Signal

by Cynthia DeFelice

  “Okay.”

  “Sorry, Owen. I’ll get home just as soon as I can. Call if you need anything.”

  “Okay, Dad. See you.”

  I feed Josie, nuke the chicken, and sit down in front of the TV. I barely even notice what’s on, because I keep thinking about the bloody guy who was hiding in the cornfield. I try to imagine what happened to him and why he didn’t want me to see him. It’s odd. It’s mysterious. It’s fun to have something new to think about.

  The next morning, Dad has already left for work by the time I get up and have a quick breakfast. Josie picks up one of my running shoes, drops it at my feet, and wags her tail expectantly. I get on my bike and head for the trail. Josie trots along by my front wheel, on the side away from the traffic on the highway. I never taught her this; she just figured it out on her own.

  I park my bike at the trailhead and lock it, and Josie and I start our run. We’re heading back to the place where I heard the bloody guy breathing. I’m curious, excited—and scared.

  I look around with more attention than usual, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary on the trail this morning. The sun is shining through the mist that’s rising off the bushes and trees, and it’s so peaceful and pretty that the panic and fear I felt yesterday seem ridiculous.

  But when I get to the meadow near the shale slope, my feet start to falter. Some of that fear and panic sets back in. I’m also feeling kind of ashamed that I ran away. Maybe the guy actually did need help, but was afraid of me for some reason.

  The path through the meadow is faintly visible, although most of the grass has perked up. I follow it to the bottom of the hill, and climb.

  At the top, I stand for a while looking around and catching my breath. The cornfield is as huge as I remember, stretching endlessly in a sea of sameness that could hide an army. No sense looking there.

  I check out the house, which is clearly deserted but doesn’t seem as if it’s been left for too long. It doesn’t have that haunted house look that places get when they’ve been neglected for years, with drooping shutters, peeling paint, broken windows, and the smell of rot and decay. This place looks unlived in, but like you could live in it if you wanted to and you felt like doing some fixing up. Josie is sniffing around the foundation, probably hunting for mice.

  I walk closer, and then climb three wooden steps up to the porch. My hand reaches out to try the doorknob. If it’s locked, I’ll leave; there’s no way I’m going to break in.

  The knob turns, and I see the lock is broken. I push the door open and step into the kitchen. It smells hot and musty inside, but not bad. There’s a table with four chairs around it, and a refrigerator, stove, and sink. Exactly what you’d expect to see. I turn the cold water handle, and nothing comes out. The counters are bare but dusty. There’s a cupboard door hanging open and I can see the shelves inside are empty.

  I walk across the floor. Josie follows me, her toenails clicking on the cracked linoleum. We go through an arched opening that leads to what I figure is the living room. There’s a couch with some of the stuffing coming out of the cushions, a fireplace, and a rickety table that looks like it would collapse if you put anything heavier than a napkin on it.

  The house feels so still and empty I have the odd sensation that it’s holding its breath until I leave. But I’m not ready to go quite yet. I peek into a room that looks like it was an office, and into a bathroom. In the office I see a couple of broken pencil stubs and some scraps of paper; in the bathroom, a box of tissues and a spray bottle of cleaning stuff lying on its side. Nothing very exciting, and I feel my interest waning.

  But there is a stairway to a second floor, and it seems dumb to leave without going up there and checking it out, although going upstairs in a stranger’s house seems like more of an invasion of privacy than poking around downstairs. Or at least that’s what I think as I climb the first couple steps. Josie stays at the bottom, whining at me beseechingly, but when I keep going she decides to come along and races past me.

  There are two rooms and another bathroom on the second floor. The first room has flowered wallpaper and holds a metal bed frame with a grungy-looking mattress on it, and a dresser, its empty drawers open. The bathroom has an old-fashioned-looking tub with a plastic shower curtain, and some sort of frilly, lacy thing over the toilet tank. That cracks me up. As if nobody’s going to notice there’s a toilet under it.

  Josie runs ahead of me and starts to bark. I hear the dancing sound her paws make when she wiggles her whole body in delight at seeing a new person. Then I hear a muffled scream and I feel like my stomach just jumped up into my throat. I stop walking. Part of me wants to blow out of there as fast as possible, but another part draws me forward and into the other bedroom. The bloody guy is sitting up, looking at me.

  Except the bloody guy is a girl.

  3

  SHE’S A GIRL ABOUT MY AGE, I REALIZE AFTER I recover from my shock and surprise. She’s sitting up on the mattress, clutching what’s left of a torn white T-shirt around her. She has the oddest, greenest, most glittery eyes I’ve ever seen, and they glare at me with a mixture of fear and defiance. She’s wearing dirty shorts. A makeshift bandage tied around her head has slipped out of place and now hangs crookedly over her right eye. There’s a bad cut there, and more cuts on her arms and legs, which are streaked with dirt and dried blood. Her light brown hair is tangled and caked with blood above the cut.

  Her lips look pale and cracked and dry. My own mouth and throat feel dry just looking at her.

  Maybe she feels as stunned as I do, because we both stay right where we are, staring, like we’re playing some weird game of freeze tag. Finally, Josie breaks the spell, looking back and forth from the girl to me and barking as if she’s urging us to get on with it, whatever it is we’re doing.

  I have no idea what we’re doing, or what she’s doing, anyway, sleeping all by herself in a deserted house with cuts on her head, arms, and legs. At last I manage to ask, “What happened to you?”

  She keeps looking at me but doesn’t reply, almost as if that question is too big to even start answering. Or maybe her throat is too dry. So I say the next thing that comes to my mind. “You want some water?”

  There’s a long drawn-out silence, and I’m starting to wonder if the injury to her head has made her stupid, or if she’s deaf or mute or something, or if maybe she doesn’t understand English. But then she nods, just slightly.

  “Okay, I’ll go get some.” I head—fast—straight to the stairs and down and out the door, Josie at my heels.

  My mind is racing, thinking about water. I could go to the creek by the trail to get some, but I don’t have a container to put it in and besides, even though people swim in the creek, including me, I’m not sure the water is safe to actually drink. Of course, Josie drinks it every day. This doesn’t prove anything, though, because in general the more unsanitary something is the better Josie likes it.

  I decide the only thing to do is go back to the trailhead where I left my bike. I keep a bottle of water in the clip on the handlebar stem for slugging down at the end of my run. As I race along the path, I wonder about the girl. I wonder why I didn’t ask her more questions, and I guess it was because there was something so odd and unsettling about her and her glittery eyes and her blood-streaked appearance.

  When I reach my bike I get on and head back up the trail. I don’t try to ride through the meadow, but stay on the trail until I get close to the hill that leads up to the farmhouse. By then, Josie is panting from running beside me, so I let her take a long drink from the stream. Then I stash the bike in some bushes near the hill and begin to climb. It’s harder with one hand holding the bottle, and I finally stick it in the waistband of my shorts.

  When I get to the top and look at the house, I have the feeling that the girl won’t be there when I go in. But she’s waiting in the kitchen. I catch a glimpse of her peering from behind the door before she opens it. I hand her the water bottle and I watch her throat as she
throws back her head and gulps greedily until it’s empty.

  After that, it’s like neither one of us knows what to do. Her eyes flicker past me toward the door, which I’ve left open. She licks her dry lips. She says, “You came back,” and her voice is all croaky and hoarse.

  There doesn’t seem to be anything to say to that. I mean, here I am.

  She clears her throat and says, “You’re not going to tell, are you.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  Tell who what? I wonder. But I shake my head no.

  This seems to satisfy her, because she nods and says, “And you’ll help me.”

  “I got water,” I point out, in case she hadn’t noticed I’d already helped.

  “With everything,” she says patiently.

  Again, it doesn’t really sound like a question. And, even though I don’t know what I’m agreeing to, I nod.

  “This is an excellent place,” she says.

  Well, yeah, I think, for a deserted house. “What do you mean? You’re not going to stay here, are you?”

  “Temporarily.”

  “How long?”

  “Until they come for me.” She looks at Josie, who is sniffing around aimlessly, and smiles. “They like dogs.”

  Now I’m really starting to wonder if getting conked on the head messed up her mind. Who’s coming? And so what if they like dogs?

  Then she says, “I’m Campion.”

  I stare at her, wondering yet again what in the world she’s talking about. “Camping?” I repeat. “Okay. I guess this is kind of like camping out, except you’re camping in.”

  She doesn’t even smile at my dumb joke. “Campion. It’s my name.”

  “Oh,” I say, feeling foolish. “First or last?”

  “First,” she says and looks at me expectantly. I realize this would be the time for me to identify myself, too. “Owen McGuire,” I say, adding, “I never heard of anybody named Campion before.”

  “I was named for a wildflower,” she says. “But there are flowers with worse names. I could have been called Humped Bladderwort or Hairy Vetch.”

  I laugh, surprised, and she gives me a funny little smile in return. Her whole face changes when she smiles, and she doesn’t look quite so strange and fierce.

  “Red campion is an alien species,” she says, in a voice like she’s reading from a book, “alien meaning ‘from someplace else, but managing to survive here.’ ” She looks at me with her eyebrows raised, as if this is important information, but I don’t get what the big deal is.

  “Campion thrives on roadsides and in waste places,” she says. Then she gives me that odd, quick smile again. “Which pretty much says it all. Anyway, you can call me Cam.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “I need you to bring me food and drinks,” she says. “I’m not a picky eater. Anything is fine. A towel. Soap, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. A comb. Or a brush— doesn’t matter. A couple of T-shirts. Do you have any shorts or pants that would fit me? Or, if not, maybe a belt or some rope or something in case they’re too big?”

  “I guess,” I say. I’m feeling a little bit annoyed. I mean, sure, I want to help her, and I can see she needs some different clothes. But she’s pretty bossy, if you ask me. Does she expect me to be her delivery boy? What’s next, I wonder, hot pizza?

  “It got cold last night,” she says. “Could you bring a blanket and maybe a sweatshirt?”

  “Sure,” I say, “but hold on just a second. How about first-aid stuff? Actually, shouldn’t you go to the hospital?”

  “Absolutely not,” she says firmly. “No hospitals.”

  “I know you can’t see yourself, but you look”—I hesitate, because it seems kind of rude, but then I say it anyway—“awful.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it looks worse than it is,” she says breezily. “These are just scratches on my arms and legs.”

  They look like a lot more than scratches to me. Before I can say anything, she goes on. “And head wounds always bleed a lot. It has something to do with all the blood vessels or veins or something.”

  She sounds pretty sure of herself. I have so many questions, I hardly know where to begin. “You said somebody’s coming. Who?”

  “My parents,” she says calmly. “But not for a few days.”

  “Why a few days?”

  “I’ve got to let them know where I am.”

  “So come to my house and call them. Or—here.” I reach into my pocket for the phone. “You can use this.” Then I remember it didn’t work on the trail. When I turn it on, I see there’s no service here, either.

  She shakes her head patiently. “It doesn’t work that way.”

  I’m really confused now. “Why not? Where are they?”

  She looks up at me from under the makeshift bandage tied around her head, and those green eyes of hers bore into mine. “At home,” she says.

  “Where’s that?” I ask, trying not to sound as impatient as I feel.

  “Up there,” she says, pointing to the sky. “On my home planet.” Her face glows and her green eyes glitter. “You can’t even imagine how wonderful it is there.”

  4

  FOR A MINUTE WE JUST STARE AT EACH OTHER, mY mind is racing. After all my daydreaming about meeting an alien, can it actually be happening?

  I stare at Cam. She doesn’t look very … alien. Whatever that means. Except for those amazing green eyes.

  She’s got to be kidding, right?

  The silence starts to grow uncomfortable, and I give a shaky laugh and say, “You mean—? Wait. Really? You’re saying you’re actually from another planet?”

  “Yeah,” she says matter-of-factly. “We were here on an exploratory mission. I was supposed to stay in the ship—”

  I interrupt. “You’re talking about a spaceship? What did it look like?”

  She sighs impatiently. “Like a spaceship.”

  “A flying saucer?” I persist.

  “Technology on my planet is so advanced, it’s hard to explain,” she says.

  “Oh,” I say, disappointed. I want to tell her to at least try to explain it, but she keeps talking.

  “I was supposed to stay in the ship, but I was curious, so I got out to see what was going on. Then jeeps full of soldiers with guns drove up, and the ship had to make a really fast emergency exit. I got left behind. So now I need to signal my parents so they can find me when they come back.”

  I take a seat in one of the chairs at the kitchen table to think about this. I can picture it all happening. But I have a question. “If the soldiers saw the spaceship, how come it wasn’t all over the news?”

  She shrugs.

  I think about it, then answer my own question. “I bet the government covered it up!” I exclaim. “Like they did in Roswell, New Mexico.”

  Cam looks puzzled.

  “You probably know all about that,” I say.

  She shakes her head.

  “A spaceship crashed in New Mexico in 1947, and the military covered it up. They said it was just a weather balloon. But lots of people—including me, by the way—don’t believe that for a second. There were witnesses who—”

  Cam sits down suddenly, saying, “I feel dizzy. I’m really hungry.”

  “Oh!” I say. “Yeah, you must be. When did you eat last, anyway?”

  She thinks for a moment. “Saturday morning.”

  “Wow.” I’m amazed. “That’s two days ago! I can’t imagine going one day without eating.” I think about it and amend my position. “Not even half a day. So, okay, you need food right away. I’ll go get some. But when I come back, will you tell me—”

  “Whatever you want to know,” she says.

  I get up and head to the door. I’m about to leave when she says softly, “It’s no accident that you’re the one who found me.”

  “Huh?” I say. “What do you mean?”

  Those green eyes look into mine. “Lots of people wouldn’t believe me,” she says.

  I don’t know what to say. I wan
t to believe her. It’s certainly possible. I mean, why would she make up something like that? And I have to admit there’s something about her that’s different from other girls I know, and it’s not just her eyes.

  I mumble that I’d better get going, and Josie and I head for the trail. I pedal at a medium speed so Josie can keep up, my mind going round and round about my incredible conversation with Cam.

  My thoughts are interrupted by the arrival of two familiar vans, pulling into one of the trailhead parking areas. They belong to a man and woman I call the Dog People. They seem to come here almost as often as Josie and I do. They park, open the doors, and let out a pack of dogs of all shapes and sizes. I’m not talking about two or three dogs, I mean a pack. Who has that many dogs?

  The lady has streaky gray, tangled hair sticking out from under a battered brown hat. She’s dressed, as usual, in a baggy shirt, jeans, and knee-high rubber boots. The man has shaggy hair, too, and a full beard, and when he smiles, which he does now, you can see his gnarly-looking teeth.

  You’d think they’d be sick of dogs, but the man and woman both call a big hello to Josie. They know her name because it’s sewn right into her collar. They always have Milk-Bones in their pockets, and Josie knows it. She runs right up to the woman and sits. The woman laughs and gives her a treat.

  I smile and call, “Thanks!” But I keep on pedaling, because I know from experience how wild their dogs are when they hit the trail. Sure enough, the pack is racing everywhere, barking and wrestling with one another and with Josie. The noise is deafening. Some of them follow Josie and me for a while, completely ignoring the Dog People, who are both calling, “Popeye! Lulu! Jasper! Simone! Come!”

  Finally, the dogs give up and go back, and I ride along, wondering as I always do why anybody would want to own so many dogs. That reminds me of Campion’s strange comment that her alien parents “like dogs,” and I smile. She should meet these people!

  At home, I raid the kitchen, bathroom, and my closet. Everything fits into the big backpack Dad gave me last Christmas, along with a tent and sleeping bag, for a camping trip that never happened.