's belief over the supernatural and paranormal had always been similar to that of an agnostic. He does believe a lot of these ghost stories were fully crap, but he does think some of them bear a semblance of truth. Maybe that truth was twisted or exaggerated, but there were things beyond what our current scientific knowledge could explain.
And that was confirmed by his own experiences. However, aliens were a whole new territory compared to ghosts, mermaids, demons and monsters.
Could there really be life beyond planet Earth? It was likely considering how vast the universe was….
But would they really look like gray humanoids rather than something that we have never seen before? This description of aliens felt more like something the confused mind would conjure, or misinterpret. Something similar to us humans, but just slightly different to be off-putting.
It may have even been a demon.
But there was no way of knowing besides getting inside Mr. Garcia's memories. Or meeting these creatures himself, which would be very dangerous considering how powerful they were.
Roland clenched his fist. He knew that he could only solve this case and prove Felix Garcia's innocence….
With Harker's help.
And he was understandably reluctant about that. But his sense of justice overpowers his reluctance, so he had decided to meet with Harker first thing in the morning.
He stood up from his chair. After all, he learned almost everything he needed for now. He can stay longer than the visit duration but he doesn't really like violating the law more than he had to.
"Thank you for telling me this, Felix. I'll try to look around the scene of the crime and near the Circus Cabaret but…. Have you seen these aliens after Dahlia's death?"
Felix looked so relieved that Roland believed him, then shook his head. "N-No, I…. I don't think so. But knowing now that they can possess people, I'm not so sure. They could be anyone, like those policemen or…. Or…"
Roland sighed. "I can assure you that I am NOT an alien, Felix. It would be counterproductive, since what they wanted was to frame you."
Felix shook his head. "No. I don't think you're an alien. I don't know why…. But I just feel sure of it. What I was scared about was what if the alien…."
He pointed to himself.
"Was still here? In my body?"
Roland knows that paranoia very well. Even now, he would have doubts whether Hanker or Henry Clerval was truly gone. And the last words of that former sailor just added fuel to his paranoia.
That they were not truly gone, just buried deep.
Roland would often feel like someone was watching him from within. Watching him with his own eyes. After waking up, he came to have a general dislike of mirrors and any reflective surface.
So he could understand this boy. More than anyone.
"If the alien was…. I know how to take it out. For now, it would be best if you sleep alone."
Felix laughed bitterly. "I already do. But yes….I'm more scared of it getting out of my body and killing me like it did to Dahlia, though. But I'd rather it not kill anyone else."
"I understand." Roland said sincerely. "Please take care, Felix."
Roland took his notes and left the detention center. He had broken his own advice just the night before, inviting over his three side chicks and getting drunk. But he needed it. He needed a distraction so badly.
But now that he was back to his room to sleep alone, making sure to lock the door and windows….
He was more scared for his life than he thought. Scared that he would get replaced by something else, something that had been waiting like a shadow to take over him.
This 𝓬ontent is taken from fre𝒆webnove(l).𝐜𝐨𝗺