Chapter 1
Robin
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The light wakes me first.
I surface through dreams of stars only to watch one sear its way across the sky.
It’s blinding, scorching. Courtside for a nuclear blast. It tears through my sleep, and drags me upright on the couch. I watch it, dazed, as it blazes its way across the star-scattered darkness outside my living room window.
It’s the sound that wakes the dog.
Twisting metal. Shearing rock. The noise slices sharply through the night.
On the floor between my couch and the recliner where Dad is snoring away, Tater Tot perks up. She watches, too, drowsy at first. Then alert. And then she starts to growl.
“Hey,” I whisper. I reach out. Tentative. Not quite touching. “It’s all right, girl.”
Tater Tot looks back over her shoulder. I hadn’t known that a dog could look skeptical, but this one does. She stares at me for one long, heavy beat, and then she goes back to growling.
My back protests as I try to sit up. Dad and I fell asleep watching TV, some old alien movie from the 1950s that he claims is “his favorite.” Ever since I moved back home six months ago, we have watched countless old sci-fi and horror movies on late-night TV together, and each one is his favorite. Despite the adrenaline, I smile. Even with his faltering mobility, Dad hasn’t stopped enjoying things.
Outside the window, the light is still flaring, a purple arc over the length of sky. And it’s loud . It keeps getting louder and closer. The bullet of light curves toward the ground, plummeting to earth, past the window frame and I lose sight of it. The living room falls dark. My heart starts beating again.
And then I hear the crash.
It sounds like a city slammed into the earth behind the farmhouse. The floor shakes. The windows rattle. Dad barely stirs, but Tater Tot leaps to the floor, her old bones graceful for the first time since I came back home.
The dog searches over her shoulder for a responsible human, settles reluctantly on me, and gives one affirmative ruff .
I sigh. The last thing I want to is to follow Tater Tot outside. But...it’s the first time she’s looked at me as something other than an interloper. The whole thing feels so fragile that I’m afraid to break it.
“Yeah, okay,” I agree, sliding off of the couch, “let’s go check it out.”
Dad snuffles awake for a moment. “Robin?” he calls after me, “is everything okay?”
I shrug a flannel over my T-shirt and retrieve the flashlight from the shelf by the door.
“It’s fine, Dad. Something just woke me up.”
He grumbles something I can’t quite make out, and then he’s softly snoring again.
Tater anxiously follows me out the front door into the crisp spring night.
I regret every single life decision that’s led to this moment as we crunch over the yard toward crash site.
Crash site . I have officially spent too long in Andromeda Valley.
One hundred years ago, some farmer claimed that an alien spacecraft landed in his potato field, and the town’s tourism board was born. Now, the district library hosts weekend stargazing events. I was a member of the Little Green Scouts. The Cosmic Carnival every July. There’s no escaping it.
Apparently, it’s a short road from moon-rock candy on the Gravitron ride to UFO hunting in my own backyard.
Darkness crowds around us. Dew gathers on my skin, leaving me cold and clammy. Tater strides at my side, her ribs brushing against my legs with every step. It creates a rhythm as we walk through the damp grass, and I start to hum along, just to calm myself.
“The bears are gonna eat us,” I sing, “the moose are gonna beat us.”
Okay, maybe not the most soothing activity.
Tater Tot glances up again, worry heavy in her eyes. Worry and longing for a better human leader.
“Yeah, I get it, girl” I say with a nod, “me too.”
We walk past the latest excavation site, the shallow trench my dad started digging last fall with his former grad student, Julian Porter, before illness robbed him of his remaining strength. They’ve been digging trenches in the fields for years now. Always digging for “local artifacts.” Which, in Dad-speak, means alien relics. He’s got a whole closet full of them. My best guess is that they’ve managed to unearth pieces of hundred-year-old farm implements. It’s pretty harmless, though it does make traversing the property a bit more treacherous.
The idea usually strikes me as ridiculous. Right now, it chills me deeper than the damp night air.
Grass thwacks against my worn work boots as we draw closer. Out here, the air tastes like...lightning. Like ozone. Something electrical gone wrong, and I drag my eyes over the night sky. Is a storm headed our way?
Up ahead, out in the middle of the field, something shimmers.
I know I saw it. A bit of glitter caught out of the corner of my eye. A glint of broken glass on the beach.
But then it’s gone again. I squint hard. I could swear...
The wind shifts, and it brings air from the middle of the field. The air is sweltering.
Tater Tot is trained on point, her nose aimed in the direction of the heat.
“Wouldn’t it be crazy if this was a UFO?” I ask the dog. “Dad would finally be right about something.”
Tater Tot only growls.
Steeling my spine, I force myself to walk closer.
Something landed in his field. I know it. I can feel it. I watched it stream across the sky. I heard the metal shriek with torsional force. I felt the house shake beneath my body when the whatever-it-was crashed in the field. I know all of those facts independently, but I can’t see anything now.
A glint of glass on the beach .
Slowly, I reach out my hand. The skin prickles on my palm. Heat. Electricity. My own jangling nerves.
And I know that I should pull away. That this sensation is a warning —not an invitation. But I can’t, so I don’t. Instead, I push forward.
Electricity surges through me.
It stings and burns and wracks my body. My head fills with a crackling noise, radio static, a crashing tidal wave, an overwhelming fullness. A gasp tears from my throat.
Then come the visions.
Big hands curved around my hips.
Hot breath fogging the crook of my neck.
Teeth on my skin.
A searing heat driving deep into my body.
I jerk my hand back, the sharp, precise pain goring into the tip of my index finger. It prickles and burns. My whole body flushes warm.
Tater Tot erupts in a savage bark.
The sound startles me and I jump. I stagger and fall backward onto my ass. Dew soaks me to the skin.
The dog keeps barking. Her old, graying jaws snap and spittle flies and she barks and barks, the ragged sound tearing the air, and I can only flail around for the flashlight I dropped when I fell. It takes me exactly four tries to scramble back to my feet.
A heavy blackness hunches in the field only six feet away. It isn’t there— nothing is there—but I can sense it. The nothingness of it is overwhelming.
I need to get us back to the house. Now.
“Okay, girl,” I say, my voice raspy, “Tater Tot, come on.”
The dog won’t stop barking. The poor, ancient thing is going wild, all of her wiry black fur standing on end. Finally, I hook my fingers beneath the dog’s worn leather collar and give it an authoritative tug.
“ Hey ,” I repeat, firm but gentle, “come on. Back to the house.”
Reluctantly, Tater stills. She pants, her breath condensing in the night air, and then, with one final grumble, she falls into step at my side.
“Good girl,” I tell her. I reach out then, hesitantly, and pat Tater Tot on the head. For the first time, she lets me.
Not letting go of her collar, I swallow the lump in my throat. Then, I turn away from the black nothingness and jog us back to the house.
Dad stirs in the living room, the recliner creaking beneath him, his voice muffled by half-sleep.
“Robin?”
Sagging back against the front door, I squeeze my eyes shut. I drag in a few steadying breaths as the dog leans against my legs. Finally, when I trust my voice not to shake, I answer.
“Yeah, Dad. I’m here.”
“Is everything all right?”
I huff an involuntary laugh. “Thought I heard something outside, that’s all. I...I probably just need to get more sleep.”
Dad grumbles, and the TV switches off. “Spoonful of honey,” he mutters into the sudden quiet. “Fixes anything.”
“Okay, Dad.”
Leave it to a beekeeper. That’s been his solution to everything from stomach aches to test anxiety since I was a little kid. Somehow I don’t think that old family remedy is going to fix things this time.
But it’s all right. I’ll deal with it in the morning. Just add it to the list along with Buy coffee and Save my dad’s farm. Right there at the end: Investigate eldritch horror in the field. Try not to orgasm in my pants.
Yes. Great plan.