Lights exploded in the distance. Blue and white moving up then down, right to left like no aircraft Stotter had ever seen. But he had seen similar lights before.
“Son of a bitch,” he said out loud, suddenly not caring if the FCC slapped him with another fine. They had been trying to run him off the air for more than a decade but Stotter was used to people trying to shut him up. As a result, UFO Network—his grassroots organization dedicated to proving the existence of extraterrestrial beings and the government’s attempt to cover it up—only grew stronger. He had built a loyal following of thousands. Tonight his radio and webcam audiences were in for a real treat.
“You will not believe this, my friends,” he said, adjusting the wireless mic as he pulled at the car’s tailgate. It finally dropped open with a crack, metal scraping on metal. Without looking, he found a duffel bag and his fingers frantically searched inside the bag until he found the camera.
“More lights in the night skies,” Stotter began his narration while trying to calm his shaky fingers. Sometime in the last several years arthritis had started to set in, making everything a challenge. He wiped his sweat-slick palms, one at a time, on his khakis and continued to fumble with the buttons on the camera.
“Friends, I’m in the Nebraska Sandhills tonight, just outside of Halsey and about ten miles east of the national forest. Holy crap! There they go again.”
The lights made a sharp pivot and headed straight toward Stotter. There were three, like bright stars in tight formation, moving independently but together as a unit.
He swung the camera up, relieved to see the viewfinder open and the night-vision function on. The Record button was a bright red. It took every bit of concentration for Stotter to steady his hands.
“Those of you listening who are Stottercam subscribers, you should be getting a shaky view of this incredible sight. For the rest of you let me attempt to describe it. The lights are going to come directly over me. Friends, it looks like Venus and two companions—that’s the size and brightness—only they’re moving together through the sky, slowly now. But just a few seconds ago they were shooting up and down, independent of each other. Almost like polar opposites.”
Stotter had been chasing lights in the night sky since he was old enough to drive. As a boy he had listened to his father tell stories about his days in the army. John Stotter had been stationed at the army’s guided missile base at White Sands shortly after the end of World War II where a classified program did test launches of German V-2 rockets. Fifty miles to the east was a nuclear-testing facility at Alamogordo and also nearby was the army’s 509th airfield just outside Roswell, New Mexico.
The story Wesley Stotter enjoyed the most was the one his father told about being on night patrol July 1, 1947, when he watched an alien spaceship fall out of the night sky and slam into the desert. John Stotter had been one of the first to arrive at the crash site. His description of what he saw that night could still raise the hair on Wesley’s arms.
Wesley Stotter would be sixty next year and as a self-professed expert in UFOs he had seen many strange things, but he had yet to experience anything like his father’s close encounter.
Maybe tonight was that night.
The lights stopped before reaching Stotter and hovered over an area of sand dunes. Somewhere in between Stotter knew that the Dismal River snaked through pasture land. The water separated grazing fields from the national forest. Stotter contemplated driving closer but there were no roads. Only sandy, bumpy cattle trails in the tall grass. He couldn’t risk spinning the tires of the Stottermobile and getting stuck in a blowout or scraping off the muffler again like he did two weeks ago.
He loved his Roadmaster. The wood panel had one small scruff—that was all—and the interior was still in pristine condition. Every year he told himself maybe he should get an off-road vehicle, but money was tight these days. His syndicated radio gig didn’t pay much and his UFO Network depended on membership fees.
Stotter missed the days of the Comet Hale-Bopp and cults like Heaven’s Gate stirring up the public. How could you beat or replicate young followers putting on their Nike high-tops, tightening plastic bags over their heads, then lying down and waiting for the spacecraft traveling in the tale of the comet to come and whisk them away to their greater destiny? No one could make up crap that good.
These days the Internet allowed UFO junkies to get their fill 24/7. They didn’t have to depend on Wesley Stotter. But just as the economy was cyclical, so was alien fascination. The more unsure and chaotic the world became, the more people started looking for something to blame their fears on. So Stotter’s webcam investment was giving Stottermania a second life.