They Came With the Rain

by Christopher Coleman

“You know that damn thing is searching the whole universe for noises?” Henry Kellerman had asked his son rhetorically one day during the first week of operation, scrunching his face while he stressed the word universe, as if perhaps he’d heard the description wrong and was now looking to his son for a correction.

  But Jerry Kellerman’s dad had been pretty close: the universe was the arena of the Grieg Telescope, and though the device obviously had its limits, to hear the people who knew about such things tell it, it was nothing short of a scientific wonder. The massive metal receiver was almost as tall as the Statue of Liberty—and twenty times as heavy—its wide, concave face positioned in a relentless stare toward space, ready to receive even the slightest of electromagnetic waves that might drift to Earth from the heavens.

  “I heard some buzzing around the dish today,” Jerry’s dad would mention in passing to his son at least a couple times a year. And then, with a look both grave and thoughtful, he would ask, “Think an alien farted?”

  Even when he could see the punchline coming from a mile away, Jerry would genuinely laugh at the joke every time, and even today, at forty-one years old, as he sat in the 4x8 guard gate at the only checkpoint of the Grieg compound, he still couldn’t help but crack a smile. He missed his dad terribly, even now, almost a decade after his death. Jerry supposed it didn’t help that he worked only steps from where the man had collapsed and died from a massive stroke during his morning crew meeting one spring day; the shared workplace meant the memories of the man often came in floods.

  Yet, despite the monotony and boredom that accompanied his particular job, Jerry considered the work important, and this importance gave him a sense of satisfaction. And though the telescope and the barren acres on which it had been situated might have been relatively dull and unchanged since his childhood, the town of Garmella had evolved into a very different place since then. The town was always beautiful—a hidden gem in the mountains of Arizona that few people even knew was there for most of its existence—but with the construction of the Grieg telescope, the place had become somewhat of a local tourist destination.

  It wasn’t just the telescope itself that drew people in now, however, though there were still plenty of people who came for the science of the thing alone. In the summer months, geeks from as far east as Texas and the Oklahoma panhandle came to take the tour of the compound, which, in Jerry’s opinion, was rather unspectacular as guided tours went.

  It was the indirect effect of the telescope, however, that had given the town its main notoriety, and because of this effect, Garmella was now a small-town version of a sideshow attraction. For the Johann Grieg Radio Telescope to be effective—at least to the degree that it was intended—it required the air and space surrounding it to be completely absent of competing radio signals. And in the late seventies when the plans were drawn, and into the late eighties when construction began, the mass use of cellular technology did not exist. The science of the telescope was as advanced and progressive as anything on earth at the time, as were the minds developing it; still, a greater technology was on the horizon, and no one at the time saw the ubiquity of cell phones that was to come.

  When a decade later the world was devoured by a plague of craned necks and swiping fingers, it was far too late to change the location of the telescope to a place more isolated. The result of these colliding technologies was that a ban was placed on cell phone use anywhere in Garmella, as well as on any other type of radio frequency. It wasn’t ideal for the residents of the town—as even things like microwave ovens were frowned upon—but to outsiders looking for a spot where they could drop off the grid, Garmella was just the place.

  Jerry looked at his watch—12:30 am. He had another four and half hours until his shift was up, and he could already feel his eyelids getting heavy. The truth was, of course, if he had really wanted to spend his shift curled up in the back of his pickup truck napping, no one would have known the difference. It was one of the many advantages of living in a quiet zone: if someone really wanted to check up on you, they had to do it in person.

  But that wasn’t Jerry’s way. In the four years since he’d worked at the facility, except for the occasional nodding off on a particularly tough night, he’d never done anything other than what he was paid to do. His father had been a part of the first maintenance crew that oversaw basic upkeep and repairs on the telescope almost thirty years ago, and, as corny as such a connection might have seemed to most people, it was important to Jerry that he respected that legacy.

  Pop! Pop!

  The sound was like gunfire and came from above him, on the roof of the guard booth. Jerry sat straight in his chair, placing his palms flat on the desk in front of him, preparing to push himself up and dart toward whatever danger was producing the sound. He maintained the pose for several seconds, listening for the racket again, and a moment later the plunks came down in rapid fire, splattering above him like exploding acorns.

  Jerry took a deep breath and sighed, and then he began to laugh.

  “Ho-ly shit,” he whispered, nodding with glee now. “It’s about damn time.”

  He opened the booth door slowly and took the shallow step from the curb to the pavement, never taking his eyes from the dark sky as he walked out into the one-lane road. His mouth was agape as he scanned the night sky like the telescope looming above him in the distance. He wandered a few more steps until he was standing directly in front of the mechanical barrier arm, but the light from the booth was making visibility difficult, so he walked several more yards from the gate until the glare faded and all he could see was the wavy charcoal of the firmament above.

  Rain. He almost couldn’t believe it. He’d stopped looking at the weather outlook in the paper weeks ago; but still, if rain had been in the forecast, he would have heard about it from somewhere. He ate breakfast at Carla’s Diner almost every morning after his shift—including the prior morning—and if the forecast had called for rain the next day, he certainly would have heard about it from that crowd.

  Huge pellets of water were now splattering into his face and eyes, and within seconds, the drops became a deluge of heavy sheets. Jerry blinked several times, clearing his vision of the relentless moisture, and then he ran his hands through his hair and shook his head, spraying the area like a dog drying from a dip in a creek. Then, as if the vibrating motion triggered an area in the reasoning portion of his brain, he was reminded that he had no spare uniform to don—either in the booth or in his truck—and that sitting in soaking wet clothes for the rest of the night was probably not the best way to spend his shift.

  He turned back to the booth now, and as he took the first step of retreat to the gate, a shadow, as tall as it was thin, entered the frame of the gate’s rear window and then disappeared.

  Jerry stopped so quickly he almost tripped over his feet, catching his breath with the same abruptness, releasing a gasp that was some mixture of confusion and terror. He wiped at his eyes again, trying desperately to clear the rain, no longer concerned with the drenching of his uniform. He swiveled his head slowly back and forth, trying to locate the dark shape again, but he knew in the blackness it was a useless task, and that only the light of the guard gate had allowed him the vision.

  He turned toward the auxiliary maintenance building now, a long flat structure that was about the width of a small elementary school. The building was about forty yards from the gate and in the direction which (the man?) he’d just seen was heading. A dull orange glow came from a bulb above the entrance, giving a radius of light that stretched to the far corner of the structure.

  Jerry took a deep breath and began to walk toward the building, and within moments he was only a few paces from the door. He looked back to the guard gate, the oasis of light there seeming to beckon for his return, offering the safety of its steel construction and illumination. But this was his job, his duty, and if someone had wandered onto the compound, it was his responsibility to find and apprehend him.

  Jerry reached
to his waist and wrapped the fingers of his right hand tightly around the handle of his baton, the weapon hanging holstered from his hip like an appendage. He stood directly in front of the door to the brick maintenance building now, and as he placed his left hand on the knob, the image of the dark shadow came to his mind again.

  What had he seen exactly?

  Jerry’s brain flooded with ideas, none of which quite made sense. The thing was too tall. Too shapeless to be a man. It had looked as if the trunk of a tree had passed by the window. Maybe that was it, he thought. The sudden onset of the storm had uprooted a tree and blown it past the booth. It was odd, for sure, but not impossible.

  But the tree explanation didn’t fit. The speed at which it had crossed the window was too slow, the direction too upright and even. And there was a human movement to the shadow; Jerry hadn’t seen anything resembling a head or torso, but as he replayed the two-second event in his brain once more, he thought he had seen...arms?

  He shook his head once more, this time erasing his speculations, trying to focus on something closer to reality, though, in truth, he was at a loss. Despite the movement, whatever he had seen didn’t quite meet the human test, and it certainly didn’t fit the description of any animal he’d ever heard of anywhere in the world, let alone one that existed in these parts.

  Jerry lingered under the awning of the structure for a few seconds, taking a moment to let the droplets of rain clear his face, and then he turned the knob to the door and pushed in.

  He waited a beat before stepping inside the maintenance building, and as he lifted his foot to enter, he heard a crackling noise come from somewhere to his right. The sound was slow and deliberate, footsteps, fifteen yards or so down from the door, near the exterior corner of the warehouse at a spot where the light offered just the dimmest sliver of visibility.

  Instinctively, Jerry unholstered his nightstick and turned to the sound, squinting as he tried to locate the source in the darkness of the early morning. His eyes fought to adjust to the shadowed corner, searching for some type of clarity in the fog of the downpour.

  And then he spotted it again, the shape from moments ago, a figure so tall and thin it reminded Jerry of one of those stilted Mardi Gras walkers, the ones who dressed in bizarre masquerade costumes and marched in long, awkward strides through the streets, towering over the throngs of equally bizarre parade characters.

  But this figure wasn’t adorned in any bright peacock colors, nor did it move with any of the wobbly treachery of a stilt walker. Instead, it moved as if pushed along by the wind, with no swing of its arms as it strode. Jerry could just make out the outline of limbs against its torso, though its entire body was distorted by the rain, an image that didn’t quite make sense but was the only explanation that was reasonable.

  Jerry put his hand to his mouth, staggered by the sighting, feeling both nauseous and incontinent, his eyes filling with the burning tears of terror as he watched the cloudy creature cross the open gravel lawn in front of the warehouse before marching on toward the side of the building.

  “Oh, Jesus,” he whispered, the quintessential quiver of fear accompanying the words. There was little question in his mind now that whatever he had seen float behind the guard gate, and which was currently moving toward the back of the maintenance house, was organic. Animal. Alive.

  Jerry stood stunned for several seconds, petrified and awestruck as he subconsciously tried to calculate the size of the black monster. Its head—or at least the portion of the creature that was highest up on its body, as he could see no clear definition of a head in the darkness—was only a couple of feet below the roof, which meant its height was closer to seven feet than it was to six.

  Jerry took three deep breaths now and put his hands to his chest, his palms flat, fingers spread as if physically trying to slow the beating of his heart. He had to relax or he would hyperventilate, and he wasn’t in the best shape anymore—never had been, really—and an episode like the one he was experiencing tonight could be the thing to send him to the grave if he wasn’t careful.

  It could just be a prank, he thought. It would have been an elaborate one for sure, and he couldn’t think of anyone who had the time or the motivation to pull off such a stunt, but it was still a possibility, and, as he considered it further, it was one certainly better than any explanation involving a seven-foot-tall shadow creature.

  Jerry pulled out his flashlight now and clicked it to life, and then, with the conscious thought not to replay in his mind what he’d just witnessed, he headed in the direction of the corner around which the figure had just vanished. He kept his chin high as he walked, looking toward the roof, thinking he might even glimpse the beast over the edge. But he had no visibility there, not really, and the thing wasn’t quite that tall anyway, so Jerry increased his pace, walking briskly now, eager to discover both the truth of the sighting and, if what he had seen was indeed something dangerous, to deal with it. He was a big believer in the notion that the anticipation of a problem was usually much more debilitating than the problem itself, and the sooner you confronted it, the quicker it resolved. Of course, he usually reserved that idea for problems of the intellectual or emotional kind, but still, the same principle applied with physical confrontations as well, especially being a security guard where confrontation was pretty much the job.

  The telescope.

  The thought of the multi-billion-dollar piece of equipment that sat elevated above the town suddenly inspired Jerry, energizing him with the reminder that he was the first and only line of defense against would-be vandals or thieves. It was his raison d’etre—the reason for any security position—so if he wasn’t going to put up a fight tonight, what was the point of him being there?

  With this new sense of duty now lodged in his mind, he took off in a gallop to the side wall of the warehouse, and the moment he reached the corner, he stopped for just a moment before turning it, the baton out in front with one hand, the flashlight in the other.

  He scanned the torch quickly but steadily from left to right, immediately seeing that the side of the building was empty. Jerry moved quickly now to the next corner, this time barely slowing as he turned left, his eyes darting as they investigated the long exterior wall that formed the rear of the shed.

  Nothing.

  He took a breath for what seemed like the first time in minutes as he stood staring down the length of the structure. He turned to his right now, away from the building, staring off to the first row of trees that began about a hundred yards from the warehouse and continued on for over four miles, rising gradually up the mountain before plateauing into a clearing in which the telescope sat watching the skies unceasingly. Jerry considered now the possibility that the thing he’d seen had simply kept walking into the woods and was perhaps hiding there for now, waiting for daylight. If that was the case, Jerry would never find it tonight, and he would have no choice but to log the event, call it in to the company, and report it to the new kid, whose shift followed his in the morning.

  But he would wait to call the sheriff, at least for now, at least until he could come up with some explanation for what he’d seen, something to relay to the officers when they arrived.

  Jerry returned his focus back to the warehouse and then jogged the length of the back wall, turning the corner that led to the last uninspected side of the rectangular building. As expected, he found only empty gravel there as well, so he continued along the side wall until he had completed his circumnavigation of the structure and was again at the front door, staring at the entrance as if it were a portal that led to another world.

  The door to the warehouse was still open, Jerry having left it that way when he went to investigate the shadow figure, so he grabbed the knob once again and pulled it shut, relishing the sound of the thick bolt latching as it entered its metal hollow. He turned to head back to the guard gate now, and in that moment decided to make his call into the sheriff, (no cell phones were allowed in Garmella, but thank god for good ol
d landlines), and as he began to walk to the booth, the dullest of thuds came from behind the door, a sound so gentle that on any other day it would have gone unnoticed.

  Not tonight, however. Definitely not tonight.

  Jerry closed his eyes, his back still to the door, his body resisting the urge to turn around again. Just keep walking. Make the call first and then, if you still want to, you can go back and check out the noise. Or better yet, don’t. Just wait for the guys with sidearms to show.

  The internal conversation happened in a half-second, and Jerry reminded himself that it was him leaving the door open that had likely invited in the source of the noise, a squirrel or raccoon or some other scurrying creature. The whole space was a clutter of shovels and tools and a thousand other things that could have made the noise.

  And if he hadn’t already seen the shadow creature, that’s what he would have assumed.

  “I can’t call this in without knowing first,” he said aloud, shaking his head as he spoke, as if understanding in the moment the wrong decision he was making.

  And then an idea came to him, one he’d never considered in four years on the job.

  Jerry turned and ran toward his F150 parked in the lot just in front of the guard gate, reaching it in seconds and quickly unlatching the tailgate, dropping the short rectangular door flat, exposing the bed and the gun locker tucked neatly against the right side. He fumbled in his pocket for his keys, blindly finding the correct one and inserting it into the lock in one fluid motion.

  Three guns filled the locker—two rifles and a shotgun—and Jerry instinctively pulled the latter, feeling the close-range capability of that particular weapon would be the better choice. Firearms were technically forbidden on the job, and not issued by the company as part of the guard kit, so anything that happened once he picked up the gun would be all on him. But that was fine. If it turned out whatever he’d seen was some kind of nighttime mirage, the stretched-out shadow of an animal or some other trick of the light, well, then, no harm, no foul.