The Stickmen by Edward Lee Page A

security policeman claimed that the debris was then flown to
Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. As for the remains of the
alien crew, there’s no record of where they were relocated to. One
AFSS pilot claims that the skeletons were later flown to Edwards
Air Force Base in California. Another AFSS pilot claims they were
flown to Carswell Air Force Base in Texas in May of the same year.
But both of these “witnesses,” according to MJ-12 documentation,
were actually ordered to report conflicting testimony. In other
words, these men were actually disinformation officers.”
    As she listened, Lynn kept string at the
photographs of the skeletons. Garret creaked back in his
garage-sale work chair, lighting a cigarette. “The Nellis Case is
the most atypical incident reported. In the past, regarding,
for instance, the Roswell Case, the Kingman Case, the Del Rio Case,
and dozens of others, witnesses have reported extraordinarily
similar observations with regard to crashed vehicles and recovered
bodies.”
    “What do you mean?” Lynn asked, shivering as
she set the photos down.
    “You know. The vehicles have always been
reported to be ‘heel- or crescent-shaped,’ or the old cliché of
‘saucer’ shapes, ‘flying disks,’ and all that. They’re also
typically described as being about the same diameter: twenty-five
to forty feet. And even before Roswell, the bodies have
always been reported with the same extraordinary similarities:
delicate, humanoid figures, four to four-and-half feet tall, with
large, pyriformed heads, tiny mouths and improminent noses.”
    “The traditional description of
science-fiction…”
    “Yes,” Garrett enthused, wreathed in smoke.
“But the Nellis vehicle, and those bodies… completely different.” He got up and showed her several more artistic
renditions based on witness accounts. “And the vehicle too. Does
that look like a flying saucer to you?”
    Lynn’s eyes perused the sketches: the long
black cylinder in the sky with some sort of engine vent at the end
and a glowing line running underneath the fuselage. Windows like
dark trapezoids forward and aft.
    “A ten-foot-wide cylinder, nearly two
hundred feet long,” Garrett emphasized. “No other sighting or crash
has ever reported a vehicle of this configuration. Running from
front to back, on its dorsal side, there was some kind of
illumination element. Every town this thing flew over that night
was lit up like broad daylight. The burned skeletons indicate
bodies—just as atypical. Seven-feet tall, not four, and a
hip/shoulder width about eight-inches.” Garrett felt entranced for
a moment, trying to picture them. “Can you imagine? Can you imagine
what these things looked like when they were alive?”
    “What’s…this?” Lynn asked, looking at yet
another full-framed drawing. The label read: ARTIST’S RENDITION OF
OCCUPANT BASED ON SKELETAL CONFIGURATION/ CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE
PHYSIOLOGICAL SCIENCES UNIT.
    “Pretty gross, huh?” Garrett commented.
    Lynn gulped. The drawing was alarmingly
detailed—an anatomical estimation of what the figure probably
looked like before all its flesh was burned off. Thin sinews of
muscle and veins ran beneath it’s skin.
    The head seemed more like a skin-covered
post. No mouth. No nose. Only a single slit where one would expect
to find two eyes.
    “Good God,” Lynn uttered.
    “One of the pieces of the fourth skeleton
appeared to be the head. But it was like no head you’d ever think
of. It was just a length of bone slightly wider than the limbs, and
it was cracked from the explosion that brought the vehicle down.
The cranial vault was the size of a marble.”
    Next,, Lynn flipped to an actual photograph,
a close-up of the post-like skull. A large chip at the top revealed
the tiny, empty cranial vault. She could see the charred slit that
evidently served for eyes.
    “Now, check out their hands.”
    The next photo: a close up of one of the
“skeleton’s”