Marilyn Peake - The Other

In case anyone connected to the cult was within hearing range, Nat and I talked as though our strategy was more than that, as though we were genuinely interested in the cult’s beliefs. Nat and I knew each other well. We could talk in a fake way and know exactly what was real. We’d invented that type of communication on earlier field research projects.

In between chomping down on his cheeseburger, Nat said, “I’m excited about this group. I think they have a lot of knowledge as to the true nature of these UFOs and aliens.”

I took a sip of my milkshake and replied, “Yeah. Me, too. I want to be on the front lines if we’re being invaded. I say we try to get accepted into the group tomorrow. I’d like to stay there 24/7 by tomorrow night.”

Nat said, “Agreed. It’s a plan then.”

The sound was turned down on a TV attached to the wall up near the ceiling in the back of the diner, but flashing red-and-blue police lights popping up onto the screen caught my attention. A red Breaking News banner lit up the bottom section. A scrolling ticker announced the major details of the story: Two children have been found murdered inside The Astral Plane compound.

I stared at the TV screen. Nat turned around to see what I was looking at. As soon as he realized, he said, “We oughta get the check.”

We paid and left.

Nat took the wheel for his turn driving. As we headed back out into the night, he said, “We should let Liam know.”

I said, “I’ll text him. But it doesn’t change our plans. We’re still going there tomorrow anyway, right?”

Keeping his eyes on the darkened dusty road lit only by our high beams, Nat said, “Of course.” His face had taken on a serious look. As he became lost in thought, I texted Liam, then played a bunch of word games on my cell phone.

When we drove up to the place where Liam had rented rooms for us to stay until we could get into The Astral Plane compound, I thought we were lost. A sign rising up from the desert floor into the night sky proclaimed: Flying Saucer Lodge . A 3D metallic-looking saucer perched on its upper right-hand corner. Green, red and yellow lights blinked all around the rim of the UFO. But there was no hotel in sight.

Nat followed signs that said: Parking This Way . We arrived at an unpaved parking lot in front of a cabin. The windows bled yellow light into the wilderness. Nat said, “You want me to go in to make sure this is the place?”

I said, “Yeah, that would be good.”

Five minutes later, he came out of the cabin carrying papers.

In the meantime, Liam texted a reply: Be careful. I mean it. Don’t do anything foolish.

I chuckled and replied: You know us so well.

Opening his door and getting back into the van, Nat said, “Welp, this is the place. I’m not at all sure what Liam was thinking. Oh, wait, yes I am. This place is dirt cheap.” He handed me a brochure.

I opened it up and took a look. “Yurts!? We’re staying in yurts!?”

Nat laughed. “Yup. Forty bucks a night. We’re staying in yurts. Also, this is the only parking lot. The manager marked our yurts with an X. We gotta go find them.”

I looked back at the brochure. Yup. Two Xs. Unfortunately, they weren’t next to each other.

Sighing loudly, I opened the van door and hopped out. We grabbed our stuff from the back. Feeling a bit like a pack mule with all the bags I had to carry, I followed Nat across the parking lot and onto a path. There wasn’t much on either side of it. Just the dark outlines of scrubby brush off in the distance. It was a path only because rocks on either side outlined it.

An animal howled. Another answered, its eerie cry piercing the silence.

Nat commented, “Coyotes.”

I asked, “How close, do you think?”

Nat said, “Hard to say. Probably not on the grounds of our lodge, though. Speaking of which, keep your eye out for snakes. Those are everywhere out here.”

I looked down at the path. There were a bunch of tiny burrow holes, but no slithering reptiles to worry about.

We walked for fifteen minutes. Then, finally, we saw the yurts. Circular cloth buildings dotted the landscape like stranded UFOs, some emitting the yellow glow of electric light. We obviously weren’t alone. I wondered if the dark ones were empty or if they were rented by people who were already asleep.

As we continued up the path, I marveled once again at how vividly the stars shone out here with so little pollution. It was as though we’d been presented with a different sky, one filled with a lot more stars than back home. I wished I’d thought to pack my portable telescope.

At that moment, something incredibly bright lit up the sky. My first thought was that I was witnessing an explosion. It hadn’t started on the ground, however. It had simply burst into existence in the sky. Was it a plane? Had a plane blown up? A terrorist attack? I hadn’t heard a plane, however. The night had been eerily quiet, almost as though Nat and I were the only human beings left alive on all of planet Earth. As I tried to figure out the source of the illumination, desperately wondering if I should be looking directly at it since the radiance felt near-blinding, the ball of light started streaking across the sky, leaving a gleaming trail behind it.

Nat dropped his suitcase and grabbed his cell phone out of his back pocket. He started snapping pictures.

I should have thought of that sooner. I did the same.

Then, as though nothing had ever happened, the night sky returned to its previous state.

A sonic boom erupted, passing overhead like an earthquake of sound.

Then, once again, the Earth became shrouded in silence.

A few people stepped out of their yurts, looked up at the sky, then went back inside.

Trudging along the rest of the path to the encampment, we found our assigned tents. Mine was made of green cloth and had a wooden door painted blue. Nat’s was red with a black door.

Once inside, I flicked on the light. Thank God, these had electricity. Yurts were invented thousands of years ago as homes for the nomadic people of the Central Asian steppe. The ones we had rented had been modernized. It even had an electric stove, rather than the wood-burning iron type that usually sits in the middle of the tent, venting pollution out through the roof.

I looked around. It wasn’t bad. Colorful rugs hung from the wooden lattice that supported the tent skin. There was, thankfully, a tiny bathroom with a toilet and sink. I assumed there were public showers on the grounds somewhere. There was a kitchen area with a refrigerator, stove, sink, a small counter and a table. And then I noticed something that pulled me toward it with the force of a magnet: a king-sized poster bed with a thick quilt. Suddenly realizing how physically exhausted I was, I kicked off my shoes and climbed in. Pulling the covers up to my chin, I fell fast asleep.

Around 3:00 in the morning, I woke with a start. It took a moment for me to remember where I was.

I became aware of footsteps outside. A few loud gasps from a bunch of people. Someone yelling, “Look!”

Groggily, I threw off the covers, wrestled my shoes onto my feet with exhausted fingers and stepped outside. A couple outside the next-door yurt were gazing upward. The woman was pointing. A flash of light, brighter than lightning, lit up the ground.

I looked up. There, the same thing as last night: a ball of light streaking across the sky, a trail of light forming a wake behind it.

I went back into my tent, climbed into bed and fell fast asleep. These didn’t look like the comets we were used to seeing, the kind that got people excited enough to haul telescopes out into the country to view them without light pollution. These latest explosions… I thought maybe they were asteroids. Tomorrow, I’d start looking up the scientific reports, to see if there was any factual basis to worry they might come too close. Probably not because there had been no news reports from scientists warning about approaching asteroids. It felt disappointing, and more than a little alarming, that we were living in another historical period when people turned to superstition over scientific fact, immediately jumping to conclusions that we were being invaded by an alien race.