Chapter 3
Robin
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“You know,” Dad says.
His blue eyes are beaming an awful lot for a man who spent the night sleeping in an uncomfortable recliner.
But he’s all revved up from last night, and now he’s got an audience of two. Not that I’m much of an audience after barely sleeping. But Julian, his former grad student, is at the table with me, listening with rapt attention.
“I postulate,” he continues, “that our visitors come to Earth much more frequently than we even realize.”
He punctuates his words with a jab of the spatula. A bit of bacon grease drips onto the floor, and Tater Tot lolls out her tongue to lick it off the hardwood. She doesn’t even bother to get up.
“Uh huh,” I agree, busying myself with a sip of coffee.
Dad’s been postulating on Andromeda Valley’s alien visitors forever.
Julian nods somberly. I’m almost jealous—almost, because while I was living three states away from here, Julian was here to keep him company. Someone to dig for artifacts. Someone to listen to all of his wildest theories.
Someone to be the son that I didn’t know how to be.
But then I moved back home and saw what a good friend Julian was to my dad. After that, my own petty envy kind of just guttered out.
Right now, he’s turning a rusting piece of metal over and over in his hands. He and Dad dug it up the other day. They debated heatedly about its purpose, its origin, but mostly settled on “ceremonial artifact,” as is anthropological tradition.
“Now that I think about it,” Dad continues, gazing thoughtfully out into space, “they likely revisit at regular intervals. For scientific purposes. Julian, I can’t wait to pick your brain at our meeting.”
Julian ducks his head, his smile small and proud.
He’s always been a shy man. Even when I was still in high school, and Dad started bringing the grad student around. Dad was still teaching history at the university over in Baxter, then, and the two of them would pore over the finer details of Andromeda Valley’s eclectic history. Julian’s a few years older than me. He’s handsome, too, but he’s always looked sad in a deep kind of way. Quiet. An odd complement to my dad’s eager cheer.
“We have an anthropological imperative to learn more,” Julian answers, draining the last of his coffee. “They’re already talking about it in town.”
Dad beams. “Of course they were!”
I sigh into my cup. At least Dad’s not one of the crazies who believes in aliens and thinks they’re just waiting for their chance to go to war. He has been decidedly pro-alien for my entire life. No paranoia or fear. Only unbridled enthusiasm.
I know aliens aren’t real. I know the town’s whole thing is just a marketing ploy to bring some tourist dollars into a failed farming economy. I know.
But after last night...
I can’t quite muster my usual patient support for Dad’s ramblings. He’s like a kid at the county fair, all wide grins and breathless wonder, but, well—last night, I know I felt something . And not just the illusion that lightning reached out and licked my balls.
Which aren’t words I ever expected to think.
But something happened in that field. The chance that is was actually aliens is astronomically slight. But...what if?
I might be losing my mind.
Dad finishes his breakfast, and then they’re heading to the door. The Galilean Society meets every Saturday morning down at the Cup and Flying Saucer. Dad never misses a meeting, and Julian is always happy to drive him.
Dad pauses with his hand on the door frame. He takes me in with a sudden seriousness to his face. Then, after a moment, he offers me a warm smile.
“Don’t be afraid, Robin,” he says.
I still, my coffee cup halfway to my mouth.
Don’t be afraid? Of what?
Then, before I can answer, Dad gives me an agreeable nod and follows Julian out to the truck. I wait for the engine to start, and then I slump forward onto the table. It’s probably just the sleep deprivation. The exhaustion of living at home again, after years away. The dog on the floor who doesn’t quite trust me.
The hulking nothingness out in the field that I did and didn’t see last night.
I’m going to have to go back out there today. Just to see that it really is nothing. To reassure myself. To reclaim my sanity.
With a sigh, I dial my phone. When my friend answers, I don’t even wait for his greeting.
“Healy, I’m losing my mind.”
Zane Healy laughs, and it’s one of the oldest sounds I know.
“Is it about those meteors last night?” he asks, his voice far too bright for eight o’clock on a Saturday morning. I take another drag of my coffee in a desperate attempt to catch up. “I bet your dad is in seventh heaven.”
Healy knows all about Dad. As a kid, he spent as much time in our house as I did in his, and he’s always liked the whole “alien” thing a lot more than I did. After university, he came back to Andromeda Valley willingly. I had to be dragged back.
“He talked Julian’s ear off for the last half hour, and now they’re off to the Woo Society to spread the good news.”
Healy chuckles again. “The Galileans are going to be absolutely insufferable ,” he says, a deep glee warming his voice. “I kind of want to join them today.”
I groan and push myself away from the table. I rinse my cup at the sink and look out the window toward the crash site. It’s nothing, nothing—and then the glint of glass again.
“Healy, something happened last night.”
He’s quiet on the other end. Patient, calm, and it’s no wonder that he works as a nurse practitioner. Healy’s always been good at putting people at ease.
“That thing in the sky last night...I think it crashed in our field.”
He lets out a breath. “Jesus, Robby, I thought you were going to tell me something was wrong with your dad. Or—oh God, that Tater Tot was sick.”
I shake my head, my eyes still on the middle of the field. “Tater’s fine. But that thing was so loud last night, and I felt the impact. And, after, I went outside to check it out and—something’s not right, man.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
Out in the field, something moves .
Not a person or an animal. Not wavering grass. More like—more like the air itself. Just a shimmer, a ripple, a distortion in sunlight.
“Robby?”
“I’ll call you back.”
Tater Tot growls softly from the floor behind me.
“You stay here, girl,” I tell her, and then with a soft prayer to the gods of Gravitrons and moon-rock candy, I slip outside.
The air smells like heat and honey. The scent is so powerful, I don’t know how Dad and Julian could have missed it. Geez, what if something got to the hives last night?
Then there’s the crackling.
It’s not a sound so much as a sensation in my blood. The same sensation from last night, but fainter, the air before an electrical storm. Swallowing down my fear, I follow the feeling.
At first, I walk toward the middle of the field. Toward the crash site. But the tingling fades, subsides. And the loss stops me cold.
I want it back .
I track the sensation like a water witch. I turn in a slow circle until my blood sizzles again, and then I follow it. Away from the house, away from the crash site. Through the field ravaged by shovels, the trenches and pits that Dad and Julian have left behind.
Behind me, in the house, the dog starts to bark.
I wish Dad was here. Or Healy. Even Julian. Anyone, anyone who could have my back. Who could tell me things were going to be okay.
But I haven’t had that for so long.
All I have is this simmer in my blood, and the need to chase the feeling.
The feeling pulls me toward the barn. The sagging structure has stood empty for my entire life. Even after Dad retired from the university and began trying to revitalize the old farm property, he never used the barn. Its wood is graying. Its frame lists to one side. I forget it’s out here half the time.
Now I can’t ignore it.
As I draw closer, the buzzing in my blood grows louder and louder until it’s filling my head like radio static. It’s a roar now, a cresting wave. It hurts .
The static sharpens. It...separates. The sound pulls apart, no longer one overwhelming cacophony, but individual sounds. Voices .
Stand down—
—Sir, please—
—Terran, we don’t know—
I freeze, ten yards from the barn. In front of me, the air shimmers. A heat mirages wavering over the dead, brown grass. And then the distortion gives way, and my heart leaps into my throat.
A man stands in front of the barn.
He’s... inhuman . Taller and broader than anyone I’ve met, wearing only pants. His skin is a few shades darker than mine, but it sheens . A red-black that borders on purple, a mesmerizing color that emphasizes every defined muscle on his body.
That lightning sensation is back, firing down my nerve endings. And this time I recognize it for what it is: arousal. Which is completely irrational at best and maybe bordering on suicidal.
There is a man in front of my barn, and I can’t decide if I want to run away—or fuck him.
Slowly, the man outstretches his hand toward me, and I hear more words in my head: Don’t be afraid .
Breath catches in my throat. Black crowds in at the edges of my vision. And the last thing I see before I start to fall is sight of the man rushing toward me.