“Trust your instincts. You know. Tell him what I am.”
Beverly closed her eyes. Would Jayce forgive her after she told him what she believed that caretaker to be? Would he turn his back on her and call off their marriage? Would he abandon her to those stones? How many times had Jayce told her that the world no longer had the space for superstition following the arrival of the aliens? Beverly knew Jayce could forgive her of so many trespasses and faults, but she was afraid that Jayce couldn’t forgive her fear. Beverly knew that loathing, instead of love, would grow within Jayce if she failed to be courageous and strong. But she could not keep the answer to Simon’s nature bottled inside of her.
“That man is a ghost, Jayce.”
Anger twisted Jayce’s face. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
Beverly pointed at Simon’s boots. “His feet don’t touch the ground. The grass doesn’t move when he stomps across it. He hasn’t cut a single weed no matter how many times he’s swung that sickle blade. He’s a haunt. He’s a shade. He’s a ghost, Jayce.”
“There are no such things, Bev.”
Simon shook his head. “I wish you were right, son. You can’t know how tired I am. I’m not even in that tomb. I’m not even buried in this cemetery. My body rests far away from this place. They didn’t want to give anyone the chance to find the truth by digging down deep. I was no rifleman, no tall-tale folk hero. I never shot any flying saucer. The only thing I shot was a defensive, helpless thing, and I haven’t slept since.”
Beverly turned away from Jayce rather than look into his face and realize that he would never be convinced another world might exist beyond the one represented by his Starwatch uniform. She wished she could show Jayce the error of his conviction, wished she could show him that not all the superstitions humankind clutched before the coming of the aliens deserved to be cast aside like empty tin cans and crumpled, plastic water bottles. Perhaps what remained of her world was too barren, too brown, too old and too decrepit to ever satisfy Beverly’s spirit, and so maybe her soul yearned for the presence of graveyard ghosts, for floating haunts to remind her of a better time when, as a girl, she was allowed the comfort of such fantasies.
Simon sighed as his eyes drifted upwards towards his statue perched atop that tomb’s column. “I wish I looked as handsome as that rifleman for one day of my lifetime. I wish I was ever as healthy and handsome. The folks responsible for this memorial created such a story when they planted all these stones and installed all these light projectors. This place has never been a cemetery, because they never buried anyone from New Bethany beneath this soil. They couldn’t risk the chance of any of those bones rising to the surface to whisper about what really happened the night that alien fell out of the sky. So they buried the residents of New Bethany elsewhere, and they didn’t think there would be anyone or anything left to tell it like it really was.”
Jayce’s eyes burned at Simon. “Why would Starwatch lie? You lived in the time before the aliens tried taking our planet. You must remember how it was. You have to remember how hate crowded the world. You can’t deny what Starwatch has done for us. It’s unfair and ungrateful to accuse Starwatch of deception after they’ve worked so hard to bring us together.”
Simon agreed. “The Starwatch certainly united us in their conspiracy. They tied us together with myth. Don’t think that I don’t know how it really was. I lived my entire life in New Bethany, and I knew all the people owning the names on these stones before the holograms came to tell new tales. I watched that alien fall from the sky in a plume of fire. I watched the woods burn. I saw how no one lifted a finger to help that alien after those boys dragged it behind their truck bumper al the way to town. Oh, I know how the world really was.
“And I remember most how that creature cried. It didn’t just cry because of its pain. It cried to get through our thick skulls and plant something in our brains. That alien’s big, black eyes stared at us, and I looked back at them when everyone else turned away. I looked too long, and that alien entered my head. It didn’t take it a moment to find the words it needed to explain to me why it came to our wretched world. It breaks my heart to think what it told me. It showed me how we might cleanse our skies and clean our waters. It showed me how we might replenish the fields. Only I knew it could never be. Everyone else in New Bethany refused to return that alien’s gaze because they couldn’t accept the truth of what fell out of the stars, because the truth wasn’t like anything they learned in Sunday school.”
Tears watered in the caretaker’s crooked, old eyes. “I didn’t turn away, though I wish I had. I couldn’t turn my back on the creature while it wailed in my head. I looked into that alien’s eyes and saw how we could build starships of our own and how we too could step into the stars. Though it suffered in the street, that alien still reached out to offer us salvation.”
Jayce hissed. “They came to choke us, old man! They came to steal from us! They came to destroy us!”
Simon’s crooked shoulders slumped. “They did not. The alien showed me such wonders while at the same time it cried within my head. But I knew none of those things would ever come to be because none of my neighbors could face what the heavens truly held. I knew they would never look into that alien’s eyes as I had, just as I knew they would never lift a finger to ease that creature’s suffering. I like to think that I did what I did to release that alien from its pain, but I often worry I did what I did because I couldn’t accept that the alien in the street was so smart that it made all our problems seem so simple. I never lifted my shotgun’s barrel into the sky, never raised my weapon like that hologram claims. I only painted my weapon at the chest of that poor creature suffering in the street before I pulled the trigger to chase the wailing out of my head. I still hear that wailing all the same.”
“You’re a liar! You’re nothing more than some alien agent projected into this cemetery, old man!” Jayce gripped Beverly’s hand and pulled her away from the caretaker.
Simon took a breath. “We left the alien in the street. No one wanted to touch it. Everyone was too afraid of catching some extraterrestrial sickness, and so we all hurried to hide in our homes, leaving that alien to whatever vultures and coyotes were brave enough to nibble at that carrion.
“So that alien wasn’t at all hidden from the scientists and the soldiers who arrived soon after we locked ourselves into our homes. I wonder what they must’ve thought when they came upon that creature’s broken body in our street. Did the scientists instantly hate us for murdering that alien before they had a chance to learn anything from it? Did the soldiers immediately despise us for so foolishly killing our planet’s first alien emissary? Did they fear we might’ve started a war none of their generals would know how to fight by killing that star creature?
“They hated us so badly that they broke open our doors and forced us to walk in a silent procession past that alien’s body to make us look on what we did. They loaded us onto windowless trucks and drove us for hours to an empty field. And there, those soldiers gunned us all down and covered our bodies in a mass grave before returning to New Bethany to build this memorial of fiction and lies. Perhaps they hoped that they might appease any alien that might come to our world wanting revenge by sacrificing our lives. Perhaps they hoped this memorial would pull mankind together by creating a new threat upon which everyone could refocus their hate. Perhaps those weren’t the motives at all for placing all those headstones on this hill.
The alien is the only body buried beneath this memorial. I hope that creature rests peacefully beneath the simple headstone at the back of all of these rows, because I doubt anyone’s spirit from New Bethany does. I haven’t yet convinced a soul visiting this cemetery to dig up that little coffin they buried in the ground and look at the truth hidden in that box. Maybe this cemetery will release me once that truth comes to the surface. I can’t guess what else would. And maybe I’ve judged the two of you incorrectly. Maybe one of you will follow me to that small alien’s grave.”
Simon turn
ed his back upon his guests and floated away, likely towards that small headstone beneath which some unworldly creature rested. Jayce glared at the undertaker’s back, but Beverly sighed for the sadness that lowered upon her shoulders. She was surprised that her feet hesitated a heartbeat before following her fiancé back to his dented vehicle. Pulling her seatbelt over her shoulder, she wondered what would become of that ghost doomed to swing a sickle blade though it could cut no weed. She wondered how she so easily accepted the idea that Simon was a shade instead of an intruding hologram as Jayce believed. She closed her eyes, and though she thought only a moment passed, the empty countryside again scrolled through her vision when the breeze streaming through the passenger window woke her.
Jayce squeezed her knee. “I hope that memorial didn’t give you nightmares. I promised you that we wouldn’t see any ghosts.”
“Is that what we saw?”
Jayce chuckled. “Of course not. Whoever’s trying to corrupt that memorial probably wants you to think it’s some
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