The Jeeling Arrival
by Ben Bielert
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Table of Contents parts: 1, 2, 3 |
part 2
His shaking hand hovered over the door handle for a moment. He laughed at himself. This was ridiculous. It was just a wild animal, so why couldn’t he bring himself to open the door?
The high-pitched squeal broke the silence of his reverie, louder and clearer than ever before. There could be no doubt it was coming from the shed. He ran.
He gripped Max’s collar desperately; the Husky mutt fought him every step of the way. There were so many ripples in the grass, but no wind. Max whined and strained as he cut a beeline for the house, but John wouldn’t ease his grip on the collar and dragged him inside. The noise was growing even louder, and Max howled, trying to match its pitch. Still, the noise persisted. He ran and checked the other door, to the carport; it was ajar. He knew he had closed it, maybe even locked it. But he did the same thing now.
The noise cut off dead just as he finished checking the windows. The trembling in his hand from the night before was nothing; now his entire body was shaking as he sat down at the table. He nearly dropped the bottle when he reached for it, and he spilled a little on the table, but he managed to pour another shot.
He was lifting the shot to his lips, but then he stopped. He placed the shot glass on the table, and he looked over at the phone. Night was falling, and he had little time to make his decision. He reached for the phone. The police had a local number for the small town, but they didn’t have a 911 dispatch, not in Barrowvale. He had dialed 6 of the 7 numbers for the Barrowvale PD when he stopped. He couldn’t face him, not Officer Clarkson, not again. Not if he was wrong.
But he wasn’t wrong, he knew that. He knew there was something out there. Suddenly gripped by another wave of terror and anxiety, he got up and went to get his grandfather’s shotgun. He had loaded it the night before, but he checked it again, just to be sure.
He regretted it immediately. The gun was loaded; he was sure he’d loaded it. But it wasn’t, not anymore.
A scraping at the front door made him yelp. It sounded like someone dragging an anchor across concrete. It was a long and low scrape, and it went on for ten seconds or more before it stopped. The night was suddenly completely silent. There wasn’t the howl of the wind, or the hoot of an owl, or even the chirp of crickets. It was just silent.
He ran into his room to put shotgun shells into the rifle. Only, when he pulled out the box where he kept the shells, under the bed, he found it empty. What the hell was happening?
Another scrape sounded, shorter this time. He had no choice; he picked up the phone and turned it on, but only dead silence greeted him on the other end. Three short scrapes in quick succession sounded at the door, and Max whined and scratched back.
A wave of sheer panic swept over John. He shouted in a frenzied voice, “Go away! Leave me alone!” He ran into the kitchen, fighting back a cold sob, and peeked out the window to get a glimpse of who, or what, was at his door. He saw nothing and was slightly relieved for it.
He went to the kitchen drawer and pulled out the largest knife he had. A desperate man always derives security from the capacity to end life, and baring the blade brought John a sense of slipshod security. He went to the door, placed his hand on the doorknob, and prepared himself to open it when next his harasser scratched. He waited for the scraping to resume, and waited.
Tense minutes passed. In the hallway his clock ticked away like a maddening metronome.
After ten minutes, he began to think that the scraping had stopped for the time being. He went to the kitchen window again and peered out. Still nothing. The outside was now a murky blue, and the sun had slipped below the horizon. He took a deep breath and fetched another drink. One didn’t seem like enough, so he took another. The drink warmed him, although it was only two ounces of courage, but it felt like nearly enough.
He searched for his keys and found them after only a few moments. He called Max and grabbed hold of the dog when he came. With one hand desperately clinging to the dog, and the other struggling with the hilt of his knife and the doorknob, he threw open the door.
He could feel the eyes on him, knew they were watching. Clutching the knife desperately in one hand and Max’s collar in the other, he tried to close the door behind him. He set down the knife for a moment to lock the door. But Max started fighting against his grip.
“Max, no!” he shouted in a pleading tone.
The grass rustled, and his heart thumped like a caged gorilla. Please, oh God, please, he prayed.
Just as the deadbolt slid closed, Max slipped free from his collar. The dog ran for the field, and John shouted after him, but the Husky-cross did not yield and soon disappeared into the tall grass. John considered his options for a moment and bolted for his truck. He was in his truck and down to the edge of his driveway when he stopped and looked back. Shaking his head at his own stupidity, he slammed the truck into neutral and turned it off.
“That son of a bitch,” he muttered under his breath.
He attempted a half-hearted chuckle, but it fell dead when it escaped his lips and he left its ghost in the cab of the truck. There was a baseball bat that John kept in his truck, and he grabbed it as he slid out into the descending murk of the evening. He slipped his butcher knife into his belt.
He couldn’t leave Max, and he knew it. He wasn’t just a pet; he’d been John’s companion for years. Max had been more than a good friend. If all he had ever done was behaved, then John would have left him there, but Max had saved John’s life once. He had been fresh to the country and a hungry grizzly had taken a swipe or two at him. He hadn’t yet learned to pack the shotgun on the back forty, and if it hadn’t been for Max then he would have been hamburger by the time that mean old griz had gotten through with him. The liquid courage was welling up in John’s gut now and it was making him, as it does for most, more bold and sentimental.
John felt numb as he made his way through the field. The night air was rapidly cooling, but he couldn’t feel it. He called Max repeatedly, but knew that his efforts would be fruitless. The dog didn’t come, and before he knew it he was at the old shop door.
“All right you bastards, just give me back my dog!” John called out, trying to sound as angry and threatening as possible, but his voice trembled.
The grass rustled behind John and he lost his composure completely. He began flailing around like a man drowning, swinging his bat wildly at the grass that surrounded the shed. But he struck nothing in the dark, and was lucky he hadn’t cut himself with the knife in his belt in his attempts.
Then came the voice. It sounded like a croak, a mixture between man and animal, and its pronunciation of the words it spoke was strange. It was unlike any accent he had ever heard. “Are you done?”
The voice came from behind him, and John whipped around to see the speaker, bat raised. It took him a moment to spot what had spoken, for the creature was not even a quarter of his height. It stood facing John, with its back to the shed. John could now see that such a creature would be able to slip in and out of the building easily through the hole in the bay door that he had noticed earlier. Its skin was scaly and a deep shade of blue. It stood on two legs and peered up at him with intelligent, shining eyes. It wore a shimmering black suit that covered its entire body from the neck down, even its feet. Only its hands were left exposed, and each had two fingers and a thumb, but no nails on the fingers and a small, sharp-looking claw on either thumb. The creature held its hands out, with the palms upwards.
John stifled a desire to shout or bolt. “What the hell are you?” he said, drawing his bat back.
“Easy now, John, we don’t want to hurt you. We will, however, subdue you if you don’t calm down,” the creature said. “My name is Denji, and I am a member of what you would call an alien race known. We are known as the Jeeling.”
“Jeeling? Denji? Wait... we?” John asked, struggling to process.
“Of course, I am not alone, but we mean you no harm,” Denji replied. The grass rustled.
“How... how do you know my name?” John asked. He lowered his bat and looked around.
“That, right, I’m sorry, but we had to go into your house. We happened to see your name on some of the mail there,” Denji said.
“You can read English?” John asked. He felt violated and angry, but he was also curious. He clenched his lowered bat.
“Oh, yes, we’ve been watching Earth for quite some time. We know much about your planet. Of course, you make it fairly easy with all the radio signals that your species likes to send into space. That’s a risky business, you know. Not everyone out there means you no harm. You’re lucky we were the ones on the other end.”
“If you’re not here to hurt us... why are you here?” John asked. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing straight up.
“That is a much more complicated question,” Denji said, and an almost human and forlorn look contorted his features. “Let me just assure you that we are not here to hurt your race or your planet. Both are remarkable, albeit human nature has us wary.”
“Okay, here’s an easy question then, where’s Max?” John snapped.
“Your dog?” There was an odd, rapid clicking noise, and John realized that the creature was laughing. “He’s safe.” The alien turned its head and called out, “Could you please bring Max out?”
John could hear a bustle of activity within the shed.
“My apologies, we weren’t trying to kidnap him; he likes us as much as a newborn enjoys tarklan.” John, of course, had no idea what tarklan might be. “We like him, too. We like you as well, and we are sorry we scared you. That wasn’t our intention. We just couldn’t risk one of our people being hurt by you, and we certainly didn’t want to hurt you either.”
Max appeared at the hole in the bay door, and John saw many small shapes shuffling around him and croaking in hushed tones. Max leapt through the hole and ran over to John, his tail wagging. John knelt down to pet Max and was relieved to find him unharmed.
“Are we free to go then? Will you let us go without harm?” John asked.
Denji responded with a barrage of the clicking sound that John supposed was laughter. “John,” it said, clicking away like a Geiger counter, “you are not our prisoner. You are free to go, as you say, but sooner than that we would leave. We would never try to drive you from your home but, with your permission, we would also like to stay.”
John’s head was reeling. “What the heck are you talking about?”
“We are not just visiting, our business here on Earth is... more permanent,” Denji said.
“Stop being so secretive! What the hell do you want here?” John said, forgetting for a moment to be scared.
“We need to be here on your planet. We have nowhere else to go,” Denji said, locking eyes with John. The alien’s eyes were a luminescent green, like two marshy pools.
“What about your planet?”
“It was destroyed,”
“How?”
“It was struck by an asteroid much as your planet was in your Mesozoic Era. Our planet was smaller than yours, though, and the asteroid tore it asunder.”
“So... you’re the last of your race?” John asked. He attempted to peer through the hole in the door, but all was still within and Denji positioned himself to block much of the opening.
“More than that, we are the last survivors of our planet. Although I suppose there could be some single-celled organisms still clinging to life in the remnants of our old world.”
“So what is your business here?”
“It is obvious, is it not?” Denji asked.
“You want to settle here?”
“We must settle here,” Denji corrected. “Your planet is the nearest planet that we know of where we are able to live, without the continued aid of technology. The environment here is compatible with our biology. We can survive on a diet derived from native animals and plants. Our species could survive and even thrive here. We will not survive much longer if we are in space, but your planet will not survive much longer without some intervention. We could be good for this planet, and it could most definitely be good to us.”
John raked his fingers through his hair. “So why me then? What’s my role in all this?”
“To be honest, there is no specific reason why it is you. We could really use your help, but we came to your land because it is remote and you live alone. If we expose ourselves to your governments too soon, then we run the risk of capture or termination. We have to have the resources to demand rights and sovereignty. In the meantime, if you would let us settle here we would be quite grateful.”
Copyright © 2018 by Ben Bielert
