It surprises me how many people don’t know there are different planes of existence. Well, it’s not really surprising if no one ever explained it to you, so I will do that now. Imagine that you live in a house that is all on one level, no upstairs, no downstairs, no attic, no basement, no crawlspace underneath. You live there, and you go in and out, and everything seems normal. Now imagine that it is really a three-story house, and you live on the second floor, with people living above you and below you….but you never know it! You never see the people living above and below, you never hear them, you don’t know anything about them–and they don’t know anything about you. There are three families living in the same place, at the same time, and each family thinks they are the only one.

It’s like that, only it’s not houses, it’s whole worlds. And there is one other thing to imagine. Imagine the three floors of the imaginary house all squashed together, so it’s only one story again, but the people _still_ have no idea they are not alone. This part is tricky to imagine. Let’s say you are in your bedroom, listening to music, lying on your bed, and bouncing a rubber ball off the ceiling. At the same time, in the same space as your bedroom, someone you can’t see or hear is giving the dog a bath, and someone else you can’t see or hear, and the dog-bather can’t see or hear, is preparing vegetable soup.

It gets more complicated. While you are bouncing a ball off the ceiling, and someone else is bathing the dog, and someone else is making soup, a highway with traffic is running right through your bedroom, or there is a herd of buffalo wandering around, or there’s a river with water and fish in it. All at once, and all at the same time, and if you are in any of the worlds all going on at once, it looks and feels to you like there is only one.

Now imagine this–sometimes it is possible to go from one world to another. It’s really rare, but it does happen. There you are bouncing a ball off the ceiling, and next thing you know you are in the middle of a herd of buffalo. Or, if you were to catch a momentary glimpse of someone from another plane of existence, you’d probably mistake them for a ghost. I know about all this–I myself came from another plane of existence to this one.

A skeptical person might think I was making all this up, or that I was crazy if I believed it myself. Of course, anyone can say they come from another plane, or planet, or that their mother is the queen of Cockadoodle, (which is not a real place, as far as I know). Well, it’s true I can’t absolutely prove I come from another plane. However, if you go to the library, and get hold of encyclopedias, and National Geographics, and certain books, you can find an article with pictures of a typical-looking Inuit, a typical-looking Northern European, a typical-looking Mongolian, a typical-looking Bantu, Korean, Australian, Morrocan, and so on…all different types. All different in minor ways, and all similar in most ways. It is interesting. What you will not find is a picture of a girl with cat’s whiskers and sort of cat’s eyes. That is, until they take a picture of me.

Since practically nobody even suspects there are other planes of existence, there would be no reason to name the one you live on. Besides, if the one I came from had a name nobody on this one would have ever heard of it. I lived in a city, ordinary city, with my uncle, Uncle Father Palabra. He’s a retired monk and a professor of mountain-climbing. I don’t remember my parents very well–they went away a long time ago. I liked living with my uncle, and I was reasonably happy, but for some reason I developed a strong desire to travel to other places, and see things. I meet three kids, Yggdrasil, Neddie and Seamus, who had managed to get off their plane and onto mine. We got to be friends, and when they went home, I went with them. My name is Big Audrey.

Yggdrasil, Neddie and Seamus live in a city called Los Angeles. I stayed with them for a long time, and even got a job in an all-night doughnut shop. Doughnuts are not unknown where I come from, but they are not used as food. I had fun working in the doughnut shop, and got to observe the many varieties of life-forms that came there, especially late at night.

I went to Poughkeepsie, New York. I said goodbye to my friends, Iggy and Neddie and Seamus, and also to Crazy Wig. Crazy Wig is a friend of theirs. He is a shaman, which means he can see visions and knows things of a mysterious nature. The first time I met Crazy Wig, he grabbed my head with both hands, closed his eyes, and made odd sort of singing noises, while continuing to hold my head. Then he said, “Daughter, your destiny is not here. You must travel. You must go on a quest. You must go…the vision doesn’t say where…but you have to go there.”

A couple of weeks later, Crazy Wig arranged for me to go as a passenger with this movie actor he knew, guy by the name of Marlon Brando, who was driving his car to New York, which is all the way on the other side of the continent. I had been thinking I should see more of the plane of existence than just Los Angeles anyway, so I quit my job at The Rolling Doughnut, threw my few belongings in a bag, and took off with Marlon in his big convertible.

Marlon was extremely handsome, and crazier than a bat. He talked incessantly about health food, and played bongo drums while driving. He drove fast, and we went non-stop. Marlon had plenty of fruit, wheat germ and bean curd in the trunk, (and also a dozen large chocolate cakes, which did not seem like health food to me), so we never stopped at restaurants–just to gas up the car. When he got tired, he’d pull over, eat about half a chocolate cake, wash it down with carrot juice, crawl into the back seat and sleep for a couple of hours. I’d curl up on the front seat with my coat over me. I made it almost all the way to New York City with him, but about the time we reached Poughkeepsie, I’d had all I could stand, and told him I’d be staying there a while. Marlon gave me a bottle of papaya juice, wished me the best of luck, and bongoed off in a cloud of dust. He was a nice guy, but he got on my nerves.

I woke up in my little room behind the shop, washed, got the big electric coffee percolator started, and got ready to open the shop. This had been my routine since I first hit town. Mr. and Mrs. Gleybner had hired me on the spot when walked in the door, carrying my bag and my bottle of papaya juice.

“Oh! Look, dear!” Mrs. Gleybner, who was short and round, said.

“Oh! Yes, dear!” Mr. Gleybner, who was also short and round, said.

“You are just the employee we have been wishing for,” Mrs. Gleybner said.

“You will like working here,” Mr. Gleybner said.

“Do you come from….a long way away?” Mrs. Gleybner asked.

“Yes. Los Angeles,” I said. “My name is Big Audrey.”

Mr. and Mrs. Gleybner looked at each other. “Los Angeles, she says.” They smiled and nodded knowingly.

The UFO Bookshop specializes in books about flying saucers, visitors from other planets, space travel, aliens who live amongst us, radio messages from space and secret government conspiracies to conceal the truth from the people. They also have books about the Abominable Snowman, Bigfoot, crop circles, the Bermuda Triangle, mystery spots where gravity works backwards, secret cities underneath the surface of the earth, and chickens who can foretell the future. They didn’t have any books that told about other planes of existence, but except for that it seemed they had plenty of stuff that would appeal to intelligent people.

The store also had a small selection of binoculars, special notebooks with boxes printed on the pages for noting characteristics of flying saucers you’d see, pens that had a little flashlight built in, and cards with pictures of different kinds of spaceships on one side, and different kinds of space beings on the other, for quick identification. There was also the Gleybner Helmet, which was something like a collander, with wire spirals sticking out of it, and a chinstrap–this was to enhance the reception of telepathic brainwaves from the space people. Mr. Gleybner made them in the basement.

Naturally, the Gleybners had assumed I was an extraterrestrial alien because of my appearance. I tried to explain, but their minds were made up. They wanted me to work for them, paid me the same as I had gotten working at the Rolling Doughnut in Los Angeles, and threw in the room in the back for me to live in. I liked the store, and I liked them. Also, once I got started working there, I found out that Mrs. Gleybner brought delicious home-made sweeelves in the morning, and wonderful soup for lunch. Suppertime, they would send me to the delicatessen or the Chinese restaurant, and we would eat at the table in the back of the store.

During the day, I would dust and vacuum, unpack books, wait on customers, and when nothing was happening I could read. Mrs. Gleybner spent a good part of each day visiting with other shopkeepers on the street, and Mr. Gleybner would read, work at his desk, and take naps in his rocking chair. There was a store cat named Little Gray Man, and he and I got to be very good friends.

The best thing about working in the UFO Bookshop was the customers.

“The finest and most interesting people in all Poughkeepsie come into this shop,” Mr Gleybner said.

Of course, I did not know all the people in Poughkeepsie, but the ones who came into our shop were mostly very satisfying to observe and talk with.

I sent a letter to Yggdrasil telling about things I was learning. I told her how Alexander the Great had seen two flying saucers in 329 BC, and Edmund Halley, who discovered Halley’s Comet saw one in 1676, how Christopher Columbus had seen one in 1492, and one was seen in 1783 from Windsor Castle in England. I also told her about Little Gray Man, and how nice the Gleybners were to me.

She wrote back to me that Crazy Wig had seen the word ‘Poughkeepsie’ in a vision, and said it had something to do with my destiny, and everybody there sent their love.

I also wrote to Yggdrasil about Poughkeepsie.

“Dear Iggy,

Poughkeepsie is different from Los Angeles. It is an old city, about 300 years old! There are strange-looking old houses, and some of the streets curve and bend and go every which way. There are lots of trees, and a creek twists and turns through the city. In the old days, the creek turned water wheels that powered mills and factories that made piano keys, cough drops, ladies’ underwear, buggy whips, licorice whips and buttonhooks, and some of them are still there. A big river runs past, and there is a ridiculously high and precarious-looking railroad bridge that goes over it. There are elfey cars that run on tracks, and a gigantic madhouse on the north side of town. And even though it’s a city it’s surrounded by country–you cross a street, and all of a sudden it’s farms and forests. There are wild bunnies, rats and opossums in the business district. The people like to eat jitterbugs, which is the name of a dish consisting of a slice of white bread with a slice of meatloaf on it, and on top of that a scoop of mashed potato, all of it covered with brown gravy. I haven’t tried one–too disgusting–but they are sold everywhere. I spend all my spare time exploring.

Give my love to Neddie and Seamus, Crazy Wig, and all our friends.
Audrey.”

Apologies to Riddleburger for stealing his jitterbug picture.

I missed my friends in Los Angeles, but I wasn’t lonely. People came into the bookstore every day, and most of them liked to talk. And it was only a half-block to Main Street, where the bigger stores were, and lots of people. Also there was an elfey car, or streetcar that ran on tracks from the loony bin, and patients who weren’t considered dangerous would come every day to walk around, sit on the benches, and watch the normal people. A lot of the loonys were interesting to talk to. And, of course, some people were both mental patients and customers.

I do not have a problem with my appearance–I am a nice-looking girl with lovely whiskers. But some people do tend to stare or ask silly questions. I got a lot less of this in Poughkeepsie than I had in Los Angeles. The bookstore customers were all sure, like the Gleybners, that I was an outer-space alien girl. I learned to avoid specifically saying whether I was or was not. It meant a lot to them, thinking I was. Besides, I sort of am. The loonys tended not to mention the whiskers. I think they weren’t sure if they were seeing them or hallucinating.

Probably my favorite customer, and also my favorite loony was Professor Tag from Vassar, a girls’ college not far from Main Street. He was a cute little old guy with a tangled gray beard. He talked fast, and was always excited about something. If you didn’t know he was a professor, you would have thought he was a bum. I liked him because he was always smiling and laughing, and because he liked me.

Once a year, Professor Tag would go nuts, and they would move him up to the loony bin for a while–then he’d get over being nuts, and they’d bring him back to teach his classes. He told me all this himself, and sure enough a little while later he went nuts. I asked the Gleybners why he hadn’t been in for a while, and they told me he was up at the insane asylum for his annual cure. So one Sunday I took the streetcar up to the place to visit him.

The insane asylum was big and sad and scary. It was not just a building as I had imagined. It was a lot of buildings, like a whole not-so-little town. The main building was the biggest. It looked like a scary castle. The bus stopped in front of it, and I went in the main entrance to the office, and told them I was there to visit Professor Tag. The lady in the office picked up a phone, and talked to someone. Then she told me I could go outside and sit on a bench, and Professor Tag would be along.

There was a very large lawn sloping down from the main building, and some benches facing it. The lawn ended in trees, and beyond them I could see the mountains on the other side of the river. There were a few people sitting on some of the benches, and others selfing around, or just standing–patients, I guess, or people who worked there, or visitors like me. I picked a bench, and was enjoying the view when I became aware of someone standing behind me.

It was a girl about my age but short and tiny with biggish hands and feet. She was looking over the top of the bench, at the mountains in the distance, but it didn’t seem that she was seeing them. I was pretty sure she was blind for a minute or two, until she shifted her gaze and looked directly at me with strange blue eyes that seemed to shimmer.

“My ancestral home is over there,” she said. I couldn’t tell for sure if she was talking to me, or to herself.

“In those mountains?” I asked.

“Yes. I come from there,” she said. “Anyway, my family came from there. And you come from another plane of existence.”

“I do!” I said. “You are the first person who knew that.”

“I notice lots of things other people don’t,” she said. “I’m intelligent.”

“Is that why you’re here? Did they make you come to this hospital because you notice things other people don’t?”

“No. I’m actually nuts,” she said. “They put me here hoping to cure me of it.”

“And are they doing you any good?” I asked.

“Not really. I’m hoping it goes away by itself. My name is Molly.”

“I’m Big Audrey,” I said.

“By the way, I like the whiskers,” Molly said.

“Everybody does,” I said.

“I notice you’re not a patient,” she said. “You don’t look miserable enough.”

“I’m here to visit someone. Do you know Professor Tag?”

“Oh, he is practically my favorite person here,” Molly said. “Do you miss your parents very much?”

“I don’t even remember my parents. They went away when I was very small. My uncle raised me.”

“Yes, but do you miss them a lot?” Molly asked.

Something I had noticed talking to the Loonys who come down to Main Street is that very often when crazy people are not actively being crazy, they are less crazy than regular people who are a little bit crazy at all times. When Molly asked me if I missed my parents a lot I realized that I did miss them–even though I couldn’t remember them. I had been missing them all my life. It surprised me that I had never figured this out before, and it hit me kind of hard.

“Yes, I do,” I said to Molly. “Thanks for asking.”

All kinds of thoughts were running through my brain. I must have noticed it before, but it struck me just at that moment that Uncle Father Palabra had never told me much about my parents. All he ever told me was that they went away when I was very small. I must have asked him questions about them, but I couldn’t remember him giving any answers. After a while, I must have just stopped asking. And also, just at that moment, it struck me that feeling I didn’t fit in where I was, and wanting to see other places, and other planes of existence, probably had something to do with my mother and father not being there. And all this stuff had been tucked away in my head, and I never thought about it until this loony girl had asked me if I missed them–and why did she assume they were not not with me and to be missed? She must have read my mind, my subconscious mind.

“There’s a big house not far from here, a mansion actually, and the people who live there swing from trapezes with chimpanzees.”

At first I thought Molly had simply changed the subject, and was telling me something factual, and then I realized that her craziness must have just cut in.

“Um, that’s interesting,” I said.

“We ought to go there sometime,” she said. “It would be interesting to see.”

Professor Tag appeared from around the corner of the building. He was wearing a woman’s dress, sort of–it looked like he had made it out of a big window curtain. He had made a wig out of what looked like the business end of a mop, and he was singing an old song called Someone left a Biscuit on the Landing.

“Ah, Audrey! You came to visit me! And I see you have met Molly, a wonderful girl.”

“Hello, Professor,” I said. “Yes, I came to see you.”

“Thank you,” Professor Tag said. “As God is my witness, I’ll never be hungry again.”

“I didn’t realize you’d been hungry,” I said.

“It’s a line from a movie,” the Professor said. “Scarlett O’Hara says it in Gone with the Wind.”

“Does he think he’s Scarlett O’Hara? Does he think he’s a lady?” I asked Molly.

“It’s possible,” Molly said. “He thinks he’s people.”

“Come, ladies. Let us sit on this bench and tell sad stories of the death of kings. And no, I do not think I am Scarlett O’Hara. It’s a joke, because Scarlett O’Hara made a dress from window curtains, and my dress is made of window curtains.”

“And is there any particular reason you are wearing a dress?” I asked. “Not that it isn’t a very nice one.”

“Thank you,” Professor Tag said. “Allow me to introduce myself, or anyway the person I think I am. I am Sir Edward Hyde, Third Earl of Clarendon, also known as Viscount Cornbury. I am the governor of this colony, and the town of Hyde Park, just to the north of here, is named after me.”

Professor Tag said this in such a high-toned way that I felt the only appropriate thing to do was stand up and curtsey to him. Molly did the same.

“And the dress is because…why?” I asked.

“Oh, as Lord Cornbury it was my custom to dress up in women’s clothing and go walking in the evening. Also, I liked to hide in the bushes and jump out at passers-by and scare the spit out of them.”

“This is good,” I said to Molly. “Here’s a loony imagining himself to be some other loony.”

“You should have been here yesterday,” Molly said. “He thought he was Lewis and Clark.”

“I hope I am not speaking out of turn,” I said to Molly. “But you don’t seem nearly as wacky as the Professor here.”

“Oh, he’s about at the top of the tree–at least for patients allowed to walk around loose,” Molly said. “We’re all proud of him.”

“Did you have the blueberry pancakes this morning, Molly dear?” Professor Tag asked. “They were extra scrumptious.”

We were selfing around the grounds now, the three of us. Other patients, and visitors were selfing too. I have to say it was a pleasant and restful place, even if the buildings looked like the set for a scary movie, and there was a fence with iron bars all around the property.

“I see the shuffleboard court is not in use,” Professor Tag said. “If you like, I could check out the equipment, and we could have a game.”

We declined.

“This place is a little like a resort or a hotel,” I said.

“That’s the theory of it,” Professor Tag said. “It’s an old-fashioned idea, but as good as any, I suppose. The place itself is supposed to cure us. They provide pleasant and handsome accommodations…that is pleasant and handsome according to 19th century ideas–that’s when all these big insane asylums were built. They provide decent food, nice grounds to walk in, diversions and simple tasks for those who can do them, and people are supposed to get well.”

“Does it work? Do people get well?” I asked.

“Some do, but they might have anyway. Incidentally, I don’t know how late you were planning to stay, but there is an excellent film this evening, The Snake Pit. It’s a wonderful comedy. I’ve seen it several times.”

“What about you?” I asked Molly. “I mean in what way are you crazy? I can see how the Professor is–he’s just a regular insane person.”

“And one of the very best,” Molly said.

“Thank you,” the Professor said.

“Credit where credit is due,” Molly said.

“But you’re not like him. Why are you on the inside?” I asked.

“Oh, I it’s because I notice things,” Molly said.

“But before you said that wasn’t why you’re in here.”

“I also lie,” Molly said. “No, that was a joke. What I mean to say is in addition to noticing things anyone might notice, I also notice things going in in people’s heads.”

“Like reading minds?”

“Yes, and I also read trees and rocks and things. I can read places. This place, the hospital, is very sad reading, I can tell you. Not everyone enjoys being crazy like the professor here.”

“So, what am I thinking right now?” I asked Molly.

“You’re wondering if I wasn’t lying when I said that I lie,” Molly said. “You’re wondering if what I am saying is true and whether you can trust me.”

“That’s more or less right,” I said.

“Is it more or is it less?”

“More.”

“And, by the way, you can, if you want to.”

“Can what?”

“Trust me.”

“So what is the professor thinking?”

“He’s thinking about how many cows could be put to graze on the hospital lawn.”

“Forty-two!” the professor said. “I would suggest Guernseys. They’re very nice cows.”

“So they put you in here because you can read minds? Why would they do that if you really can?”

“Well, to begin with, they think I can’t. They think I’m imagining it, and then there are the voices.”

“Voices?”

“I hear ‘em. It’s one of the big signs that you’re cuckoo.”

“Are they real voices or voices because you’re cuckoo?”

“They’re in my head. They sound real to me, but that is what every voice-hearing loony thinks.”

“Whose voices are these, and what are they saying?”

“No idea about who. And they seem to be talking to one another, not to me. It’s like…well, did you ever pick up the phone, and you can hear another conversation faintly going on in the background?”

“I think so. Are you able to make out what they’re saying?”

“Not usually. I have an idea they are not of this world.”

“Like ghosts?”

“Maybe ghosts, or little men in flying saucers, or maybe they aren’t there at all and I’m a nutcase. It’s puzzling.”

While we talked we had been walking. Away from the big spooky castle of a main building and the big lawn there were trees, streets, and houses, bungalows, little apartment houses, playgrounds, a little old-fashioned school house that appeared to be closed, a church. Some of the houses were for the people who worked at the old insane asylum and their families. It really was like a little town.

“When I was quite a small child, my father, Professor Tag, would take me to New York City of a Sunday.”

“Your father was a professor too?”

“No, that was his first name. He worked for a commercial dairy in the town of Poughkeepsie. I am named after him, and I am also a professor, so my name and title is Professor Professor Tag. Anyway, in those days, men would sell things in the street. I remember a wonderful toy. It was a limber dancing man, with stretchy arms and legs made of accordion-pleated crepe paper, with a cardboard head, hands and feet.

“The sidewalk sellers would make them dance amazingly, and they also–though I did not know or understand it–conceal in their mouths a tiny device know as a “ventrilo,” with which they would make music and funny noises. Understand, I was very small, and didn’t have any understanding of mechanical things, and I was nearsighted and not yet fitted for glasses, so I never saw the thin black thread by which the dancing men were suspended, and was unable to figure out that a paper toy would not be able to dance by itself.

“I begged my father to buy me one of the amazing things, and as it only cost a few coins, he obliged me. I rode home with him, on the train to Poughkeepsie, in a state of high excitement. I was going to amaze my mother, little siblings, and all my friends with the magical toy.

“Naturally, when unwrapped, it was nothing but a cheap paper doll with a string attached. It did not dance, let alone make amusing noises. Had my father not been completely inept and ignorant of mechanics, he might have explained to me that it was the skill of the sidewalk salesman that made the doll perform, and perhaps together we might have made some kind of attempt to work it. But he was as baffled as I was, and thought we had been cheated–that a useless copy of the dancing man had been fobbed off on us. He swore vengeance on the dishonest tradesman, and made me swear too that I would track him down to the ends of the earth, and get my father’s thirty-five cents back. And indeed, until I was twenty-one years of age, that was the central concern of my life.”

“And?”

“That’s all. I got over it.”

“That’s a very touching story, Professor.”

“Thank you.”

We had walked all the way to the back side of the grounds. There was an open gate, and a road beyond it.

“We’ve come to a gate,” I said.

“So we have, Molly said.”

“I mean, are you allowed to leave the premises?”

“I don’t see anyone stopping us,” the professor said.

“So, we can just…leave?” I asked.

“Unless you’re tired,” the professor said. “As for me, I feel like walking more.”

“Fine by me,” I said.

“Let’s go this way,” Molly said.

“What you were saying before, about the voices and all that…”

“Yes?” Molly said. “Feel free to ask questions.”

“Well, I do have one. You spotted me as a visitor from another existential plane. That is something that just about never happens. How do you know about such things?”

“Well, it’s my belief that things are very different than they seem. For example, space–space may not be an illusion, (or it may) but it is very much easier to get around than is commonly supposed. I think it’s possible to get from here to there in a snap.”

“I came from my plane of existence to Los Angeles on a bus,” I said. “It took under two hours.”

“Doesn’t surprise me,” Molly said. “I have also worked out that
people are immortal, or comparatively immortal, so at different times one carries on one’s life in various forms and in various places.”

“The Hindus believe this,” the professor said.

“Then I agree with them,” Molly said. “And, I believe there is a finite number of persons, (this includes the animating principle of whales, bunny rabbits, microbes, and eggplants). So it’s interchangeable parts, and everybody gets to play all the roles, given enough time, (which may or may not be an illusion, but anyway works quite differently from the way most people think it does). And given enough time, you will meet everybody–at least everybody you’re supposed to meet….and then…meet them again.”

“Very sound reasoning,” the professor said. “You should come and teach in my college.”

“Wouldn’t I have to graduate first?” Molly asked.

“Yes. They have all these silly rules,” the professor said.

I was having a hard time remembering that I was taking a walk with two officially crazy people. From my limited experience passing between planes of existence the things they were talking about didn’t sound particularly insane–on the other hand the professor was wearing a dress made out of curtains from some room in the mental hospital, and had spent a good part of his life seeking vengeance on some guy who had sold his father a toy that didn’t work–and earlier Molly had been telling me about a house where people swing from trapezes with chimpanzeeses.

“What are your views on interstellar travel and alien species?” the professor asked Molly.

“Well, given there are untold billions of stars in the universe, stars like our sun, any of which might have planets, and some incredibly large number of those might have conditions conducive to life, I’m of the opinion it is a dead cert that we are not alone. Of course, it’s hard to get all this stuff to behave in my head, because of being deranged you know.”

“You should read my book, ARE FLYING SAUCERS FROM NEW JERSEY?” the professor said.

“Are they”? I asked.

“Well I thought they might be when I wrote it,” the professor said. “But now I think possibly not. But I am certain one of the main points where lots of them come together is the airspace above Poughkeepsie.”

“I know I’ve seen plenty of them,” Molly said.

“Oh they’re up there all right,” the professor said. “And the genius of it is, who would think of looking for them here? People all have the idea that if you want to see UFOs you have to go out in the western desert.”

“I’ve never seen any flying saucers,” I said.

“That’s because you’re always in that bookshop,” the professor said. “And a flying saucer bookshop at that. But anyone who has lived here for any length of time has seen them. Here! I’ll ask this passerby. You there! Yokel! Have you ever seen a flying saucer?”

A guy in overalls was walking along the road. “Who wants to know?” he asked.

“Just a seeker after truth,” the professor said. “Now, fess up. Have you noticed any lights in the sky?”

“Quite often, especially on Wednesdays,” the guy said. “And I’ve seen them land behind the old stone barn.”

“There you are! The voice of the people! Thank you my good man.”

“Escaping from the nut farm, are you?” the stranger asked.

“Just for the afternoon,” the professor said. “The old stone barn, you say?”

“Just down the road,” the local said. “Have a nice day!”

The way we were going was down a road with tidy houses, trees and yards on both sides. Like a lot of streets in Poughkeepsie, it had once been all farmland, and in some places we could see past the houses to cultivated fields. It was easy to see that the old stone barn was built before the houses–it looked hundreds of years old. And it was stone, and it was a barn, and it had a sign on it that read “Old Stone Barn,” and another one that read “Coca Cola,” and a blackboard on which was written, “Apple Fritters.”

Sometimes, as you go from one place to another, step into a room, or out a door, you suddenly get a mental picture of how you might appear to someone seeing you for the first time. As we entered the small lunchroom that took up a corner of the old stone barn, I got a flash of the three of us, a tiny girl with a strange crazy gaze, a grey-bearded old man in a makeshift dress, and a tall girl with pussycat whiskers. We must have been fairly noteworthy. But there were no customers in the place to take note–nor did the proprietor.

Behind the counter was a tremendously fat woman with a hairnet and a red face. “Apple fritters?” she asked, looking at Professor Tag.

“Apple fritters!” the professor said.

Then she looked at Molly. “Apple fritters?”

“Um…”

“Apple fritters?”

“I have money,” I whispered to Molly. “It’s my treat.”

“Apple fritters?”

“Well, I…”

“Apple fritters?!?” the fat, redfaced, hairnetted woman shouted.

“Apple fritters!” Molly shouted back.

Then she looked at me. “Apple fritters?” she hollered at the top of her voice.

“Apple fritters!” I screamed.

“Apple fritters!” the woman yelled, and hustled into the kitchen to make them.

We took seats along the counter.

“You know, for a little neighborhood place like this, I bet she sells a lot of apple fritters,” Professor Tag said.

The woman reappeared, and banged a plateful of apple fritters, with powdered sugar on top, down in front of each of us.

“Coffee?” she yelled.

“COFFEE!” all three of us yelled back as loud as we could.

“COFFEE!” the woman shouted. Then, with a big smile on her red face, she drew three mugs of coffee from a big percolator, and banged them down on the counter, one, two, three.

The apple fritters were delicious.

The coffee was fragrant and creamy and hot.

“I was conversing with a bumpkin just now,” Professor Tag said to the apple fritter woman. “He said he has seen flying saucers in this vicinity.”

“They land in the back,” the woman said. “My apple fritters have an interplanetary reputation.”

“What, the space men come in for fritters?”

“Space men and space women. I thought you three might be some of them at first.”

“Ah, is that why you stuck to one expression–apple fritters?”

“Some of them don’t know a lot of English.”

Now, it is a fact that even if you have worked out logically that the odds are vastly in favor of life on other planets, even if you have had experience that supports the idea that travel between worlds is not only possible but common, and even if you have actually seen or otherwise had personal experience of spacecraft or flying saucers–when someone else claims to have had an encounter your first thought is to check out whether they are crazy.

“I am Professor Tag,” Professor Tag said. “I am interested in flying saucers.

“I am Clarinda Quackenboss,” the fritter woman said. “I am interested in making the best apple fritters in the galaxy.”

“When do ‘they’ tend to stop by?”

“Could be any time. Sometimes they are around all the time, and sometimes I don’t see any for months. But usually its at night, and for some reason usually Wednesdays.”

“Could we examine the area where they land?”

“Help yourselves. It’s out back,” Clarinda Quackenboss said.

In order to get to the back we had to go out of the little lunchroom, and back through the main door and through the old stone barn. It was dark and musty, and there was a disgusting smell.

“What is that disgusting smell?” I asked.

“It smells like about a hundred male cats,” Molly said.

“And bats. There are lots of bats here,” Professor Tag said. “Look! You can see the little sweeties hanging from the rafters having their daytime sleep.”

“Where are the cats?” I asked. “I don’t see them, just smell them.”

“Maybe the bats ate them,” Molly said.

“Bats don’t eat cats. Other way around, if anything,” the professor said.

We gulped fresh air when we came out the back door of the old stone barn.

“Let’s look around,” the professor said.

“What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know. Some kind of evidence that saucers have landed here.”

“And what kind of place is this?”

I had been sort of expecting an old run-down farm, but this was not that. There were wide lawns, and a driveway leading to a big strange-looking house a long way off. There were huge trees bordering the driveway on both sides. These trees were like nothing I had ever seen. Their trunks were thick and twisted, with smooth grey bark, and weird bulges. The branches were skinny and angular, and bent this way and that, and the roots above the ground were fat and bulbous-looking, like old feet with bunions. The leaves were shiny and metallic-looking and they shimmered and rustled in the breeze. I had the feeling that the trees towering over us were looking down at us. Somehow they looked as though they could pick up their bulbous roots and walk. They were like…intelligent trees! And a little scary and maybe evil.

“It’s an old estate,” Professor Tag said. “And these are the biggest, oldest, weirdest beech trees I have ever seen.”

“Beech trees? Is that what they are?”

“Yes, copper beeches, and some other varieties I don’t recognize. They have to be way over a hundred years old.”

“Professor, do you get the feeling these trees know we’re here?”

“They’re very old trees,” the professor said. “They may have developed some kind of consciousness in all their years. And they may not be the only ones who know we’re here.”

I didn’t understand what the professor meant at first. Then I saw there was someone approaching us.

It was a tall old lady with grey hair piled up on her head, and wearing dress not unlike Professor Tag’s.

“How do you do?” the professor said. “I am Professor Tag, on temporary leave from the college while insane, and these ladies are Audrey and Molly. Clarinda Quackenboss, the apple fritter lady, said it would be all right for us to come back here and have a look around.”

The old lady stood very straight, with her hands folded. She had grey eyes and very pale skin. “I am Alexandra Van Dood,” she said. “You are welcome to look. Do you know where you are?”

“I do, and I don’t,” Professor Tag said. “Clearly this is a very old estate, at least 200 years old. The beech trees are of remarkable age and size. The mansion is of Dutch design, very large and grand–it must be a famous house. But I have lived in this county and city, all my life, and I am a scholar, yet I never knew it was here! Madame Van Dood, will you tell me the name of this house?”

“This is Spookhuizen,” Alexandra Van Dood said.

“What? This is Spookhuizen?” the professor was excited. “Of course I have heard of it, but I did not know it still existed–or that it ever existed. This is Spookhuizen, the ancient seat of the Van Vliegende and Van Schotel families?”

“Yes, this is the Vliegende-Schotel mansion,” the old lady said.

“And is it haunted, as the stories tell?” the professor asked.

“Oh, it is most haunted,” Madame Van Dood said. “Most haunted.”

We looked down the avenue of tortured-looking trees. The house was big and dark, and the windows were dark. It was covered with cedar shingles that had turned black over the centuries, and had a silvery sheen like the leaves of the beeches. The shadows under the porches were the blackest black. It didn’t seem to me like a place in which I would want to set foot in broad daylight, and at night you couldn’t pay me to go in.

“We will have to come back here sometime at night,” the professor said, causing me to remember he was crazy.

“If you will excuse me, I must go now,” Alexandra Van Dood said.

And then she was gone! We looked around in all directions, but could not see her going away. But here is the funny thing–I thought saw a big white owl flitting through the beech trees, Molly thought she saw a white horse galloping over the lawn, and the professor thought he saw a white mouse scurrying through the grass.

“Let’s be getting back to the madhouse,” Professor Tag said. “I need to change out of this hot dress, and then check myself out.”

“You’re going to leave the hospital?” Molly asked.

“Yes, I will cut short my stay, pleasant as it has been,” the professor said. “I have some research to do in the library.”

“About Spookhuizen?” I asked.

“Yes. I want to know who Alexandra Van Dood was.”

“Was? Don’t you mean is?”

“I mean was. Don’t you know a ghost when you talk to one?”

We walked back along the same road to the nuthatch. As we walked, a little way behind the professor, who was hurrying, Molly and I conversed.

“Let me ask you a question. Do you feel at home here?”

“Here? You mean in Poughkeepsie?”

“I mean on our version of Planet Earth. Do you feel at home here?”

“I suppose I do…anyway I feel at home as…”

“As you did on the other version of the planet, or plane of existence, from which you came?”

“Yes.”

“And let me ask you another question. Did you feel at home there–as though you belonged?”

I thought. “No, I guess not. Not ever. Not for a minute.”

“Felt alien?”

“Yes.”

“Alien there, and alien here?”

“That is not to say I don’t like it here…and there–and I love my Uncle, Father Palabra. Just that I never felt…”

“At home?” Molly said. “By the way, did you know many cat-whiskered people in your home world?”

“Well, it’s not all that common, but of course people have them.”

“Know any personally?”

“I didn’t go to a school, or have a whole lot of friends. Uncle Father Palbra educated me at home.”

“Ever see anyone on the bus, or in a store downtown–anything like that?”

“Now that you mention it…”

“Interesting.”

It was interesting. Had I just assumed cat whiskers were a normal occurrence? Molly had a way of bringing up things that made me wonder why I had never thought about them before.

“Did you have a nice visit with Professor Tag at the laughing academy, dear?” Mrs. Gleybner asked me.

“He’s checking himself out,” I said.

“So soon? Usually he stays in until the end of the semester,” Mrs. Gleybner said.

“He wants to do some research.”

“Such a nice man,” Mrs. Gleybner said. “We’re thinking of ordering chicken chow mein, Chinese string beans, and egg drop soup. Does that sound all right to you?”

I told the Gleybners about visiting Spookhuizen with Molly and Professor Tag. I was sure they would be interested, but for some reason it didn’t seem to make much of an impression. I think they were more concerned with in things in books, as distinct from things in real life. I thought probably when the professor found stuff out in his research, if he wrote about it, then they’d be all excited. It may be that so many people came into the shop every week, making so many claims that turned out to be empty, that they just tuned out any first-hand mention of UFOs or similar things. It was even possible that they didn’t actually believe in flying saucers, and didn’t know they didn’t. They politely listened when I told them we’d heard that flying saucers had been seen landing behind the old stone barn, and then asked questions about Molly, and whether she was a nice girl, and were they helping her get over being insane at the psychiatric place. They said I could invite her to supper some time.

I thought a lot about Molly and the professor over the next couple of days. I was thinking I would go back to the loony bin the next Sunday and visit Molly–when she turned up in the store!

“Molly! What are you doing here? Did you take the streetcar from the institution?”

“I lit out, Audrey. I couldn’t stand it there any more. They serve shepherd’s pie three times a week.”

“Ick. Sounds disgusting. What is it?”

“You don’t want to know.”

“So, does your family know you you graduated yourself from crazy college?”

“Get a hint, Audrey. My family is supernatural. They don’t know where I am half the time, and I don’t know where they are.”

“They’re supernatural?”

“Mostly.”

“Who or what are they?”

“They’re little weird people who live deep in the Catskill Mountains, bowling and brewing gin. They’re almost never seen, and they dress like the seven dwarves.”

“What, Molly? You’re one of those Catskill Mountain elves? The ones sometimes said to be the ghostly crew of The Half Moon? The ones who played ninepins with Rip Van Winkle? Funny, you don’t look Elfish.”

“Well the men are pretty ugly, but us females are nice,” Molly said.

“So you’re not going back to the Catskills?”

“If I did, and if I could find them, I’d spend my days crushing juniper berries, or herding goats or something. They’re completely old-fashioned.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I thought I’d hang out with you for a while. I could sleep on the floor.”

“The Gleybners have already suggested you come to supper. They’re nice. I don’t imagine they would object. Tell them you’re a elf, and they’ll insist you stay.”

“Not a elf exactly. More of a dwerg or a fee — anyway something along those lines. By the way, this is Wednesday.”

“So it is. What about it?”

“Don’t you want to hike up to Spookhuizen tonight and see if any flying saucers land?”

“Oh, I hadn’t thought about that! Sure. Let me tell Mrs. Gleybner you’re staying to supper, and we can start out right after. It’s chicken with peanuts and hot peppers tonight.”

“Yum!”

Supper was just as I thought it would be. The Gleybners were crazy about Molly. The only way they could have liked her more would have been if she told them she was an extra-terrestrial alien. But being a Catskill Mountain dwerg, which turns out to be Dutch for leprechaun, was almost as good. The funny thing was once they got done saying ooh and aah, and how exciting it was that Molly was descended from the little guys in the story about Rip Van Winkle, they treated her like an ordinary kid, one they liked and were interested in–which was nice. I could tell Molly enjoyed being with the Gleybners. I asked if it would be all right if Molly stayed with me for a little while.

“I can sleep on the floor,” Molly said.

“No need for that,” Mr. Gleybner said. “We have a perfectly nice folding cot in the closet. I’ll just wheel it into your room after supper.”

“We’re going up to Spookhuizen tonight to see if any flying saucers land,” I said.

“Don’t get abducted. And take sweaters,” Mrs. Gleybner said.

Even though Molly was little, with little short legs, she was a fast walker. I had to stretch to keep up with her.

“I wonder if we’ll see flying saucers,” I said.

“I hope so,” Molly said. “I’m also interested in seeing your reaction to them if we do.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Oh, just what you think about them,” Molly said. “You’re an unusual person.”

The apple fritter place was closed and dark, but the main door of the old stone barn was open, and we went in. The bats were awake and flitting around, we could hear their wings rustling. We hurried through, and emerged in back with a lot of bats flying over our heads. The moon was already up, and made the beech trees appear a hundred times spookier, also the roof of the old mansion shone silvery in the moonlight. The place was completely silent, and we breathed quietly, and didn’t even whisper.

I felt a little scared. It was a perfect setting for a ghost, and I was half expecting to see Alexandra Van Dood, but she never appeared. Molly and I stood in the shadow of the eaves of the old stone barn, and watched and waited.

We didn’t have to wait long. It was a clear night, and every one of the millions and millions of stars shone brightly. A shooting star flitted this way or that every few minutes. And some of the stars seemed to pulsate or throb…and there were some that seemed fuzzy, or blurry, bigger than the other stars, and maybe not so bright. Some of these fuzzy stars moved, but they didn’t flit or streak like metors. After a while, I realized they were moving toward us–and they were not stars, but fuzzy places in the sky.

Molly poked me. I poked back. The fuzzy lights were definitely closer, bigger, and they were moving slowly and gracefully across the sky.

And closer. And closer. And showing beautiful colors that changed. And closer.

I had sort of expected machines, metal machines, maybe making machine sorts of noises, maybe clanking, maybe whirring, maybe shooting fire like rockets, maybe with electric lights flashing on and off. It wasn’t like that. They were quiet, almost silent–but I could hear them, anyway feel them. And instead of being things made of metal, solid things, they seemed to be…well, I can’t say what they seemed to be. Soft, I knew they were soft. And they were warm. And they made me feel…content, and happy, and almost a little sleepy in a happy way.

Throbbing, vibrating, thrumming, I could feel it in my bones. And the saucers, more like gigantic fuzzballs, were really close. The whole place was lit up bright as day–only it wasn’t bright, it was the softest kind of light. I’d say it was pink, but that is just as close as I can come to describing the color–it was no color I had ever seen. I could hardly take my eyes off them, but I made myself glance at Molly. Her mouth was hanging open, and her eyes were staring–just like mine. She looked stunned–happy but stunned. By this time I was experiencing the flying saucer fuzzballs as if they were music. And perfume–an amazing scent, it was like nothing I’d ever smelled–the closest I can describe is pineapple with a hint of mint or maybe catnip. It made me dizzy. And there was a taste in my mouth like the best cookies anyone ever ate, or never ate. It was also like taking a bubble bath.

And that was when they were still a couple hundred feet above us.

By the time they were at the level of the treetops we were so full of bliss we were probably drooling. Also giggling. The fuzzballs bounced around, whirling and zig-zagging–it was comical somehow. They were putting on a show for us.

I noticed there were lights flickering in the windows of Spookhuizen. The flying fuzzers bowled down the avenue of beech trees, bounced a couple of times, and settled onto the roof of the house. Then they either sank, or extinguished, going out like matches. And it was over. They were gone.

“Wow! That was not what I expected,” I said to Molly when I got my voice back. “I loved it! I love the saucers!”

“Did they go inside the house?” Molly asked.

“It sort of looked like it,” I said. “But I’m not sure.”

There was the house, dark and silent and dead-looking in the moonlight again.

“Do you want to wait around in case they come back?” Molly asked.

“I’m not sure I could stand it if they came back,” I said. “I might flip my wig–no offense.”

“None taken.”

We made our way back through the dark barn. The lights were on in the lunchroom, and we could see the enormously fat Clarinda Quackenboss through the windows, bustling around. We went in. The place was empty except for a couple of orange cats before which Clarinda was in the act of placing saucers.

“Ah, it’s those girls!” Clarinda said. “You want apple fritters?”

“We just noticed your lights on,” I said. “That was quite a show the saucers put on out back.”

“Was it? I didn’t notice. Too busy getting things ready.” Clarinda Quackenboss said. “I open up on Wednesday nights in case the extra-terrestrial aliens want fritters.”

“Have any come in so far?” Molly asked.

“I was hoping for a big crowd, but all that’s come in tonight are these two.” She jerked her thumb at the cats. “You want some more milk with apple fritters crumbled in, kitties? No?”

The cats selfed out through the open door.

“How about you, girls?” Clarinda asked. “Apple fritters?”

“We filled up on Chinese food,” I said. “Thanks anyway.

Hi all,

We’re having some technical difficulties, which are preventing this week’s chapter from being added. Please stay tuned, and apologies for the delay!

Webmaster Ed

“So, you don’t bother to watch the saucers on Wednesday nights?” I asked Clarinda.

“I’m too busy. Some nights they come crowding in, demanding apple fritters. Some nights they don’t. I don’t know why. By the way, they pay in pure gold, and they’re good tippers, those space aliens.”

“Are they nice? Are they fierce?”

“Oh, they’re nice. They’re regular pussycats.”

“What goes into apple fritters?” Molly asked me as we walked home.

“Apples, of course, and some flour and water, sugar, oil to fry them in, maybe eggs if you use them to make the batter.”

“So mostly stuff that isn’t very expensive and keeps fairly well?”

“I guess.”

“And the space creatures pay in gold, and tip handsomely.”

“So she said.”

“So, she ought to be able to make a tidy profit running that lunchroom specializing in fritters.”

“So?”

“But so far we haven’t seen anybody there. Where are all the customers?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it gets busy at lunchtime.”

“Listen, are you going to tell the Gleybners what we saw?” Molly asked.

“Sure. They’re interested in flying saucers, anyway in theory. Why do you ask?”

“Well, if you tell them, they will repeat it to everyone who comes into the store–and that’s all the flying saucer fans in Poughkeepsie. Then, next Wednesday there might be a whole crowd of people with binoculars and cameras hanging around Spookhuizen. Who knows? It might scare them away, and we might want to go back for another look. You might have questions you want answered.”

“I might?”

“You might.”

“Well that guy the professor talked to the other day knew all about them, and that they landed behind the old stone barn on Wednesday nights. So apparently it’s not some secret we discovered.”

“Right. It’s common knowledge, so we are not witholding anything people couldn’t find out about for themselves if we don’t go into detail with the Gleybners. We can just say we saw lights in the sky–it’s the truth, and it’s also what everybody says when they saw, or think they saw, flying saucers.”

“I wouldn’t want to trick the Gleybners,” I said.

“It’s not tricking, it’s just revealing stuff a bit at a time. I think we should talk to the professor before we let the information spread around too much. Do this for me–I’m insane and you don’t want to upset me.”

“Well, all right,” I said. “I don’t see that it makes a big difference one way or the other.”

“I haven’t been able to find out a thing!” the professor said.

Molly and I were in the living room of his house, a nice little house near the college. The professor was wearing a wizard robe and one of those pointy wizard hats with stars and moons on it. When we asked him it turned out it didn’t have any special significance–he just wore the robe around the house because it was comfortable, and the hat came with it, and kept his head warm.

“Not a thing?”

“Well, nothing I didn’t know already–there is mention of Spookhuizen here and there, but no records, nothing about exactly where it was built, or that it still stands. And the same with Alexandra Van Dood. There was such a person, but I found nothing about her as a ghost. I’ve been all through three libraries, looked through newspaper records, phoned librarians in New York City and Washington, D.C., and haven’t found a scrap.”

“Well we found out something,” I said.

“You did?”

We told the professor all about our visit to Spookhuizen, and the beautiful, fuzzy, made-you-feel-wonderful, flying…somethings, and how they may have gone into the house.

“Now you see the limitations of professors like me,” the professor said. “I looked in books, and you girls went and looked at an actual something. Well done! Very well done!”

“What now?” I asked.

“Well, it’s interesting, isn’t it?” Professor Tag said. “I suppose I could write a small article about it, but maybe not. People look askance at those who are interested in flying saucers. It’s the sort of thing that would emphasize that I’m crazy, which I am–but why do things that call more attention to it?”

“But I want to know more about those flying things we saw,” I said. “It’s very important to me.”

“It is? Why?”

“I don’t know. I just know I felt something when we were watching them. I can’t describe it, but it was important.”

Molly was smiling.

“In that case, now we know what has to be done!” Professor Tag said.

“We do?”

“Of course we do!”

“What? What has to be done?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”

“Um, not quite. Tell us.”

“We have to get a look inside the house.”

“Inside Spookhuizen?”

“Where else?”

“But it’s spooky and scary.”

“We’ll go in the daytime. It’s not as scary then, is it?”

“Maybe not _as_.”

“If you need to know, you need to know. Did you feel that the things you saw were scary?”

“Just the opposite. But the house is.”

“Things are scary until you know what they are. I’ll just go and change clothes.”

“Wait! We’re going now?”

“Why not? No time like the present. Besides, aren’t you a little hungry? I’ll treat you both to apple fritters and coffee.”

Professor Tag ran into his bedroom, and emerged in a few minutes wearing short pants, boots, knee socks, a jacket with a lot of pockets and a pith helmet. It was one of those African explorer outfits.

“Who are you supposed to be this time?” I asked.

“Professor Tag!” Professor Tag said. “This is my usual costume for field work and expeditions. See? I have pockets for notebooks, lots of pencils, a tape measure, a compass, a waterproof pocket for my lunch.”

“What exactly are you a professor of, Professor?” I asked.

“Classical Accountancy. I specialize in Dynastic Egyptian bookkeeping.”

“And you go on field trips and expeditions requiring all that gear?”

The professor was putting his arms through the straps of a rucksack. “You’d be surprised,” he said. “A classical accountant must be ready for every kind of emergency.”

The first emergency, or what I thought was an emergency, happened when we arrived at the old stone barn. We went through as usual–there were the scary-looking beech trees, making a long corridor, and at the end…no house!

“Where is it?” I asked.

“Where is what?” the professor asked.

“The house!”

“What do you mean?” Molly asked.

“I mean it isn’t there! There is no house where the house was!”

“What are you talking about? There is the house, just where it always was.”

“No it isn’t! Yes it is!” The house was there, just like before.

“But, just now there was no house there!” I said.

“I didn’t see no house,” the professor said. “And I do not mean that in an ungrammatical way.”

“I didn’t not neither,” Molly said. “And I do.”

“Well that is strange,” I said. “It wasn’t and now it is.”

“A trick of the light, no doubt,” the professor said. “Now, let’s go have a look at it.”

“We’re going to go inside?” I asked.

“At least we’ll have a peek through the windows,” the professor said. “Let’s approach.”

We began walking along the long beech-lined driveway toward the house. It was quite a long driveway. And it turned out to be even longer than it first appeared. We walked and walked, and the house didn’t seem any nearer.

We walked some more.

And some more after that.

“You know, we don’t seem to be getting any nearer,” I said.

“We’re not,” Molly said. “How can that be?”

“Another trick of the light, perhaps,” the professor said. “It may be like a Japanese garden, the landscape is cleverly laid out so the spaces seem large and the distances greater than they are. Only in this case, it’s done so a great distance seems small. If the trees near the house were larger than the trees at the far end of the drive, for example, it might make them seem closer.”

“So you’re saying the house is further than it seems, and someone made it so the distance would seem less? Why would anyone do that?” I asked.

“Why does anyone do anything?” the professor asked. “Let’s walk faster, and see if we seem to be making any progress.”

We walked faster. We walked faster yet. We trotted. We ran. When we looked behind us, there was a long line of trees. When we looked forward, the house appeared to be just as far away as when we first started.

“It’s no use,” Molly said. “We can’t get near the place.”

“It has to be moving away from us as we approach,” I said. “Did you ever hear of such a thing?”

“And don’t forget, when we first came here you didn’t see it at all, and a moment later, when Molly and I looked, it was there and we all saw it. I am thinking you looked first, Audrey, and it hadn’t arrived yet. And a moment later, it had!” the professor was making a note in his notebook.

“OK, I have an idea,” I said. “What do you think would happen if we found out the boundaries of the property, left it completely, found our way around to the other side, and approached the house from that direction? What do you think would happen then?”

Molly and the professor looked at me. “We could try it, if we wanted to be thorough and scientific,” the professor said. “But I think we all know what would happen.”

“The same thing,” I said.

“I agree,” Molly said.

“So, what are we going to do,” I asked. “Give up on getting close to the house?”

“Well, now that we know it doesn’t want us to get close, I want to all the more,” the professor said. “Oh, look! It’s gone!”

We looked. There was no house to be seen.

“I told you it went invisible,” I said.

“So you did,” Molly said. “Wait! I think it’s coming back!”

We could see the house, but dimly, and it was sort of transparent.

“Well, this is beyond me,” the professor said. “We need to talk to someone who knows about things like this.”

“Do you know such a person?” Molly asked.

“I do, and we are going to see her.”

“See who?

“Chicken Nancy, of course,” the professor said.

“Who is Chicken Nancy?”

“She knows things no one else does,” Professor Tag said. “She’s very, very, very old. She’s the one to ask about things like invisible evasive houses.”

“And this is someone you know?” I asked.

“I know about her.”

“But you’ve never met her.”

“No.”

“Well, let’s go talk to her,” Molly said. “Do you know where she lives?”

“Somewhere around here,” the professor said. “She’s a local wise woman.”

“Somewhere around here, meaning this neighborhood, or the city of Poughkeepsie, or this general area?”

“This general area. Somewhere in this county, or maybe the next one.”

“So how do you propose to find her, the yellow pages?”

“I rather doubt she’d be listed, or even have a phone. We’ll ask around. Someone is sure to know where to find her.”

I liked the professor so much, and he seemed to know so many things, and was so confident, that I had to keep reminding myself that he was a five-star maniac. I reminded myself.

“I’ve worked up an appetite chasing that house,” he said. “Who’d like apple fritters and coffee?”

“Good idea,” Molly said.

“Good idea,” I said. “Something real that we can get our hands on.”

“It’s the girls! And the professor!” Clarinda Quackenboom said brightly. Then she bellowed, “Apple Fritters?”

“But of course,” the professor said. “And keep them coming.”

“Clarinda,” I asked. “Did you know that if you try to approach the old house out back, it moves away from you?”

“There’s an old house out back? I never noticed.”

“What? You’ve never seen it?”

“I’ve never looked. I am interested in apple fritters, and serving my customers. That’s the way to run a successful business.”

When Clarinda went into the kitchen to make our apple fritters I whispered to the professor, “She isn’t a ghost, is she?”

“No, not a ghost. I’m not sure what she is, but she may not be an ordinary human. I suspect you will never see her anywhere but in this fritter shop. Very perceptive of you to notice.”

“I’m going to ask her if she knows where Chicken Nancy lives,” Molly whispered.

“Why bother?” I whispered back. “She’ll just tell you all she pays attention to are apple fritters.”

“It will do no harm,” Molly said. Clarinda came out of the kitchen, with fritters. “Clarinda, do you know where Chicken Nancy lives?”

“You go down the road about a quarter of a mile, and go right at the corner. Then go along that road for almost a mile. You’ll see a Christmas tree farm on the right, and a long driveway. Go all the way along the driveway, past the Christmas tree farm. There’s an orchard on the right, just keep going, until the driveway turns into a footpath through the woods. Continue on that until you come to a little house, and that’s it.”

“How come you know that?” I asked.

“I buy apples from the orchard.”

There is the city of Poughkeepsie, and surrounding it is the Town of Poughkeepsie, which is bigger and more rural. Still, it is possible to look out certain apartment windows, or schoolroom windows, in the city of Poughkeepsie and see cows, or fields under cultivation. A Christmas tree farm, and an orchard, and woods within a city–and there are streetcar tracks that go right out into the country, so a farmer can walk a little way from his house, step onto a trolley, and go into the city and see a movie, or buy something in a store, or go to the dentist. And a city person, who lives in a building with an elevator, can get out where there are things growing, and forests, and visit the loony bin, or maybe see bunnies or deer. It’s a very good way to have a city, though I’m sure, in time, all the fields and pastures will be paved over or built on, and it won’t be as nice.

We followed the road Clarinda had told us about, and found the Christmas tree farm and the driveway. It smelled nice with the fir trees on one side, and the apple trees on the other. Then the driveway narrowed into a little path that we followed into a woods. We had to walk single-file until we came to a clearing. The sun was shining down through the trees on a little cottage with a pointy roof. There was a neat vegetable garden beside the cottage, and flowers in pots on the little porch. Also on the porch, sitting on a straight chair was an old lady. Her skin was brown, her hair was white, and her eyes were very clear and bright. She was wearing a grey old-fashioned-looking dress.

There was a dog, grey and shaggy, lying beside the old lady. As we approached, the dog stood up, and we saw that he was very big and very tall. He stood with his head down, and looked at us with yellow-brown eyes. The eyes were kind and intelligent. But I could tell this dog was not one to mess with. Anyone who found their way to this little house with bad intentions would soon wish they had never come.

“But you have nothing to worry about, girl from far away,” the old lady said. “I will speak to the dog. Weer, this cat-whiskered girl and the two crazy people, one a lot crazier than the other, are just looking for information. They mean us no harm.” Weer sank down beside the old lady’s chair, but kept an eye on us. “By the way, I know you didn’t come seeking it, but I can cure you of being insane while you’re here–if you wish.”

“I am Professor Tag,” Professor Tag said.

“I know all about you,” the old lady said. “You go cuckoo every spring, and your students love you.”

“You are Chicken Nancy, I presume?” the professor said.

The old lady nodded her head.

“This is Molly,” the professor said.

“You are welcome, Molly,” Chicken Nancy said. Her voice was clear and nice to listen to. She had a slight accent, which the professor later told me was Dutch. “You are a fairly long way from the mountains where your ancient dwergish people live. I will make you a cup of tea and remove the slight confusion from your head. Would you like that?”

Molly said she would like it very much.

“And this is Audrey,” the professor said.

“Audrey. It’s been nearly a hundred years since I saw anyone like you. Come into the house, all of you, and we will have a nice visit.”

The inside of the house was even tidier and neater than the outside. The floor was made of brick, the walls were whitewashed, the furniture was wooden, simple and primitive, there were bunches of dried herbs and flowers hanging from the rafters, and there was an iron kettle hanging from a hook in a little stone fireplace and making steam.

Chicken Nancy was quite tall when she stood up. “The kettle is just boiling. I will make tea for all of us, and special tea for this crazy girl. You, professor, prefer to remain crazy, I believe.”

“Yes, I am quite accustomed to it,” the professor said. “And I was not as happy when I was sane.”

“I understand,” Chicken Nancy said. “I was crazy myself for twenty-five or thirty years. It can be pleasant if you have the right kind.”

“I have the wrong kind,” Molly said.

“Hush. It will be taken care of,” Chicken Nancy said. “Now, you came to ask me about something. Please sit at my table, and I will help you if I can.”

“We wanted to know about the Vliegende-Schotel house,” I said.

“I know everything about it. What did you want to know?”

“Everything.”

“Fine. I will tell you everything. First, its right name is not the Vliegende-Schotel house.”

“It’s not?” the professor asked. “I thought it was so named because the Vliegende and Schotel families lived there.”

“There were no such families,” Chicken Nancy said. “The family that built the house was called Van Vreemdeling.”

“Van Vreemdeling?”

“Van Vreemdeling. Vliegende and schotel are Dutch words meaning ‘flying saucer.’”

“What? There were flying saucers back then?” I asked.

“Why not?” Chicken Nancy asked. “I am going to guess you have seen them landing behind the old stone barn.”

“Yes, we have,” Molly said.

“Well they have been doing that for much longer than I have been alive, and I have been alive a hundred and fourteen years.”

“You’re a hundred and fourteen years old?”

“Approximately. Records weren’t kept very carefully for black people.”

“It’s remarkable,” Professor Tag said. “You don’t look a day over ninety. To what do you attribute your youthfulness and vigor?”

“I come from a long-lived family, and I never touch fried food,” Chicken Nancy said.

“You were saying, the family was called Van Vreemdeling. And you know this because…?”

“Because I was born on the property–the house was Schiksal-Nanie which is the proper way of saying my name. It means Dirge of Fate, or Elegy of Destiny. And my mother was born on the property. She was owned by the Van Vreemdelings.”

“Owned? How do you mean owned?” I asked.

“She was a slave. My mother was a slave, and I am the child of a slave.”

“How is that possible?” Molly asked. “This is New York. Slavery was in the southern states.”

“Slavery was in the southern states until the end of the Civil War in 1865,” Chicken Nancy said. “There was slavery in New York until about 1827, and even after that fugitive slaves from the south could be pursued and caught here–legally–and sent back south.”

“So you were born when your mother was only ten or fifteen years out of slavery,” Professor Tag said.

“Yes, and of course she remembered it quite well, and told me all about it. It feels odd to think how recent and how close to home it was, doesn’t it?”

“It does indeed,” the professor said.

“Soujourner Truth, who was born just across the river, as a slave, lived until 1883 by which time the electric light and the telephone had been invented and were coming into general use, and she probably saw an early automobile or even took a ride in one.”

“Who was Sojourner Truth?” I asked.

“Oh, you had better read up on her,” Chicken Nancy said. “She was one of the smartest women of her century, and did important things. I met her more than once. And she began as a slave like my mother. But you want to know about the house and the Van Vreemdelings, and what happened there.

“Cornelius Van Vreemdeling had a brassworks, the first one in the colonies. They spun and stamped things out of brass, especially the popular Van Vreemdeling Kwispedoor.”

“What was that?”

“A cuspidoor, a spittoon, thing you spit in–they had them everywhere in those days, and Van Vreemdeling got rich selling them, and bought the big piece of land, and built the big house, and became a member of the aristocracy. He was a patroon spitoon tycoon, and later made another fortune importing pineapples.

“But the Van Vreemdelings were strange, and kept to themselves. The people were uneasy about them, and told strange stories about the things that went on at Spookhuizen.”

“The lights in the sky?” I asked.

“Yes, those. And the family had an unusual appearance. I have a portrait of Elizabeth Van Vreemdeling, who was Cornelius’s grand-daughter, and was a friend of my mother’s.”

Chicken Nancy went to an old bureau, opened a drawer, and took out a very small painting in a frame. She handed it to me. It was a portrait of a girl about my age, wearing old fashioned clothes. She had cat whiskers just like mine!

I was surprised, amazed and curious. While I was being all those things, and thinking of what I wanted to ask first, Chicken Nancy said, “The water is boiling. I will make the tea. This pot is for all of us, Audrey, and Professor Tag–and this little pot is for Molly. This will make you sane.”

“What’s in it?” Molly asked.

“Mint leaves. I grow them myself.”

“And what is in the other tea?”

“Mint also, but yours is a special kind. Take a sip.”

“Mint leaves will cure madness?” Molly asked.

“How does it taste?”

“It’s good.”

“Drink it all up.”

“How do you know this will work?” Molly asked.

“I am a 114-year-old wise woman,” Chicken Nancy said. “If I didn’t know about things like this, who would?”

“How long until I’m sane?” Molly asked.

“Have you finished your tea?”

“Yes.”

“It will have worked by now.”

“I feel about the same.”

“You weren’t all that crazy.”

“So I’m cured?”

“Yes.”

“Imagine that,” Molly said.

“Um, this other tea…..” Professor Tag began.

“It won’t do a thing. Enjoy it. You’ll be as crazy as ever,” Chicken Nancy said.

“Thank you,” Professor Tag said. “It’s just that I wouldn’t want to do anything to upset the delicate balance of my mind.”

“I understand completely,” Chicken Nancy said.

Weer had placed his great shaggy head on Molly’s knee, and she was scratching him behind the ears.

“Would you like to stay here with Weer and me while you get used to no longer being a nutbar?” Chicken Nancy asked Molly.

“Well, if I am no longer insane, there is no point going back to the mental hospital,” Molly said. “And I don’t know how long I can continue imposing on Audrey’s employers–I’ve been sleeping on a cot in her room.”

“You may stay here, and Audrey is welcome to visit you, of course,” Chicken Nancy said.

“That is very kind of you,” Molly said. “Thank you.”

I would never have said anything, but I felt a little relieved. I liked Molly very much, but rooming with a dwerg had drawbacks. She didn’t seem to need a lot of sleep, and was very active at night, bouncing around the room and climbing the bookshelves, while humming, and making sound effects with her mouth, usually explosions, motorcycles and creaking doors. Of course, now that she wasn’t crazy maybe those things would have stopped–but I was satisfied that she accepted Chicken Nancy’s invitation.

I was about to ask Chicken Nancy about the picture of Elizabeth Van Vreemdeling, with the cat whiskers, but Professor Tag got his question in first.

“We first thought of coming to see you because we had some funny experiences with Spookhuizen,” he said.

“The Van Vreemdeling mansion,” Chicken Nancy corrected him. “It was never called Spookhuizen, which means ‘haunted house’ when people lived there.”

“The Van Vreemdeling mansion,” Professor Tag said. “It doesn’t seem to behave like a well-behaved house ought to behave.”

“Let me guess,” Chicken Nancy said. “When you tried to approach it, it moved away from you.”

“It did!”

“And it may have even disappeared and reappeared.”

“Only Audrey noticed it doing that,” Professor Tag said.

“Perfectly normal,” Chicken Nancy said. “Nothing to be concerned about.”

“Perfectly normal? For a house to move around, and become invisible?”

“Not normal for a house,” Chicken Nancy said. “If a house behaved like that it would be highly unusual to say the least. But that about which you ask is not a house.”

“Not a house?”

“Not.”

“If not, then what?”

“It is complicated to explain.”

“I am a professor. I can understand anything,” Professor Tag said.

“Of course. But I want the children to understand too, so you will forgive me if I use an example to illustrate.”

“Certainly.”

Chicken Nancy handed Professor Tag an object. “What do you take this to be?” she asked him.

The professor held the object which was flat, about the size of a saucer, and reddish in color. “It is heavy. It is hard. It is smooth.” He dug into his rucksack, and produced a magnifying glass, and looked through it. “It has a complicated pattern of colors, predominantly a dark brownish red, and also lighter reds, touches of yellow, orange, blue-green, and black or very dark brown. Parts of it are very light and slightly translucent. I would take this to be a combination of various minerals, including iron, copper, possibly cobalt, manganese oxides, and quartz. The pattern suggests the structure of vegetation, or the grain of wood. So, I would take this to be a sample of petrified wood.”

“That is correct,” Chicken Nancy said. “I got it in Arizona in 1905. Now, can you tell me what petrified wood is?”

“Yes, I can,” Professor Tag said. “It is wood turned to stone. It is a type of fossil. Wood becomes buried under sediment, because of a flood or some other natural occurrence. The wood is preserved from rotting away because of a lack of oxygen. Mineral-rich water flowing through the sediment deposits minerals in the cells of the wood, and as the cellulose and chemicals which compose the wood decay away, the minerals retain the exact form and appearance it originally had.”

“So, is what you hold in your hand a piece of wood?”

“No, it is a piece of stone.”

“But it has the exact appearance of a piece of wood?”

“Yes.”

“And it is identical to an actual piece of wood which once existed?”

“Certainly.”

“Where is that piece of wood?”

“It is gone. It no longer exists.”

“Now, if instead of handing it to you, I showed you a photograph of it, what would you think it was?”

“Piece of wood.”

“It looks exactly like a piece of wood?”

“Exactly.”

“But it is not wood, not in any way, except for its form and appearance?”

“Are you telling us that Spookhuizen, or the Van Vreemdeling mansion is a petrified house?”

“Sort of. There was a house, but it is gone. Not a bit of it remains. But every bit of it has been replaced with something else,” Chicken Nancy said.

“But not stone,” Professor Tag said.

“Not stone.”

“So what we saw is a sort of fossil house, but not petrified, not turned into stone,” Professor Tag said. “It is turned into something else, but what?”

“What do you know about the house, from your own observation?” Chicken Nancy asked.

“It looks like a house. The girls say they saw the flying saucers, or whatever they are, seem to enter it, or join with it in some way. And it moves about, seemingly in response to things in its vicinity, such as us trying to approach it.”

“What category of thing moves about?” Chicken Nancy asked.

“Living things?”

“Have a Dutch cookie,” Chicken Nancy said.

“It’s alive?” the professor asked, munching a cookie.

“Can you think of a better explanation?” Chicken Nancy asked.

“So, instead of a living or once-living thing becoming a non-living mineral thing as in the process of petrification….” Professor Tag said.

“Assuming mineral things are non-living,” Chicken Nancy said.

“You are suggesting that a non-living thing, such as a house…”

“Assuming houses are non-living.”

“….has changed in every detail to a living thing that has the exact same form and appearance, only it is alive and it can even move around.”

“Yes.”

“Well, as crazy as I am, and have been, man and boy for more than forty years, that is one of the craziest ideas I have ever heard.”

“And yet it has a ring of truth to it, does it not?” Chicken Nancy said.

“I must admit, it does…for some reason,” the professor said.

The professor and Chicken Nancy fell silent. It seemed they were both thinking about the phenomenon of the reverse-petrified house. I was thinking about asking Chicken Nancy about the picture of the cat-whiskered girl, but Weer began to bark, loudly and urgently.

Chicken Nancy sprang to her feet. She reached into an iron kettle and brought out a handful of thick greasy-looking cigars.

“Quick! Everyone, take one of these cheap cigars and light it! Then run outside and puff smoke everywhere!”

“But…but…none of us smoke!” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Chicken Nancy said. “Here are kitchen matches. Just light one end and suck on the other–then blow the smoke out. Blow it everywhere! Hurry! Hurry outside! Get your cigars going! I will explain everything later.”

Something that came as no surprise to me was that it was just about impossible to disobey Chicken Nancy when she told you to do something. I ran outside with the others. The cigar caught fire easily, and I sucked and puffed mouthfuls of smoke. It smelled like something between burning toast and tarpaper, and it tasted awful.

“Blow the smoke everywhere!” Chicken Nancy said. She was puffing a cigar herself. The clearing around the little cottage was filling with clouds of stinking blue smoke. Weer was running in circles, barking wildly.

It wasn’t long before I began to feel sick. Molly was quite green. The professor was slightly green. Even Chicken Nancy was a little greenish.

“I think we can stop now,” she said. “Thanks for your help.”

I was dizzy. Things were swimming. I sat down on the ground.

The professor was leaning against a tree. Molly had a disturbing expression on her face, and disappeared behind a bush.

“You said you would explain,” the professor said. “Will you do that now?”

“Yes,” said Chicken Nancy, who was not looking so well herself. “He can make himself invisible, or nearly invisible. You can see him against a thick fog–or smoke. If we had gotten outside in time, and puffed enough smoke, it would have caused him to show up. Weer is a sort of sensor–he heard him or sensed him–I don’t know how he does it. But apparently he had moved on before we got the smokescreen going.”

“He? Who?” the professor asked.

“The Muffin Man.”

“The Muffin Man?”

“Yes. Do you know the Muffin Man?”

“Do you mean the local legend or local mythical Muffin Man?” Professor Tag asked. “The one who is said to live in Dreary Lane?”

“So you have heard of him,” Chicken Nancy said.

“It is believed he was Matthias Krenzer, the old Dutch Censor,” Professor Tag said. “He stole the censer from the Old Dutch Church.”

“Yes, that is the one.”

“After stealing the censer, he lost his position as censor, and became the town cleanser, cleansing the sidewalks, and the steps of houses.”

“You are indeed a learned fellow,” Chicken Nancy said. “Yes, Matthias Krenzer, the old Dutch censor, who stole the censer, and became an old Dutch cleanser, later opened a small muffinery, and became known as the Muffin Man.”

“And Weer, the dog, is an old Dutch censor and cleanser sensor?” the professor asked.

“What’s a censer?” I asked.

“Thing you burn incense in,” Molly said. “They use them in churches.”

“But, as I understand it, Matthias Krenzer lived a couple hundred years ago.”

“You understand correctly,” Chicken Nancy said.

“And he is still around?”

“It would appear so.”

“That would make him an extremely old person,” I said.

“Or a ghost or something,” Molly said.

“Or something,” Chicken Nancy said. “By the way, Molly, how are you feeling?”

“Pretty sane, I think,” Molly said. “It feels a little strange.”

“Wouldn’t you like to go get your things, and then come back here before it gets dark?” Chicken Nancy asked. “I don’t want you wandering around at night with the Muffin Man in the neighborhood.”

“Okay,” Molly said. “I have a bag and and couple of things in Audrey’s room at the bookshop. I’ll go get them. Audrey, you want to come with me?”

“Before I find out more about the Muffin Man and other things?” I asked.

“I can explain all that later,” Chicken Nancy said. “If you like, you are welcome to come back with Molly, and stay for a while. Be sure to tell the Gleybners where you’ll be.”

“I can help Audrey carry her things,” I said. “Let’s go now.”

“In that case, I will go too,” Professor Tag said. “I want to have my hat blocked. I will come back to hear the explanations another time.”

We said goodbye to Chicken Nancy and Weer, and headed for downtown Poughkeepsie.

We walked back toward downtown Poughkeepsie with Professor Tag.

“So, are you really not crazy any more?” I asked Molly. “Did one cup of Chicken Nancy’s special tea cure you?”

“I think so,” Molly said. “But it’s hard to put into words, or even feelings. I mean, I have been crazy so long, and when you’re crazy you aren’t noticing that you’re crazy all the time–besides, I wasn’t crazy every single minute, as you must have noticed. You know what it’s like? It’s like having forgotten something, and knowing you’ve forgotten something, only you don’t know what it is you’ve forgotten, obviously, because you’ve forgotten it. Only, of course, in this case I am not trying to remember it. So, let’s change the subject.”

“I’m happy for you, of course,” Professor Tag said. “But, speaking for myself, not being crazy would make me sad.”

“I was a little sad when I was crazy, and I’m noticing that I am not sad at all now,” Molly said.

“Then Chicken Nancy did the right thing.”

“What else do you know about the Muffin Man?” I asked the professor.

“Well, mainly I know the song and the game we played as children. We would sing, “Do you know the Muffin Man?” and the adults would steal the muffins from our lunchboxes. Muffins were popular treats when I was a child.”

“And at the end of the game, the adults would give the muffins back,” I said.

“I don’t remember them doing that,” the professor said. “I was under the impression they kept them and ate them. Anyway, I did not know the Muffin Man was still around. We thought he was long dead.”

“Apparently he is still around,” I said.

“And invisible, even,” Molly said. “And sort of evil or dangerous from the way Chicken Nancy was acting.”

“I want to hear all about him,” I said. “And even more, I want to hear about that picture Chicken Nancy has.”

“The one of you,” Molly said.

“It’s not me,” I said. “It’s Elizabeth Van Vreemdeling, Cornelius Van Vreemdeling’s grand-daughter, and a friend of Chicken Nancy’s mother.”

“It’s a picture of you,” Molly said.

“Because of the whiskers?”

“Because of everything,” Molly said. “Professor, you know that picture Chicken Nancy showed us?”

“The one of Audrey?”

“Yes, that one. Of whom is it a portrait?”

“Of whom? Of Audrey of course,” the professor said.

“She said! She plainly said it is a picture of Elizabeth Van Vreemdeling!” I said. “Why and how would she have an old oil painting of me, and why would she tell us it was of someone other than me?”

“You’d have to ask her that,” the professor said. “At the very least there’s a striking similarity. And here we are at the book store, and my goodness, look what a crowd!”

There was quite a crowd. They were milling about in front of the UFO Bookshop, and there were a lot of people inside. I recognized most of them–they were regular customers. But what were they all doing here at once?

Molly and I threaded our way through the press of people and went inside the shop. Mrs. Gleybner saw us and hurried toward us. “Oh, you’re just in time, girls!” she said. “Put on these aprons, and start handing around apple cider and cookies. We have an important guest. He will be arriving any moment.”

We put on the aprons, and carried trays with little paper cups of cider and sugar cookies and offered them to the people. It turned out the important guest was Eland I. Tankwiper. He was an author, and he was coming to the book store to sign copies of his book, _They are Among Us_. It was all about how aliens from space are here on Earth, and living disguised as regular Earth people. Eland I. Tankwiper was a specialist in subjects like space aliens. I had read parts of the book. We had a copy in the store. It claimed that Woodrow Wilson, Johann Sebastian Bach, Walt Disney and Josef Stalin were all residents of other planets who had come to live on Earth. Now there was a whole box of copies of _They are Among Us_, and lots of copies stacked in a pyramid in the window.

The people all applauded when Tankwiper arrived. He had on a beautiful blue suit, and a long flowing moustache. Mr. and Mrs. Gleybner shook hands with him. They stood around for a while, laughing and smiling and chatting. Then Mrs. Gleybner caught sight of me, and motioned for me to come toward her. I knew what was coming.

“We have a surprise for you, Mr. Tankwiper,” Mrs. Gleybner said. “I don’t suppose you thought you would meet a real extraterrestrial in a bookshop here in Poughkeepsie. This is Audrey, our very own space alien.”

Eland I. Tankwiper pulled a pair of horn-rimmed eyeglasses out of his breast pocket and put them on. He peered at me through the glasses, took them off and cleaned them with his handkerchief, and put them on again. Then he put his glasses back in his pocket and said, “I regret to contradict you, Mr. and Mrs. Gleybner, but this young lady is not an extraterrestrial. If you refer to the illustrations in the back of my book showing the various types of space aliens, you will find there is not one that looks like her. She is nothing but a common or garden variety Earth girl with a set of whiskers. Very nice whiskers, to be sure, but she is nothing out of the ordinary.”

The Gleybners were crestfallen. They did their best to hide it, but I could see that Eland I. Tankwiper had spoiled one of their favorite imaginary beliefs. I had long before stopped trying to explain that I was not a space alien–it seemed to make them so happy to believe I was.

I took offense at what Tankwiper had said. First of all, it was impolite of him to disappoint the Gleybners like that. And I didn’t care for his saying I was nothing out of the ordinary. I wondered how many people he had met who came from another plane of existence, not to mention someone extraordinary enough that a wise woman over a hundred years old had an oil painting of someone who looked enough like her that her friends thought it _was_ her.

Mr. Tankwiper sat at a little table, and the people lined up to have their books signed. Molly and I continued to pass round the cider and cookies. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, but I took a dim view of the whole business. When I got a chance I whispered to Mrs. Gleybner, “Just because he wrote a book does not mean he knows everything.”

“Do not worry yourself,” Mrs. Gleybner said. “We have authors here quite often, and we are used to them.”