Caitlin Kiernan - Alabaster

"I don't think I want to go anymore," Shelly, the keyboardist-in-the-floorboard, said. There was a little nervous laughter and then, "No, I'm serious," she said. "Turn the car around and let's go back to town."

And before we had time to start arguing about whether we were going back to Athens or continuing on to Jefferson to hunt ghosts, there was an extremely loud BLAM and the car swerved off the road into a weedy ditch. A few seconds later, once we were sure that none of us were bleeding or unconscious or disemboweled or anything, Barry climbed out one of the windows (his door was jammed shut).

"It's a blowout," he reported. "We blew a tire."

I had a spare, of course, And, of course, it was also flat.

For the next ten minutes, maybe less, we sat there in the car, rubbing at our various scrapes and bruises, drinking the weasel-piss beer and Jagermeister, and debating whether we'd get shot if we went to one of the houses along the road and asked to use the phone. The girl who was driving (she had a name, but none of this was her idea, so I'm not using it) turned on the flashers and declared that we never should have left town in the first place. I don't remember anyone disagreeing with her.

"What if that thing comes back?" Shelly asked anxiously.

"It won't," I said, hoping I was right, and started looking for the bottle of Wild Turkey, which had rolled under the front seat when we went into the ditch.

And that's when the black Monte Carlo came along, heading south towards Athens, away from Jefferson. It only had one headlight and that didn't seem to work very well. "Thank god," Shelly grumbled, as the big, ugly Chevy glided across the yellow center line and came to a stop directly in front of us. After sitting in the dark, even that one weak headlight seemed blindingly bright.

Mike-whose door wasn't jammed shut-got out of the car, and a very tall, very fat man, a veritable mountain of human flesh, climbed out of the Monte Carlo, and the two of them stood staring at the crippled Honda, shaking their heads. The man from the Monte Carlo was wearing a dark suit and a white shirt, a long coat that almost reached the ground, and a derby hat. He had a long beard, which may have been gray. Echo and the Bunnymen weren't singing anymore because we were still sober enough to think the stereo might run down the battery, and the night was so quiet, so still, those of us in the car had no trouble hearing what Mike and the man from the black car were saying. It went something like this:

"Where are you kids headed this late?"

"Nowhere."

"Well, good, because that's the only place you're gonna get to with that tire. Don't you think you should change it?"

"Our spare's flat."

"You're kidding?"

"No sir. Are you going to Athens? If you're going to Athens, maybe you could give one of us a ride back to town."

"I'm not going to Athens. I'm going to Savannah. I'm going to Savannah, and I don't pick up hitchers."

Their breath fogged in the cold, and Mike hugged himself for warmth, though the guy from the Monte Carlo seemed oblivious to the temperature. He scratched his beard and stared at the flat tire.

"You kids been drinking?" he asked.

"A little," Mike lied.

"So it wouldn't do to just sit here until a cop comes along, then, would it?"

"No sir. We'd really rather not."

"I don't pick up hitchers."

"Yes sir."

"I'm going to Savannah. I got to make my delivery before morning."

"Yes sir," Mike said again, and Shelly, who happened to be his girlfriend, mumbled something rude from the backseat.

I opened the bottle of bourbon, took a small drink, coughed, and that's when I noticed two shiny points of light, like cat eyes caught in the beam of a flashlight, that sort of iridescence, but silver. Two points of light, like silver cat eyes watching us from inside the Monte Carlo. I was suddenly very aware of the cold, the Georgia night stretching out around us, and just how far we were from anywhere light and safe and warm.

I took another sip of bourbon.

"Well, I'll tell someone you're out here," the big man said.

"We'd sure appreciate that."

"I'll tell them to send a wrecker."

"Thank you."

"I'd give you a ride, son, but I don't take hitchers. And I gotta be in Savannah."

And then the big man got back into his black Monte Carlo and drove away. As he passed, I swear I saw a second set of the iridescent eyes watching us from the backseat of the Chevrolet. I drank more Wild Turkey, and then Mike was back in the car again, shivering, letting in the cold.

"What the fuck was that ?" Barry asked him.

"Lock the doors," Mike said.

"Why?" Shelly asked.

"Just lock the goddamned doors!" And we did, because Mike didn't raise his voice very often and I'd never heard him sound scared before.

"Did you see that kid in the front seat?" Mike asked, and I didn't say anything about the silver eyes. "Jesus," Mike said, his teeth chattering, and he stared out his window, up at the November sky full of unhelpful stars.

"So, is he sending someone?" Barry asked, though I'm sure he'd heard the big guy from the Monte Carlo as clearly as the rest of us.

"Yeah, man, he's sending someone, okay? He said he was sending someone. Hell, I don't know."

"I can't feel my feet anymore," Shelly said, stomping them against the back of the front seat. "I think I'm freezing to death. I think I'm getting hydrophobia."

"You mean hypothermia ," the girl behind the wheel said. "Hydrophobia is rabies."

"Whatever," Shelly replied and stomped her feet twice as hard.

"Jesus, did you fucking see that kid?"

"What kid?" Barry asked, and Mike shook his head and shivered.

"The kid sitting right there in the fucking front seat. Jesus."

"I didn't see anyone but the big fucker in the bowler."

"It was a derby," the driver said quietly.

"What's the fucking difference?"

I passed the bottle back to Mike, and he stared at it a moment like maybe he'd forgotten what it was for.

"That dude, man, he smelled like something fucking dead. He smelled like rotten meat."

Barry lit a cigarette then, his face caught for a moment in the yellow-orange glow from his lighter, and no one said much of anything else that I can recall. A few cars passed, heading north or heading south, but no one else stopped to help. In a little while, maybe twenty or thirty minutes, a red tow truck showed up, just like the big guy had promised, and took us all back to town.

I'm forever drawing connections where none exist, or, to be more precise, where many other people would not draw connections, which is another thing entirely.

The hovering ball of blue light.

The blow out.

The strange man from the Monte Carlo.

The silver eyes shining from the dark car.

All these things in the space of fifteen minutes. My mind draws connections, and I'm left to puzzle over their legitimacy.

I don't believe in UFOs, not in the popular sense, anyway, that unidentified flying objects are extraterrestrial space craft. I do believe in extraterrestrial life, but I know, as a scientist, that the odds of its getting from planet to planet, much less crossing interstellar distances, are remote. Anyway, what we saw that night didn't look like a "space craft." I'm entirely willing to entertain the possibility that the blue ball of light was some unusual electrical discharge, though I couldn't begin to imagine what its origin might have been, or why it shone so brightly but didn't seem to radiate any light at all. Was it something meteorological? Seismic? Man-made? Insects? I have no idea whatsoever. I can only say it was one of the strangest things I've ever seen.