The Jeeling Arrival
by Ben Bielert
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 1
“Police, fire or ambulance?” the operator asked.
John took a deep breath. “I... I dunno what this is exactly.”
“Pardon me, sir? May I ask with whom I’m speaking?”
“This is Jonathan Dowler. Look, there’s been an incident out at the old Mueller place. You better send someone.”
“What exactly has happened, Mr. Dowler?” He could practically hear her squinting at the phone.
“You’ll think I’m crazy if I tell you, but trust me, I need someone out here as soon as possible.”
There was a sharp little exhalation of exasperation on the other end. “Mr. Dowler—” she began, but he cut her off.
“I promise, this ain’t no joke. Just send somebody.” His voice wavered as he said the word “somebody.”
For a moment there was a cold silence on the other end, and then, finally, the operator spoke again. “All right, you said the old Mueller place, right?”
Waiting was the worst part. He didn’t want to think it, but he couldn’t cease the worry gnawing at his subconscious: Aliens. Aliens had landed in his field. At any moment his life would turn into an X-Files episode; a bright, piercing light would shine through the windows, and tall white figures with black globes for eyes would burst through his door to do God knows what to him.
The tremor in his hands had spread to his entire body and he convulsed involuntarily. Clutching the shotgun, he made his way to the liquor cabinet and poured a drink. He downed it readily, and then another. After a moment’s thought, he downed another. He might have continued in this manner had he not known that he would soon have to give testimony to a cop. Three is enough.
The tremor in his hands and body soon passed, and he felt brave enough to look outside.
There was nothing. Even if it weren’t lost in the murky dark of night, he wouldn’t have been able to see the gigantic, metal egg way out there in the field. There was no sign of tall skinny white or little green men emerging to probe him. Small blessings.
Nearly an hour later, a new noise pricked his ears: the dull roar of an engine heading down the old country road. Relief washed over him and he stood. When the headlights of the police cruiser finally pulled into his dirt driveway, it felt like Jesus had come to his hobby farm, salvation in a squad car.
* * *
Officer Dan Clarkson wasn’t a man who had much patience for nonsense. He was a hard man, third-generation cop, and he took his coffee black. He had never met the guy who had placed this call, John Dowler, but he didn’t like him already. Maybe it was the vague call they had received at dispatch, maybe it was the fact the guy never grew anything out here and was likely growing reefer in his basement, or maybe it was just the fact that he looked like the kind to have lots of airy ideas. He was probably some sort of closet queer. Dan couldn’t put his finger on it exactly, but his instincts told him that he was no good, and he trusted his instincts. It wasn’t some hippy new-age intuition or anything like that; it was nature. A good cop had to trust his instincts, and every one of them told Dan that this kid was no good.
The officer shut off the engine and stepped out of his vehicle. Right away, he knew something was up. The country was quiet, but this was the silence of a crypt. He unclasped the button on his gun holster. Three quick raps on the door, and a half a second later he was face to face with the kid, John, gawking at him.
“We received a call about some trouble out this way,” Officer Clarkson said.
“Yes, yes you did. Thank you for coming, Officer, I know it’s awful late. I was sleeping myself, didn’t want to bother you folks. I didn’t know what else to do though. Not like this sort of stuff happens every day.” John spoke very quickly and with an occasional stutter.
Officer Clarkson furrowed his brow. “What exactly is it that’s happened, son?”
John laughed nervously. “You’ll think I’m nuttier than a fruitcake if I tell you, probably best if I show you, Officer...?”
“Clarkson, Daniel Clarkson,” the aging cop said, tapping the little gold nametag on his chest.
“It’ll be best if I just show you, Officer Clarkson.”
Dan sighed heavily. He was in no mood for games, but he was curious. Town crime varied from jaywalkers, to dine and dashers down at Rosie’s Cafe, to a variety of crimes involving reefer. This didn’t seem like any of that; this was something different. Even when he’d caught Debbie Harris with her husband’s body in her truck twenty years back, she hadn’t been as shaken as Dowler was now. “All right, show me then.”
John nodded nervously and led the officer through the night and to the field, his shaking beam of light cutting through the shadows. The kid’s dog, a handsome Husky-cross, was following along with them, bounding in and out of the tall grass.
“It’s just ahead, it’s right...” John’s voice trailed off, his movements slowing as they came to where John had seen whatever it was he had seen.
A patch of flattened Earth stretched before them; grass and vegetation trampled underfoot in a wide circle, like somebody had tamped it down. It was a strange sight all right, but hardly a reason to call one of Barrowvale’s finest out at 3:30 in the bloody morning. The dog ran around the area sniffing about excitedly before bounding off and disappearing into the tall grass.
“This is it?” Officer Clarkson asked.
John bit his lip and began to wring the handle of the flashlight with both hands. “It’s gone,” he sputtered.
Officer Clarkson couldn’t help himself; he chuckled. “What? The ship that made this little baby crop circle?” He laughed a little more readily now, and whipped out his little LED flashlight and started poking around.
“It sounds ridiculous, I know, but there was something here. Right there,” John said in a hurried voice, pointing to the middle of the flattened area.
“Mmmhmm,” Officer Clarkson said. He was inspecting the area, slowly walking along the breadth of the circle and crouching down to inspect the ground. “What did it look like? This ship you saw.”
“I never said it was a ship. I’m not sure what it was exactly. I never saw it move, but I assumed it caused this,” John said, gesturing around them. Somewhere in the distance, the dog barked.
“Right. Well? What did it look like?”
John described the large metallic egg-like object to Officer Clarkson, who scribbled down notes on his pad and shook his head through most of the account. From time to time Clarkson would chuckle or breathe a slight snort of derision, but finally John finished and the two traipsed back through the field to his house, the dog emerging from the field just as they were crossing John’s front yard.
With a, “We’ll be in touch,” and a look that seemed to finish the sentence, “with the local nuthouse,” Officer Clarkson got into his cruiser and drove off.
* * *
John trudged into the house, peering about the property as he went. If not for the overwhelming exhaustion, he would have felt more... what? Terrified? Confused? He didn’t even know, had he imagined the whole thing? No, it had been out there in the field, he was certain. So where was it now?
He didn’t have the energy to think about it; he flopped into bed. The digital numbers of his bedside clock-radio glowed in the semi-darkness of the predawn morning; it was nearly five. He had to be up in an hour to get ready for work. Even an extra ten minutes would help, but sleep wouldn’t come no matter how much he tossed and turned. Soon he got up, made coffee, fed Max, and ate some toast.
As he was putting his plate in the sink, he heard it again: that strange high-pitched tone, that humming. The coffee mug nearly slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor. He clenched his teeth and tried to convince himself he was imagining it.
But Max began whining and scratching at the door, and he couldn’t deny it anymore.
He was slipping on his boots when the hum stopped, as quickly as it had started. Max quit scratching and just wagged his tail. In the silence, John stood there, heart pounding, waiting to see if it would start again. Then he cursed and flopped down on the couch and flicked on the TV. He drank more of his coffee, basked in the glow of the screen, let Max out, let Max back in, and left for work twenty minutes early because he couldn’t shake the nagging feeling that he was being watched.
* * *
Work was long and hard, but not enough of a distraction. All day he thought of the oblong sphere and its high-pitched tone, and when day’s end arrived he dreaded going home.
As he pulled up to the house, he was surprised to see Max out; he was sure he had left him in and locked the door. Getting out of the car, he walked up to the front door and tried the handle. It was locked. So how the hell had Max gotten outside?
John swallowed hard. Every hair on his neck stood at attention as he walked into the old ranch house. He called Max over and the dog came easily. He was comforted by Max’s presence, but couldn’t shake a feeling of foreboding. The house looked foreign to him now, something dangerous with traps or intruders behind every corner. He moved through it like an archaeologist exploring an old tomb. Someone had been in here, he knew it. Had he left his bedroom door ajar? What about the magazines on the coffee table? They’d been arranged differently, hadn’t they? Someone had moved the remote...
“No,” he said aloud to himself, firmly. He was just seeing phantoms. He was sleep-deprived; he just needed a rest.
Then Max started barking, hopping up onto the windowsill of the big bay window in the living room. It wasn’t a vicious bark, but more of the bark that he reserved for greeting John or a visitor he recognized. He was peering towards the field.
But John hadn’t heard a car.
He ran outside, letting the screen door slam behind him and was just in time to see something dart into the grass. Max followed John outside, wagging his tail as another bark issued from his mouth.
Part of John said, Go back inside and pour a stiff drink. Another part said, Follow it. He decided to split the difference, and took a swig from his bottle before slipping his boots on and running across the yard with the dog in tow. The tall grass of the field rippled as he approached, marking a trail onward, and he followed it, ignoring the dread that was welling up in his gut. It was a beautiful summer evening, and the sun was amber in the sky. Great fingers of golden cloud stretched across the heavens, their undersides rosy pink. Bolstered by the dying light, John pushed on.
The ripple moved quickly, and John could hear the slaps of footfalls on the ground. The ripple was heading towards the old shop, sitting to the side of the field, near the tree line. Soon it loomed before John. He never used the old shop, but it was huge and had four bays for equipment. It had seen better days, but there was no doubt that it was still structurally sound. Since it had been neglected so long, the old dirt road leading to it was now overgrown.
The ripple in the grass stopped at the perimeter around the shop, but John didn’t see the door open. When he got to the shed, he could see it in its full state of ruin: the roof was rusted, a pane of one the windows had broken, the paint was peeling, and one of the bay doors had a hole in it big enough for a raccoon to get through. Maybe that was all he was seeing. It was just a raccoon. But did they move around when it was light out?
Copyright © 2018 by Ben Bielert
