Chapter 3 #2
When Amelia and I applied to The Willow University, I knew moving here was the right choice.
Close enough to visit my family. Far enough to start over.
Amelia had wanted me to move into her father-funded luxury apartment downtown, the one she’d fought him on and lost. I’d passed.
I loved her, but I knew better than to test the roommate gods. Too many horror stories.
Besides, I needed my solitude. My space.
That’s when I’d found Bob’s ad in the local paper. A retired widower, he needed help with yard work and grocery runs. In return, he offered a discounted rate on the fully furnished garage apartment. It was too good to pass up.
Except when dumb trains got in the way.
The landscape outside my windows turned rural—clusters of trees, quiet fields, the occasional farmhouse.
Faint glimmers of porch lights shone in the distance.
My headlights skimmed golden corn stalks as I turned down 100E, a stretch of road so empty it felt like it existed outside time.
Harvest season was in full swing, and soon these fields would be flat and barren.
I liked the city and its conveniences, but there was something peaceful about the country’s heavy quiet. It was its own kind of beautiful. At least it made the long way home enjoyable—
My car speakers exploded in a burst of static so loud I yelped and instinctively lifted my foot off the gas. Light danced off my passenger window, there and then gone. Recovering, I checked my mirrors. No one behind me. Nothing at all besides fields and stars.
Just me on this lonely lane. Weird. I could’ve sworn I saw lights.
The static swelled again, and a garbled voice cut through the white noise. Impossible to make out, gone just as fast. Interference.
“See? Just the solar flare,” I muttered, pressing a button to change the station. Static.
The next station. More static.
I frowned, turned the volume down, and tightened my hands on the wheel. It was nothing. Electromagnetic interference.
Chalk it up to science.
Could also be my shitty car’s even shittier antenna. Either way, nothing beyond the realms of normalcy here. Nothing to put the extra in extraterrestrial.
The road narrowed and sloped into a dense cluster of trees, branches crowding the edges of the pavement like reaching fingers. The crescent moon vanished behind them, leaving my headlights to carve through the black.
The path curved sharply ahead, and I slowed, glancing once at my rearview. Still empty. Still alone. A tingle of unease prickled between my shoulder blades.
But then I clicked my tongue in annoyance. Screw Kelly and her stupid conspiracy theories. Screw Tony and his smug little grin.
Screw that dumb conversation with Sky, of all people, for…well, being the rotten cherry on top.
Aliens weren’t scary. They weren’t even real. What were they going to do, mess with my Spotify queue?
I snorted at my own joke. Loudly.
And that was when the sky lit up.
A blinding sphere of multicolored fire exploded through a gap in the trees, as if the sun had suddenly risen again and then decided to drop from the sky. It careened to a stop in the middle of the road ahead, hovering.
Glowing pink, green, yellow, blue.
In front of my windshield. Right on top of me.
Time slowed.
My heart stopped beating as I slammed on the brakes.
Faith’s tires shrieked in protest, the wheel shuddering violently in my grip.
I let out a short scream and braced myself as the back end fishtailed, the car veering sideways across the road.
Air punched from my lungs. My shoulder mashed into the door, and the seatbelt cinched tight across my chest, biting deep.
I caught a blur of those lights, rainbows of flickering color, then Faith lurched with a bone-rattling crunch and ground to a halt in a spray of gravel.
The jolt flung me forward into the steering wheel.
For a moment, I couldn’t move. I hung there, lungs heaving, ears ringing with static and my own frantic heartbeat.
I didn’t know how much time passed before I lifted my head. Still wheezing, I blinked hard and squinted out the windshield.
Faith sat crooked, her front end in the ditch, back tires on the shoulder, headlights spearing through a patch of red-leaved oaks. Beyond them, broken stalks of corn jutted up like jagged teeth in the dark.
I’d just wrecked my car. Something had flown out in front of me.
But what?
Adrenaline surged, snapping me into motion. My chest ached as I drew a deeper breath and threw the car into park. Where was my phone? Had I tossed it into my purse?
I twisted to look over my shoulder. Then froze.
The ball of light was still there.
Blazing, suspended in midair over the road, it pulsed in steady rhythm—pink, blue, yellow, green—glowing too brightly for me to stare at it directly. Still, I couldn’t look away. Couldn’t blink.
Couldn’t breathe.
It was silent. Motionless. Radiating like a fallen star.
“No freaking way,” I whispered.
My fingers shook as I fumbled with the jammed seatbelt. On the third try, it gave way with a loud click. I shoved the door open with a trembling hand. The ding of the keys still in the ignition echoed loudly in the otherwise eerie quiet.
I half-fell out of the car, legs wobbling. My knee cracked against the doorframe, but I didn’t feel it. My limbs tingled with pins and needles as I dropped into a crouch and sucked in another shaky breath.
I should call someone. Make sure the car was okay. But I couldn’t. Not yet.
I had to know.
My shoes sank into the damp leaves and wet ground as I crawled up the embankment, driven by that stupid, innate curiosity.
Surely I hadn’t seen what I thought I had.
I hesitated at the top, crouching just before the ridge. A spooky, flickering glow spilled from the other side, bathing the trees, the car, the crumpled, wet grass. I couldn’t see the source from here.
I’d seen it in the road, though.
Scrambled possibilities flitted through my brain, too fast to process. What if I’d imagined it? I could’ve mistaken a different light…a bright star, a meteor. Hell, even Starlink. Those satellites always looked creepy.
Or…or maybe I was concussed.
Maybe that shitty dinner shift had caused a mental break. Maybe I’d lost my mind. Nobody could blame me after the night I’d had.
Or maybe…just maybe, it’d been…real.
Panic swelled, and I braced my back against the back wheel well’s rusted metal, forcing myself to breathe.
The static of Faith’s radio buzzed faintly, and the taillights bathed the pavement in red.
The crimson glow illuminated the harsh, black skid marks that showed exactly where I’d swerved right off the asphalt.
That had been before I hit my head. Which ruled out a concussion.
A mental break was still in the running.
Also, I was delaying the inevitable. I had to look.
I stayed crouched there, though. Tall trees loomed over me like dark sentinels, and each pulse of light made their trunks ripple. A faint charge hung in the air, humming on my skin. The scent of ozone filled my lungs and mingled with the burned-rubber stench and Faith’s exhaust.
I had to see.
But my knees wouldn’t cooperate. My stomach twisted with nausea, fear, and something else. Something electric.
I wanted to run.
I wanted to look.
“Come on, Rae,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “There is no try.”
With a grimace, I shoved up just enough to peek over the trunk, peeling open my lids.
And I gasped.
Because the road was empty.
The ball of light was gone.