The Spaceship Next Door

by Gene Doucette

  Beth, hopefully, had something on it.

  “How long ago was that?” Ed asked.

  “I heard the story the day you and I met.”

  “I mean, when did your friend see this?”

  “Not sure. And he isn’t my friend. I could ask him if I run into him, or we can call Rodney and see if he knows. Might come off as kind of weird though, dialing him up to ask that.”

  “You can’t look up Rick?”

  “Like I said, he isn’t my friend. And he’s not easy to track down.”

  Ed smiled. “Annie Collins, I thought you were friends with everyone in this town.”

  “I said I know everyone in this town. I don’t happen to like all of them. He is one such person. But, I can find him if you really want to talk.”

  “It’s okay. Probably not important enough to go through the trouble. It’s only that he might have the earliest reported sighting. I thought we might want to establish a timeline.”

  “Yeah, well I’m about 50% not sold on the zombie theory right now. And I’m not even supposed to be the adult in this partnership. I’m gonna go say hey to Beth. Maybe come up with a vampire angle instead, while I’m gone.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  Beth stepped around the counter when she approached, put down a coffee urn, and gave Annie a big hug.

  “You snuck in here without even a hello first!” Beth said, releasing Annie only to smack her on the arm. “I was so worried! When I heard about Carol…”

  “She’s fine. She’ll be fine, I mean. I talked to her three times yesterday; she’s in good spirits. Everything positive all the time, you know how she is.”

  “Where are you staying? Not home alone, right? I know it’s not with your reporter friend, I would have heard about that.”

  “Stop it.”

  “Look, any time you want to stay with us, I mean you know my parents already want to adopt you… I mean…”

  Beth blushed furiously.

  “Not that you need adopting,” Beth said quickly. “I mean Carol…!”

  “It’s fine, oh my God calm down. I’m staying with Violet, but I’ll let you know if I need any help, don’t worry.”

  “Oh, okay. Have I met Violet?”

  “I think probably. She’s a neighbor. Hey, so we were supposed to talk to a few folks down at city hall this morning, but it sounds like they’re closed. Is something up?”

  “I don’t think so, I think people are just sick.”

  “Like, collectively?”

  “No, but there’s something going around. It’s not like they have a lot of hugely important votes going on anyway.”

  This was true. Local government’s central function was to make sure the trash was collected and the streets were plowed in the winter. Aside from that, they planned the occasional festival and put up commemorative plaques. The first year after the ship, the council was extremely important and extremely busy, because every day there were five new businesses looking for real estate, and there were liquor licenses and building permits needed everywhere. Not a lot had changed since that year, though.

  “Okay, thanks. Hey, we have some folks to talk up down at the mill, can we leave the car around back?”

  “Sure, nobody’ll care.”

  “No towing, today?”

  “No need, it’s Tuesday. Nobody’s around.”

  “Thank you, girl. We’ll talk later.”

  Annie returned to the table.

  “I guess city hall called in sick today,” she said.

  “What, all of them?”

  Annie shrugged. “It’s a part time job, they probably didn’t have anything cool to vote on, and Beth said there’s something going around.”

  “What kind of something?”

  “I dunno. Want me to ask? Maybe it’s a zombie plague.”

  “You’re not going to drop that any time soon, are you?”

  “Looks like no.”

  14

  Bang the Drum Slowly

  A drum sat in the corner of Desmond Hollis’s office, on a small stage, in a glass case. The drum was—depending on who was asked—either a smaller replica of the original, or the original itself, miraculously preserved for over three hundred years.

  The latter claim was within the realm of the possible, only because the Hollis family could trace its bloodline back to the original Sorrowers, which was a statement pretty much nobody else in town could make. It gave the claim some legitimacy.

  However, much like the spaceship up the road, most people thought the drum would be bigger.

  The story was, when Josiah Sorrow’s followers picked this spot in which to settle (or Josiah did, when he decided to die nearby) they inadvertently wandered onto ground that was considered either sacred or cursed by five different regional Native American tribes.

  There were enough competing historical claims on this particular detail that it was effectively impossible to tease out the real story. In some stories, it was the site of a great war between the tribes and was subsequently considered haunted by the natives. In another, there was no war, but the crops always failed, so it was cursed. A third had the tribes keeping away because of the wrath of an angry local god, although the expression of this wrath was unspecified. The most benign version held that the weather in this part of the valley was simply too harsh for people who lived lives which didn’t include modern winter gear. This one had merit for being the least condescending toward the belief systems of the regional native Americans—who were in most respects, quite practical—if it did somewhat discount the ingenuity of a people who lived year-round in New England.

  What all iterations of the story did have was the drum.

  The drum used to rest on a tree stump in the middle of a field a short walk from the shore of the river. That field was now a parking lot and the stump was long gone, but a plaque was erected—by the same committee that funded Josiah’s mural—and that plaque was still standing at the edge of Main in front of the parking lot.

  As it went (in most of the stories) when there was an inter-tribal dispute, any one of the elders from any of the tribes could travel to the stump and bang on the drum, which would signal all of the tribes that a meeting was required. The other elders would show up shortly after, and the matter would be resolved peacefully, with no bloodshed, due to the sacred/cursed nature of the land on which the drum sat. It sounded like a great way to avoid a war in an era before telephones and treaty organizations.

  Given this description it was reasonable to assume the drum was larger than the one in Desmond’s office, because the real thing had to be something big enough to be heard throughout the valley. This was a very modern idea, though, because in truth, Main Street ran through a midpoint in a natural concavity. If one took away all of the buildings and the cars somehow, added some more trees and got rid of the parking lot, it was possible that the sound of a drum could carry pretty far if one faced in the correct direction. Even a small one.

  In the early going, it was to the Sorrowers’ benefit that the locals—who surely would have otherwise slain them for their encroachment—were afraid to shed blood on the ground they’d elected to call home. Sorrowers were also considered cursed people by a couple of the tribes, not specifically because of where they were living but because when they arrived the first thing they did was shed blood (Josiah’s) in a place where that was taboo.

  The tribes mostly left them alone, then, and figured it was okay so long as none of the Sorrowers did something stupid, like touch the drum.

  Then came winter.

  Josiah’s cult had some experience with winter, certainly. All of them were born and raised in the Americas, and they’d toughed out two prior winters isolated from the larger settler populations to the southeast. But half their summer was spent in canoes, which left almost no time for preparing the sorts of things a community needed to survive a winter in this climate: shelter, adequate provisions, and so on. They also had no horses and hardly any weapons,
and half of them were dying from what turned out to be syphilis. (The Sorrowers called the disease the God’s Wrath Plague, and in this instance that was probably accurate.)

  One evening in the first winter, with a quarter of their number already dead, a young man decided, on his own, to trudge through a foot of newly fallen snow to the drum, which he banged furiously for an hour. His name was Oliver Tempest Hollis.

  Young Hollis likely had no idea what the drum was for and just wanted something to hit, although later it would be said this was a divinely directed action, and who was to say?

  Assuming his goal was to alert the neighbors that the tribe of white men residing on cursed soil was about to perish, he succeeded. Within two days multiple representatives of each of the five tribes arrived at the stump.

  Pretty much nothing was known about what happened in the conversation that followed, between the elders and their clansmen and Oliver Tempest Hollis. As the banger of the drum, the natives took Oliver to be the man who spoke for all of the Sorrowers, and so he did. He had no authority to do so, but the deal he struck ended up being one that saved the lives of everyone else living in Sorrow Falls, so the others had little choice but to roll with it.

  One thing that came out of the talk was that young Hollis was promised to an age-appropriate woman from one of the tribes. This was in exchange for food, clothing, and shelter, and a long-term co-existence between the Sorrowers and the Natives, so the implication was that Oliver Tempest Hollis was one hell of a catch.

  This also may have been true, in that the elders appeared to have considered him a great man to survive on cursed land and to bang the drum without being struck dead by their gods for this impertinence.

  There was an accompanying Disney version of this tale that held that the woman Oliver wed—her name was Aquena in most of the texts, and the daughter of one of the elders—was there the day they found him at the drum, and they fell in love on sight.

  This was probably not true. But it was a neat idea, and neat ideas almost always made for better stories.

  * * *

  Hollis’s office took up a third of the top floor of the mill, which made it about level with Main Street out of one window. Another window presented a terrific view of the Connecticut River, and the sudden disappearance of said river over Sorrow Falls.

  Annie had been in the office a half-dozen times, and liked to imagine the view from there wasn’t all that dissimilar to the last one Josiah had.

  “I’m glad we finally had a chance to talk,” Desmond was saying to Ed as everyone took their seats.

  Desmond Hollis was the youngest of the three brothers. Desmond, Richard and Louis, and their sister Katherine, were the children of Allan Hollis and his wife June. Allan was, in turn, the only living son of Calvin Hollis, the founder of Hollis Paper Goods. Calvin’s great-great-great-grandfather was Oliver Tempest Hollis, meaning the Hollises were one of the oldest families in America, and certainly the oldest that virtually nobody knew a thing about.

  They seemed to like it that way.

  “Well, I don’t know what you heard,” Ed said. “It’s not a big deal, really.”

  “Nonsense, a reporter in town to write a big story on our special visitor? I wouldn’t turn you away. We want everyone in Sorrow Falls to feel welcome, isn’t that so, Annie?”

  “It certainly is.”

  “How’s you mother, hon? You know if you need anything at all…”

  “I know, Desmond. Thank you. I’ll tell mom you said hey.”

  “You better.”

  Desmond was approaching sixty and had plans to hand over the business to whichever son he felt would do right by the town. That was how he ended up running the mill over his elder brothers, although word was they showed little interest one way or the other.

  There were a lot of bad stories about industry in New England, but the Hollis paper mill was one of the few consistently good stories. It remained a family-owned company with its own way of doing things. Sometimes that way of doing things was contrary to what was most profitable, which was why choosing the right successor was so important, to Allan Hollis before and to Desmond now.

  Ten years ago there was a fire, which gutted a large part of the factory beneath them. Desmond could have been made whole for the loss by insurance and kept the mill closed indefinitely at no additional cost. It was the profitable thing to do. Instead, he nearly bankrupted his entire family by using most of the insurance to rebuild and compensate all of the employees while rebuilding. Anything other than that would have ruined most of the town, and he knew it.

  Annie was pretty sure he was paying for the care her mother was receiving in Boston, too. Their health insurance was good, but it wasn’t that good.

  “So what is it I can do for you, Mr. Somerville?”

  “Well, Mr. Hollis, I’m talking to as many people as I can around town who were here back when the ship came down.”

  “Yes, so you told Missie. I’m happy to talk about that, but you know, I’ve told these stories a hundred times. If you’ve done your homework, you already know I didn’t see it happen. Wish I had! I’m a restless sleeper.”

  “He’s trying a new angle,” Annie said.

  “Oh, is that so? Well good, I’m tired of my own stories.”

  “The people who’ve been around as long as we have…” Annie caught herself, because she realized she was about to compare life stories with a man who had almost fifty years on her. “I mean, those of us here since the ship landed, how we never left… The idea is, maybe we have a better perspective on…”

  “On anything new,” Ed said, finishing the thought. “Anything you may have noticed that’s different. Ear-to-the-ground stuff. Annie says you like to keep well-connected.”

  “Anything at all? That’s a pretty broad question, Mr. Somerville. Annie, is this a fishing expedition?”

  “Kind of. But this time’s different.”

  More than one reporter had blown through town looking for a tiny thing to exaggerate up into a huge story that ended up not being true. This was how it was reported, a year earlier, that birth rates had fallen in town because the ship was making everyone sterile. Another time, no lesser entity than the New York Times claimed the residents didn’t celebrate Halloween, and the cars in Sorrow Falls no longer required gas.

  “How’s it different?”

  “Because something’s actually happening this time, Desmond.”

  Ed shot her a panicked look, which she ignored.

  “Well all right, that’s new,” Desmond said. “What is it that’s happening?”

  “Why don’t you tell us first, and Ed here will tell you what he can.”

  “I actually can’t…”

  “Just what you can, Ed, don’t have an attack.”

  Desmond fixed her with a long stare. “Don’t be mad at her, Mr. Somerville, she’s more shrewd than all of us combined. She knows I knew you weren’t a reporter before you even walked in. Now she’s playing my curiosity against me.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” she said. “So have you noticed anything, Desmond?”

  “Broad question, young lady, as I said.”

  “But you have.”

  He shrugged.

  “Maybe. Productivity’s been down a lot lately.”

  “That’s a cyclical thing, isn’t it?” Ed asked.

  “It can be. Middle of summer, people are on vacation in their heads already, sure. We still use a punch clock around here, did you know that? It’s computerized, but it’s still a punch clock. People come to work, punch in to record their arrival time, then hit the floor and get to work, or hit the break room and start their coffee. We’re not real strict about most details because by now, people know how to do their jobs and we expect them to answer to themselves about it. Just the same, I know what time every one of my mill employees checks in, and I know when each of them is supposed to check in. What I’m seeing is, in the past six weeks, people are punching in late by an average of six minutes.�
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  “That’s unusual?”

  “Compared to any other time of year, it is. Average is two minutes early all except during winter storms. They’re coming in late, they’re not sleeping well, and they’re groggy half the day. If it was one or two folks, I’d maybe sit them down, ask if everything was okay at home. But it’s everyone. We’re also seeing a lot of people down with the late-season cold everyone seems to catch toward the end of summer, but that’s an annual thing. You probably want real numbers.”

  “I… sure, whatever you think you can share.”

  Desmond awakened his desktop computer with a wiggle of the mouse and began tapping away at it. “I can give you numbers, I just need to strip the employee information off the sheets. Probably all of this is confidential, but what the hell, I own the place.”

  “That’s great.”

  “It’ll give you an idea of what we’re looking at over here. It’s not much but it’s something. Reminds me of farm animals before storms, to be honest. Those of us around long enough to be attuned to the changes in the atmosphere know something’s coming.”

  “I think you’re probably right,” Ed said. “But what’s coming?”

  “Unless I miss my guess, that’s what you’re here to answer, Mr. Somerville. Now give me a few minutes and I’ll run this to Missie’s printer. Annie, has the man seen the drum? Show the man the drum.”

  Desmond’s gaze, and all his attention, went to the computer screen. He was two-finger typing, so this was likely going to take a few minutes.

  Annie walked Ed over to the display with the drum.

  A plaque was on the podium, describing it as the actual drum of the five tribes. So far as the Hollis clan was concerned, there was no dispute regarding whether this was the real thing or a replica.