The Spaceship Next Door (7 page)

“I know you are, but it’s not healthy!”

“I’m perfectly healthy as well.”

“But I can’t be your only lifeline to the world, what if something happens to me?”

“What’s going to happen to you?”

“I don’t know, but something could! And if it did and I wasn’t around any more, your meager social skills would just wither away. A decade from now you’ll be like Nell, grunting in a cabin in the woods.”

“I already live in a cabin in the woods.”

“
That’s my point
.”

Violet sighed grandly.

“All right, I will
try
. But seriously, the banality is difficult to stomach.”

“You are so full of it.”

“Me? How so?”

“Nobody is
actually
this pretentious. People have to work at it.”

“I think I’m offended.”

“See, that’s what I mean, you can’t actually even
be
offended, you have to announce that it’s a possibility you may at some point develop a feeling, and that feeling if, when felt, might develop into a sensation akin to a quality reminiscent of offense.”

“Well I would never say that, but that was impressive. You should write it down.”

Annie threw a balled-up straw wrapper at Vi, and then Rodney sat down.

“Hey, did you hear?” he said.

Rodney Delindo was either nineteen or twenty, which put him squarely outside of the tribal demographic of Annie’s sociology study. He still had a spot inside her circle of friends, though, perhaps an even more important spot than most everyone aside from Vi. Rodney was, for a short while not too terribly long ago, quite possibly Annie’s very best friend.

They hardly spoke any more, because they both got older and things changed. Rodney’s graduation from high school was one of those things. He was a manager at the bowling alley now, while he considered his higher education options. This meant, in less polite terms, his grades were not fantastic and his ability to pay college tuition suspect. At the same time, the job still had to be considered temporary because nobody goes through life planning to be a shift manager at a bowling alley. Especially not one without a candlestick lane.

He was Annie’s first crush. She never said so, but he probably knew it.

When he sat down, he flipped the chair over so the back was facing the table, and then straddled it cowboy-style. It was a modestly stud-worthy maneuver.

“Hey, Rod. What were we supposed to have heard?”

“Yes, there’s so much,” Violet said. Annie shot her a look, and got back a,
you wanted me to engage, so…
shrug.

Rodney more or less pretended Vi wasn’t there. It wasn’t even impolite; it was just what one did.

“About Rick.”

“I heard he saw a vampire. But this is Rick we’re talking about.”

Rodney laughed.

“No, no, it wasn’t a vampire.”

“Of course it wasn’t. That’s my point. Rick is Rick.”

Rick Horton was a year above Annie, which made him seventeen and still four years away from the legal drinking age, when he could officially fulfill the role he’d been training for his entire life, that of the town drunk.

Wildly insensitive
, Annie the sociologist wrote in her notebook.

Rick was the first local kid roughly Annie’s age that had a self-evident drinking problem. It didn’t seem possible for someone so young to exhibit alcoholic tendencies, but by most accounts, Rick had his first beer when he was twelve and hadn’t stopped drinking since.

The last two or three times Annie spoke to Rick, it became clear he was also auditioning for town crackpot. He was working on a number of fascinatingly disturbing theories about the spaceship and the army that was a complicated synthesis of everything the trailer people had to say combined with the wild theories from the protestors. Just add alcohol and stir.

Literally anything could follow
did you hear about Rick?
She expected one day it would be
he died
, but not yet.

Vampires were right in his wheelhouse.

“No, I mean it wasn’t a vampire, it was something else.”

“Go on,” Violet said. Rodney looked her way, confused momentarily; wearing an expression along the lines of
I did not know it spoke
.

“So you remember Mr. Granger?”

“From seventh grade? Sure.”

“And do you know…” he looked a little uncomfortable, because the next part of the sentence was
…that he died
, and it just occurred to him if she did
not
know this, the way he was breaking the news was probably a tiny bit insensitive.

“Yeah, so sad,” Annie said. “He was young, too.” To Violet, she said, “He taught English in middle school. He was really cool.”

“He died?”

“Couple weeks ago. It was really sudden. Heart attack?”

“I think so,” Rodney said.

“I think he was only maybe fifty. Used to jog, too.”

“Yeah, we’d pass him in the morning, remember?”

“I do.”

Rodney’s family lived up the road from Annie. She used to hitch rides in the winter.

“So what about Mr. Granger?” Annie asked.

“Rick said he saw him.”

Annie laughed.

“Was Mr. Granger the vampire??”

“Not a vampire. What Rick said was, he saw the undead. People filled that in.”

“So, wait, okay, Mr. Granger is a zombie?”

“Where did he see him?” Violet asked.

“Uhm…” Rodney was still perplexed regarding the existence of Violet.

“He was drinking in the cemetery, wasn’t he?” Annie asked. She thought this was hysterical, and couldn’t really understand why nobody else did. “That’s priceless.”

“No, no it was… well, he didn’t say exactly.”

“You got this from him?”

“Yes, he told me himself. He was really spooked.”

“So where?” Violet repeated.

“Okay, so the whole story, Rick said he was hanging with Ellard. You know Ellard?”

“I know him by sight. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to him.”

“He and Rick… they hang out.”

“Ellard can buy alcohol.”

Ellard Baron was twenty-two, and the kind of person young girls were told to steer clear of.

“Yeah, I’m sure that’s a factor. So he and Ellard were going tipping…”

“Oh, good Lord.”

“What’s tipping?” Violet asked.

“Cow-tipping,” Annie said. “Could they be more stereotypical? Did they also have moonshine in jugs? Jesus. I’m embarrassed on their behalf right now.”

“So Rick and Ellard headed up Cedar in Ellard’s pickup, looking for a cow. But you know how the farms are up there, not much to see from the road, especially at night. I guess they pulled off at some point and started wandering on foot.”

Annie sighed. “I can see where this is going.”

“I can’t,” Vi said.

“Once you leave Cedar, you’re pretty much just hopping stone fences one after the other. It’s really easy to get lost up there, isn’t it, Rod?”

“It is. Story is, they settled down, edge of one pasture or another, and started drinking. Never found a cow. Then Ellard passed out. Sometime around who knows when, Rick heard somebody walking around in the trees. He was thinking farmer, shotgun, that sort of thing, so he ducked down behind the fence. That’s when he swears Mr. Granger walked on past.”

“In the dark, in the woods. Was there even a moon that night?”

“I don’t know what night it happened. I guess I can catch up to him and check.”

Violet had pulled out her phone and opened a maps application.

“Cedar Road. This here?”

She pointed to a small road surrounded on both sides by no roads at all. Cedar was one of those poorly paved barely-two-lane roads that were commonplace in Sorrow Falls and large portions of the entire valley. It was the kind of tributary Spaceship Road used to be, before it was Spaceship Road.

“Yeah, that’s it. By the way, I’m Rodney.” He extended his hand. Conservatively, he had met Violet on six prior occasions.

“Violet,” she said, shaking his hand. “How far up Cedar do you suppose they were?”

“Seriously, no idea.”

She zoomed in on the map, pulled it left and right.

“Where was Mr. Granger buried?”

“Violet, seriously.”

“I’m showing interest.”

“You’re creeping me out.”

She turned to Rodney. “So you don’t know.”

“No, but I get what you’re saying.”

“What’s she saying?” Annie asked.

“Peacock Cemetery’s just over that hill.”

“You are seriously both just messing with me on this, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Violet said. “That’s all.” She swiped the maps image to one side and put it down in front of Annie without saying anything about it.

“I’m sure this Rick was just drunk,” Vi said to Rodney.

Annie looked at where her friend stopped the map. Cedar Road ran more or less precisely between the cemetery and the field where Shippie rested.

This meant nothing, of course.

T
he conversation
at the bowling alley soon devolved into an exchange of some of the gossip Annie picked up earlier that day, some of which Rodney even cared about. Then there was a pin jam on some far lane that needed immediate tending-to, and he was back to work.

They were on the road shortly after.

“Geez, Vi, I wanted you to engage in conversation, not act like a crazy person.”

“Sorry. You know I’m not good at this. I just thought it was interesting.”

“Yeah, well now I’m freaking out over zombies, thanks. Vampires I can handle.”

“Neither one is real.”

“I appreciate that, but if I’m going to be afraid of something that isn’t real I’d rather it be vampires. At least some of them are a sexy kind of not real. Zombies are just gross. Plus, what does the ship even have to do with any of this.”

“Nothing! I just thought… Never mind. I thought if this Rick fellow was going to make up something that happened in a certain place, he picked an interesting place.”

“It’s not
that
interesting. I can think of two other cemeteries and one pre-colonial burial ground around here, and I could pick almost any street and draw a straight line going from one of those sites, across the road I’d picked, ending at the ship. I mean I guess if I’m a zombie, and I really, really want to see the spaceship, I’d rather be buried in Peacock than Winterhill, so that’s smart thinking by Mr. Granger.”

“I doubt he had much say in it.”

“I’m kidding.”

“Oh.”

Annie’s phone vibrated. She pulled it out and discovered she’d been missing some texts.

“Oops, mom’s looking.”

“Is she all right?” Vi asked.

“Yeah, she just wants me home. No emergency.”

It was ten minutes from the mall to the end of Main, and another twenty to the house. Violet went by way of Patience and Liberty instead of taking Spaceship Road, even though the route that took them past Shippie was largely clear of traffic by nightfall on most evenings. That may have been because it was harder to see the ship at night. The army had spotlights on it, but those didn’t help as much as they should have. Plus, sightseeing in the dark just wasn’t a thing.

It would have been faster, then, to take Spaceship Road, but Violet preferred the second route, or perhaps was just on automatic, since it also went past the road that led to her house. Vi’s default excitement level in regards to the ship was also much lower than Annie’s.

When they pulled up to the house, the spot behind the family Honda was taken by a black SUV.

“You sure, no emergency?” Violet asked.

“We have a code worked out, you know that,” Annie said. “And that doesn’t look like an ambulance.”

“No, that’s a government vehicle. Look at the plate.”

“Yeah,” Annie agreed. “Army car. I don’t really like this. Wanna come in?”

“No. Text me later.”

“You’re not curious?”

“I’m very curious. Text me later.”

Annie jumped out of the car and waited for Violet to release the trunk so she could extract her bike. The driver of the SUV—military man in plain clothes, she didn’t recognize him but he had the Look—was standing next to the car. He noticed her and pretended not to. She wondered if he called anyone indoors to notify them of her impending entrance.

She got the bike out after some amount of work and wheeled it to the front porch, which was where it lived. The inner door was ajar, but this was hardly unusual. They lived far enough from proper civilization that they rarely locked up.

Annie’s house was on a small street that got a decent amount of traffic only because it connected the northern side of a bowl valley to the southern side of the same valley. In the center of the bowl was farmland. The house was on the lip, so from her bedroom window on the second floor (above the front door) she could look down on the private farms of six families. It looked a whole lot prettier than it smelled, because someone was always spreading fertilizer down there, and the wind always seemed to blow it toward her room.

It wasn’t the sort of place Annie would intentionally bring a guest. This was the first thing she thought of when finding Edgar Somerville in her living room. He and the army man who had picked him up that morning at the diner were both there, drinking coffee, and talking to her mother.

Annie didn’t quite know what to make of this peculiar arrangement of humans, but she was pretty positive she wasn’t okay with it.

“There you are, honey,” her mother said. She got up and gave her daughter a hug, which got her close enough to whisper: “
What have you been up to?
”

Annie smiled and shook her head, to say
I have no idea
.

“Mom, you should sit down. Are you feeling okay?”

Her mother was the kind of thin that looked unhealthy, because it was. Carol Collins was not in any real sense a healthy woman, physically, and her mind was nearly as suspect at this stage. She was dressed in an assortment of scarves and a loose caftan and standing in a living room that smelled of pot smoke, which—if Annie’s somewhat acclimated nose could smell it—meant she’d had a joint recently. It was not a good time for the military to drop in unannounced. Not that there was ever a good time for that sort of thing.

“Oh I feel fine, Annie. Don’t worry. She worries.”

Edgar and Army Guy nodded politely. Annie could only imagine what they had been talking about before she got there.

The couch the guests were sitting on bore some similarities to the way Annie’s mom was dressed, in that it was covered in blankets and sheets—plus a couple of towels—and was maybe even being held together by all of it. Most of the couch springs had surrendered all of their potential energy years ago and were just there to keep a little space between the top and the bottom of the seating area. Despite this, it remained superbly comfortable, although perhaps not the best thing to be sitting on should the need to rise quickly present itself. It was no coincidence, then, that a fire extinguisher was bolted to the wall next to it: if there was a fire it might take less time to put the fire out than to get off the couch.

The rest of the room was a collection of mismatched electronics verging on antique status, two floor lamps losing a battle with gravity, and an embarrassingly vast library of old movies on videotape. Every surface—the fireplace mantle, the end tables—was decorated with two or three porcelain tchotchkes, a drink coaster, a pen commemorating something, or an ashtray.

It wasn’t the kind of place meant for guests, but when they had them it was the guests who tended to act embarrassed, because this was a room that suggested privacy and intimacy, and
not for public consumption
.

“These men were just here to, well, I guess to offer you a job of some kind, isn’t that right?” her mother said with something close to a smile. It was impossible to tell if she was incredibly amused or if Annie was in a lot of trouble.

“It was her suggestion, actually,” Ed said, somewhat louder than he meant to. “I just decided to take her up on it.”

“I wonder, um...” Annie looked at Army Guy. “I’m sorry, we haven’t met have we? You are?”

He stood—this took some effort—and offered his hand. “Brigadier General Morris, Ms. Collins. A pleasure. Your reputation precedes you.”

“My reputation? Okay. Okay, can I…? General, I wonder if you could keep my mom company for a minute while I talk to… Mr. Somerville in private? Would that be all right?”

“Absolutely.”

“Great. Ed, if you could just… no, not my room, let’s go outside.”

She led him out onto the front porch.

There were a great many reasons not to hold this conversation anywhere else in the house, because despite the inhospitable nature of the living room to all but close family and friends, the rest of the house was possibly even worse. About two years earlier they’d discovered dry rot in some of the floorboards on the first floor, and her father—who didn’t live with them in any real sense—decided to tear out the floorboards to stop the rot from spreading. This was a good idea provided those floorboards eventually got replaced, and they hadn’t been. He was due to return in October, at which time he would hopefully finish the job, but given she and Carol had been saying that every six months for two years, there was a reason to think it wasn’t going to be happening.

What it meant was that navigating the house to get to just about any other room aside from the kitchen (which had a direct exit from the living room) meant going down a corridor that opened directly to the root cellar in three different places.

Annie took Ed down the creaky wooden porch stairs and past her bike, and around the side of the house. The entire time, he looked either confused or embarrassed, or something in the middle of both.

“
What are you doing here?
” she demanded.

“Calm down.”

“Don’t tell me to calm down, you showed up at my
house
?”

“I’m really sorry. I promise you, I didn’t… look, I didn’t know your mom was sick.”

“Didn’t know? It’s none of your business. It’s not
anyone’s
business unless I…”

“I know, all right? I screwed up. Look, I mean… it’s kind of your own fault, really.”

“I didn’t invite you here, how is this my fault?”

“You suggested it!”

“I suggested you hire me to show you around, I did
not
suggest a house call.”

“Right, and I’m the idiot who’s going to put a sixteen year old on the payroll without getting her parent’s permission first. In this day and age.”

“On the… wait a minute, you’re going to pay me?”

“No, the army’s going to pay you.”

She shook her head and stepped back like he had just whipped open his pants. “Whaaaat is going on?”

“I can’t really tell you.”

“You gotta tell me
something
. Like why you’re seriously about to turn me into a government agent.”

“Don’t get carried away, you’ll just be drawing a stipend.”

“I don’t know what that means, does it mean I get paid money?”

“Yes, that’s what it means.”

“All right, so I’m in, but let’s keep talking anyway and pretend you need to convince me, because I’m not necessarily going to be all that helpful if I don’t like what I hear.”

“All right.”

“Why don’t you tell me who you really are?”

“I gave you my real name.”

“Super, but you’re not a reporter.”

“No, I’m not. That’s my cover, though.”

“A cover. You’re a spy!”

“No, no I’m not a spy. A spy would be better at this.”

She laughed.

“I agree. You work for the army?”

“I work for the U.S. government. I’m an analyst. I do things called threat assessments and action plans.”

“Sounds boring.”

“It kind of is. But it means I’m sort of an expert on Sorrow Falls.”

“That’s an interesting distinction. Sorrow Falls, and not the spaceship.”

“I’m sort of an expert on both, but yes, I made that distinction deliberately. I’ve spent about as much time studying the town in nearly every way I can as I have the ship itself.

“All right, all right.”

Annie was pacing. This was partly because it helped her think, partly because she was in shorts and a t-shirt and the bugs were starting to discover her existence. Walking kept them guessing.

“So what I’m hearing is, something changed,” she said.

“Yes. I can’t tell you what.”

“Right, but it was something. But why me? You aren’t a reporter, and that was my whole pitch.”

“Yes, but… look, Annie, I can’t tell you exactly what’s going on, but the reason I’m here instead of someone else is because I’ve been arguing for a while that there’s something… different about Sorrow Falls. There are things here that don’t fit together right. I can’t pin it down, but it’s something. And now… well. I need to talk to people, get my ear to the ground, that sort of thing. I have a good reason for doing it, and I can’t tell you what that reason is. But based on everything I’ve heard about you in the past few hours, you’re something like the local Tom Sawyer. I’m not sure why or how that’s true, but it is.”

“I’m not sure if I like the comparison, Tom Sawyer was only like twelve, and I’m—”

“Sixteen, I know. You have a tendency to mention it every few minutes. Why is that?”

She laughed.

“I’ve spent my life in this town, and I know a lot of people. All of them are friendly and most of them are much older than I am. Around when I started hitting puberty I noticed some of those people were looking at me a little differently, so I got in the habit of reminding them how old I was. It’s nothing personal.”

“I guess that makes sense. What will you do when you turn eighteen?”

“I’ll start reminding them how old
they
are instead. So what are you looking to find out? In general.”

“Anything unusual, basically.”

“How unusual?”

“I don’t know how to qualify that.”

“All right, we’ll work that out later. How long?”

“As long as it takes, I guess.”

“School starts in a month, so I may need a note or something.”

It was hard to tell, but he might have been blushing.

“You know, it actually didn’t occur to me school would be an issue. I obviously can’t get in the way of that.”

“Sure you can. This sounds way more fun.”

“I… okay, we’ll figure that out if we need to. You’ll, um… you’ll also need to keep my cover, which will mean a little… lying. I already feel uncomfortable asking you to do that.”

“Your cover as a reporter.”

“Right.”

“Let me explain something right off. Nobody’s going to believe you, especially if you went and saw the ship today like you were supposed to. Not that it will make a huge difference.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If you build up a good, solid lie, you’ll be fine. They won’t believe you, but they’ll answer your questions anyway. You just can’t half-ass the lie or they’ll think you’re insulting them. Who do you write for?”