Invisible City Read online

  THE JOSHUA FILES

  INVISIBLE CITY

  M. G. HARRIS

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Josh’s Guide to Pronunciation

  Acknowledgments

  For Josie and Lilia

  Any life is made up of a single moment: the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  you have wandered into a conspiracy-theory zone

  This blog belongs to:

  Josh Garcia

  What’s it all about?

  This is a record of my search for the truth behind my father’s death.

  Age:

  Thirteen

  About me:

  I’m the son of a Mexican archaeologist (Dad) and a British history teacher (Mom).

  Favorite bands:

  Green Day, Arctic Monkeys, Nirvana

  Favorite books:

  His Dark Materials

  Favorite sports:

  Capoeira—it’s a Brazilian martial art.

  Um … that’s about it!

  If eight out of ten cat owners prefer M&M’s, what do the other two like?

  They live on a pure diet of Reese’s Pieces.

  Chapter 1

  BLOG ENTRY: WALKING CONTRADICTION

  I need a place where I can get rid of all these things going on in my head. Things you don’t want to talk about. Things your friends, your family don’t want you to talk about.

  So here’s this blog.

  I never used to be like this, mooching around on my own, writing down my deepest, darkest thoughts. It wasn’t even that long ago that it happened—a couple of weeks back, I was just another guy at school. Okay, probably not the smartest or strongest, definitely not the best-looking or most popular, but apart from that I don’t think I had a single complaint in the world.

  The thing was, I didn’t know it. I thought my problems were a big deal.

  Well … I had no idea.

  There was this phone call and people are telling me I need to go home early. So I’m on my skateboard and down the road.

  Never thinking it through. Never guessing that somewhere up the street a storm was brewing. I sailed toward it, practically singing.

  Innocent.

  Stupid.

  It’s capoeira night. Capoeira is this cool Brazilian martial art that I’ve been learning for almost two years. Our teacher, “Mestre” Ricardo, receives a call on his cell phone and calls me out of the roda—a circle we make around the two players who “fight.” He tells me to get my stuff, to go straight home. At the time I don’t really notice, but later I remember something about the look in his eyes.

  Mestre Ricardo is a former soldier. Not an easy guy to worry would be my guess. The way he looks at me is something I’ve never seen from him, never dreamed I’d see: pity.

  I remember every detail about the skateboard ride home, over the bridge, the college towers behind me, big puffs of marshmallow cloud in a blue sky reflected in the lead-paned windows. It’s the last memory I have where I’m really happy.

  I arrive home to find my mother perched on the living room sofa. Jackie from next door, she’s there too, holding Mom’s hand. As soon as Mom stands up, I can tell she’s been crying. Her face is a color closer to gray than her normal rose pink. There’s a smile of affection on her lips—it looks forced. The ends of her hair are wet, like she’s just washed her face. She tries to kiss me, and I shrink from her touch, pull back to look into her eyes.

  She’s actually shaking, won’t even look at me.

  She can’t.

  A chill seeps into my blood. Dread floods through me. A suspicion grows, a tiny seed of horror in the deepest recesses of my mind. It’s such a heart-stopping idea that I can’t even bring myself to take it seriously.

  Mom begins. “Josh, sit down; there’s some bad news, I’m afraid. Terrible, terrible news.”

  She doesn’t get any further, though; she’s overwhelmed by tears. Her palms go up to her face, cover her eyes. She sinks back down onto the sofa. Jackie takes hold of both my hands, which feel rough, cold, and huge in her small fingers.

  Between Mom’s sobs I make out, “The Cessna plane your dad was renting in Mexico. It went down. And … Josh, I’m so sorry. So sorry, but … he’s dead.”

  Then it’s like I’m disconnected from the moment. Bodily I’m still there, holding hands with my middle-aged neighbor, nodding slightly. But somewhere deep inside I begin a scream of rage and disbelief. I can hear that Jackie is talking, but she seems distant, remote. Mom’s face is nothing but a blur as I struggle to grasp what I’m hearing.

  Then the screams in my head finally catch up with my mouth. It’s as though I’m possessed. I start shouting: “What? What?!”

  Both women try to hug me, but I shake them off. I can’t take it in. Then I’m punching the living room door, yelling at them, “No, no, no, no, no!” For an instant I catch the fear in Mom’s eyes at my sudden violence.

  But within seconds I’ve stopped, already exhausted. I feel sick. My legs actually buckle slightly underneath me. I slump onto the couch. When I glance up, I notice a shimmering haze around Mom and Jackie. I’m shocked, trembling, numb. Mom grabs hold of me, holds on tight, but all I can think is how her arms aren’t long enough for a strong hug. And I wonder: How would it have been if Mom, not Dad, had died? Would Dad’s arms be long enough? At the thought of losing Mom too, I burst into tears.

  Yet there’s this hard little kernel of me that’s still holding steady. Still able to look on the bright side.

  Wait a minute … what if it isn’t him?

  I’m full of questions. How can they be sure it’s my dad? Maybe Dad changed his mind about hiring that plane. Maybe it’s some other guy.

  “No, Josh, no,” Mom murmurs. “The detective who came around—Detective Barratt—says the Mexican police are sure it’s him. Your dad hadn’t been seen for three days since he’d rented this plane.”

  I shake my head, thinking furiously. Trying to find any loophole. “No. Not Dad. Just ‘cause he’s missing … he could be camping near some ruins. They can’t be sure without proof. Have they got proof? What is it they do—they look at dental records, don’t they? Yeah, I’ve seen it a million times in movies. I bet the dental records will show it’s not my dad.”

  “I’m sorry, dear,” Jackie explains kindly. “It wasn’t that simple. Wish it was, sweetie.”

  “What … why not?”

  Mom holds my hand. They exchange a look. Mom nods at Jackie. Very slightly.

  “Your dad’s plane hit a tree. A branch.
Would have shot through the windshield at God knows what speed. He had no chance, Josh. No chance at all.”

  “What?! Just tell me,” I insist through my tears. “What aren’t you telling me?”

  Jackie straightens up; her voice steels, becomes faint, distant, cold.

  “He was decapitated,” she says. “In the plane crash. There is no head. Just your poor dad’s burned, broken body.”

  I take a few moments to absorb that. I’m already beginning to join Jackie in that remote place.

  That’s where I need to be now. Somewhere else. Anywhere.

  Death would have been instantaneous, she’s quick to assure me. Better hope so. The thought of something like that happening slowly is unbearable.

  There was no sign of foul play. No severed fuel lines, nothing suspicious. The best guess from the Mexican police is that he fell asleep at the controls, lost altitude, and plunged to his doom.

  My emotions start to shut down. Movements become purely mechanical. Would I like some tea? I’m nodding, asking for milk and two sugars.

  Like it matters.

  I wish I could stop the TV scenes that begin to play through my head. Two sympathetic policemen at the door, the phone call from the hospital, the phone call from abroad. On TV, I’ve seen bad news delivered lots of ways. Now it’s my turn.

  Jackie seems to know just what to do. She has nerve; in the midst of our little storm, she holds firm. She’s all gentle Irish humor as she makes us hot buttered toast. She serves us thick slices with mugs of sweet, milky tea. She turns on the TV. We watch a whole movie, but later I don’t remember a single detail. I keep glancing at Mom, wondering what we do now. Am I supposed to hug her? Or what?

  I know what Dad would say: Son, you take care of your mother, you got that?

  Mom’s eyes look glazed, staring. After my initial outburst, things are calm. We take it quietly then.

  Later, when I go to bed, I get to thinking. I can’t stop wondering about something Jackie said, something I hardly noticed at the time.

  So far, the Mexican police haven’t actually found his head. The rest of his body was burned beyond recognition. They are sure of two things: it was the plane Dr. Andres Garcia rented, and his luggage was found thrown clear of the crash.

  That’s where it begins, that’s the root of the matter. Call it what you like: doubt, suspicion, a hunch.

  I don’t believe it. Not “can’t.” I’m pretty sure that I could if only it felt true. But something doesn’t feel right. Dad has only been flying for three years. I know he’s still cautious, plans every detail.

  There’s no way he’d fall asleep at the controls.

  There has to have been some horrendous, monumental mistake.

  BLOG ENTRY: THE JOSHUA FILES

  So here’s the thing—everyone thinks I’m crazy.

  Well, it’s weird. When people believe you’re going a bit cuckoo, they don’t actually use words like cuckoo, crazy, or even psycho. They say things like normal grief response and therapy.

  What’s really baffling my mom and her friends is that I’m not even getting “crazy” right. Maybe she’d prefer it if I were crying all the time, or just sitting staring into space. But it’s like there’s a sign taped to my forehead: Does not fit the textbooks.

  All I’m doing is looking at the circumstances of this plane crash and asking a few questions that don’t seem to interest anyone else.

  1. Dad told Mom and me that he was going to Cancuén in Guatemala. Some Maya king was murdered there hundreds of years ago. So why was Dad’s plane found hundreds of miles from where he’d rented it and hundreds of miles from Cancuén?

  2. Why did the local newspaper not have a single witness who saw the plane come down?

  3. Why did that same local newspaper carry eyewitness reports of a major UFO sighting close to where they said his plane had crashed?

  Seems to me, you get some information like that, you should ask some serious questions. Maybe wonder about the truth of statements like “Dr. Andres Garcia crashed his Cessna in the jungle of southern Mexico and suffered fatal injuries on impact.”

  Why am I the only one wondering about this? Seems totally normal to me. But the more I go on, the more Mom thinks I’m losing it.

  What is it with UFOs, anyway? Why are you automtically a head case just because you say you’ve seen a UFO? So many people nowadays have—it’s not hundreds of people; it’s hundreds of thousands. From all backgrounds, all ages, all types of braininess. UFO sightings are rampant; you can’t ignore something that so many people see.

  I took those three facts about my dad’s plane crash and I put them together like this: What if that body belongs to someone else? What if Dad wasn’t in the crash at all? What if he was abducted by the UFOs? What if he isn’t dead, just missing?

  Mom’s first reaction, I have to say, was very reasonable. She said, “Okay. Let’s assume that there really was a UFO. What about the body in the plane? What about the luggage? No one else was reported missing, just your father.” Then she gave me a big hug and said, “I understand, sweetheart; you don’t want this to be true. Neither do I. It’s unthinkable, unbearable.” Then she slowly began to cry, and it was me who had to comfort her.

  Which I can do, because now I’m not so sure that he’s dead.

  Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

  Hey Josh. Us UFO-philes should stick together. I saw a UFO once, you know. It was at night; my dad was driving me home after a party and there it was, for just a few seconds, hovering in a field. Dad said all he saw were the lights of an airplane. But he didn’t get a good look ’cause he was driving. It hovered all right, then swung into the air and shot off. Planes don’t do that—at least, no plane I ever saw did. If you say you think your dad was abducted, then I believe you.

  Reply

  Thanks, TopShopPrincess. (I’m guessing you’re an Arctic Monkeys fan, right?) It’s good to know there’s one person out there who believes me. The guys at school think it’s a joke. I only mentioned it once and I never will again.

  Comment (2) from TopShopPrincess

  Arctic Monkeys rule!

  BLOG ENTRY: AEROMEXICO PILOT FILMS UFOS IN CAMPECHE!

  I’ve been spending a lot of my time looking through UFO sighting reports. It’s amazing what you can find on the Web. People I might once have called “nuts,” logging hours online posting information, rumors, opinions. I can’t get enough of it. If I keep looking, I might find the one report that will lead me to Dad. It’s not unheard of. People often get abducted in groups. Years later, they find each other again. No connection in their normal lives, but they know each other, somehow. I’m not talking about déjà vu. This is real. Total strangers who know stuff about each other that they couldn’t know if they hadn’t met.

  If Dad was taken along with anyone else, there might be hope.

  We heard about the plane crash a few days back. I’ve been tracking rumors in the UFO boards. Now they’ve hit the mainstream news.

  So I’m not just going on the words of some random UFO fans. A commercial airline pilot with Aeromexico is one of my key witnesses!

  Aeromexico Pilot Films “UFOs”

  In the late evening of June 15, a commercial airline pilot flying Aeromexico Flight 231 filmed six unidentified flying objects in the skies over southern Campeche state, a Defense Department spokesman confirmed.

  In a sighting that bears an uncanny resemblance to the widely reported event of March 2004—in which pilots of the Mexican air force filmed eleven UFOs—a videotape made widely available to the news media shows the bright objects, some sharp points of light and others like large headlights, moving rapidly in what appears to be a late-evening sky.

  Comment (1) from TopShopPrincess

  I looked up the news stories you blogged. Awesome! I can’t believe you’ve actually got airline pilots backing you up on this one.

  Reply

  For all the good it does! Remember, I’m working against total skepticism here. Mom’s
argument, basically, goes like this:

  1. The plane was found on June nineteenth. The corpse was at least three days old, but it could have been older. So we don’t know for sure that the crash was on the fifteenth, the day the UFOs were sighted.

  2. People are always spotting UFOs in Mexico. The stories amount to nothing.

  3. If the body wasn’t Dad’s, then whose was it? No one else was reported missing.

  4. Dad could have planned another trip, not just to central Guatemala, but to somewhere in Campeche, Mexico. There are lots of Mayan ruins in Campeche.

  Comment (2) from TopShopPrincess

  Hmm. Well … don’t get mad at me, but your mom does have a point.

  Reply

  Maybe so, TopShopPrincess, but she’s wrong about UFOs. They haven’t only been around since the 1940s. They go way back. There are ancient Sanskrit manuscripts from India that talk about flyingsaucer-type objects. Ancient Sumerian clay tablets 4,000 years old with carvings of flying machines. UFOs—they’re ancient history.

  Chapter 2

  While I’m reading TopShopPrincess’s response to my blog post, I notice my mother standing in the doorway. She’s wearing her nightgown—again. She’s scarcely been out of the house since we heard about Dad. I wonder if she’ll ever get back to teaching history to those rich kids at the college.

  “Mom, you have to look at this,” I say, waving her over. “A pilot for Aeromexico spotted those UFOs too. June fifteenth. Almost the the same day they think Dad’s plane crashed. What if they got it wrong; what if his plane went down on the fifteenth?”

  Despite herself, Mom can’t resist looking. She stands, reading over my shoulder as I hold my breath. Is this it? Finally, the point at which she takes me seriously?

  After a few minutes, she says in a tired voice, “Read the bottom line of the report, Josh. ‘Mexico has a long history of UFO sightings, most of which are dismissed by scientists as space debris, missiles, weather balloons, natural weather phenomena, or hoaxes.’”