Phantoms of the Moon
By Michael Ciardi
Fiction
Published by Lunar Prose Books
[email protected]
In E-Book Form
Copyright 2011 Michael Ciardi
PROLOGUE
Ten Years Ago
The autumn twilight cast an array of colors throughout the sky, but it was an offering destined to fade when pitched against the forthcoming gloom. As daylight surrendered its place to a nocturnal realm, the stars emerged in pinpoint formations across the heavens. Far away from any trace of artificial light, these orbs of eve glistened with an unrivaled flare. But before long, the Moon ascended like a golden-clad sentinel over the landscape, seemingly summoned to survey over all that glittered in the habitat of this November night.
A two-lane byway unfurled in a tortuous path within the countryside. As it was on most occasions, only a few cars traversed this road after nightfall. Consequently, Glen Dale’s sylvan backdrop was virtually absent from a buzz of traffic at this hour. A lone vehicle’s headlights soon defied the pavement’s solitude by reflecting off the surrounding trees. With few distractions in sight or mind, Brian Hayden enjoyed his jeep’s acceleration. But no matter how swiftly he navigated his vehicle along the roadway, little escaped the full Moon’s ever-present glow.
Two seven-year-old boys scrunched their noses against the jeep’s rear window. Through an assortment of roadside pine trees masking the landscape, they watched the Moon with an innocuous wonder.
“I think it’s following us,” the one boy, Robby, whispered in a shrilly voice to his twin brother. The meeker of the two boys said nothing in return. Perhaps his fear was more than obvious as he quivered in his seat beside his brother. He then glanced tentatively toward the vehicle’s front compartment, where his mother sat as a passenger.
Kim Hayden smiled with acknowledgement. She then pivoted to console her one son and gently scold the other. “It’s okay, Ryan,” she remarked, glancing at the Moon. “Nothing is following us. Your brother shouldn’t try to scare you all the time.” She then directed a closed-mouth stare at Robby, which triggered a giggle from the mischievous child.
“I’m just teasing him, Mom,” Robby tittered. “He knows that.”
“I’m not scared,” Ryan remarked, trying to sound as intrepid as his brother.
Of course Ryan’s brother and parents knew better. Although Ryan was the eldest of the twins by a full three minutes, it was his younger sibling who had inherited his father’s zestful appreciation for anything vaguely related to a practical joke. The buffoonery created a fair amount of amusement over the years, but Kim and Ryan were usually on the receiving end of the sophomoric pranks.
“Beware of the Moon,” Brian chuckled in a forcefully demonic tone, which instantly merited a nudge on his shoulder from his wife.
“Just be quiet and drive, you instigator,” Kim cautioned playfully to her husband. “Do you want to keep him up all night with us in bed complaining of nightmares again?”
“I’m not a baby anymore, Mom,” Ryan replied in his own defense, but his one eye still had not shifted its focus from the Moon outside the car’s window.
Brian cleared his throat and forwarded a grin at both his sons. “Okay,” he announced, “I promised your mother I wouldn’t act like a big kid tonight.”
“Promises, promises, “ Kim smirked at her husband as lovingly as she had demonstrated when they were first married over nine years ago. Despite the petty complaints she sometimes contemplated in regard to her husband’s behavior, Kim’s devotion toward him had only strengthened over the years. He was the rare type of guy who kept her mind and body thriving with excitement, and she did not know a woman in the world who contested his warmhearted demeanor.
Few marriages seemed balanced flawlessly in an age where commitment had become secondary to hedonistic pursuits. But a genuine level of respect and selflessness between Brian and Kim made them closer than most couples married for the better part of a decade. The birth of fraternal twin boys only served to solidify their relationship, especially since a history of twins existed in neither side of the family, and Kim almost miscarried due to a series of unexplained complications during her pregnancy’s first trimester.
This was a family grounded in decency, and they appreciated the mundane events of life just as much as their occasional extravagancies. Gleeful appearances outside the home sometimes masked a family’s sorrow, but occasionally the exterior glow of happiness proved to be an accurate depiction of things. On this night, however, the family’s blissful vision of togetherness was about to change forever.
“We’ll be home in about twenty minutes,” Brian yawned. Kim mimicked his tiredness and reclined slightly in her seat to peer out the passenger window.
“Such a clear night,” she sighed, lending particular attention to the full Moon again. “There’s not a cloud in the sky for miles.”
“Mom, I have to go potty,” Robby grimaced from the back seat, instantaneously fracturing a mood of clarity that Kim had manufactured for herself.
“Well, we’re not stopping now,” grumbled his father. “We’ll be home in a little while. Besides, there’s nowhere to pull over around here safely.”
As Brian uttered these words he felt the jeep’s engine sputter momentarily. Then a sequence of flashing red and orange lights illuminated the vehicle’s dashboard. Although he continued to depress the accelerator, the car’s speed diminished rapidly.
“What’s the matter?” Kim asked, somewhat apprehensively.
Brian still pumped the jeep’s pedal with his foot, but the engine did not respond. The entire electrical system suddenly faltered and darkness encompassed the vehicle’s compartment.
“I just had this thing checked out last week,” Brian muttered as the jeep gradually lost all of its momentum. He then navigated the car to the edge of the roadside before it crawled to a complete stop. “Shoot,” he said, pounding his hands on the steering wheel.
“Great,” said Kim, but not loudly enough to alarm her sons. She immediately reached for her handbag to search for her cellular phone. “What’s going on, Brian?”
Brian snapped the gearshift to neutral and turned the ignition key several times. The engine made no sign of recovery. “Must’ve blown a fuse of something,” he thought aloud. He did not pretend to know much about the mechanics of a fuel-injected engine, but it was more of a dutiful habit for a man to pop the hood and stare with some level of expertise at something he had entirely no clue of comprehending.
“Wait here,” he said, while opening the jeep’s door. “Maybe the battery is dead or a wire got jarred loose.”
“It’s a new car,” Kim reminded him. “And you just had it checked out, right?”
Brian zipped his jacket after a chilly breeze swirled through the vehicle’s compartment. He flashed his wife and children a reassuring look with his midnight-blue eyes and said, “Everything will be fine. There’s nothing to worry about. I’m just going to take a quick peek at the engine.”
As Brian stepped out of the car and lifted the hood, Ryan could not help but to feel nervous. He kept a watchful eye on the environs outside the vehicle and thought how isolated they seemed from any trace of humanity. Of course they were not more than five miles from the nearest town of Glen Dale, but the woodland’s encompassing silence arching out on both sides of the roadway made it appear significantly farther.
“I really have to go, Mom,” Robby blurted out again. He positioned his right forearm between his legs in such a way to openly exaggerate the urgency of this matter.
“Oh, Robby, can’t it wait another minute?” Kim huffed. “Just a few seconds more.” She still had not found her phone in the content
s of her purse.
“But I can’t hold it any longer,” Robby complained.
Before Kim had a chance to respond, Brian slunk back to the driver’s side window, shrugging his shoulders. “Everything looks okay to me,” he declared. “Just no power. Damn new engines. You can’t do a thing with them nowadays.”
Kim appeared perplexed before admitting, “I think I left my phone on the kitchen table. You don’t have yours on you by any chance, do you, honey?”
Brian checked his belt loop, where he normally carried his phone, but he already suspected that he left it in his pickup truck back home. “I guess we’re just going to have to flag someone down and get some help,” he said. “ Looks like we’re not getting home early after all.”
“Well, whether it’s early or later, Robby has to go to the bathroom now,” said Kim, unbuckling her seatbelt and setting her purse on the vehicle’s floor mat. She then flipped her flaxen hair over her shoulder with a swipe of her hand, which was a gesture she typically resorted to when irritated. Brian looked around and suggested that his son unzip his trousers and pee next to the car, but the situation was a bit more personal than anyone preferred.
“It’s number two,” Robby finally confessed, somewhat embarrassed. Ryan smirked to himself but wanted to laugh aloud at the predicament. Luckily, Kim had encountered this situation before with her sons when they were on their way home from a camping trip. She proceeded to reach under the seat and displayed an unopened roll of toilet paper.
“I may have forgotten my phone, but at least I remembered to bring something useful,” said Kim as she surveyed the immediate area. A cluster of evergreens erected about thirty feet from the road. “Come on, I’ll take you behind those pine trees over there,” she suggested, while stepping out of the car. Robby was more than eager to comply.
“Just be careful, Kim,” Brian cautioned his wife as he leaned wearily against the side of the jeep. He then glanced at the road in both directions before he said, “I just hope someone comes by soon. Where’s a cop when you really need one?”
Robby grasped his mother’s hand and jumped down from the jeep. Kim motioned to Ryan, who was still buckled on the opposite side of the seat. “Do you got to go, too?” she asked Ryan. “No sense in us making two trips.”
Ryan shook his head from side to side and replied, “I’ll stay here with Dad.” Robby was already making his way hastily toward the pine trees with the toilet paper in hand, when Kim turned to follow.
Ryan watched his mother and brother duck behind a row of trees flanking the road. His eyes then pivoted to the Moon, which cast a colorless spray of light upon the evergreens’ peaks. He fidgeted in his seat a bit, waiting impatiently for his brother to scamper out of the woods beside his mother, but nearly five minutes elapsed and they still had not emerged. To avoid the night’s chill, Brian sat back inside the vehicle and closed the door. The jeep’s interior was already cold enough for him to see pockets of his own breath. Three more minutes ticked away on Brian’s wristwatch.
“We can’t stay out here much longer,” Brian muttered. “It’s going to get pretty cold tonight.”
“Why are they taking so long?” Ryan asked his father, somewhat apprehensively.
“Who knows,” said Brian, glancing at his watch again. “Maybe your mother had to take care of some of her own business, too.”
After another five minutes came and went without any indication of Kim or Robby’s return, the distress from Ryan’s expression now crept through Brian’s countenance. He checked his watch more urgently before determining that they had been gone too long. Without hesitating, he opened the car door and said, “I’m going to go find them, Ryan. I want you to wait here in the car. Do you understand me?”
Ryan nodded his chin and folded his hands across his lap before declaring, “I won’t move.”
Brian paced away from the jeep rapidly. Ryan listened as his father shouted for his wife and son repeatedly. With each syllable, the man’s tone sounded increasingly desperate. Brian’s calls continued for several seconds until his voice became barely audible behind the same set of the pine trees. In another instant, Ryan was faced with absolute silence. Remembering his father’s words, Ryan had not initially intended to disobey orders to remain inside the vehicle. But after ten minutes of excruciating silence, the boy pivoted his eyes back to the vacant roadside. He gradually tilted his head toward the sky so to clearly observe the star-speckled heavens. Though he was at first mindful to not redirect his eyes to the hovering Moon, its prominence in the atmosphere was too compelling for him to resist.
A frigid sensation gradually edged up the boy’s spine and caused the hair to stand straight on the back of his neck. Though there seemed to be nothing particularly unusual in the Moon’s presence tonight, Ryan’s compulsion to look upon it seemed anything but normal. Was the Moon, as his brother suggested, truly following Ryan? Or was he, as best as he possibly managed, following it?
Perhaps it was a wiser choice for Ryan to avoid the temptation to leave the vehicle’s confines, but when curiosity mixed with fear it sometimes brewed irrationality. Ryan repeatedly reminded himself that nothing was wrong; his family was merely playing another joke on him. He exited the jeep with this notion guiding him to the edge of the pine trees. As he neared the perimeter of the evergreens, he detected the scent of crisp spruce needles decaying beneath his feet.
“Mom?” he called, but his voice was pitched a decibel beneath a whirling breeze. He inched two steps further so that his body was directly beneath the pine trees’ branches. “Dad?” he shouted again, louder than his previous effort, but the result remained the same.
Ryan could not yet see beyond the pines’ hanging limbs. After plotting his next course of action, he gently brushed them aside and tiptoed through a cluster of branches. Once on the opposite side of the trees, he confronted a large circular clearing approximately two hundred yards in diameter. Though dark, he determined that the ground was covered with a thin layer of leaves and pinecones. His footsteps crackled under the dry earth as he walked forward, using only the moonlight to steer his progress.
“Come on, guys,” he shivered, partially from the biting air but mostly because of his increasing consternation. “If this is a joke, it’s not funny. You’re not scaring me.” Ryan suspected such trickery from his father and brother, but his mother’s participation in such an act remained improbable. He paced deeper into the clearing. Each inch of progress seemed increasingly difficult. His attention was suddenly drawn to a white object unwinding in front of his eyes. A roll of toilet paper blew across the ground, but no one other than Ryan was within a hundred yards of it.
Once observing this, Ryan yelled for his parents and brother again. His tone was as frantic as it had ever previously been in these moments, but he still did not distinguish a response. He soon concluded that they were nowhere within range of earshot, but there was not anything to suggest where they had gone exactly. As Ryan kneeled to the ground to inspect the abandoned roll of toilet paper, he sensed an unexplained source of heat emitting from the soil beneath where he stood. He brushed his hand through the leaves and placed it flat on the soil. “It’s warm,” he thought, but the air was much too cool to naturally explain this peculiarity.
After rising to his feet, Ryan’s eyes swayed back to the Moon’s pallid glow. Unlike before, he detected a minor alteration in the lunar light. Three sphere-shaped objects hovered momentarily in front of the Moon’s surface. The boy at first thought it was nothing more than an optical illusion triggered by his anxiety, but the spheres remained fixated in the sky for several seconds. They appeared no larger than the boy’s fist and projected a muted, silver coloration. Even at his young age, Ryan knew that such a celestial display was not natural in origin.
His father’s earlier advice now sounded like a far more prudent choice. Ryan decided to head back toward the jeep as swiftly as his feet managed to shuffle across the terrain. He sprinted for the line of evergreens in a heedless
manner. Although he had not ventured more than fifty yards into the clearing, it might have well as been fifty miles. Positioned just in front of the firs, Ryan watched as several spheres materialized from the shadows. These orbs were similar in size, shape, and color from those he just witnessed in the sky, but unlike those initial spheres, these spiraled in a circular pattern and shone with brighter intensity.
With nowhere left to flee, Ryan elected to stand his ground. Upon closer inspection of the orbs, he realized that the objects had methodically encircled him. Though he could not confirm his suspicion, Ryan believed that these objects were communicating with one another through a sequence of alternating strobe lights. Shock or confusion prevented any further reaction from the boy. His eyes swelled with astonishment as a luminescent energy flooded the entire clearing. And as quickly as the metallic spheres had emerged, they vanished. The ground where Ryan had previously stood now seemed undisturbed in the darkness. The moonlight shining upon the clearing revealed no signs of life—at least for an undetermined period of time.
When Ryan reopened his eyes he was laying prone on the exact spot in the clearing where the orbs had encircled him. Though groggy and obviously stunned, he managed to harness his strength and lift body from a bed of pine needles. He then scanned the dark corners of his surroundings, but neither his family nor the spheres were in sight. His only focus now was to return to the jeep. Nothing impeded his progress at this point. After crossing through the line of trees in front of the road, Ryan collapsed onto his knees fifteen feet from the jeep.
Another strobe of light soon invaded this desolate road—this one emanating from the cherry-colored flash of a police cruiser. Inside the squad car, Chief Gary Wescott immediately noticed the boy’s position and veered to the road’s shoulder to inspect the scene. Wescott was a paunchy, aging policeman who had visions of retirement on the horizon. Admittedly, not much in the way of excitement had disrupted the highways and byways of Glen Dale in the twenty-five years since Wescott’s service commenced, but all things were bound to change in time.
Wescott exited the vehicle with a flashlight in hand. He shone the beam on the boy and then upon the jeep. He detected no occupants residing in the vehicle’s interior. Sensing danger, Wescott approached the boy cautiously, but he did not draw his gun from his holster. When he neared Ryan, the chief peered at him curiously. The boy did not acknowledge the man’s presence; he simply fixated his gaze upon the Moon.
“Is everything okay?” Wescott asked, but Ryan acted as if he did not hear the police chief. Wescott edged closer to the boy and centered the flashlight’s beam directly in the boy’s eyes. Still, even at close range, Ryan’s eyelids did not flutter. His skin appeared frightfully pale. “Where are your parents?” Wescott questioned again, this time leaning forward to make eye-to-eye contact with the child. Ryan’s expression revealed no trace of emotion. His eyes were as vacant as a starless sky.
“What happened out here?” Wescott asked relentlessly. He did not even expect a response from the boy at this point. The chief then surmised that Ryan was injured in some way, but he saw no visible signs of an accident. He touched the boy’s forehead with his hand, which felt almost icy to his fingertips. “Are you hurt?”
A few seconds passed before Ryan blinked his eyes and forwarded a terrible scream. His body trembled as he muttered, “Don’t let them touch me!”
“Relax,” Wescott assured the boy. “I’m a police officer,” he then announced, shining the flashlight upon his badge. “I’m just here to help you.”
Ryan shivered as he tried to organize his thoughts into some lucid recollection of what occurred. He did not yet possess the words to describe what he had witnessed. The boy frantically whirled his head around to check his position several times. Despite Wescott’s efforts to soothe Ryan, the boy remained anxious.
“Where are your parents?” Wescott asked, although it was clear that Ryan was in no condition to offer a coherent response. “Is that your parents’ jeep?”
Ryan’s eyes met directly with Wescott’s before he said in a hushed voice, “They’re gone.”
“Gone? Gone where?”
“Just gone,” replied Ryan meekly.
Wescott followed the boy’s gaze to the pine trees beside the road. There was nothing within his line of sight that served to explain the oddity of this situation. The only apparent commotion resided in Ryan’s state of mind. After a few seconds, the chief lifted the boy to his feet and comforted Ryan by putting his arm around him.
“Don’t you worry,” Wescott announced. “I’m going to get you some help, young man. Now let’s get out of this cold.”
The chief guided the child by his hand and assisted him to the back door of the squad car. During the process, Wescott noticed a peculiar substance coating the backside of his hand and sleeve. It appeared grayish-blue in color and had the texture of talcum powder, but slightly grittier. Wescott brushed the material from his skin with no consequence, but he then realized that the same material covered Ryan’s exposed flesh and clothing.
“Do you know what this stuff is?” Wescott asked the boy. He rubbed the coarse substance from Ryan’s clothing before allowing him in the car. It glittered in the moonlight as it sprinkled to the pavement under the scrutiny of the chief’s eyes. “Where did it come from?”
Ryan simply shrugged his shoulders and leaned his head against the back of the car’s seat. He did not utter any further words to the police chief on this night. Wescott turned away from the squad car to examine the surroundings once again, but there was nothing left to uncover. Before long, a few assisting officers and an ambulance crew arrived on the scene. Wescott had no concrete answers to relay to any of them. They inspected the perimeter of the woods and road for another six hours before concluding that the whereabouts of the boy’s family members was unknown. Though none of those in company on that isolated stretch of road could have possibly surmised it at the time, they had just stumbled upon the most bizarre mystery in the history of Glen Dale.
Within range of an introspective eye, all of the Moon’s romanticized lore had been nullified by advancements of science and technology. What was once a magical sphere of energy symbolic to mythological gods was now nothing more or less compelling than a desolate satellite. Yet, at least in the fanciful contemplations of one young boy, Earth’s nearest neighbor glowed with the mysteriousness borrowed from a philosophy abandoned long ago. In this instance, Ryan Hayden awakened his mind to the celestial wonders that most of mankind did not savor completely.
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