by James Sperl
CHAPTER 1
Matilda was on edge this morning. Her back hooves tapped a continuous nervous rhythm while Andrew worked her teats. He paused several times to offer her a reassuring pat, stroking the coarse hair along her neck.
“What is it, girl?” he had asked more than once. “What’s got you so riled?”
He sensed the goat’s anxiety upon stepping into the barn, her unusual behavior matched by Billie and Sasha, Andrew’s two other milk goats, both of which tamped equally skittish patterns on the raw wood floor of the shelter.
Maybe it was the weather. The morning was atypical in its stillness: no wind breathed through the dense pines surrounding the property; no threat of a storm loomed on any horizon. Andrew chalked up the goats’ distress to meteorological blandness, though for him, the morning was as pitch perfect as one could ask.
He stopped by the chicken coop on his way back to the house to chill the milk and collected three eggs from among the eight hens caged there. Like the goats, their behavior was peculiar. Instead of rushing the gate as they usually did upon his approach—the promise of morning feed an unspoken rally call—the hens remained hunkered down in their respective places.
“What’s going on with everyone today?” Andrew said.
He scooped some feed and tossed it into the yard. Surely the crunch of food in the metal cup followed by the arm-swing scatter into the coop would bring the birds to life, but the hens only raised their heads lackadaisically before looking away.
Andrew regarded his animals with growing concern. Were they getting sick? Had a virus found its way onto his homestead? He hoped a veterinary call wasn’t in his near future. The last thing he wanted to deal with was an outbreak. Starting for the house, he vowed to check on the animals throughout the day periodically. It was the best he could do today. It was Thursday, after all.
Thursday.
More specifically, it was the third Thursday of the month. He hated third Thursdays. Because third Thursdays meant inventory, which Andrew despised. In fact, of all the chores he attended to on the property, delving into the snore fest of managing his food supply ranked dead last on a list of things he desired to accomplish. Nothing was particularly difficult about it. It was just a tedious, mind-numbing job, albeit a necessary one.
Each month he evaluated the expiration dates on every item in his stores. That meant consulting the log and determining which items were approaching the end of their shelf life, then removing them and rotating the stock to accommodate replacements. His record-keeping system was painless thanks to an elaborate spreadsheet he had developed many moons ago on a PC that utilized an outdated operating system. He always printed a copy in the event of a power failure, but this often felt like overkill since he had a Kohler 38,000-Watt backup generator to restore juice in case of an emergency. Still, it was better to be safe than screwed.
Inventory tedium, however, accounted for only a fraction of his disdain for the task. It was what he had to do following the clearing of canned and dry goods reaching their maturity that raised the hackles on his neck: go into town.
With a population of roughly 15,000 people, Pastora was as close to a small town with big-city amenities as he was likely to find. Situated on the outskirts of Oregon’s Umpqua National Forest, the town was merciful miles from any major metropolis. Eugene, with a population of 150,000 some-odd folks, was the nearest “big” city at just over a hundred miles away. All things considered, Pastora was a good compromise, though its size didn’t mean Andrew enjoyed driving into it any more. It just meant the lower citizenship made him hate it a little less.
Within a fair driving distance—but not so close that people from town would wander onto this property—the quaint little burg provided him with more than enough to maintain his fringe existence. He’d figured out the best time of the day to avoid people at the local hardware store, which was between 2:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m., or the Golden Hour, as he called it. There were times when he’d had to drive to the Home Depot in Roseburg to fill out an order, but those trips were few and far between. Banking he could do online, as well as pay bills and manage his Internet/phone plan—all from the comfort of his sofa via a WiFi-connected laptop. Once every two months Treeline Gas came out to fill his liquid propane tank, and a delivery service dropped off chicken feed, goat food, and chaffhaye within two days after he had placed an online order. Sometimes weeks passed before Andrew saw another human being, which was how he liked it. After all, that was the whole point.
But it was the food, the blessed food, that always forced the potential for social interaction.
Something was always expiring, and on rare occasions, whole sections of foodstuffs had to be removed and restocked. Just three months ago he was alarmed to discover that twenty-three canned fruit stores had approaching expiration dates—he’d grown sick of peaches that month—not to mention the assortment of beans, vegetables, rice, flours, and soups that had to be purged and replaced.
He did the best he could to supplement. The garden provided a bountiful variety of fresh produce, and he’d become a master at jarring what he could preserve. But all it would take was a couple of nights of off-season frost or a rainstorm of Noah-like proportions to undo all the work he had put into his raised-bed food producer. After that, it was back to square one. A greenhouse was on his near-future to-do list.
So, once a month, the dreaded trip to town.
The smattering of grocery markets offered up ample selections of food, and like the hardware store, he had determined the best hour of the day to minimize encounters with fellow shoppers. He did run into the occasional Chatty Cathy at checkout, but for the most part, he was able to get what he needed and stay to himself.
He supposed he had earned a reputation. Words like “hermit,” “recluse,” and “loner nutjob” had all undoubtedly been uttered at one point or another about him. But he was okay with it. Rumors had wonderful ways of creating space where simple truth could not. He considered dispelling people’s misconceptions about him, but what would be the point in that? Remaining enigmatic served him better.
Continuing to the house, Andrew stopped at the junction box for the solar panel array mounted on the roof. He brushed away a thick spiderweb from the upper corner, its eight-legged architect nowhere in sight.
He sighed heavily. Town. He always had to gear himself up for the trip. But it wasn’t all bad. When he did have to go, he made sure to include an element of joy during his visit, and Aunt Mae’s provided just that. Their breakfast was top notch, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t warm his heart every time that friendly young waitress handed him his to-go bag. Even now, the thought of seeing her twitched his lips into a smile.
First, though, inventory.
Andrew clomped up the stone steps to the front porch, fresh milk sloshing from the pail and splashing the deck.
That’s when the sky erupted.
CHAPTER 2
Clarissa peered through crusty lids at her alarm clock: 5:20 a.m.
Jesus, she thought, why is it going off now? I don’t have to be up for another hour.
She reached for the snooze bar and pressed it then rolled over in anticipation of silence, but the sound persisted. Turning back, she glared at the glowing red numbers on the LCD. She pressed the bar again. Still, the grating sound continued. Propping herself onto an elbow, she snatched up the alarm clock and turned it over clumsily in her hands. The jarring shift from sleep to consciousness was often disorienting, cloudy judgment a prominent aftereffect. But even after Clarissa's head cleared, things still didn't make sense.
The sound wasn’t coming from her alarm clock.
She sat up and stared into the dark room. She cocked her head and angled her neck, trying to get a read on the noise’s origin. It was unlike
anything she had ever heard. It sounded enormous, cavernous, as if something large and metal were dragged across the floor of an empty concrete room the size of Oregon.
Slipping out of bed, she tiptoed to the front door of her apartment and stepped onto its narrow balcony. Crisp air kissed her skin, as she sought out the noise. It was even louder out here. By her best reckoning, it came from the sky, the sound seeming to emanate from every direction all at once. The deafening screech made her wince and caused her shoulders to involuntarily rise. She hugged herself.
Glancing around, she discovered she wasn’t the only one to have been jarred from a restful sleep by the unsettling noise. Bleary-eyed residents of Willow Brook peppered neighboring balconies and first-floor doorways. Clarissa’s eyes met those of Angie Calhoun in the early morning darkness. A mother of one, Angie cradled herself inside her terrycloth bathrobe, her four-year-old son, Malcolm, apparently still asleep inside.
Lucky kid.
“You got any idea what that is?” Angie called from the balcony across from Clarissa’s.
Clarissa shook her head and scanned the empty sky. “I don’t have the first clue.”
Angie held herself even tighter than she had been. “Whatever it is, it’s giving me the willies.”
“I hear you.”
A college kid named Geoff exited his apartment on the first floor. He locked his door and strode purposefully for the parking lot, having given the pinking heavens only a cursory glance.
“What’d you do?” Clarissa said to him above the noise. “Break the sky?”
Geoff searched the air and found Clarissa looking down at him. He flashed a handsome smile that made Clarissa wish she attended an institution of higher learning. Even in the gloom of predawn, she recognized how attractive he was, the faint light no match for his angular jaw and perfectly tousled hair.
She was sure she was quite the vision to him, what with her puffy face (thank you, alcohol!) and sleepy, squinched eyes. Her shoulder-length bedhead ’do didn’t help matters either. The unruly mane gradated from bland brown roots to a deep chocolate at the tips. She was fortunate the darkness concealed its need for coloring; the low light could only do so much to hide the disaster that was her makeup. She was certain her eyes and mouth were smudged with yesterday’s attempts to bolster beauty, the previous evening’s revelry having distracted her from removing it before going to bed. Geoff had seen her without makeup before and had even commented once how the lack of eyeshadow allowed her milk-brown eyes to pop. Even so, the thought of going sans makeup mortified her—who needs to see the first signs of age etched along my brows and at the corners of my mouth? Who wants to look at discolored half-moons of exhaustion beneath my eyes?—but given her current state, she would have preferred it over the Juliet-as-tramp vibe currently on display.
“What’re you doing up?” Geoff said with an amused frown, though he continued walking.
Clarissa slumped her shoulders and gestured to the sky with open palms. “You’re kidding, right?”
“What, that?” he said. “That’s just God sharpening his knives, didn’t you know?”
Clarissa scowled then grinned. “What does that mean?”
Geoff shrugged. “I don’t know, man. It’s five in the morning. It’s too early to come up with witty comebacks.”
Clarissa giggled, less from what he said than the fact that he hadn’t slowed or broken step since leaving his apartment.
“You’re like a machine, you know that? Always working or off to someplace. Why don’t you take a day off once and awhile?”
“Sure,” Geoff began, turning and backpedaling without losing a beat, “then can I send you my next tuition statement?”
Clarissa flicked her hand at him. “Be gone, workaholic.”
Geoff flashed that winning smile again then faced forward. He waved over his shoulder as he crossed to the parking lot, the darkness swallowing him.
Clarissa watched him for several seconds before looking over at Angie, who had followed him with her eyes as well. She turned to Clarissa and cupped a hand around her mouth.
“If I were ten years younger,” she whispered hoarsely.
“Preach, sister.”
Clarissa and Angie shared ear-to-ear smiles, but only Angie got to enjoy hers fully.
“What is that?” said a groggy male voice behind Clarissa. A pair of hands grabbed her shoulders tenderly then slipped to her waist where they encircled her.
Glenn. Or was it Ben?
Glenn or Ben squeezed her, sneaking in close to smell her hair and deliver a gentle peck on the neck. Clarissa pinched her eyes shut until she felt his chin come to rest on her shoulder.
“That’s the strangest fucking thing I’ve ever heard,” said Glenn or Ben.
“Yeah,” Clarissa said, but that’s all she could add.
Glenn or Ben hugged her tighter, and suddenly she felt a growing lump against her ass that wasn’t there three seconds ago.
“You want to go back inside?” he said.
Yes, she thought, and lock the door behind me and take the longest, hottest shower of my life.
“I wish,” she lied, turning to face him. His breath reeked horribly of alcohol, stale tobacco, and poor dental hygiene. “I’ve got to be at work soon.”
“Oh, okay. Do you want to hook up later tonight for a dr—”
“What is that?” she said, intentionally pulling from him—air!—and staring at the sky. “It’s so strange. Are they doing something over at the rail yard?”
“Yeah, uh, I don’t know. It’s fucked up. That’s for sure.”
Clarissa’s shift didn’t start for another two hours, but she would happily begin it in the next five minutes wearing only her panties if it would get her away from Glenn or Ben. She had made her fair share of inadvisable choices when it came to combing Pastora’s limited drinking establishments and clubs, but she thought Glenn or Ben might hold the title for the most pathetic. Brash, smelly, and not particularly good-looking once the lights were up, he was the exact opposite of what she looked for in a man. Why she still clung to the notion that she would find Mr. Right hunched over a pint of Fat Tire in some half-lit bar was beyond her. Whatever. Desperate times. Sometimes a hunter had to settle for a coyote pelt when the coveted lion remained elusive.
Now, however, she wanted to leave. Actually, she wanted him to leave. But short of flat out telling Glenn or Ben that last night was a mistake of epic proportions, and all she wanted to do was scrub her body with a Brillo pad to make it all go away, it wasn’t likely to happen. So lies would have to suffice. It didn’t mean she had to be a bitch about it, though.
“You want me to brew up some coffee before you go?” she said through a discreet sideways glance.
“Uh, sure,” Glenn or Ben said. He loosed his grip around her waist and moved up beside her to grab the balcony rail. “Man, that sound is intense. I should grab my iPhone and record it.”
“Good idea. One can never have too many YouTube videos.”
“Right?”
Glenn or Ben trotted away. Clarissa exhaled and glimpsed Angie again. Her neighbor shrugged apathetically, a sort of whaddya-gonna-do-girls-get-horny-too shoulder lift. She followed this by sticking out a thumb and rocking her wrist—thumbs up? thumbs down?—her eyebrows raised into inquiring-minds-want-to-know arcs.
Clarissa delivered two emphatic thumbs down.
Angie pressed a hand to her mouth and suppressed a burst of rollicking laughter, which made Clarissa smile. If she couldn’t laugh at herself, what did she have? She was disgraced and more than a little embarrassed, but she would live to fight another day.
She eyed the sky a final time before she turned to go back inside. The sound hadn’t diminished in the slightest since she stepped foot onto the balcony, and it was still just as unsettling. In half an hour, Glenn or Ben would be gone. She hoped he wasn’t the only thing to go away.
CHAPTER 3
Aunt Mae’s was booming. Normally, Clarissa’s seven-tabl
e section would only be half full at 7:00 a.m. on a Thursday morning, but today folks were queued up outside the door to get into the moderately popular eatery. The reason was obvious: The Sound.
By the time it finally stopped, three minutes and forty-one seconds had passed. Everyone was talking about it. Clarissa moved from table to table, the conversations taking place at each one seeming to be a continuation of the table that preceded it. What was that strange noise? Did you hear that sound this morning? What do you think that horrible racket was? She had replied “I don’t know” so many times in response to these and other customer queries, she lost count.
She wasn’t surprised by the surge in patronage. Aunt Mae’s often served as a restaurant-slash-town hall when the city needed to make sense of something its citizens couldn’t quite wrap their heads around. In 2003, it had been a midnight wildfire that crept up on a housing development, sweeping through a good third of it before the wind forced it to change direction. Seven people died as a result of what had ultimately been an unattended campfire. Clarissa also recalled how the restaurant filled in 2011 after a drunk driver failed to heed Wilson Elementary’s crossing guard, the woman’s bright red stop sign having gone unnoticed as the driver plowed through the intersection at Green and Olive. The guard and two third-graders were killed, with three other students having suffered severe injuries. Martin Rayson, who shattered his leg in the accident, still comes in with his parents from time to time. Clarissa has never seen him without crutches.
For better or worse, Aunt Mae’s had always acted as a lightning rod, a place where the townsfolk of Pastora converged to help vet tragedy, though there were other places too. Smokey’s Café was almost never without a full house, and Tom & Ron’s, a vegan establishment on the far side of town, had become so popular in recent years it was nearly impossible to get a table there. Each corner of the city had its own version of a community watering hole. For Clarissa and the folks packing themselves into the snug dining room, it was Aunt Mae’s.