by Jack Beal
I’m still not convinced. Anybody who knows Willy could have guessed he’d say something like that.
He must read the skepticism on my face because he hastily adds, “Or how about how you came to my window knocking in our code six years after I’d last seen you? And then you told me you saw that UFO everybody wonders about, and you’d show me?”
My throat plummets into my stomach. Either Willy caved and told this guy everything, or else… I throw caution to the wind. “That’s why I’m here! You told me we’d go to the site first thing in the morning…”
Willy finishes my sentence, “because it was too dark. And if Old Man Alder caught us creeping around on his ranch, we’d be dead meat!”
“It’s morning now! So, let’s go!”
The little boat sitting atop Willy’s lip droops suddenly. “Don’t pretend you think I took a growth spurt overnight…”
Searching for an explanation, my eyes dart anxiously around the room. The kitchen’s as colorful as a candy shop. The refrigerator, oven and all the other appliances look like they’ve been dipped in shiny red sugar or shaped out of pearly green taffy. Only, they were all pure white last night.
I swallow down the lump in my throat. “How long has it been?”
He scratches his chin, which is poked with little red hairs. I wonder if things hadn’t gone all wonky if maybe I’d have a beard today, too. “The last time you came knocking at the downstairs window, it was the 6th of July 1953.”
I touch my chin, but its smooth as a baby’s bottom. “And today?” I’m growing frantic. “What’s the date?”
Willy picks up the newspaper sitting on the kitchen counter and tosses it over to me nonchalantly.
The paper crumples under my panicky fingers as I fold back to the front page. My jaw drops. The date reads July 7, 1959.
“Six years, Robbie.”
“…and a day,” I whisper below my breath. The same age I was when I found the UFO. “You’ll still take me, right?”
“Sure. But don’t get your hopes up. I went out to the Alder Ranch six years ago. There was nothing there to find.”
One disappointed saddle shoe after another, I follow Willy into the garage. The bike’s tires are lacking a bit of air, but I figure it’ll still be a lot faster than walking. Plus, if we each take turns pedaling and sitting on the handlebars, we’ll avoid getting too tired.
But Willy bypasses the old red Schwinn. As he pulls out a set of keys and unlocks the faded blue car, my eyes grow wide.
“You coming or not?”
I hop eagerly into the passenger seat. “You need to go to the end of the road and hang a right.”
“I know the way.”
Convertible top down, wind in our hair, we zoom down the 247. When we get to the shabby path hidden between a few ramshackle cornstalks, Willy takes a sharp turn.
“What are you doing? Trying to get us killed? If Old Man Alder sees us driving through his corn field…”
But Willy lets out a bellowing laugh. “Yeah, you wouldn’t know. Old Man Alder abandoned the ranch years ago.”
Willy steers the car slowly into the field. As we drive carefully forward, we leave a flattened path of stalks behind us. I can’t help but think of the story Grandmom used to tell me about Mother Corn, a beautiful deity with long, silky hair. I tell Willy as much.
“Mother Corn was alone on the Earth. There were no men or women, just animals. So, one day, she decided to have children. But her children were many, and they were greedy. They killed and ate all the animals, and then came to cry to their mother that they were still hungry. So Mother Corn told her children to kill her and bury her bones in the ground. Nine months later, when the children returned to the place where their mother had been lain, the land was covered with corn plants. That is why the corn has its silky hair.”
“That’s pretty creepy. Why do you think people make up stories like that?”
I shrug. I guess I never asked myself the question.
“Maybe it’s a way for them to relate to what’s going on around them. Maybe people make up myths to help them through the hard times. To help them understand.”
His words ring uncomfortably true. I want to ask him how he got so wise, but something grabs my attention. A small hillock inside a clearing comes into view.
“This is it! This is the place!” When the car brakes, I race through the weedy field and over to the hill. Then I stop. There’s nothing but a round, rugged recess where the flying saucer should be. “It was here…”
“Well, it sure isn’t anymore.”
The memory of those suffocating waves of smoke is so vivid that I’m suddenly gasping for air. I retrace the steps I strode over twelve years ago. Passing the place the two hotrods had been parked, I plod to the exact spot I found the saucer leaning up on its side.
“But it’s got to be here! There’s got to be some kind of proof!”
“Doubt it.”
“What do you mean?”
“First off, it’s been too long. If anything had been left, the government would have cleaned it up by now. And second…” his voice trails.
“Second what? You don’t believe me, do you?”
Willy shrugs. “Honestly, I don’t know what to believe. None of this should be possible,” he says, pacing. “But, if you ask me, the only way you could have disappeared for so long without changing…is if that UFO took you away.”
My eyes bulge. It’s not that the thought hasn’t already crossed my mind. It’s just that I wasn’t expecting hearing it out loud.
“Either way, there’s nothing here. Come on. Let’s go,” he sighs, motioning to the car.
But Willy’s wrong. Instead of turning toward the car, I approach the place the flying saucer once was. Maybe he can’t sense the change in energy, but I can. The air surrounding the knoll is excited, tense. I can feel it.
Remembering the soft, skin-like metal, I breathe it into life. The silhouette of the flying saucer materializes like a hologram before us.
Willy gasps. Then he recoils, taking cover behind his car.
But I’m not afraid. Charging toward the glistening reflection, I raise my hand toward it. Aching to feel that indescribable texture again, I hold my breath and press my palm into its warmth. But my hand passes straight through.
The image slowly reshapes and shifts until it’s been restructured into the form of a little boy. A little boy holding a shovel.
“I can’t believe it!” Willy has come back out from behind the car. In his eyes, my image is reflected twice: two identical boys holding matching shovels. “I think…I think you need to dig here.”
Wresting the shovel from my back, I plunge it into the hard ground. As the hole becomes deeper, the pile of dirt beside it grows. Higher and higher until the mound of earth kisses the quicksilver sky.
When my shovel strikes something solid, I stop and peer down into the darkness. The cavity bursts with light and the thrashing of wings. I’m sent stumbling backward, just as a murder of cawing crows wing their way into the sky.
Seven, I count before they dwindle to black dots on the horizon. Returning to my digging, strings of forgotten lyrics croon out from my lips.
One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold…
When I’ve loosened up the dirt around the object enough, I excavate it and dust it off.
“What is it?” Willy creaks.
“Seven for secrets never to be told…”
As I trace the mysterious symbols, the brick spreads and flattens. The ancient hieroglyphics dance across the hoary beam until it’s taken on a whole different appearance. Different, yet familiar. My chest tightens. What else was I hoping to find coming back here?
Willy’s talking, but his voice is trampled by all these other voices ringing out of nowhere. Intersecting and overlapping, the syllables collide jarringly. But despite the racket, I manage to decrypt a voice. “It is time for your journey to begin,” it beckons.
Willy’s eyes bulge wider. “You’re not considering going, are you? Don’t you know how dangerous it is?”
We meet eyes. “I’ll be fine,” I try to say, but the words won’t come.
The voice pulsates again. “It’s time.”
Between my hands, the tablet trembles faster and faster until I am shaking uncontrollably. With a final, mighty tremor, it lights up, bathing the world in lean, silver streams. Everything else falls away. I can no longer see the hole, or the shovel, or the pile of dirt reaching up to the heavens. It drowns out the crows’ song and Willy’s pleas. Only the tablet’s beckoning can be heard. “Embark for the mission!”
Palms sweaty, I hold the metallic slate up in the air. Visions of the adventures that lie ahead sway enticingly around me. I smile, allowing my words to echo into infinity. “I accept!”
But the tumultuous quaking doesn’t fall away. Instead, it becomes more violent. I try to focus, but the pounding in my head won’t let me. My eyes begin jerking around like a couple of wild marbles in their sockets, leaving my vision strained and blurred. I try to stay calm, but the ringing in my ears keeps growing louder and louder. Wave after wave of nausea crashes over me.
Until.
“All that we see or seem, is but a dream within a dream.”
~Edgar Allan Poe
SIX
THE MINUTE HAND TURNS
The stringent smell of iodine sailing precipitously up into my nostrils draws me out of the void. Everything around me appears still and quiet. Except for a high-pitched sound breaking through the calm every few seconds with a slow, steady beep.
My eyes dart frantically back and forth, but all I can see is a deep, sickly red that’s blotting everything out. I attempt opening my eyelids, but they’re glued firmly shut. Fear sets in.
What’s going on? My arms feel like they’ve been fashioned out of lead bars. The same goes for my legs. I urge my muscles to move, but my body simply lays there. As a thick coat of sweat drenches my forehead, the beeping accelerates.
My apprehension does the same. I try remembering where I am, but I can’t recall a thing. It’s like my mind’s been wiped clean. All I know is I’m laying here in the darkness, unable to see, unable to move.
Breathe, I tell myself. But even that proves complicated. My chest tightens and flexes, but the air doesn’t come. It’s like my lungs have shriveled up to the size of lima beans. I feel like I’m going to suffocate. The beeping speeds up.
The pungent odor is suddenly all around me. It’s so thick I can taste it. My body shudders rudely, inducing my gag reflexes. I’m going to asphyxiate.
Panic surges in.
Stagnant streams slide listlessly down my cheeks, their moisture loosening the crust sealing my eyelids shut. As I wrench my eyes apart, the tangled lashes untangle painfully. I wince.
“Eh-verything oh-kay there?” The voice is spread out and flat, as if the person is talking through a fastened jaw.
I jolt. Who’s there? But the words get snagged in my sandpaper throat.
As the light gradually filters in, everything around me becomes bright and blurry. I blink back the tears, but my vision doesn’t clear.
I squint, trying to make out the speaker, but it’s hopeless. With all this light, the person hovering over me looks like a shadow that’s lost all its borders. The darkness is leaking out of the lines, like crayon marks on a kid’s coloring page.
The image launches a pang inside of me. It’s something… important. Something I promised myself to remember. Only, now I can’t.
“What’s a-matter, Robbie?”
“Who’s there?” I drive the words out. They’re feeble and scratchy and don’t sound like my own.
“It’s me, don’t cha know!” The voice chatters as an uncomfortable tightness issues through my bicep. Then, as quick as it started, the pressure releases. “Everything’s loohkin’ alright,” the voice chirps, the shadow making for the doorway.
“What are you talking about? Nothing’s alright!” I gasp. “Where am I? Why can’t I see? Why can’t I move?”
The dark form recedes. There’s a click and a fssst, followed by the fwoosh of a broken suction. As a rush of glacial air eddies around me, something chilly grazes my nose and the skin around my ears. I don’t wear glasses! I protest regardless of the fact that everything’s grown clear.
But if you think my being able to see again comes as a relief, you’re wrong.
I’m lying on a bed in the center of a clear box with tubes spilling in every direction. Some are dangling idly to the ground. Others are attached to me. The whole box is bathing in this violet-colored light that flickers every few second, letting strobes of white and red in.
The shadowy figure is a woman, probably in her forties. She’s wearing matching periwinkle scrubs and a pair of white shoes that squeaks each time she takes a step. She looks like she hasn’t slept in weeks.
“Sorry I’m late!” a new voice screeches, her freckled face splotching red. A plastic badge hangs crookedly from her button-down shirt. Student Nurse. “I was helping Mr. Marcy with his lunch.”
“It’s fine, Madison. But try being on time from now on.” She hands the girl the cardboard clipboard. Then she turns to me. “Madison is shadowing me all week. Is that okay with you, Robbie?”
“I don’t care who’s around as long as somebody tells me what’s going on! Where am I? What am I doing here?”
“Please try to calm down, Robbie. The stress isn’t good for you, and you know it.” When I manage to fake a composed demeanor, she continues. “You’re at the Mayo Clinic, where we’ve been taking good care of you for the past…” she glances at a dry erase board fixed to the wall before adding, “nearly three weeks. I’m Andrea, your scheduled nurse for the day. And this is Maddie, who’s studying in our School of Medicine.” The dark-haired girl offers a quick wave.
“But why am I here?”
“That’s exactly what we’ve been working so hard to figure out. You’ve been here in the ICU since the attack. We’re all working day and night to make sure…”
A sickly feeling scratches in the hollow of my recollection. Attack? What kind of attack? But before I can put a finger on it, it slides silently away.
Andrea’s deep in explanation. “…has left you extremely weak. That’s why you’re having trouble moving. It’d be better off if you’d stop trying. You need to rest if you want to feel better. As soon as the doctor gets your results in, he’ll be able to tell you more.”
“And what the hell is this thing around me?” It’s the first time I recall cursing.
“It’s an incubator, nothing to be afraid of. We use them all the time to help control temperature and administer different therapies.” She turns to Maddie. “Would you like to try explaining?”
“Um, yeah. It’s, well, different wavelengths of light help you to heal differently.” Andrea’s nod encourages her to continue. “And it says here you’re being treated with Infrared, Red, and Protected Ultraviolet light for Osteogenesis…”
The head nurse cuts in, “Great job, Madison.” Then she turns to me, “The doctor will be around shortly. Like I said, he’ll be able
to answer your questions in more detail. But everything here has a schedule to follow, so if you want him to come in and talk to you, this clipboard needs to be hanging on that door. Which means we’ve got to get the ball rolling.”
I nod.
Andrea approaches the incubator and turns a knob which suspends the flashing lights. “First thing to check is the eyes,” she states matter-of-factly. “The sclera still has a blue tint. You can write that in the chart. Next, we take the vitals…”
Madison scratches feverishly across the pack of papers as Andrea administers the rest of the exam. When she’s finished, she instructs the student nurse to hook the clipboard onto the back of the door. “Is there anything we can do to make you more comfortable while you’re waiting for the doctor to be in? Maybe put on some music? Or TV?”
I must admit that a bit of television would be a much-appreciated diversion, right now.
As Madison clicks the remote control, a news program comes to life on a flat screen hinged to the top of the far wall. Sentences go whizzing by distractingly on a black band at the bottom of the screen. The screen zooms in on a woman who sounds like she’s drunk one too many coffees this morning. “…the company risks shutdown if they refuse to comply with government regulations. Sometimes the result of burning too bright is burning out.”
Eyes wide with worry, Andrea snatches the remote from Maddie’s hand and switches the channel. This time, the screen is split in two. My eyes dart dizzily from one scene to the next. On the left, a series of explosions. On the right, a black background bearing a thick red stamp: Breaking News. As the imprint fades away, a man takes its place. “As you know, several nuclear reactors have been sent to the red planet and put into place by our rovers. This morning, a chain of explosions has been detected by our intelligence systems. While this information has come as a great shock, we have no cause to believe there has been any foul play at this point.”
My eyes are glued to the screen. First there’s a moving image of a lab full of scientists gathered around one of the complex cylindrical units. Then a map is projected across the screen, marked with dozens of little red x’s to show the reactors’ positions. Finally, a woman with hair the color of ebony drifts into view. “Thank you, Dr. Brown. Can you tell us what these developments mean for next year’s mission?”