John Jordan had never seen anything out of the ordinary –not with his own eyes. As he trod up the rise, over the sleeping fog and over the snapping and scraping of the hard cornstalks crumbling beneath his boots, the dim blue dawn began to flush the darkness from the marshes. He stood there and began his morning stare. With the corn harvested and the air already getting cold, John hoped that the eyespot wouldn’t return to the corn leaves next year, even though it probably would. The neighboring farms probably brought it in, or the lake’s moisture did.
Lately the season had been making him feel his face thickening with age. He was beginning to squint from the glare on his fleshy cheekbones. He looked over to the north past his own barn and saw the neighboring barn at the bottom of the slope. His mind called it a barn out of habit, but he didn’t know what it was.
The thing was long, two stories high, aluminum skin painted white, with tools and vehicles drawn up against it, just like John’s, but upon looking at it, he knew right away that it didn’t belong there –it didn’t belong in his understanding of things. There was no difference between his own barn and that one, but it was very clear that that one was not human, did not serve humans, was not tenanted by humans.
John listened. Except for the faint sucking in the air of dawn pulling the night back over the edge of the world, and the low crunch of corn remains, there was no sound. Inside that thing there were no cows or chickens to be heard, nothing was being dismantled or fixed or adjusted. John Jordan had been a little shocked until now, but now the silence terrified him. Before his eye wandered to the left of the other barn, toward the house, he turned, afraid of what he might see.
He’d forgotten what he was doing out there. He turned back toward his house, but the other barn followed him. How long had it been there? Why hadn’t he ever noticed before that it was so unnervingly other? What living thing was in control of it? Ideas he’d never even perceived before were now demanding that he recognize and solve their problems. He came in the house and kicked off his boots. The video game in the other room was hooked up to a speaker system and the sound of virtual guns going off was like bombs dropping on the house. He poured himself some coffee, unsure what it would even taste like this time of day, when it was fresh, and sat down at the kitchen table at the right of his wife Sharon, who was surprised to see him.
“You already got the boat up?”
John just stared at the steam climbing out of the coffee and tugged at the gray hair on his chin. Sharon reached over and slapped his arm, then became worried and squeezed gently where she’d slapped.
“Hey. Earth to John. What’s wrong?”
He looked up at her, trying to make her out, as if from under water.
“Did something happen to the boat?”
Sharon was something he knew for sure, and so was the boat.
“The boat! Right. No, I didn’t.”
Sharon withdrew her hand and sipped her coffee.
“Oh.”
“I uh … have you noticed anything strange around the lake?”
“Well no –like what? The Odekirks are selling their house and they’ve had quite a few lookers coming by,”
“No,”
Her hand came back up to his shoulder, pressing.
“Oh god John, this morning Suzanne called and said their old dog Trina, the German shepherd, drowned in the lake last night but they couldn’t find the carcass. Did you find it?”
“No.”
“Oh thank god.”
She seemed to go through some inventory written in minute letters down her eyelashes.
“Then what’s wrong?”
John drew his hand up from the hair on his chin to his right temple, pressed gently and frowned deeply. He summoned the half measure of courage afforded by having a companion.
“Cmon, I’ll show you.”
A series of explosive noises boomed out of the video game through the floor. He took her hand and they went outside. The sun was out now, but hung back and left the hard blue sky open to the birds making their broad southward arcs over the marshes toward their autumn places. Some wild turkeys were stepping around and staring at nothing at the edge of the small woods that met the lake at a narrow point on the other side of the house. John took Sharon up to the top of their rise, to the middle of the gray field. He pointed out the white metal barn.
“The tree?”
“No, the barn.”
Sharon looked, then her hand flew up to her mouth, where a fingernail rested clinging to her bottom lip.
“Oh my god.”
She looked at John, the sunlight blotting out the far side of her face.
“It’s not- whatta you think it is?”
He looked at her.
“I dunno.”
She looked back at it, then back at him, with an incredulous look.
“This seems ridiculous but –John, it scares me.”
“I’m scared too.”
“Whatta you think it is?”
“I dunno. But I think we should leave it alone.”
“We should find out what it is, if it’s dangerous or not!”
“Dangerous? It hasn’t moved yet in all this time.”
“Well we should still make sure!”
“I’m not gonna go looking around it.”
“Well, no! I meant we could go ask other people.”
John snorted out a stifled laugh.
“Who? Katy? Dan?”
Sharon looked again.
“It looks like,”
“The Odekirks?”
“Hush –it looks like nobody’s home.”
“Has there ever been anyone home?”
Sharon went pale.
“John, now you’re just asking ridiculous questions to scare me!”
“No I’m not! Let’s go back inside.”
“How could it’ve just been there and we didn’t notice?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’re they doing with it?”
“They? How do we know it’s a they?”
“Stop it!”
Inside the video game had stopped exploding. Katy came running into the kitchen with her brown hair brushed straight down and with her various sweaters and her backpack on. She used the same tone of voice with her mom as her mom did with her.
“Cmon mom, time for school!”
It put off Sharon, but it reasoned that her daughter figured it was the one correct tone for the phrase. Katy ran back out just as soon as she’d come in, and her footfalls rumbled through the floor. She returned with Dan, six years older and three heads taller than her, by the wrist.
“Morning dad!”
“Good morning.”
“Did you eat yet, Dan?”
Katy answered for him.
“No! He was playing shootemup all morning.”
“I noticed.”
“No, it was only for a half hour after I’d been up for an hour already.”
Katy shakes her head.
“It’s still all morning!”
“No it isn’t. Compared to the total time I was up, it was only a third of the morning.”
“Ah, stop debating. We’re gonna be late, mom!”
Sharon loaded Dan’s hands with an apple and two of the big baked energy bars that were supposed to be reserved by treaty for John.
“No we’re not.”
She kissed John’s cheek and looked him briefly in the eyes, trying to dilute the worry in both their faces with some of the tenderness that she’d summoned into hers. Then she went out and started the car, the kids following.
“Bye John.”
“Have a good day, Dan. Take it one step at a time.”
“I’ll try.”
“Bye dad!”
“Bye Katy.”
John went back out and headed down along the side of the house right to the water, forsaking a second attempt at his ruined morning stare. He hooked up the boat hoist to the truck, got the little boat out of the cattails, cleaned it up and hung it in the rafters above the garage door.
Now he looks with scrutiny at the other barn again, as if surveying the land between an invading force and his own land. He feels exposed without the wall of corn that divided their two slopes, but on the other hand now he can be sure that nothing else was hiding in the corn.
The barn looks like any other, cheap and metal and just sitting there, but there’s no mistaking that it’s foreign. Its metal siding doesn’t mean the same thing as that on other barns. The lines of its roof are full of cryptic, eerie information. Even the way its weight sits on the ground conceals some terrifying secret message.
What creature would have such a thing, and what use could it possibly be serving? Are they invisible humanlike things?
Was it some temple to a god that’s supposed to have died thousands of years before the ground was cleared for the humdrum Christianity that consoles this rolling country? The thoughts come to John as if through communication –they don’t feel at all akin to his anemic imagination.
At least the barn appears to be made to blend in, and has never moved or done anything since he’s lived there. So there’s no reason it’d do anything now. John can’t communicate with whatever it is, but he decides to try to keep feelings of hostility down, so it won’t react. But how can he keep his family in line? What do the kids know? If he and Sharon can hardly speak in front of it, how will he know if one of them sees something different?
In the afternoon Sharon returns from work with the kids. John’s getting used to seeing Dan’s shadowed head in the car as it approaches. It’s been four months since they took him in so Sharon could take his mom, her sister, to a live-in rehab clinic for alcoholism. Their mother had left money for such a necessity in her will. Katy seems to like having more crew to captain around the house, and more ears to listen to her inventions.
Dan is bright and respectful, very collected on the outside, for his age and his circumstances, but he’s quite a contrary kid when he gets back from school. It takes a while for him to let down some of his defenses and feel safe again.
“Katy, do you want apple slices or pear slices?”
“I want apples.”
“Okay. Dan, are you hungry?”
Dan’s already gone into his room and closed the door. Katy trots into the hall and bangs at the door.
“Dan!”
He responds but she doesn’t hear him clearly.
“Dan!”
The door swings open.
“Just a second!”
“Do you want apples or pears?”
Sharon bends out from the kitchen into view.
“You want a snack?”
“I don’t need anything.”
“I’m already at it.”
He looks down his chest at Katy.
“What’re you having?”
“Apples. With peanut butter!”
“I’ll just have what she’s having.”
“Alright.”
Dan comes out of his room and sits down in the den across from the kitchen, on the end of the couch that he’s colonized. It’s the corner, and his claim on it, his refuge, has made it even cooler and darker than it was. Katy comes to a stop at her mother’s side, giggling.
“He said that again today at school!”
“What? That he’ll have what she’s having?”
“Quit it, Katy. I didn’t say anything.”
“We were at the bus stop with the big kids and Dan kept saying I like that, I like that, to everything they were saying.”
She keeps giggling.
“That’s funny cause I never said that.”
“Who was that, Dan?”
“Steve and Willy Swanson.”
“Have you made friends with them?”
“Not really.”
“It’s okay if you have! But I hope you won’t go hunting with them.”
“I don’t wanna go hunting.”
“Katy, don’t bother him. He’s trying to fit in and adjust.”
“I’m just saying, he’s like a broken record!”
“I never said that!”
“Let it go, honey.”
“I don’t wanna get censored.”
John comes in the house from the inside garage door.
“Hi kids.”
He crosses the den into the kitchen and gives Sharon a kiss on her jaw while she cuts up the fruit. Katy jumps up on him in greeting, then back off, like a kitten.
“Did you have a good day at school?”
“Yeah! Mister Blomquist said that half of us are stistically going to end up flakes.”
“How about you, Dan?”
“It was okay.”
“Okay is okay.”
Dan cracks a smile.
“Yeah.”
John looks furtively at Sharon, managing at length to catch her eye. Deciding not to wait for her to return a look that he’ll have to judge as agreement or not, he clears his throat.
“I wanna show you kids something outside.”
Katy jumps into her shoes.
“What is it? What’d you build us?”
“It’s nothing like that.”
Dan draws himself up in the sofa.
“What is it?”
“It’s,”
John looks at Sharon again, this time getting a look back like you handle it.
“It’s an issue of safety, and I wanna make you kids aware of it.”
“Okay.”
“You can just tell us. We know the property.”
“I know, Dan. But let me show you.”
John tries to look confident and leads the kids out the house, Sharon behind them. He takes them up to the rise, to the middle of the mowed cornfield, where he first saw it, and points to it. Sharon touches her lip, but doesn’t manage to cover her gaping mouth. It stands there in bold relief against the landscape, heavy on the ground. There’s no denying that the thing isn’t human. Its mystery blows across them like a wet gust.
John looks at Dan, worried most for him, feeling guilty for bringing him into more trouble. Dan stares at it for a long time, inscrutable behind his defenses. Katy looks up at John, rubbing her eye, with the look on her face of a child that wants to get it but doesn’t, and doesn’t care.
“It’s far away.”
John smiles faintly, but the smile fades before he meets Katy’s glance.
“Yeah, it is. Good thing too.”
Without words they all go back into the house, Sharon locking the door behind them. She distributes the sliced fruit and the four of them snack, staring at nothing, each with a coal of the thing still burning in their eyes. Katy is first to move. She drags her backpack down to the middle of the den floor, eviscerates it and lays down on her chest to do her long division.
“I just don’t understand. How could everyone let them stay that long? Haven’t we ever talked to anyone who lived there?”
That makes John reflect, regarding the cleanly bitten end of his green apple against the rough, pocked skin of his fingers. Sharon and he know everyone in this tiny town. If whatever it is has been working that land, he’d have at least met it at the grain elevator. But his memory is blank; the unanswerable mystery has punched out everything he might have known about that place on the other side of the cornfield, at the opposite foot of the rise.
After a while Sharon looks at John, her eyes wanting to bargain.
“What if it’s nothing?”
“I think we’ve all seen it. How could it be nothing?”
“It used to be nothing! You’ve scared everyone!”
“I don’t want it to catch anyone off guard like it did me!”
John finds Dan looking at the both of them, frozen as if fascinated by a film.
“I’m sorry, Dan.”
The words fall out of John’s mouth. He wishes there were a way for Dan to know what he intended them to mean, that he deserves parents he’s not scared of, that he deserves to live somewhere safe. John takes Sharon’s arm firmly and leads her into the bedroom. He sits on the edge of the bed, but Sharon remains standing, livid.
“You made me see it.”
“No I didn’t –I mean all I did was point it out to you.”
“You told me something that made me think of it that way!”
“No I didn’t!”
Sharon has an idea.
“You’ve gotta get the gun out, John. They could be dangerous!”
“What good would that do? What good is a gun against something that’s managed to live next to us for as long as any of us can remember without even being seen? What if they’re invisible?”
Sharon can’t get any paler, so now she starts tearing up, her eyes darting from one corner of the room to the other.
“You’re right! What if they’re already right here with us in the house? We need the gun! We can’t let them get in the house!”
She bolts to the closet and slides the mirror door open.
“They’re not.”
John and Sharon start, each catching their reflections in the mirror and frightening themselves, Sharon doubly so because her eyes are only six inches from the ones looking back at her. They turn to the doorway. Dan meets eyes with them, and then immediately a look crosses his face like he’s just done the most crushingly embarrassing thing ever. John rises slowly and approaches Dan, his hand outstretched.
“Whatta you mean they’re not?”
He gently presses the youth’s shoulder. Dan shies away from his uncle’s touch.
“I mean –I don’t know.”
“No, Dan, it’s okay. Come here. Whatta you mean they’re not?”
Sharon advances on the both of them.
“Did you–”
She shoots a desperate look at John.
“Can you–”
Dan insists.
“I don’t know.”
John holds up a hand at Sharon.
“Stop.”
He tries again to communicate with Dan through his eyes, knowing nevertheless that he’s never had a tender eye. The tone of voice that Dan used couldn’t be faked, and he’s not one to draw attention to himself. John’s amazed and proud –and frightened –that Dan has seen what the others couldn’t.
“Won’t you tell us anything, Dan?”
“Let him be, Shar.”
“I’m curious!”
“You’re not curious, you’re scared.”
“Don’t tell me how I feel!”
But Sharon stops there. Her affect changes back to fear. Katy comes into the room, silent, looking worried and confused. She closes the door behind her and approaches the bed.
“What’s going on?”
John sits back down on the bed and pats the cover at his side. Katy springs up on the bed between him and Sharon, looking at them both.
“We’re just trying to understand something strange, baby.”
“Don’t worry, Katy. Dan, if they’re not in the house, where are they?”
Dan remains silent, strong enough within to reproach her with his eyes for being so foolish as to demand such. Beyond the bedroom wall and just around the rise stands the strange thing. It could almost peek down the lakeshore at them.
“Dan, if you don’t tell us what makes you say that, there’s nothing we can do.”
“Let him be, won’t you! There’s already nothing we can do. And besides, there could be nothing there.”
“I think Dan’s made it pretty clear that there’s something there!”
“He hasn’t said anything! You’re the one who said it’s probably nothing in the first place.”
“Well I changed my mind.”
“Well you changed mine too!”
John gets up and shoves past Sharon, steps toward the mirrored closet door, wanting to get the gun. He hesitates and turns around. Sharon glares at him silently, but he doesn’t even need her glare to know better. He’s gone beyond trying to protect Dan and taken the argument for his own needs. He’s being a coward.
“That’s a bunch of bull shit.”
“I know.”
He crosses back over and sits back down, shielding Dan.
“Then why’d you say it?”
“Let’s stop, alright? Dan’s liable to run away if we keep on like this. I didn’t know what do –I didn’t mean to cause all this –I just didn’t know what to do besides show it to everyone so we’d all be on the same–”
“But we’re not, John! Dan saw something more.”
John takes a breath, looks at Dan, then back at his wife.
“I admit that it felt to me like he did too. But we can’t force him to–”
“No, you’re right. We can’t force him to talk.”
Everyone watches as Sharon’s affect loses its sense of helplessness and takes on an unsettling authority.
“So let’s let that be the solution. Dan,”
She steps close to him, grasping his eyes with her own.
“Will you promise not to ever tell what you saw?”
“Shar,”
“Otherwise you’ll be the only one who –otherwise everyone won’t be on the same page. It’s like John says.”
“Let him talk, mom.”
“Katy, stay out of this, honey.”
Sharon is never like this otherwise. Katy, and even John, are becoming afraid of her.
“How’re we ever gonna be sure that he won’t tell?”
“Dan, do you understand what could happen if people –at least until we can figure out how to make them leave,”
Dan’s been silent since his last protestation, and he looks like he’s about to break into pieces. John abruptly stands up and grabs Dan away, puncturing the bubble of their four confined bodies and heading down the short hall to Dan’s room.
“Come on.”
They get in the door and John locks it shut before Sharon can catch them. Dan sits down on his bed. John waits, watching how he arranges himself, then joins him. Dan and he haven’t become close before now, and he pleads with his eyes, which Dan fearlessly meets.
“I’m sorry, Dan,”
Dan draws himself up in his rehearsed adolescent defense dance. Every small movement, every shift of weight, serves to prevent some past thing from getting through to him again.
“I’m sorry.”
“Stop saying you’re sorry.”
He looks away, rummaging with his eyes through the posters tacked to the wall.
“You wanna know what I saw, John?”
“Not really, Dan. I don’t know if it’d even get through my ears. I’m sorry. Of course I wanna know. Your aunt Sharon’s just got me –this whole situation’s got me end over end. It’s been a really hard day for me.”
“When’d you see it?”
“This morning.”
“What’d you see?”
“It’s just –for me, it’s just –you see it there, and all these things about the world are tied together with that thing, all these –meanings. And it just doesn’t have any of those meanings.”
“That’s what it was like for me, too.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Even with having seen them?”
“I didn’t try to see them. I wasn’t looking for something like you and Sharon. I just knew.”
John’s heart beats so fast that it feels like it doesn’t beat at all.
“What is it?”
“It belongs here. It didn’t just get here now.”
“And…?”
“And –I don’t know either. But it’s –we just haven’t ever noticed.”
“How many are–”
“It’s not like a number. It’s just –you look and you just know that something’s there. Like you know if it’s day or if it’s night.”
“But they’re not in our house?”
“No. They’re just there.”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t want anyone to know what I said, John. I don’t want anyone to think I’m weird.”
“I know you don’t. Don’t worry, no one’s gonna find out.”
“I don’t want anyone to be thinking about me.”
“I understand.”
“You won’t let Sharon say anything?”
“No.”
John hazards a touch, squeezing his shoulder, and Dan leans his head on his uncle’s shoulder and they sigh together. They linger there, the tension in their bodies creating a tickling vibration where their brows meet.
Sharon raps gently on the door.
“Guys? Why did you lock the door?”
“Have you calmed down?”
“Have you?”
“Yeah.”
“Open the door.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yeah.”
John stands up.
“I won’t tell her anything. If I come out we have to leave Dan alone. Okay?”
“Alright.”
He opens the door halfway and slides out. Sharon tries to peek her head around him as he turns around the doorframe.
“I’m sorry Dan,”
“Just –come on. Later.”
John closes the door and leaves Dan alone. A shaft of afternoon sun coming through the white curtains lights a spot on the bed next to him. He can already feel the thing settling in with him.
He puts his head in his hands and runs his fingers over his scalp. How could he tell anyone about something that can’t be understood? He figures it’s probably better to accept that it’s there, and to give it a place in his life, so it doesn’t need to intrude on other, vulnerable places. To let it wander would be too painful.
In the kitchen John and Sharon sit at the table, both exhausted.
“I feel terrible for fighting like that in front of him. What were we thinking?”
“We weren’t.”
“What’re we gonna do about all this?”
“Nothing. It stays here in the house.”
Sharon sort of laughs.
“If we told anyone they’d think we were crazy.”
“I guess we’ll forget about it eventually. If we ignore it.”
“I just wish I knew what it was. I wish we could understand it.”
“Well, as long as we can’t, let’s just let it be. We can’t fight about it like this for the rest of our lives.”
“Should we move?”
“And lose the farm? And what if the people who buy the place see it too, and they let it get out? Who knows what’ll happen. Who knows if it’ll defend itself.”
Sharon begins to become afraid again.
“Do you think it knows that we tried to shoot it?”
“We didn’t! Forget it.”
“John, I’ll just never feel safe again, knowing that something could be reading my mind. Couldn’t we get Dan to,”
“To talk to it? To negotiate with it? What makes you think he could?”
Tears roll from Sharon’s eyes and she sniffles.
“I just feel so helpless, John.”
“I know.”
“No, you don’t. We’re gonna have to keep that boy under wraps.”
“No we won’t. How’s he supposed to know what to do about what he saw? What makes you think he’s any different from us? We’ll just let him be. That solves the problem.”
“He said they weren’t here!”
“Well, he was reacting to what he thought he saw, just like we are.”
“I suppose.”
“Mom… Dad… can I come out now?”
“Oh god. Yes, Katy, come out and finish your homework.”
Mankato, October 2010
Tags: alien, barn, clairvoyance, corn, eyespot, midwest, Minnesota, nonhuman, property, psychology, telepathy
