The Light

by Francis CoCo

  It didn’t move.

  We did. At about five miles an hour. Angela closed her eyes again and pressed her head to her knees, she began whispering, “Oh my God...oh my God...oh...” I gripped the seat and bounced my knee up and down, watching as Max looked back, then forward, then down at his foot and wondered aloud, why we were moving so slow.

  The Light stayed planted where it was.

  Finally, we made it to the end of the road- to the entrance- where we had come from.

  Without looking, Max peeled off the road, still in reverse, and swung the car around, out onto the main street, the one that would take us back to town. As soon as we’d hit the entrance, the car sped up and spun around with a hard jerk. Thankfully, no one was coming and we were now headed in the right direction.

  Just as we were about to zoom off down the main road, I looked down the road where we’d just come from and saw that it was empty- the Light was gone- there was nothing there- just a dirt road, empty and still- cornfields on either side. Max drove home like a bat out of hell, going eighty the whole way back.

  _____

  When Max wasn’t working, he was at home in his pin striped red and white bathrobe. He wore the raggedy thing all the time. I don’t know what significance there was in the bathrobe- it was just kind of odd because, before our encounters, he hadn’t gone around in an old ratty bathrobe with his hair a curly uncombed mess and now he did, that’s all. It also seemed that his house was a bit of a disaster, there were always dirty dishes in the sink, empty glasses and coffee mugs all over the place, newspapers laid about everywhere. He was a guy, so, he’d never kept an immaculate house but since the Light, he no longer seemed to care much about cleaning. Angela now smoked and drank and me, well, I guess the only thing different about me was that I spent a good bit of time sitting in silence – trying to figure out just what had happened to us. What we’d seen. Not that it did any good at all. I still had no idea. None of us did.

  _____

  “Have you given any thought to Thanksgiving?”

  We were at work. Angela and I had just gotten back from lunch and we were hanging up our coats in the coat closet. We had gone to O’Charleys with a few of the other girls from our office. Alyssa and Karen hung up their coats and were headed back to their desks. My desk sat right outside the coat closet and Angela followed as I went and sat down and turned on my computer.

  “I haven’t even thought about Thanksgiving,” I said. That had been the very last thing on my mind, with all that we’d had going on lately.

  “Oh shit, here comes Mary,” Angela said, glaring as Mary came waddling by, so pregnant she was about to pop. The girls in the office were having a baby shower for her that Friday. Angela made an appointment to get her annual pap smear at that exact time so she wouldn’t have to sit through it.

  Once Mary had passed us and was on the other side of the room, Angela picked up one of my files and held it to her chest- an old trick- holding a file and trying to look busy when you were really chit-chatting at work.

  “I don’t know how you handle seeing the girl your boyfriend impregnated every day,” I said.

  “I don’t really care at this point, not about him, I just can’t stand her.”

  “I’m glad you’re over him. Looks to me like you dodged a bullet there.”

  “I did. So, about Thanksgiving, what are we doing?”

  “We can do whatever. I just need some normalcy,” I said, looking around the office. Everyone, back from lunch, sat at their desks and talked on their phones and appeared busy. Angela set the file down on my desk and opened it. She spread out the papers and leaned over the file and I leaned forward- to make it appear we were discussing the contents.

  “We can have it at my house, if you want to,” I said quietly, pointing at a random line on one of the papers in front of us.

  “Yes, please. God, I would love to have a normal day.”

  “I can’t guarantee you that,” I said, “but we can try for one.”

  I hated to say it, but I wondered what would make Thanksgiving any different from any other day since our experiences? Since the Light, no day had been normal. Not for me anyway. There was never a day that seemed ordinary since seeing the Light. I didn’t want to say that but it was the truth. I didn’t think I would have an ordinary day ever again. Our entire lives had changed. But, of course, Angela knew that as well as I did. We all knew that. And I understood what she was getting at- we needed to try and have a day where we weren’t discussing or thinking about or wondering about this bizarre encounter.

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling, suddenly excited about the idea, “you know what? That’s a really good idea, actually. Let’s have Thanksgiving at my house. We’ll go all out – have a big turkey, all the trimmings, watch the game, the Macy’s day parade!”

  Angela laughed, “Yes! Right? Let’s do that...”

  “Make it an extravagant affair,” I said, “I’ve always wanted to have a big Thanksgiving at my place… you know, make the cranberry stuffing, deviled eggs, like a holiday party...”

  “I make a delicious pumpkin cake, I’ll make one, you’ll love it.”

  “I have to get back to my desk,” Angela whispered, closing the file and putting it back on the tray where a stack of other files sat.

  A little louder, for the other girls in the office’s benefit she said, “I would have him resubmit his application, tell him to send it to Personnel this time.”

  “Thanks for your help,” I said, clearing my throat and typing mumbo jumbo on the keyboard. Angela walked across the powder blue carpet towards her desk which sat in front of the large window that overtook half the wall. Outside snow was just beginning to fall. I watched it for a minute, falling softly, leaving a thin layer of white dust over the cars in the parking lot. Soon we would be up to our necks in snow.

  _____

  I was excited about Thanksgiving. Of course, it would only be the three of us, it seemed we now almost did everything together. We were always together in some variation; either me and Max, or me and Angela or the two of them – our experience had certainly brought us together as friends. Probably because, we had stuck with our original plan and not told anyone else about what happened. At least, I didn’t think that either of them had told anyone. I had broken the rule and told my sister but I’d made her swear not to tell a soul and she’d promised she wouldn’t. I’d realized after telling her, that it had been a mistake to tell her anyway. She had no clue as to what I was talking about and had even suggested it might have been someone on a four wheeler that we saw. That was about the dumbest thing I’d ever heard. I wanted to tell my mother and my best friend from back home but I didn’t. I knew they would believe me but it was so hard to explain- this Light, this being- it was hard to explain the way it made you feel. Like it knew you. My sister had certainly not understood. I couldn’t really blame her. It was one of those things that you had to see to believe. So, I decided not to tell anyone else. I wasn’t really up for trying to make anyone understand what had happened to us when I was still trying to come to terms with it myself. Plus, I spoke about it plenty with Max and Angela and that did help, a little- although, none of us came up with any answers.

  I thought Thanksgiving would be a good day to try and get back to normal. I felt like, if we could only get back to how we’d been before that night (both nights), then maybe we could move on from the whole thing altogether.

  _____

  Angela and I drove into Deerhedge. They had a much larger grocery store, a very nice one, that had fancy wines and cheeses and a gourmet deli. We picked up a ham, (we’d decided against the turkey- too carcasy, according to Max) and got some asparagus, some salted butter from the deli, red potatoes and the ingredients for Angela’s pumpkin cake. We also got an expensive bottle of wine, some kind of Sangria with a purple and gold label. Well, expensive for my taste- fifty bucks.

  I had been so excited at the idea of hosting a holiday gathering at my place- the first soci
al thing I’d done really, since Brian’s death- that I had gone into Zuzacks’ Interiors - a nice store in downtown Deerhedge - a few days previous and splurged on two large Hot Buttered Rum flavored candles and vanilla incense and fairy lights- which I’d strung over my kitchen window and over the phonograph in the living room- placing them around the black and white family photos I had sitting in silver frames.

  On Thanksgiving day, I’d gotten up early that morning, hours before Max and Angela had shown up, and put the ham in the oven and cleaned my apartment and lit the candles and placed them in the middle of the kitchen table. I was so excited at the idea of entertaining and I was determined to get back to my normal life. I’d had two big wallops in the past two years. Brian’s death had been awful and just as I was beginning to come to terms with that, then we’d had this bizarre Light encounter. It certainly had had an effect on all of us. How could it not? It seemed to be bothering Angela the most- she was the one that had the hardest time understanding it but I was determined to move past all of it. I had to. I just could not stay in that state.

  Right before eleven, when they were due to show up, I turned the television on to the Macy’s day parade and sat on the couch and watched it alone for a few minutes while I waited for them to arrive. I sat smiling at the television as the gigantic Snoopy came floating down the street on his side- bobbing up and down 6th Avenue. I giggled at the Blues Clues float that looked like it was about to deflate, and I was completely engrossed in the show being put on by the Rockettes, dressed in red sequined leotards and black panty hose and their red feathered caps. I’d always loved the Rockettes, ever since I was a little girl. My grandmother had seen them a few times in person, when she’d gone with her friend Maude to New York. She shown me pictures and told me all about it, when I was a little girl.

  Just then, there was a knock at the door and I got up and opened it and Angela and Max, smiled back at me and for a minute, I forgot that there was something we were all trying desperately to forget. For a minute, I’d forgotten all about it.

  Angela sat the cake plate down on the table. She pulled the top off and said, “So, Paige, this is my pumpkin cake. You will die.”

  “Looks yummy,” I said, peering over her shoulder to inspect the cake. It actually did look delicious. The scent of cinnamon and pumpkin filled the air. Angela placed the lid back over it.

  “It’s the only thing I know how to make,” she said, shouldering off her pea coat and hanging it on the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table. She looked around. “Wow, Paige, your apartment looks great,”

  “Thank you,” I said, sort of proud, “do you like it? I’ve rearranged some things...I have a rug rolled up in the laundry room that I’ve been meaning to give you… you’ll like it, I think...”

  “Why don’t you want it?” she asked, going to pour herself a glass of the fancy wine.

  Max stepped in the kitchen then and took a deep breath, “Smells good in here!” he said.

  I ignored Angela’s question about the rug. I asked Max if he would mind making the brown sugar glaze for the ham.

  “Yeah, of course,” he said, “is this the packet here?”

  He walked over to the kitchen counter and took the little packet labeled, Ham Glaze, that had come with the ham.

  “I think you just add water.”

  “Well, that’s certainly something I can manage,” he said, reaching for a bowl from the cabinet and giving a little laugh.

  “Oh my God, Paige, look,” Angela said, leaning against the counter and taking a sip of the Sangria.

  She set her glass down and pulled up the sleeve of her sweater to expose her forearm. I took a step closer and saw that she’d gotten a tattoo. It was raised and the skin around it was pink.

  “When did you do this?” I said, looking close at the red rose with the blue tear drops falling from it. What was that supposed to mean? I wondered. Honestly, it was hideous. It took up almost her entire forearm- from her wrist to her elbow.

  “Yesterday,” Angela said, beaming and looking down at her arm, “Max went with me...”

  I could tell Max wasn’t so crazy about it either. He turned and said, “Yeah, we uh… went into Deerhedge yesterday and got it, at a quaint little place called, Bid Daddy’s Tattoo Parlor.” He raised an eyebrow and turned away.

  “What are the tears?” I asked, “what do they mean?”

  Angela pulled her sleeve back down over it, picked up her wine glass, “I dunno, I just saw it on the wall at the tattoo parlor and I liked it, so I got it.”

  I didn’t know what to say. But, I knew I couldn’t tell her what I really thought- that it was ugly and stupid and that you shouldn’t get an enormous tattoo that didn’t even mean anything to you or that you didn’t know what it was supposed to signify and so I said, “Wow, it’s really… wow.”

  “Right?” Angela said, “I mean, thank you. For fucks sake- finally someone has something nice to say about it.”

  She smiled and walked into the living room. I looked at Max. He shook his head and said nothing. A nonverbal exchange that said, I don’t get it either. We followed behind her.

  “Do you still think about Brian?” Angela said, completely ruining the moment. We’d been having a great Thanksgiving. We’d watched the Macy’s Day Parade in the living room and had just sat down to Thanksgiving dinner when Angela said this, unexpectedly and killed the vibe.

  “What? Yes! Of course I do...”

  She smiled, “I know you do, that’s not what I mean, what I meant to say was, do you think about his death? About him being found the way he was? There were never any real answers about what killed him...”

  I took a deep breath and exhaled, “they said natural causes but that’s never made sense.”

  “What?” said Max, “you guys think someone killed him or something?”

  Angela looked across the table at me. I picked up my glass and took a sip. Neither of us said anything.

  Max said, “No one killed him, he had a heart attack.”

  “But why?” I said, “He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, wasn’t overweight… he was only twenty-eight.”

  “Probably he was born with some heart thing, you know- sometimes they don’t diagnose things like that until something happens- it’s easy for something like that to go undetected, he was more than likely born with some kind of heart thing that nobody knew about.”

  “Did you hear that from someone?” I said, “did the coroner say that? Because, no one ever told me that.”

  “No. I’m just saying...”

  “If he had been born with some heart defect, they would have found it during the autopsy,” I said, suddenly very sorry that our Thanksgiving dinner had taken this turn. Why did Angela have to bring this up?

  “There were those tracks in the snow...” Angela said, softly.

  “Don’t even start with that,” said Max, agitated, “those tracks had nothing to do with Brian’s death, nothing.”

  “Max, maybe-”

  “No, Paige, those tracks had nothing to do with Brian’s death- it was a coincidence, he’d pulled over or something and…”

  “They were circling him!” Angela interrupted, “come on, Max, it was creepy.”

  Max stared straight ahead, keeping his eyes fixed on the flower arrangement that sat in the middle of the table. After a minute he said, “If those tracks did have something to do with Brian’s death, then, I don’t want to know about it. I don’t even want to think about something like that, because, then we really are in trouble.”

  “You haven’t figured that out already, Max?” Angela said, “those tracks...that Light… you haven’t put two and two together yet? You don’t see that something is out there? That we are in trouble? Are you blind?”

  Angela got up from the table, grabbed the pack of Lucky Strike’s sitting on the kitchen counter and went outside on the deck. Max downed the last of his wine and got up to join her.

  When Brian had been found dead on the side o
f the road, there had been animal tracks in the snow around him. A policeman at the scene had claimed they belonged to a wolf, the EMT said they belonged to a dog, and the other EMT said they didn’t belong to a wolf or a dog, but couldn’t say what they were. He said he’d never seen anything like them in his life. The odd thing about that is, that the three of them said they were avid hunters and had been born and raised in Fallcrest. Whatever animal the tracks belonged to obviously had not touched Brian as there wasn’t a scratch on him. His heart had stopped although, no one knew why but whatever had left the tracks- whatever had walked around his body hadn’t so much as touched him, it appeared. But his heart had stopped. He died from a heart attack at twenty eight years old and that made no sense whatsoever. Sometimes I believed his heart stopped from fear.

  Chapter 5

  “I’ve been seeing things,” said Max. We were sitting in his living room, sometime around eleven in the morning. Angela was upstairs, taking a bath. It was a Saturday.

  The three of us spent a lot of time together these days. Angela certainly hadn’t spent a moment alone since the incident. Both incidents. Seeing the Light the second time had really amped up her fears. She was always with one of us, if not both of us. She was taking the whole thing pretty hard.

  “Seeing things? Like what kind of things?” I said, afraid he was going to tell me he’d begun seeing ghosts or something.

  “Shadows. On sides of buildings, walking down the street,” Max said, raising his teacup and taking a sip. We were drinking black tea. It would be Christmas in two weeks. Normally I would be so excited, because I loved Christmas. I always went all out at Christmas time, putting up a tree, decorating my mantle, my yard, my front door. But now I felt kind of numb. None of us had put up the first Christmas decoration, not even a Christmas tree.