Phantoms of the Moon

by Michael Ciardi

The amateur stargazers, who sometimes perused the evening sky, sometimes assumed the stars burned with greater intensity during the year’s colder months. An astronomer’s adroit eye, however, recognized that no star emitted more energy in the wintertime than it did during any other season. In fairness, the novices’ conclusions were not entirely without merit. Constellations may not in fact shine brighter at various times, but a greater amount of resplendent stars were visible with the naked eye during particular months, and in the northern hemisphere this generally occurred amid the coolest season. Illusions of this nature, therefore, sometimes seemed more factual than what science handily demystified.

  Even before Ryan finished setting up his Newtonian scope in his backyard, he easily distinguished the stellar configuration of Orion. The star Rigel caught his eye initially. Equally as splendid, Betelgeuse—with its ruddy glow—marked the heavens vividly on this night. And the jewel of all stars, Sirius, flared more brilliantly than anything hovering in the sky, save for Venus and the Moon. No visual aid was needed to witness Sirius twinkling restlessly with its colors of blue, white, and yellow.

  Despite the spectacle of such faraway wonders, Ryan’s primary object of interest resided closest to Earth. Once again the Moon inspired his imagination and reminded him of the fear it gripped him with as a child. He considered how foreign the entirety of its landscape was before 1959, when the far side of the Moon existed only in obscurity to human examination. The Soviet craft Luna 3 dispelled centuries of speculation when the first photographs of the Moon’s “dark” side projected to Earthlings. But through his continued observations of the lunar surface, Ryan eventually learned to appreciate its desolate beauty. Suddenly, while glancing at the Moon through the eyepiece of his scope, it was as though he gazed upon its craggy formations for the very first time.

  Victor had almost convinced himself to avoid Ryan’s house on this evening even though he had never personally witnessed a drunken tirade by his friend’s grandfather. Maybe he harbored some doubt about whether Ryan had exaggerated the frequency and severity of Frank’s alcoholic fits. He only remembered Frank being a quiet, unassuming man who usually spent the majority of his time sleeping. When he arrived in Ryan’s backyard on this night, the circumstances had not changed from his point of view.

  Ryan appeared genuinely engaged in the activity of the sky as his friend approached. Victor had come prepared for stargazing too, but elected to bring a high-powered pair of binoculars, which he conveniently looped around his neck with a strap. He attempted to direct the 35mm lenses in the same vicinity in the sky where Ryan had focused his telescope.

  “Is there something I’m missing?” Victor inquired, trying to distract Ryan’s attention away from the sky.

  Ryan looked slightly startled and pulled back from the scope’s eyepiece. “Hey, I didn’t hear you come up.”

  “You seem pretty involved over here,” said Victor as he dropped the binoculars from his face. “Nice Moon tonight, though.”

  “It’s normal,” Ryan replied, sounding slightly disappointed. He tilted his eyes toward the quarter Moon again and stared at it for several seconds.

  Victor was perplexed by his friend’s statement and replied, “Were you expecting something other than normal? I don’t think there’s a lunar eclipse due tonight.”

  “Maybe I just imagined it,” Ryan thought aloud.

  “Okay, Ryan,” said Victor, his curiosity peaking. “What’s up now?”

  “Probably nothing,” remarked Ryan in a tentative manner. His voice sounded increasingly nostalgic as he continued. “You know, Victor, I was just thinking about how William Herschel must have felt the first time he observed three spots on the Moon’s surface back in 1787. He referred to those eruptions as volcanoes, which really sounded more scientific than it was. But the fact remained he saw something at the time that had no astronomical explanation. Some people spend their entire lifetimes hoping to observe something like that.”

  “I don’t want to seem dense here,” said Victor, “but how does Herschel’s findings affect what you’re searching for tonight?”

  Ryan almost laughed at himself when he replied, “You know me. I’m just trying to rationalize something that I don’t really have an answer for yet.”

  “Then you did see something unusual?”

  “Like I said—maybe. I saw something that looked like spots on or around the Moon.”

  Victor became increasingly intrigued with Ryan’s behavior. It had been some time since he witnessed him examining the Moon with such eagerness. Victor chewed on his thumbnail as he assessed Ryan’s words. “Tell me more about these spots that you saw. Were they on the Moon’s surface itself?”

  Ryan motioned for his friend to take a look through his telescope before answering. “I can’t be sure, but I think they were orbiting the satellite. Whatever I saw, they’re gone now.”

  Victor bent over and peered through the scope’s eyepiece. He assumed his friend had set the scope’s ascension and latitude dials precisely as he did on the previous evening. The field of vision permitted Victor to observe the Moon’s Mare Tranqullitatis and north to Plinius, and finally to the fringes of the Sea of Serenity. The craters appeared perfectly undisturbed with no unexplainable activity.

  “You saw spots?” Victor asked in a bewildered tone.

  Ryan’s voice heightened momentarily when he replied, “Yes, three I think. Do you see anything like that?”

  Victor pulled his face back from the scope’s eyepiece and sighed with disappointment. “Not a thing. As you said, everything looks normal. I’d say it was probably just a shadow or maybe light pollution reflecting off the lens.”

  Ryan had considered a plausible explanation, too, and perhaps required confirmation from his friend before becoming at least partially satisfied. Being overly analytical sometimes served as a detriment to Ryan, but it prevented him from making impulsive conclusions. Victor detected a confounded expression working its way onto Ryan’s face. His mind obviously stirred with words not yet spoken.

  “What’s on your mind now, Ryan?” asked Victor.

  “It’s possible that I just imagined the objects.”

  “Objects? I thought you said you saw spots?”

  It was by no accident that Ryan said the word ‘spots’ in his initial description to Victor. He typically refrained from using words or phrases that suggested his acceptance of any hovering object that could not be accurately identified. His reluctance to entertain such notions stemmed from his own childhood experiences. Too many people had already suggested the likelihood that an extraterrestrial encounter was linked to Ryan’s family’s disappearance. As a result, Ryan was determined to disprove any wild speculations. His exploration into the stars in fact enabled him to verify that scientific research adequately explained more than ninety-nine percent of all supposed UFO sightings. Of course, the mere one percent chance that something otherworldly may have been witnessed always filtered through the back of his mind.

  Throughout the years, Victor was tempted to ask Ryan about the probability of alien spacecrafts being visible from Earth. But without any tangible evidence, the matter never quite registered as a substantial topic of interest. Considering that both he and Ryan spent the majority of their youths poring over the celestial wonders available to them through the lens of a telescope, it only seemed logical that an unexplained object eventually crossed their field of vision. But it took until this moment on this night for Ryan to even hint toward the idea of stumbling upon something in the stars that he did not presently have the ability to comprehend.

  “Do you want to tell me anything else about what you think you saw?” Victor asked, trying to maintain a nonchalant tone to his voice. He sensed Ryan had buried a confession of this nature in his subconscious for some time.

  “I promised myself I wouldn’t do this,” muttered Ryan with discontent. “Do you realize how many crackpot astronomers and star watchers have claimed to witness UFO’s in the last sixty years? Once
you go on record with something so preposterous, you’ll likely lose all credibility in the scientific community.”

  “So what are you worried about? I don’t think we have any credibility to lose just yet. Besides, I’ve heard the astronauts aboard Apollo 11 encountered unexplained objects on their way to the Moon. Their integrity remains intact. But for your peace of mind, let’s just say this conversation is off the record.”

  “First of all,” Ryan pointed out, “I’m not verifying that I observed anything remotely connected to alien spacecrafts. A UFO sighting doesn’t necessarily mean that I’ve seen anything connected to alien life forms.”

  “Of course not,” said Victor, appeasing his friend’s insecurities. “I’m sure there’s a rational explanation for what you saw, if in fact you saw anything at all.” Once again Victor managed to pacify Ryan’s anxiety. They had reached a comfortable juncture in their friendship where neither felt as though they needed to be entirely infallible with their estimations.

  Ryan was almost thinking aloud when he spoke again. “Honestly, what are the chances of me actually spotting an unidentified flying object?” He did not really expect a reply to his rhetorical question, but Victor always seemed unhesitatingly armed with a snappy remark that often made Ryan’s head dizzy with wonder.

  “Statistically speaking,” Victor noted, “you stand a better than average chance of sighting such objects based solely on the amount of hours you spend watching the sky.”

  “And I assume you’ve already worked out the percentages on this?”

  “All kidding aside, Ryan, according to some mathematicians, there’s a more than probable chance of another form of life existing somewhere beyond our planet.”

  “Someone actually computed these odds?”

  “Of course. Didn’t you ever hear of the Drake Equation?”

  “Maybe,” declared Ryan, but he was not quite ready to concede his ignorance in this regard. “We both know that they’ll always be people who’ll suggest the chance of life forms existing beyond this world.”

  “And on the other side of the coin, there will always people like you and me who need hard evidence in order to be convinced.”

  “What about you, Victor? Have you ever seen anything in the sky that might’ve seemed remotely unusual?”

  “Are you asking me if I’ve ever seen a UFO?”

  “Yeah—I’m asking.”

  “Like you, Ryan, I’m a skeptic, but that doesn’t mean I’ll never change my mind.”

  “I thought you’d go with the safe answer,” chortled Ryan as he peered at the shafts of moonlight turning the distant treetops to a pillow-colored white. His eyes then trained on the faint stars sparkling in the overhead sky. “Sometimes I think that possessing too much knowledge spoils our ability to accept what we can’t explain.”

  “Is that what you’re doing now?”

  Ryan’s attention momentarily drifted to his telescope, then to the Moon, and back to Victor’s concentrated stare. Though there were a few times in Victor’s life where he did not detect a contemplative mood from his friend, Ryan’s present hesitation seemed unusually sustained and his expression hinted to his bewilderment.

  “It’s not what I saw that’s causing me so much confusion,” Ryan stated. “I just have a strange feeling that I’ve seen those objects somewhere before.”

  “When do you think you saw them last?”

  “I can’t remember,” Ryan uttered. “It was before I moved to Belle Falls.”

  An obvious thought fired through Victor’s mind, and he sought to convey it without making his friend feel awkward. “Does this have anything to do with you wanting to go back to see that psychiatrist?”

  Ryan zipped his jacket and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He suddenly felt chilled either by his friend’s inquiry or the duration of inactivity while standing outside in the cold. Ryan sounded dreadfully bleak when he spoke again. “I’m not sure Doctor Evans can help me with this one.”

  “What do you want me to do for you, Ryan? You must’ve invited me over here for a reason tonight.”

  Ryan glanced toward the Moon again before he said, “The reason isn’t here now.”

  “Are you convinced that whatever you saw will come back?”

  Ryan pondered his friend’s words momentarily and shook his head from side to side. Situations such as these often left Victor feeling frustrated because he truly wanted to understand Ryan’s past but not adamantly enough to jeopardize their friendship. After Ryan started to disassemble the telescope, Victor realized he had squandered an opportunity to explore his friend’s emotions with any significant depth.

  Victor attempted to sound casual with his next statement. “You know I’m not one to harp on things, Ryan, but if you need to tell me anything, I’m here for you.”

  Genuine friendships did not emerge often in one’s lifetime, and Ryan was wise enough to appreciate Victor’s inquisitive nature. Although Ryan was not yet secure with exactly what he sought to reveal, he knew that having a friend to rely on like Victor was a great privilege.

  “I’m glad you came over here tonight, Victor,” said Ryan. “But I’m going to need some time to sort through this stuff.”

  “Are you sure?”

  Ryan nodded his chin and continued to pack up the equipment on the lawn. His thoughts seemed a bit scattered when he revealed, “Maybe I just need to take a break from all of this stargazing for a few days.”

  “You must be kidding?” Victor squawked in disbelief. “When have you ever done that?”

  Perhaps the correct answer was many years, and for this reason alone Ryan believed that his eyes required a temporary reprieve from the sky. Over the years, Ryan had been conditioned by his grandmother to absorb as much information as possible. Similar advice had been the rallying cry for more people than not, but Ryan now considered the possibility that an overindulgence in any area actually hindered one’s ability to mature with an open mind.

  “I never thought I’d hear myself say this, Victor, but I almost feel like I need to appreciate things closer to home—at least for a little while.”

  The confession was outrageous to his friend, but at the same time refreshing. Perhaps Ryan had finally mustered the courage to utter some of the identical notions that Victor did not yet reveal. At seventeen years of age, it was becoming increasingly obvious that both boys welcomed the promise of adventure that expanded beyond the intangible range of telescopic images.

  “We’ll just call it a night,” Ryan suggested. “But you’ll be the first to know if I need some help figuring any of this out.”

  “Fair enough,” remarked Victor. Before the thought escaped his mind, Victor patted his pockets in search of something. He found what he was looking for folded in the contents of his wallet. He then revealed a single piece of paper and extended it toward his friend.

  Ryan took the note in his hand, but he did not look at it right away. “What is it?”

  “Just open it.”

  Ryan flipped the gum-wrapper-sized paper over and silently read the name and phone number scribbled in strawberry-colored ink. He then swallowed as if he had a golf ball lodged in the center of his throat. “Where did you get this?” he asked.

  “What does it say?”

  “That pretty girl from the library gave you this?”

  Victor nodded his head and smirked. “It took a little coaxing on my part,” he lied, “but she couldn’t resist my sex appeal.”

  Ryan’s appeared a bit perplexed as he folded the paper again. He then attempted to give it back to his friend. “Why don’t you call her?” he suggested.

  Victor had already contemplated this notion with some seriousness, but ultimately decided against it. “She wants you to call her, Ryan—not me.”

  “I don’t have time for her right now,” Ryan huffed as he clutched the paper tightly between his fingers.

  “You just finished telling me that you’re ready for a change in your life. I can’t think of a better way
to start—call the girl.”

  Ryan chuckled at his friend’s point, which seemed logical. He then stuck the paper in the pocket of his coat and conceded to his friend’s request. “Okay, okay. You know I don’t have much experience in this area, Victor, so don’t expect any miracles.”

  “Just call the girl and see what she wants. What’s the worst thing that can occur?”

  “It sounds so easy to hear you say it,” Ryan smirked. “If I didn’t know any better I’d swear you had some kind of experience in this area.”

  Laughing at himself was not a problem for Victor, and this instance served him with an opportunity to prove it. “I’ll admit that I haven’t been out with any girls yet,” he said, “but at least give me an opportunity to live vicariously through you. Isn’t that what friends are for?”

  “If you say so,” simpered Ryan. “At least you’ve given me something else to think about tonight.”

  Victor playfully slapped his hand on Ryan’s shoulder and said, “Just remember one thing, my friend: there are more stars in the sky than there are fish in the sea.”

  When Ryan returned to his bedroom later that evening, his friend’s parting words still resonated in his mind. He stood in front of his bedroom mirror holding the scrap of paper between his trembling fingers as if it was the code to crack a clandestine operation. His eyes gradually edged away from the phone number and focused on his own reflection. The thoughts of insecurity that plagued him since childhood soon resurfaced. But at seventeen, he could not deny the impulses raging inside him at times. He was curious about the opposite sex, and the prospect of delving into the mysteries of womanhood titillated and frightened him almost as much as the sight of a full Moon.

  Never before this moment had the potential motivations of a high school girl registered as anything more than a passing fancy to Ryan. As he undressed for bed, a more stabilizing thought centered in his mind. His grandfather had already passed out from yet another drinking binge. At this point, the method of achieving peace in the household was at the forefront of Ryan’s concern, even if it meant permitting his grandfather to wallow in a puddle of regurgitated gin for the entire evening.

  Once settled in bed, Ryan tried to fall asleep, but he slept twitchily. This was not an uncommon pattern for him of late. He found himself waking up on various nights for no obvious reason. Sometimes he would not sleep for more than three hours in a single evening. Tonight, his eyes lids fluttered rapidly beneath their closed lids, which indicated he had entered a cycle of REM sleep—the stage where dreams occurred most frequently.

  In the realm of dreams nothing ever seemed truly coherent to Ryan. Scenes, people, and ideas shifted as quickly as a flash of light from one place to another. Prior to this particular night, none of Ryan’s dreams registered as memorable. He had always been an individual who found it difficult to unscramble the details of any of his subconscious thoughts. Dr. Evans had faulted Ryan’s mulish nature as being the culprit to his lapse of memory, but Evans also predicted that Ryan’s brain would have one day unleashed a flood of lost moments that no amount of denial had a chance to withstand. Evans used the analogy of a dam holding back an incredible volume of pressure for a period of time. But even the slightest fissure left such a barrier suspect to a flood, and tonight that dam within Ryan’s brain revealed its first indisputable chink.

  Ryan envisioned himself standing at the center of a cylindrical tunnel. It had a circumference of no more than eight feet. Although Ryan was quite certain he had never visited such a place in reality, the surroundings felt strangely familiar to him. The tunnel’s interior walls had no visible seams and stretched for about a hundred yards in each direction from where Ryan stood. The material from which it was constructed gleamed with a metallic luster and emitted an energy that felt tepid to the touch. A pale blue light pulsated along the tunnel’s frame; it vibrated with an almost melodic humming sound barely perceptible to the human ear.

  Despite the oddity of this environment, Ryan paced forward toward what he perceived to be an intensely vivid light at the tunnel’s far end. This light throbbed and pulsated in various shades of white and yellow. Whatever instigated this display of power was not yet apparent to Ryan. He felt compelled to move closer to the source of energy, almost as if it was being methodically lured by an unidentified attractant. He did not even sense the perspiration dripping down his face in salty rivers. The vibration within the tunnel grew stronger as Ryan neared the object of intent.

  When it seemed as though there was nothing left to harvest from this tunnel other than the cosmic-like rays of the light, the energy subsided and the tunnel’s interior grew almost entirely dark. A shadowy figure then emerged exactly where the light blazed so resplendently only a few moments before. At first, Ryan’s eyes watered as he squinted in the general direction of the image. He was almost consumed by blackness now, save for a consistent chain of blue lights spotting intermittently across the tunnel’s walls.

  Ryan reached his hands out in front of himself as though he recognized the figure within fifty feet of his grasp. He was not certain if he estimated correctly, but he imagined the figure to be that of a child. But this was clearly not just any child. Between the angled spray of a dim sapphire-colored haze, Ryan distinguished the shape of his twin brother at the same age on the night he disappeared. Ryan’s fingers twitched fretfully as he tried to lean forward and touch the brother he had not seen in over ten years.

  “Robby!” Ryan’s voice called out, reverberating throughout the tunnel. “Robby, it’s me—your brother!”

  No response came back to Ryan. He only detected a soft humming sound that had first drawn him to the flashing energy. Never before this moment had anyone or anything connected to his family’s disappearance been visualized with such clarity in Ryan’s mind. Though there was a definitive reason to believe that this was all a hallucination, Ryan refused to deny that the image seemed lifelike and no longer merely a component of his subconscious memory.

  The vibration inside the tunnel intensified as Ryan inched closer to the figure. The blue lights accompanying his every step seemed to match the rhythm of his own heartbeat. The closer he paced to whom he believe to be his brother, the faster the lights pulsated. It was nearly useless for him to scream his brother’s name again. Ryan’s movement was fueled on sheer adrenaline in these seconds. Nothing was more vital to the comfort of his soul than to have the ability to touch his brother’s hand again.

  But dreams, as dreamers know best, often unfold to completion in an unsatisfactory manner. Ryan’s dream was no different in this respect. Before reaching the end of the tunnel so that he had an opportunity to reunite with his brother, Ryan’s eyes burst open and the flickering images inside his brain extinguished like flames being snuffed out under a bucket of sand. Only the cry of Ryan’s forlorn voice and the sweat on his skin remained.

  With his eyes now peeled as wide as saucers, Ryan lied motionless in his bed without uttering a sound. After a few moments he realized that he had perspired enough to soak through his sheets. Traces of visible sweat pooled in the crevices of his body. He wiped at the dampness as if trying to smear it back into his skin. It was in these seconds that he realized he had experienced a nightmare unlike anything he had encountered before. He became so unnerved by what he remembered that getting out of bed seemed like an instinctive reaction. He jumped to his feet and his legs almost buckled from under him. After a brief rest on the edge of his mattress, he crossed the room and flicked on the light.

  Ryan required a few minutes to permit his eyes to adjust to the room’s brightness. When his vision cleared, he positioned himself back in front of the mirror and put his glasses on. Sweat still oozed from his pores in these seconds. He swiped the last traces of perspiration from his chest before noticing something unusual glimmering on his hand. Several particles of what appeared to be a metallic substance collected on his fingertips. Upon closer inspection, he noticed that these same silvery flecks coated areas of his shoulders
and abdomen. He then hastily inspected the rest of his body and determined that the substance had somehow speckled most of his skin.

  As the moisture dried from his body, the particles in question fell like a heavy dust to the floor. Ryan had no explanation as to its origin. Perhaps, he surmised, it came from the bed sheets or the clothing he wore that day. When this proved to be a wild speculation, he considered the heating system in his home. The likely solution, he determined, must have been from a faulty filter in the heating ducts. Yet, if this was merely dust, it seemed denser and maybe a bit too gritty in texture.

  Before returning to bed, Ryan made certain he had cleaned his entire body with a damp cloth. When finished, he gathered nearly a handful of the substance. It glimmered in his palm like crushed silver. Instead of tossing it in the trash, which was his initial instinct, Ryan poured the contents carefully from his palm to the dresser top. For the rest of the evening he did not sleep. He kept the light on and occasionally glanced out his bedroom window.

  A sliver of moonlight was visible from Ryan’s vantage point in bed, and he immediately thought of his brother when gazing upon it. In the midst of his recollections, a single teardrop formed in the corner of each eye from beneath the lenses of his eyeglasses. He brushed them away with his fingertips. He then held his hands out a few inches in front of his face and studied the same gray particles dotting his skin. Somehow the events from ten years ago seemed closer to him than they had in a long time. He now realized that discovering the truth about his past, no matter how sobering or painful, required a heightened dedication on his part.