Roswell

by J. T. Green

Table of Contents

Table of Contents
parts: 1, 2, 3

conclusion

The sky brightened. A long stretch of fence cut across the dirt road, wrapping hard against the steep sides of the mountain. Across the road was a gate. The gate was open.

What we could not see before, behind the two-story observatory, was a small cottage, white, with blue trim. A perfect little garden sat before it with yellow roses and purple hydrangeas. I had a vision of myself setting up an easel there and painting those flowers, some gentle, kind lover of my own just inside, smiling out at me from the kitchen window.

The driveway ended at the door to the observatory. Father stopped the truck. I thought he might hesitate, but he did not. Once the truck was in park, he got out. He moved with the unhurried and relentless precision of a clock. I opened my door to follow. And so we found ourselves on the stage of what had been Lilly’s world.

* * *

It was a tableau worthy of Bosch. George was dead, his body grey, face bulging and purple. A cord had been tied around his neck, a strong knot at the base of his skull. Lilly sat beside him, rigid with fright, but still holding his hand. Before them the projector spat frightful programming onto a white bedsheet that had been tacked to a cedar crossbeam.

I could not see her face. An IV bag hung from the back of a wood chair. The chair was bejeweled in turquoise and polished steel. Tubing ran from the bag to a needle in Lilly’s arm, a piece of duct tape across her skin, holding it in place. The light from the projector ran through the curved body of the IV bag, falling in distorted colors across the ground in magnified and prismatic horror.

The film was amateurish in its production, but the content was disturbingly real. Clearly the protagonists were Bruckner and his boy, dressed in those absurd alien costumes. In the film, they committed countless atrocities, all perpetrated in flickering, rapid succession.

I shuddered to imagine how it looked so real. In one scene, they were atop a screaming, thrashing woman in an alley, behind a dumpster, and in the next they were alien overlords with zippers running up their backs, their right arms extended, the film shifting in and out of historical footage, armies of the Third Reich marching lockstep before the two. And on and on, through countless permutations of human misery.

I stood rooted to the spot. The boy sat crosslegged before the film on a rug, a shotgun resting across his lap. He was still in his costume, elbows on his knees, the head of the alien set beside him, facing the screen, as though they were two children, watching cartoons together.

I could sense Bruckner to my left and Father to my right, but I did not have the strength to look at either. It occurred to me that Father had ordered this film made, just for this purpose.

The calculated, vile enormity of this premeditated act exploded behind my eyes.

I ran to Lilly and ripped the IV out of her arm in one quick jerk. The boy spun, surprised. Blood began to run from Lilly’s arm and splatter on the rug. The boy stood — to stop me I suppose — but from the corner of my eye I saw that someone waved him off. I dropped to my knees, sobbing. “Lilly, oh, Lilly. What have I done?”

Lilly’s face was a mask of pallid horror, frozen in a queer, slack-jawed indifference. But seeing me thrust between her and the film, she blinked. “Sarah?”

“Yes, yes, I’m here,” I said, fumbling with the duct tape, trying to pull it tight over the wound. “I’m here and I’ll tell you what they’ve done. We will set this right, I promise. Oh, God, Lilly...” My hands were smeared in blood.

“Sarah, they’re coming,” Lilly said.

“No, no, that’s just the film. They’ve frightened you, that’s all. It’s not real, it’s...”

But I trailed off, because she was shaking her head, and trying to look over her shoulder.

“Sarah, hurry. Stop them.”

“Stop who? Those men? They won’t hurt you again, I promise.”

She turned back to me, a kind of startled incoherence on her face.

“Men? No...” she said, shaking her head, and I finally got the sense that she meant someone else.

“Who?” I asked.

“The plans.”

“What are you talking—”

“George programmed it, before they broke down the door,” she said, squeezing her eyes tight in frustration, as though she were having trouble finding the words. “He thought they’d save us.”

I shook my head. She was clearly in shock and babbling. “Lilly...”

“He started the countdown! They’re coming!”

“Who?” I yelled at her.

“Them!”

The tape that held her wrist was slick with blood and, in a violent burst of strength, she managed to slip her arm from beneath the duct tape and cast it over her shoulder. She was pointing to another room. I glanced at Father and Bruckner, but the boy was already moving. He was low and fast, and I saw him for the first time for what he was: a perfect little soldier.

I was one step behind the three. We stood, gazing at the sophistication of the place. The room was a marvel of technology: Huge coils of wires, computers, clicking arrays of machines, vast panels of blinking lights, the smell of ozone, and in the far corner, a door, or rather, the metallic frame of a door.

As if summoned, the door came to life, a shimmering grey sheet of light expanding to fill its frame. The far wall, which was easily seen before, was obscured by this light. A voice from the computer announced that the countdown was complete, the connection established.

The grey light dissolved into another world. From the far room Lilly began to scream over and over. I think, now, much later, that if that scream had been but one scream, it would not have remained in my memory as the haunting summary of that day.

Another world stood before us, and we before it as ambassadors: two men, an ape-like boy, and myself.

It was a lovely world. Snow-capped peaks, purple skies, and, as if the realization of some science-fiction novel, three moons. A being approached the door, separating itself from a group of curious onlookers.

The rumors had been true, then. There had been a crash. For there could not have been any other way our species could have known its likeness so perfectly.

The Roswell alien stepped through and raised one, long, slender — almost fragile — arm, hand open, palm out, a perfect facsimile of my drawing.

“We are peace,” the being said, its voice trilling and melodious.

There was a heavy clack as Mr. Bruckner’s boy flipped a breaker, and the power to everything went out, including the computer that was maintaining the connection to this other world. Only the light that burrowed through the drapes remained, but you could see.

The delicate being was left standing, alone, as its world winked out behind it. I noticed a soft light emanating from the center of its chest, like a hand held over a flashlight.

Sarah had stopped screaming.

“Sir?” Mr. Bruckner said to Father.

“This is absolutely incredible,” Father said.

The being looked curiously, kindly, at each of us, head tilted slightly, arm still raised in a gesture of welcome.

“Do you speak?” Father asked it, raising a hand in greeting, mimicking the creature.

It straightened its head, and I realized it was looking past Father as it spoke.

“No,” it said, its voice infinitely sad.

I screamed. My left ear went deaf. The shotgun report was devastating. The creature flew back through the now empty door, the buckshot describing a malignant constellation of light in its chest, and whatever had been there escaping forever through the holes, like dying stars.

Father whirled. Bruckner grabbed the barrel of the shotgun. Lilly stood there, pure hate on her face. She spat in the creature’s direction as Bruckner removed the gun from her hands. My ear had come back to life, opening up a flood of ringing.

To their credit, the two men knelt and applied pressure, but even before their hands touched its chest the light had fled. I stood over them as they attempted CPR. Bruckner’s hands were smeared in gore. After a while he stood.

Father and Bruckner talked, but I didn’t hear. I stood staring at Lilly for a long time. She sat in a corner, knees to her chest, staring blankly ahead, rocking back and forth. Finally, I turned back to Mr. Bruckner.

“Do you have a lighter?” I asked him.

“What?”

I repeated my question.

He shot me a quizzical look, but automatically reached in his tunic and pulled out one of his nichrome wires and a battery. I took it without a word and walked outside.

In the clear light I felt at ease. I connected the wires to the battery, as Bruckner had shown me. The nichrome began to glow. I removed the picture of the alien from where I’d folded it into my pocket and touched the edge of the paper with the nichrome. It caught, and the dry, old thing went up quickly.

The smoke was acrid, but thin. It had not been a very large picture, after all. Smiling up at the sun and spreading my arms, I thought about how man had made the bomb, and what a glorious thing it was that the human race had created something hotter than the sun.

* * *

One morning, much later, as we neared home, Lilly came around. “I’ve had the strangest dream,” she said. They were the first words she’d spoken in two days.

“Yes?” Father said.

“I dreamt I’d fallen in love with a man. Your age, Father.” She laughed, a ghostly, rustling sound. “How silly is that?” she said. “And more. That we’d discovered something... beautiful. Something very, very grand.”

“That sounds like a pleasant dream,” Father said.

She thought about this and slowly her face twisted into pain. “No,” she said. “No, I think in the end it was not.”

I was in the back. All I could see was her profile.

She had looked as though she were going to say, ‘Yes’, then frowned, as a dark arrow pierced her mind.

“No,” she said again, firmly, her mind seeking some kind of balance, like reaching out in the dark to brace yourself. Then she looked around, confused, and laughed again. “You know, I’m not entirely sure how I got here.”

“You’ve been ill,” Father said. “I’m bringing you home.”

“Oh,” she said. Then she looked out of her window. The sky was bright, but the morning star blazed, just over the horizon. “How strange.”

Father glanced at her, pain deep in his eyes. Mother would not have shown such weakness, and I lost much of my respect for the old man then. Lilly did not see. She was still looking at the morning star. She was beautiful, something about the absence of any real thought smoothing her features and lending her an ethereal, timeless quality.

“Sarah,” she said, seeing me in the truck’s side-mirror as she gazed outside, “I didn’t see you there.”

I smiled at her. She let out a nervous laugh. “What happened?” she asked.

“You’ve found peace,” I said.

In the bed of the truck, the wind had blown the edge of the tarp aside. Beneath it, I could just make out a long, slender — almost fragile — green arm.