The Lights In the Sky

Chapter 20

I went back that night. Not to the clearing. Up.

They took me to that room with the projector. Strapped me in. I was no longer afraid of them. In fact, I think I smiled when they put me on the slab. That's messed up, huh? The truth is, I had nobody else but them. Not Frank or Deborah. There was nothing to do and nobody who I wanted to be around. Nobody except them. I think that surprised them. They stopped and looked back and forth at one another. Started to talk in those twangs and echoes. After a moment, they left the room. I was alone. The eye of the projector hung before me, unlit. I started to sing. Do you believe that? The same song I knew my grandma listened to that night.

After what seemed like forever, they came back into the room. They unstrapped me and grabbed me by the arms. I did get a little nervous then, because this was new. All I wanted to see was everything they showed me before. I had no desire for anything else.

There were more hallways. I was completely disoriented. I didn't know if we were going left or right or where we were in relation to the room. At one point it felt like we were moving up stairs, but I don't remember my feet lifting me.

At the end of one hallway was a dark red door in the shape of a semicircle. There were four of them with me, walking me toward it. My heart started pounding. Gut instinct told me that I didn't want to know what was behind the door. It opened with a hiss, which is such a cliché, but also completely true. We stepped into a room that resembled an airplane hangar or large warehouse. There were humongous metal boxes in rows from one side of the cavernous room to the other. Each box was maybe twenty feet high and a hundred feet along each side. The metal was gray with white writing on the front. I'm sure you can already guess that I have no idea what the writing said. There was a long seam along the front of each of the boxes.

The four that were with me led me down the nearest row and we took a left. At the end of that aisle was another identical box. They stopped me in front of it. One of them walked behind the box. I heard some beeping but didn't see anything else. This was all in almost near-dark. When I say they were leading me around, it's not like I could clearly make them out. No more than usual. It was like watching clouds through the fog.

The seam in the box split open slowly. The front of it peeled back in sections, slamming with a crackle every time one panel hit the next. I clapped my hand to my face. I was staring into my living room.

There was the couch. The TV and the doorway to the kitchen. At first I thought maybe it was some kind of video feed, that my paranoia about being watched was actually understated. But the room was three-dimensional, tangible. Little details were wrong. There were pictures of Tabitha and I on the walls, but they were switched around. The television had no screen; it was just an empty square. There were no stairs leading to the second story.

There was, however, a white door leading to the back porch. I took a step back from the scene when it started to open. I didn't want to know what would come out. But their sandpaper hands caught me. Held me in place. I tried to shrug them off, but already knew their strength was too much. I let out a yell.

"I don't want to see it!" I said. "I don't want to see it!"

They grabbed my shoulders. The door creaked open.

I stopped screaming when it stepped out.

It looked like me. I mean, it was me. The left side of its head was identical. The hair, the skin color. The eye. But there was nothing more than a corner of a mouth. Half a nose. Beyond it, there was a cavern. The faintest outline of a skull that was made of the same thing as my captors. The swarm of gnats. It formed a shell that contained chunks of meat and a liquefied brain. It walked with a slouch. The skin below its neck was gray, falling off its bones. There were gaping sores along its chest and thighs. Its ribs stuck out like fingers under dirt. A sore on its right thigh dripped with pus.