by David Beers
“And maybe you’ll die from radiation poisoning. Who knows?”
* * *
Things had been tense between Bryan and Julie over the past twenty-four hours, and she didn’t like it. Hated it, really. Things were going to get tougher next year and she didn’t want to spend their senior year fighting about Michael. They had less than a year to see each other every day at school and hang out every weekend, then both of them would head to different colleges. That would mean they had a few weekends and school breaks to share with each other. Nothing else.
It hurt to think about that. She’d been with Bryan since elementary school, if not in a relationship, then as friends. And now they both were just about to walk away, to leave what they had together in this town, to put additional stress on it. Yet, the stress was necessary for the long term, she understood that. They would need college in order to have anything in this world. They would need college if they didn’t want to end up like…
Michael.
That’s where all these arguments stemmed from and Julie didn’t like it anymore than Bryan. Michael was her friend. Michael had been her friend as long as Bryan. Cutting someone off wasn’t something she enjoyed, despite how she acted when talking to Bryan about it. It was tough and it didn’t feel good, at all. She couldn’t show Bryan that though; she couldn’t show him how much she hated the thought of simply turning Michael away. Because if he saw that in her, he wouldn’t let it happen. He would identify too much with it and then convince her that they couldn’t just leave him behind.
She tried to talk to Thera about the risk, briefly, once, a few months ago. She thought someone would see it the way she did, that maybe Thera would identify somewhat with her.
“What if we never leave?” she said.
“Leave where?”
“Here. Grayson. It’s just a dot on a map, a place that no one outside of our own county has ever heard about.”
“We’re leaving this coming year. What do you mean?” Thera said.
“I don’t know, I guess,” Julie said, sighing, thinking that Thera wouldn’t see it. Thera didn’t hold the fear that Julie did because Thera was going to be something. Thera was getting out of here on her brains alone, and Julie guessed that she knew it.
“You don’t like it here?”
“It’s not that. Grayson is just a town of middle class people with no desires besides being middle class people,” Julie said.
Thera had nodded, but that was it. They stopped talking about it.
But that middle class thing? It scared and depressed Julie. She didn’t want to end up like that, didn’t want to end up like her parents. And if ending up like her parents frightened her, then ending up anything nearing what Michael’s future held terrified her. A trailer? Alcoholism? Working at a fast food restaurant? These things formed her nightmares, and if she didn’t start distancing herself now, then would she ever be able to? The longer they hung around Michael, the longer they hung around this damn town, the more likely they were to end up being it. She couldn’t let that happen, it didn’t matter how much she cared about Michael. It was unthinkable.
Yet Bryan didn’t see it, not like she did.
Julie pushed the thoughts from her mind. They’d been going around in circles all day, leading her nowhere, and the only place she wanted to go was to Bryan. Both of them had planned to see a movie today and she wasn’t going to mention Michael once the entire time. She wasn’t going to talk about last night, wasn’t going to talk about how she had been a bitch, wasn’t even going to bring up the damned shooting star. Tonight, she would be Bryan’s girlfriend and nothing else. That was all she needed, all she wanted.
She put on the last of her makeup, and then picked up her phone. She called Bryan’s cell, and listened as it rang all the way to his voicemail. She hung it up and immediately called his house phone, thinking that he probably left his cell upstairs like always.
“Hello?”
“Hey, Mrs. Yetzer. It’s Julie. I called Bryan, but he didn’t answer. Is he there?”
“Hey, Julie. No, he went out with Michael a few minutes ago. Do you want me to have him call you when he gets back?”
Julie didn’t say anything for a second, taking in the words. He went out with Michael? What the hell? She realized her silence was stretching on though, and finally said, “No, thanks though. I’ll just call later.”
* * *
The moonlight danced across the field, casting beautiful shadows everywhere. The forest was different, though. Michael imagined that in the next ten years, this entire place would be leveled. The field turned into a parking lot and the forest a collection of stores. Progress and all. Right now though, progress hadn’t reached this piece of Grayson, and the woods were deep and thick. The field was long, maybe the size of two football fields, but the forest was ten times that size. Michael didn’t know; he’d never been deep enough inside to see the entire thing. They used to play here as kids, building forts and having wars, but they never came in at night; now, though, the moon couldn’t compete with the pine tree branches above Michael and Bryan. They each held flashlights, shining out into the dense trees from where they stood at the woods’ edge. The flashlights were the only source of illumination either of them had, and while it was nearly enough, it didn’t make Michael feel safe.
Bryan walked a few feet in front of him, leading. Neither of them spoke much once they entered the tree-line. Before, on the way here, they laid out a plan of what they would do when they got to it. Stay far enough away. Take pictures. Then leave and report it to the police. That was the plan. But when they got inside the forest…things changed. Michael didn’t know exactly how, couldn’t have told anyone if they asked him, but it was still there, that change. It stemmed from Bryan, from the way he led deeper and deeper into the woods. They should have been walking together, their strides matching one another. That was how it always was between the two of them, yet in here, Bryan was in charge. Or…and it sounded insane to even think it…something was in charge of Bryan. Something was pulling him into this place, causing him to walk faster, causing him to only care about one thing—about seeing whatever arrived last night.
Stop sounding nuts. None of that’s true. He’s excited; that’s all.
“You think we’ll even find it?” Michael asked, trying to focus on anything but the lunacy in his mind.
“We’ll find it,” Bryan said. “It was too big not to find.”
They kept walking in silence, fifty feet, a hundred, and then Michael lost count. He kept his flashlight pointing in front of him and his feet moving, trying not to think.
“There it is!” Bryan shouted, and Michael looked up.
It was the worst thing he’d ever seen, even if he didn’t know it then. He would, though, eventually.
What fell from the sky the previous night seemed to have both hit with a viciousness that destroyed the Earth, and yet landed as gracefully as a feather. Black, scorched earth lay out a hundred feet in all directions from the object in the middle. No trees, no green grass, nothing but black ash, the wildlife incinerated by whatever fire this thing brought. There should at least have been trees—burnt, dead trees, but still standing. Nothing. Empty space with a white globe lying in the middle.
Michael kept walking forward, trying to get closer now, trying to see what could have made this amazing sight, what could have burnt through everything around it, could have destroyed the landscape.
He looked at the white orb in the middle, not needing to shine his light to see it. No wonder they saw it so clearly the night before, despite the fire burning across it; the orb produced its own light, and with each step they took forward, it seemed to brighten. With each foot Bryan moved closer, the thing’s light reached out further and further into the black ash surrounding it. The orb looked perfect, which Michael felt was a weird thought. Perfect? To describe something he had never seen before? It didn’t make sense, that a concept such as perfection should be used here, but it was the only word that fit. What
ever lay in the middle of the ash circle, the globe that shone with white light was perfect.
Bryan stopped just before his feet touched the ash and Michael stepped up next to him.
The thing hadn’t made any indentation on the ground. It sat perfectly on the dirt, fully above ground level.
“What is it?” Michael asked, not expecting an answer but having to say something. Having to express something about what was before them.
Bryan didn’t respond, at least not with words. Instead, he took a step into the ash, Michael’s jaw opening as he did. Not one step though, that would have been permissible—the sheer beauty of the orb would make nearly anyone step a bit closer. Bryan kept going. Slowly, but walking toward the orb nonetheless.
“Bryan!” Michael shouted, not moving, not wanting to put any part of himself into that ash. Ash from this Earth, but ash created by something not from here.
Bryan didn’t turn around. He dropped his flashlight and kept moving forward, one foot after the other, carrying him on a direct line to the center, to the orb.
Michael had to make a decision. He could go into the ash and grab Bryan or he could let Bryan continue his march. That was it. Did he sit here and watch, screaming as loud as he could and hope that Bryan heard him? What if he didn’t? What if Bryan couldn’t hear anything right now but the thoughts in his own head? And when he reached the orb, what would he do? Touch it? The questions inside Michael flew around his brain so fast they felt like a cloud, each one mixing with the next, so that he couldn’t decipher anything individually.
He moved, shutting down all the noise inside his head. Bryan was thirty feet in front of him and picking up speed, but Michael could make it if he ran.
So he did, his feet following the directions of his brain, and his brain focused only on stopping Bryan from reaching the orb.
Fifty feet from the middle, he caught his friend, grabbing him by the shoulder.
“Bryan!” He shouted, close enough that it should have hurt Bryan’s ears. Michael’s hands pulled him roughly around, halting his movement.
For a second, maybe less, Bryan wasn’t there. Right then at that moment, Michael would have put his palm on a Bible and sworn his eternal soul to the fact that Bryan wasn’t the person in front of him. His eyes were empty, not glazed like Wren’s, but completely vacant. Uninhabited. Michael stared at a shell, something that might have a brain and a spinal cord, but nothing besides electrons firing inside it. Even an insect would have more going on than what looked back at Michael.
But then it was gone, the emptiness replaced, Bryan coming back. His friend. The one that drove him here.
“Hey, are you okay?” Michael asked, unable to keep his normal calm.
Bryan blinked a few times, not saying anything, seeming to still be returning to reality.
“Bryan?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine. I just, I just wanted to touch it.” He turned around partly and looked over his shoulder at the glowing orb. Not moving, not trying to venture further inward, but looking.
The glow was gone, Michael was sure about that. Had it been glowing at all? Or had Michael’s flashlight been shining on it? It couldn’t have been Bryan’s, because he dropped his. Michael turned back to look at the orb, making sure that it wasn’t glowing, that his eyes weren’t tricking him. Nothing.
“I think we need to go,” he said.
“Okay.”
7
Present Day
She felt its steps. Not directly, not how she would have felt them if she had been fully awake, but she felt enough to know that she had landed somewhere. That there was another creature here—creatures, most likely. She could only latch on to one, and his mind beamed out to her like the stars she had passed in the blackest parts of the universe. She didn’t know what made it stand out like it did, not yet, but then again, she didn’t care right now either. The important thing was that she had landed. Bless The Makers, she had landed. How long had she traveled? How long since she felt her home world end in a flash of heat and wind? The capsule slowly fed her mind the information surrounding her, but it would take time. She grew dormant during the trip, her mind taking a state akin to hibernation, unable to think at the levels she could when they first boarded.
No matter. There was a creature out there; she felt it. And at least on a primitive level, it felt her too. It had come out here, wherever here was, and nearly touched the ship. Nearly touched Morena.
It was gone now, but she could still feel it, the connection still alive.
Where was she? And Briten?
Morena felt for him, frantically, needing to make sure he survived. Having to make sure he was here with her, that all of this wasn’t for nothing. She found him, inside the capsule, though not like her. Not anymore. He was in the Ether now, floating in a space of nothingness. The Ether.
That’s what this had come to? Her lover, her husband, lost in a place without thought—not even allowed to die. Morena couldn’t weep, not in this current state, but her mind cried out, wanting justice, wanting another chance, wanting to save Briten. Could she? Was it possible? She had heard of some being brought back from the Ether, but those were creatures of a different time, shortly after The Makers began life. Myth and legend, nothing concrete.
She had to try though. She wouldn’t let him languish in that space for eternity, not without trying to bring him out, to bring him home. Except this world wasn’t Briten’s home, but then her world hadn’t been his natural home, either. This place, it would have to be a new home for both of them. Morena could do that. She could make this place home and then bring her husband from the Ether, bring him back to life.
She could at least try.
And if she failed, then they would both die here, on this world—together.
8
Present Day
The clock on his nightstand said three in the morning.
Michael hadn’t stopped staring at it since it showed one. He couldn’t sleep though his body was exhausted. He felt like there was a ship’s anchor attached to his neck, weighing him down no matter how hard he struggled to move—at least his body felt that way. His mind was an anthill. An infinite number of thoughts traveling through tunnels, working incessantly, each one seeming to have its own agenda. He couldn’t make them stop, couldn’t even slow them down. They worked on their own accord, following some agenda that he wasn’t privy to.
It all went back to what he saw earlier that night. It all went back to Bryan walking into the field of that thing’s destruction, of turning him around and seeing…nothing…a shell. He couldn’t push past it, didn’t understand it, and couldn’t shut his mind off.
He reached to the nightstand and picked up the cordless phone. He could hear the television in the living room, but didn’t hear his father moving around at all. Hadn’t heard him moving in a while, so most likely he was sleeping. Wren had a tendency, if one could call it that, to eavesdrop on Michael’s conversations. There was a lot that his dad did to him, but that annoyed him the most. The complete invasion of privacy. They fought over it constantly, creating a natural sense of protection about all Michael’s conversations. Tonight, though, it was more than protection of his privacy. He didn’t want his father to hear this. He didn’t want anyone to hear it besides Thera. He didn’t even know what he would say, not really, and didn’t know how someone might take it. Because he didn’t know how to take it.
He dialed Thera’s number. He was the only one of all his friends who simply remembered people’s numbers. That happened when you didn’t have a cellphone to keep up with them all.
“Hello?” She answered the line sounding like he expected her to, still half asleep.
“Hey, it’s me.”
“I know. What’s up?”
He loved her. She answered in the middle of the night without hesitation. She answered in the middle of the night, sleeping, without any anger toward him. She answered because he called, and that by itself was more than he deserved.
“We went out there. Bryan and me.” Michael didn’t know where to begin. Did he just blurt it all out? Did he tell her how frightened it made him?
“What happened? Are you okay?” Her voice cleared up some, adrenaline probably spiking in her body, splitting the fog of sleep.
“I am. I…” He trailed off, unsure how to say it. “I don’t know if Bryan is, or was. Something strange happened out there. I don’t know how to say it because I don’t know what it was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bryan, he…left, I guess. Not like physically, his body was still there with me, but his mind went away. He started walking toward it, Thera. Like we’re standing there in this forest, and this huge white orb is in front of us, and ash all around it—I guess where it landed, the fire scorched the entire area—and he just starts walking toward it. Walking to touch it, and I swear to God, it started glowing, Thera. Each step he took, the fucking thing got brighter. I screamed to him but he didn’t even slow down, just kept walking to it, and finally I chased him down.”
He paused, realizing he’d been rambling. Realizing that all the ants crawling around his head had just crawled out of his mouth. He wasn’t done, though.
“When I turned him around, there was nothing. He was empty, like nothing behind his eyes. Bryan wasn’t there.”
He fell silent and Thera said nothing. They sat quietly for a few seconds, Michael feeling relieved just to have told someone.
“When we rode home, he wouldn’t talk about it. I asked him what happened, and he said he just wanted to see it up close, but that’s bullshit. He couldn’t do anything because he wasn’t there.”
Another pause and still Thera remained quiet.
“Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here. I’m trying to keep from saying I told you not to go out there.”
“Didn’t you just say it?” Michael asked, smiling, glad to smile about anything.