Blackwater Lights

by Michael M. Hughes

  If Kevin was right about Blackwater, something had happened to both of them in this tiny, dreary town almost forty years ago. Now that he was here, he knew somehow that it was true—this was the place. The memories felt like they were bulging against the inside of his skull, close to breaking out. But the thought of what Kevin might reveal made him more than a little afraid. Maybe there was a reason what had happened was shoveled under so deep. Maybe his mind had been doing him a favor by hiding it for so long.

  It’s happening again, Kevin had said to him on the phone.

  Ray shuddered. No need to think about it now. Not all by himself in the middle of the godforsaken backwoods. He needed a night without another of the dreams.

  In the distance, an orange glow appeared against the black void of the forest. It flared up, then brightened against the treetops.

  Probably just some drunken hunters illegally spotlighting deer. Or whatever other critters they liked to shoot and eat in these parts.

  His arm jerked and he knocked over his beer. It hit the floor of the deck and sprayed on his leg, gushing foam.

  The orange light was moving. Fast. Directly toward the house.

  Then it split in two—twin blobs of light, zipping through the sky, just above tree level, until they seemed like they’d crash into the house. Ray recoiled, holding up his hands in front of his face. For an instant, the entire yard looked like it was on fire.

  Just as quickly, the lights passed overhead.

  He jumped to his feet. In the distance, the lights hovered, their glow reflecting off the low-lying clouds and illuminating the tree line below. They wobbled, suspended in the air, and plunged straight down into the darkness of the forest. The woods were again deep black. The afterimage burned in his retinas, painting the night with phantom trails.

  He ticked through a list of possibilities, but nothing made sense. They weren’t any kind of aircraft—too fast and too small for that. And they hadn’t made a sound. They had traveled from the far ridge to the house in seconds. And too slow for meteors—plus what kind of meteors flew straight over treetops, hovered momentarily, and dropped straight down to the ground? Maybe it was ball lightning. He’d read about that once—how it could roll in through an open door and out a window without burning anything. Unless it touched you, in which case you were reduced to a pile of greasy ash.

  Ball lightning was the only real explanation. The sole other option—the one that seemed, as he stood staring into the night, to be the most obvious—was not even worth considering. It contradicted all he knew to be sane, rational, and real, and to consider it required looking into a deep, bottomless hole. He’d seen people like that on TV, wide-eyed proselytizers talking about how big-headed aliens took them into spaceships and stuck probes where the sun didn’t shine. Those people.

  He stood, staring into the darkness, until raindrops splattered on the top of his head. The hair on his arms bristled. Definitely time to go inside.

  He locked the doors. His mind raced, replaying the light show, and he watched the clock change to 3:00 A.M. before he fell asleep.

  Someone was in the yard.

  Ray sat up in bed and looked at the bright green numbers on the digital clock—4:11. The motion detector floodlights had come on.

  Then there was laughing. Female laughter.

  He got out of bed and opened the curtains of the bedroom window. A naked woman—a girl, really, maybe twenty-two at most—danced in the yard. Her skin, in the bright white light, glowed stark against the dark trees. She spun in circles, long dark hair lifting and twirling around her face. She stopped, wobbled, glanced up at the sky, smiled wide-eyed and ecstatic, and fell on her back in the grass.

  Ray ran to the front door. He fumbled with the lock and rushed outside. He knelt next to her head, afraid to touch her. Her pupils were so dilated they nearly obscured her irises.

  Her eyes rolled back into her head.

  “Hey.” He leaned over her and grabbed her shoulders. “Hey! What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  Her eyes rolled down mechanically, like the dull, plastic eyes of a doll, and stared directly into his. They were alive now. Curious.

  “Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.

  “Come on inside,” he said. He helped her to her feet and led her into the house. Maybe she was one of Kevin’s porn models, whacked out of her gourd on smack. But where had she come from? There was no car in the driveway. Which meant she had to have walked along the road through miles of woods. Or maybe someone had dropped her off. But who?

  He led her to the couch, where she fell back, curling up into herself and wrapping her arms around her knees. He turned on a lamp and she winced, covering her eyes.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “What’s your name?”

  She moved her hand from her eyes. Even in the bright lamplight her pupils were enormous. “Crystal,” she said hesitatingly, as if unsure. Her face was wet with tears, flushed, and soft. She’d shaved her pubic hair, which made her look even younger than she probably was. Years ago he might have played this situation quite differently. Kevin, no doubt, would have accepted the woman on the couch as a gift from the gods and asked questions later. But something wasn’t right.

  He looked her over more carefully. She seemed mostly uninjured, but her feet and legs had small scratches. The bottoms of her feet were blackened with dirt. He knelt next to the couch. “Let me get you a blanket. Do you want some water?”

  She looked at him, eyes wide. “I want you,” she whispered.

  Ray stopped. “What?”

  “Please.” She pulled him toward her, pressing her breasts against his bare chest. Her hands slipped down to his buttocks and squeezed him through his boxer shorts. “I need you. I need you to fuck me.”

  “No.” He pushed her lightly away. “No. We need to get you some help.”

  “I don’t need any help. I just need you to fuck me.” Her hand snaked down between his legs.

  “Hold on,” he said, pulling her hand off his crotch. “Are you on something? Did you take drugs, Crystal?”

  She reached for his crotch again, but he pushed her hands away.

  “Hey, Crystal, why don’t you just sit there for a minute? I’ll get you a glass of water. Just relax for a few minutes, okay?”

  Her eyes widened. “Where am I?” Her head jerked from side to side. “Where did everyone go?”

  “You’re safe. You’re safe with me. I’m Ray. I’ll get you a blanket and a glass of water. Just relax.” She stared blankly. He grabbed a quilt from Kevin’s bed and draped it over her. “I’ll get you some water.”

  In the bedroom, he picked up the phone and dialed 911.

  The operator answered—a rheumy-voiced woman with a heavy West Virginia accent.

  “Hello. I … someone wandered into my yard. I think she’s on drugs. She’s … something’s wrong with her.”

  “Is she hurt?” the operator asked.

  “Not really. She has some cuts and scratches, but nothing major.”

  “Is she acting in a dangerous manner?”

  “No. Not really. I mean, she seems to be messed up. She’s acting very strangely. She doesn’t know where she—”

  Crystal screamed.

  Blue lights flashed in the windows. Gravel popped under tires and a car squeaked to a stop. “The cops are here,” Ray said. “Sorry.” He hung up the phone.

  Crystal screamed again.

  Ray ran to the front door. Crystal got up and crouched behind a chair. “No. No. Please don’t let them take me.”

  Fuck. His instincts had been right—this situation was rapidly swirling down the crapper. He opened the door. Two cops, one older and very heavy, the other tall and ratlike, walked toward him. The heavy cop spoke first.

  “Excuse me,” he said. His face was red and splotched with tiny veins, his neck hidden beneath the folds of his chin. “We’re looking for someone—a girl, about nineteen years old, long brown hair—”

  “She’s insid
e,” Ray said. He moved out of the way, and the fat cop stepped into the room.

  Crystal shrieked when she saw him, and ran into the bedroom. The thin cop rushed past him and after a brief struggle dragged her back into the living room. He held her tightly, pinning her arms. “No!” she screamed. “Keep your fucking hands off me! Get off me!”

  “It’s okay, darling,” the heavy cop said. She struggled, but the thin man’s grip held her rigid. She closed her eyes tightly and a string of saliva dripped from her mouth and hung suspended, swinging like a pendulum.

  The fat cop leaned his face into hers and whispered something in her ear—Ray couldn’t make out the words—and Crystal collapsed into the thin policeman’s arms. What the fuck was that? It was like she was a puppet, and he had cut all of her strings at once with nothing more than a whisper.

  The skinny cop lifted her—she couldn’t have weighed more than 110 pounds—and carried her out the door.

  “Sheriff Morton,” the fat cop said. “You are …?”

  “Ray Simon.” Outside, the thin officer opened the car door and placed the limp, naked girl into the backseat. “What’s this all about? Who is she?”

  “Whoa. Slow down. My turn to ask questions, Mr. Simon.” His eyes flicked around the room. “What’s she doing here?”

  “She showed up outside. Naked. I have no idea where she came from.”

  The sheriff frowned. “You don’t know her?”

  “Absolutely not.” Ray glanced through the door. The skinny cop pulled a blanket out of the trunk and placed it over her. “I woke up when I heard her. She was outside. Dancing, spinning around. I figured she was high or something.”

  Sheriff Morton chuckled. “Probably is. Stupid kids around here ain’t got nothing better to do. Meth, OxyContin, garbage like that.” His eyes studied the room—flick flick flick. “Pretty girl, huh?” He flashed a yellow smile.

  “Yeah, sure,” Ray said. “I called nine-one-one, but then you guys showed up.”

  “Well, it’s a good thing we did. We’ll take care of her. She’ll probably come down in a couple of hours and start crying for her mommy and daddy. No need to worry.” His smile lingered. “It’s not every night a sweet young naked thing like that drops by—especially out here in the middle of nowhere. But you must see plenty of naked women, working in the porno business with your friend and all that.”

  Ray swallowed hard. “No, no. I’m just visiting Kevin. I’m waiting for him to get back. He’s out of town.”

  “Where do you live, Ray?”

  “Baltimore. You want my address?”

  Sheriff Morton shook his head. “No need. We’ll take her to the hospital, let her sober up, get her checked out, that sort of thing. I doubt she’ll be bothering you again.”

  Ray forced a smile. The lanky cop stood outside by the car, watching the two of them and lighting a cigarette.

  “What’s she doing out here?” Ray asked. “How did you know where to find her?”

  “We got a report, told us she might be out this way. I don’t want to talk much more about it, if you don’t mind. Privacy laws and such.”

  “Sure, sure. I just hope she’s okay.”

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Simon. She’s in good hands now.” He glanced around the house again, as if he might have missed something, hoisted his pants, and left.

  Ray stood in the doorway, watching the taillights of the cruiser disappear down the driveway.

  Now he really couldn’t sleep. Sheriff Morton had scared him—there was something odd about him, something beyond his bloated embodiment of every small-town law enforcement cliché. He’d said something to Crystal that made her go limp, almost as if she were part of a corny stage hypnosis act. And how had they known she was out here in the first place—in the middle of miles of nothingness?

  Too many questions. Too much craziness for one night—unexplained lights flying through the sky, naked women dancing, and the sideshow cops. Jesus. He could still smell Crystal on the blanket. A musky scent, sweaty, heavy, and spicy.

  He shifted for hours, the sheets bunched up against his face, wishing it would all start to make sense. He had come here to solve his life’s most persistent mystery, and now he was more confused than ever.

  Chapter Four

  He awoke to something scratching at the door. Sunlight streamed through the windows.

  He walked into the living room and opened the inside door. A cat stared at him through the screen, an orange and white tabby, its head cocked to the side. Its right ear was torn and scabbed.

  “Hey there, kitty. Kitty kitty kitty.”

  The cat licked its lips. It stared at him, tilting its head one way and then the other. He couldn’t let it in—Kevin had never said anything about owning a cat, and if it was a stray, it was probably infested with fleas and ticks. And although he didn’t dislike cats, he’d never been a card-carrying cat person. Lisa had been highly allergic to animal dander, so they’d never gotten a pet. At least that’s what she had told him. He had a hard time now believing that anything she’d said had been the truth.

  They watched each other in silence, man and cat, before it turned, slunk low, and loped off into the woods. Its testicles were huge and white, like cotton balls glued between its legs.

  Ray checked his email and found a short message from Kevin.

  So sorry. Server farm burned up. Might be arson, dealing with cops and lawyers. Tried your cell a couple of times but no answer. Back ASAP, 1–2 days max. Hang tight. —K.

  “Christ,” he muttered. Another couple of days here on his own and he’d be ready for the nuthouse. He tried calling Kevin, but his phone showed a glowing NO SERVICE. Great. Maybe they used tin cans tied together with string to talk to each other out here. He tried the landline, but it went directly into Kevin’s voicemail. He left a short message and hung up.

  If Kevin wasn’t here to explain what he’d learned about the camp, Ray could do some digging around himself. Maybe seeing something familiar would shake a few memories loose. You need to see it for yourself. It validates everything. It proves it, Kevin had said. The two of them had spent decades wondering if they had simply gone crazy. Now it was possible to understand why they weren’t. Maybe if he looked around, he’d see it, too. Whatever it was.

  He drove back into town.

  He couldn’t find a library. Maybe Blackwater didn’t have one. It didn’t seem to be full of library-patronizing types.

  He found a bookstore on the main drag—Sara’s Book and Candle Shop. Couldn’t hurt to look around. He parked and was about to open the car door when he saw the preacher from the parade stepping into the crosswalk, wearing the same ridiculous blazing white suit.

  Ray bent down as if he were looking for something in the passenger seat.

  The old man passed by the car, whistling. Like birdsong, the kind of whistle only old men seemed to be able to produce.

  When the trilling faded away, Ray exhaled. He’d been holding his breath. It made no sense. He’d never been afraid of evangelists or the pamphlet-bearing Jehovah’s Witnesses when they came to his door, but something about this man gave him the heebie-jeebies. When he looked up, the preacher had rounded the corner. Ray got out of the car. The bookstore was dark inside, but the hand-lettered sign read OPEN, and coppery bells clanked as he pulled on the door.

  The smell of incense hit him, sharp and pungent like the stuff he remembered priests swinging around in censers when he was a kid. Father, Son, Holy Ghost. Frankincense, maybe, or myrrh. Shelves overflowed with books, and piles of them littered the floor. Jars of herbs, powders, and twigs, all hand-labeled in faded black marker, were lined up in glass cases. Lisa would love this place, with all its soaps, incense, and oils—the stuff that gave him headaches. And there was something else in the air beneath the incense and floral fragrances. A hint of cat piss?

  “Hello.” The owner sat behind a counter piled with crystals, crude figurines, and baskets of polished stones. She had a bright face, a profusion of tiny
wrinkles around her eyes and mouth, and gray hair woven into a long braid. “Can I help you find something?” she asked.

  “Just looking around,” he said. A thin gray cat rubbed up against his leg. The piss culprit.

  “Just let me know if you’re looking for anything in particular. I’m in the process of reorganizing, so things are kind of chaotic.”

  Ray smiled. He doubted the store had ever been organized. He scanned the dilapidated shelves—Buddhism, herbalism, Wicca, and natural-healing books, many of them used. Stuff he would never read. His spirituality had always been pretty straightforward—you lived and you died and you tried to be a decent human being, with no need to complicate it with rituals or silly myths.

  The bells on the front door clanked. A young woman stepped inside. Average height, nice body, mid- to late thirties, blazing red hair. He watched her through a space between shelved books. Kevin had a theory about the need of straight males to instinctively undress women with their eyes. Millions of years of biology, Raymond, he liked to say. Our brains judge every woman on a simple binary scale—would fuck or wouldn’t fuck.

  The red-haired woman was definitely the former.

  He moved deeper into the store. The tabby cat followed him, rubbing its head against his legs, almost pushing him along through the tight rows of shelves. An entire bookshelf was dedicated to UFOs—worn hardbacks, faded paperbacks, and magazines. Flying Saucers Have Landed. Aliens and Angels: UFOs in the Popular Imagination, Passport to Magonia. UFOs: Operation Trojan Horse.

  He picked up an oversized paperback that had been propped against a purple geode. West Virginia UFOs and Mysterious Beings: True Accounts, by Baker Grayson. The cover was a terrible drawing of a red-eyed monster that looked like it had been done in colored pencil. He opened the book, which was cheaply bound and flimsy. He flipped to the contents, scanning the chapters. “The Beast of Beckley,” “Elkins Wave of 1966,” “The Mothman,” “The Braxton County Monster,” “The Blackwater Lights” …

  Blackwater Lights. His mouth went dry. He flipped to page 111. The chapter opened with a photo captioned The author, Blackwater Bridge, 2004. An overexposed shot of a man from behind, his arm pointing upward into the sky. Above his finger, in the blackness, were three circles of light in the shape of a triangle.