Nightmare From 30,000 Light Years

Thomas sat in the back of the old Ford pickup truck with Kenny, staring at the gray light that made everything in the Idaho terrain seem to stand out in sharp focus and trying to hold on as the truck rattled and bounced across the prairie.

The two men in the cab were Hoxey and Clarence. Hox was at the wheel, driving like a fiend. Thomas tried to let his body sway with the truck, the way he would fit his loose-limbed movements to a horse. If he'd been galloping at this speed on a good horse, though, it would feel a damn sight less bruising.

The two men in the pickup's bed were slowly getting their fill of the punishing ride. Finally, Kenny hollered "Slow down!" Hox didn't slow down at all; he probably hadn't heard. Kenny pounded the truck's rear window. Still no change - the truck was bouncing so hard that the gun rack across the rear window was rattling loudly. So was the rest of the vehicle.

Kenny shook his head and gave up. The pickup raced along, finally reaching smoother, flatter terrain and picking up even more speed.

For the first time in months Thomas felt like he was in his own body again, and in the moment. The world looked present and up close instead of seeming far away, observed remotely like something on TV.

Four months ago - on the Fourth of July weekend, though actually it was on Saturday, the fifth of July - Mary had loaded up Brock and Sally and taken off in the old Plymouth.

Mary, he'd said, what the hell are you doing?

And she didn't tell him why. She just did it.

He still hadn't figured it out. He never hit her. He didn't yell - not much, anyway. He wasn't a drunk, like a lot of the guys in town were, though after she left he did drink quite a bit more than he used to. But the beer and the whisky didn't help, didn't paper over his confusion, didn't bring him sleep.

Did Mary have another man? Thomas didn't think so. He tended to think that if anything, Brock was the reason. Brock was almost sixteen, and there was something about him... Screw it, Thomas knew what was going on there. Brock struggled with it, but Thomas knew fighting it wasn't going to help. Thomas had managed to block it off, put it away, and soldier on. But Brock - he didn't think Brock was going to manage.

Brock was gay. His son was gay. Thomas had known it for a long time - since his son was little. It made him sick... not with disgust, but with worry. Thomas felt it was all his fault, but what could he have done different? But yes it was, it was all his fault. A gay man trying to not to be gay. Of course his son was going to be gay too. Lord God, Jesus on the Cross, what could you do?

Sally was his angel, his precious baby girl. She was pink and happy, she was all girl, she would grow up to break hearts. Brock wasn't girly, but he...

Well, Sally would be okay. Brock?

The boy got a lot of shit at school. Maybe Mary wanted him to have a chance and so she took him to her mother in Albuquerque. Gays were more welcome in big cities. That's why they all went to San Francisco and New York. Albuquerque would be a good place for Brock, better than Kamiah.

Thomas hoped his son would find his way, hoped the way the world was changing would promise something better. In twenty-five years it would be the twenty-first century. Brock would be forty years old. Maybe the twenty-first century would make more sense, be less hidebound, less fucking mean and vicious. But maybe forty years old would be too late for Brock. Shouldn't he have a youth, the way other men did? The way Thomas had not? The year 2000 sounded good in principle but it was still 1975 for now, and what was Brock going to do until the world became a kinder place?

For his part, Thomas didn't know if he'd care to be around that long. Twenty-five years? That would make him... well, Tomas was thirty-six now, so in twenty five years... Shit, he was never good at math. He'd be old - just old, he reckoned. He already felt old, too old for starting over as a single man, or for hanging on for dear life while Hox twisted the wheel this way and that and the pickup leapt and swerved like a bronc. The goddamn truck was rolling fast across more rough ground, now, and Thomas couldn't think straight.

The hunting trip was Kenny's idea, Thomas suspected, and he thought he knew why. Kenny and him had been tight ever since they were kids. Kenny never said anything, but Thomas knew that Kenny hurt for him since Mary left. They worked together at the garage and filling station, two guys getting filthy greasy every single day, and you didn't need to put it into words: When your world crashed down on your head, your best friend knew. Kenny never asked for details, he never said How are you doing or any of that, but he did ask Thomas to come grab a beer after work a few times a week, he asked Thomas to come over and let Alice cook you dinner at our house, and now he asked Thomas to come hunting with the guys.

Kenny probably even knew Thomas' secret, and not because when they were teenagers they used to beat off together. All the teenage boys had beat off together, and they probably still did. That didn't make a guy queer. But when girls finally entered the picture, Kenny was all over that, and Thomas... well, he did his best. Thomas thought Mary only said yes because she liked hangdog guys, hopeless cases. But now they were getting older and maybe she wanted something more. Thomas couldn't offer Mary too much in the bedroom these days. It was no wonder she left him. When he was younger it wasn't so tough to get it up, make it do something, but now...

Well, she'd find a strapping young buck in Albuquerque, if that's where she'd gone. Or maybe Mary stuck closer to home, maybe she was in Boise. That was a big city. But hell, even Caldwell was bigger than Kamiah. Maybe Mary was in Caldwell with her sister Tanya. Or maybe she was in Idaho Falls with Ginny. But no, Ginny married a Mormon and she had to turn Mormon too, and Mary never had much patience for all of that. She wouldn't be in Idaho Falls. Would she? Thomas really had no idea. Mary had never written or phoned to tell him where they were, and Thomas was too proud to contact her mother or her sisters and ask if they knew where his wife had gone to. Why the hell should he have to crawl after her when she left and didn't even say why? Fine, if she wanted to leave. Fine. Let her go.

Thomas didn't know what else to do about the situation except drink and brood, and that was what made him feel apart from the moment, a stranger to his own life, numb and dead inside. But a few minutes ago all that changed. Maybe it was adrenaline or maybe it was shock, but things were real again, which was strange because the little hunting party had just witnessed something that Thomas never would have believed in if he didn't see it with his own eyes.

***

The day was supposed to be simple - ordinary, a distraction, nothing more than that. Hunt some deer. It took a few hours to drive to the mountains, but hell, what else did Thomas have to do this weekend or any weekend?

November, deer season, you only had it once a year, and Thomas could probably use the meat this coming winter. Kenny did say that: Thomas, you're getting thin, buddy, you better fill up your freezer full with venison or come springtime there won't be much left of you.

They were barely forty miles out into the back of the beyond, barely two cans of beer into the two full coolers they brung along, when they saw it streaking by overhead, round and silver and buzzing. What the shit! - Hox yelled, and Thomas and Kenny could hear him clear in the bed of the truck. Clarence must have been half deaf, up front there in the cab with Hox, who had a loud voice anyways and liked the sound of it so much he never shut the hell up.

It was up there, it wasn't a trick of the light or the planet Venus shining in the early hours. That really was a flying saucer! Kenny and Thomas stared, their mouths falling open. Round and silver and buzzing fast, like a jet; then, tilting and sliding out of the air and disappearing. There was no boom, no smoke, but the silver ship... it was a ship, right? A space ship? It didn't reappear. Hox aimed the nose of his truck where the ship went down and stomped on the gas, and here they were, tearing up the fucking prairie, not even on the road, not even on a two-rut track. For fuck's sake. Tearing up the goddamn prairie.

It took thirty, forty minutes to find the ship, but they didn't even drive close up. It was resting on the ground like it had slid to a stop there, slid like a flat-sided stone, the kind you could skip at the lake at Lucky Peak.

Yeah, Lucky Peak, they went there a lot that year he and Mary lived in a trailer outside of Boise.

Well, you didn't see this sort of thing in the city, Thomas thought when he caught sight of the ship. For a crash landing it wasn't so bad. The ground didn't look too roughed up, and the ship... well, it seemed all in one piece, still round, not bashed in, but not buzzing any more. It occurred to Thomas that maybe the saucer hadn't crashed at all. Maybe it had just come in for a regular landing.

If there was any damage to the ship, the men didn't get close enough to see it - and that was because they saw the thing that must have been flying it. When they came over the rise and saw the ship down there in the shallow, the very next thing they saw was that -- that thing, the space thing, charging at them fast. Hox hit the brakes and the pickup came grinding to a stop, dust thrown up in a cloud all around. The space thing kept coming, still running right toward them. What the hell? Didn't it want to run away? Jesus Christ. They had guns, and lots of ammo, and if it knew what was good for it, the space thing would -

Holy fucking Baby Jesus, the thing was almost on top of them already!

Hox jumped out, reached back and fumbled to get his rifle out of the gun rack. Kenny hopped over the side of the truck bed, then ran up to the front of the truck and leaned half across the hood. Thomas climbed out, slower, the moment's every detail still throbbing at him, intense and clear-cut: Indian grass underfoot, the bright gray sky overhead and the dull gray space ship over yonder and the massive, mean looking space critter closing in. Thomas raised his own rifle, made sure the safety was off. Hox got himself squared away and fired first, and then Thomas and Kenny fired also. The first volley was followed by a second. Clarence didn't even get out of the truck until the thing went down.

The four men approached the space thing slowly. It was furry, and long-bodied, with lean limbs and a lean torso, and a head that looked like a bobcat's, sort of. Bigger than a bobcat's. It was bleeding, too, black blood. Oozing black blood that the men discussed: Would it poison them to touch it? Would it burn, would it give them a disease? They clustered round and stared down at the unmoving creature. It looked wild and vicious. Could something like that really build a space craft? They turned slowly and looked at the ship, silver and silent, a great big flying saucer. Was this creature at their feet its sole occupant? Maybe the thing had pals in the saucer?

An urgent new discussion broke out among the men. Should they take the body? Well, of course they should. Who was gonna believe it? The body was evidence. The body would convince others to get their asses out here and deal with this ship before it did something terrible. What if it had a death ray or something, for fuck's sake?

Okay, take the body. Where should they take it? They had to tell the state troopers or the army or someone. The army? Who wanted to get the government involved? What if the government already was involved? What if the government was behind it?

They looked down again at the body with its long, bony limbs. Long but thick, bony like the bones of a goddamn elk, or a moose, solid and strong. Knobby joints. It had a muzzle that was hanging open a little, and its teeth were sharp. It had hands... they sort of looked like hands. It didn't have feet. They looked more like hooves, or... or double hooves, long and strangely shaped. It was covered with fur, brown and red and white fur, and a little black here and there, but there was no space suit, no clothing of any kind. Space aliens went around naked, Thomas reflected. When people told stories about space aliens, the aliens were always naked. They were usually smooth skinned, hairless and gray with big black eyes, but they were naked.

This guy had eyes, two of them, and they were shut. No one wanted to mess with them, pull them open and see if the creature reacted, or if it really was dead. Thomas wondered why a space alien would look so much like an Earth animal. Maybe it was an animal? Maybe the smart aliens were still inside the saucer, maybe they were the gray guys and this was a guard dog or something?

Hox had issued an order to the others: Everyone grab a limb hoist it up, sling it in the pickup bed. Thomas had the presence of mind to go back and open the tailgate. Then he joined the others, took hold of a leg. There were four bullet wounds... no, six wounds, four of them stitched diagonally down the space thing's lean torso, which was covered with bristly white fur, four bullets in a trail of oozing black dots leading to where the fifth and sixth bullets had struck its lower belly and the inside of its haunch, or its pelvis maybe. The fur was black there, and it was hard to see the blood. There were no visible sex organs. Maybe he was a she? Maybe they didn't have guys or gals? Maybe they were all one kind of sex, or reproduced by other means?

The fur was coarse and a little oily. Thomas regretted that he didn't think to bring any gloves on the hunting trip. They all tugged the thing up and hauled. It was heavier than a deer, but they managed. They had to swing the thing like a hammock, standing behind the truck, building up momentum and then letting go so that the body hurtled into the bed like a gunnysack. Then Thomas and Kenny gathered their rifles and climbed in. They pushed and pulled and got the elk-thing's limbs all clear of the tailgate. Hox shut the tailgate and headed for the cab. Clarence hung back to stare another couple of seconds over the side of the bed, and then he got in the passenger side.

All this was real, Thomas marveled, and it felt real. All it took to shake him out of his funk was their very own alien invasion! Thomas's fingers were still oily. He brought his fingertips to his nose and sniffed - there was a heavy animal scent, the smell of the fur.

Hox drove - slower than before, and a little more carefully, but still pretty fast, and the ride wasn't as rough but there was still some jouncing. The space thing lolled and jounced, too, a little. It was heavy and dead, so it didn't jounce like Kenny and Tomas did, trying to keep comfortable, trying not to bruise.

Kenny was looking at him. Thomas looked back.

Guess we bagged us a big one, Kenny said.

It took a couple of hours, and the time went by in a steady march. The gray light persisted. Details of the prairie stood out - craggy distant peaks, dry stalks sticking up looking wintry and dead from the hardscrabble ground. The space thing didn't look too spacy, but it didn't look like anything that belonged on the Earth, either.

Thomas wondered if this was all a dream. He never remembered his dreams much. Was this what they were like? Would he wake up and forget this one, too?

Hox drove to Thomas' place, which was set outside of town. Thomas had a big shed on his property. The shed used to be a chicken coop, but Thomas meant to turn it into a workshop for his hobby. He liked rocks, collecting garnet and whatnot, grinding and polishing the stones. The shed was mostly empty. Thomas hadn't much felt like working on it for a few months now. There was plenty of space to dump the space thing. It could just lay there for a few hours while the others went and got the cops or the Marines or whoever.

The space thing's oily fur was more oily now. Thick with oil, in fact, oil that shone on their hands. They wiped their hands on their clothing but couldn't get it off. More heavy animal smell, and something else, something a little...

Clarence just wanted to go home. He was looking green and a little freaked out. More than a little freaked out. Was he going to freak out? No thanks, he said when Hox offered him a ride. He'd be fine walking home. But he wanted to go right away, go and get home and get washed. The thick oil on his hands felt disgusting. Clarence wasn't sure, but he thought maybe it was starting to sting a little, starting to burn. Did anyone else feel it was starting to burn?

Clarence didn't even want to come in and wash there at Thomas' house, but the other guys took Thomas up on the offer. Kenny and Thomas scrubbed at the kitchen sink using Palmolive, which seemed to cut through the oil just fine, as advertised. Hox scrubbed at the bathroom sink using Zest. Hox barked something about Why did Thomas use Zest? Hox liked Lava. Hox laughed at that. Kenny and Thomas traded smiles and rolling eyes. He's an idiot, Kenny said.

Hands clean and clothing still smudged where they'd wiped thick oil all over their jeans and shirts, the men trooped outside. Kenny looked at Thomas, saying he had best go with Hox to the cops or they'd think Hox was drunk or just plain nuts. Hell, the cops might think the both of them were nuts. But two guys were more convincing than one. Was Thomas gonna be all right on his own?

Sure. All Thomas had to do was keep watch, in case... what? In case the flying silver ship buzzed over and set down on Thomas' land. In case an army of smooth gray guys came out of the ship and took custody of their dead elk-bobcat thing. Or took Thomas, for that matter, but someone better keep watch anyway -- just in case.

Kenny said they'd hurry. Then he and Hox climbed into the pickup truck and were gone.

Thomas paced restlessly. The air rang with stillness, and the gray light had weight to it. Thomas heard his own breath and wondered what it felt like to be dead - to be a dead man, a dead space thing. Life in space? Life, really? What were other planets like? What was it like, living there? Did the man alien, if they had men, get up each morning and have to listen to their wives gripe about whatever shit... the kids didn't listen, the boy was a brat, the girl was sneaking cigarettes...

No private parts, though. Not that Thomas wanted to see alien private parts, but still. There should be something there. It was hard to imagine happy little families of elk-bobcat aliens if there were no baby-making parts. It was like GI Joes, it was weird how they had nothing down there. You didn't want to see anything there, necessarily, but it was weirder for there to be nothing than for there to be something. When Brock got a GI Joe for his sixth birthday, Thomas didn't approve. Thomas had wanted to be a Marine himself, it wasn't that he didn't like war toys - that was Mary's thing. She didn't want Brock to have toy guns. She wasn't happy about the GI Joe either, but that was because he was a GI. Thomas just didn't think boys should play with dolls, even if they were GI Joes. Thomas' doubts about the GI Joe got sharper when Brock took off Joe's clothes and then wondered why Joe was built like a girl down there. Brocks' friend Jesse said that Joe must have got his manhood shot off in the war. Brock said he felt bad for Joe. Thomas did, too, now that his son mentioned it. So what if GI Joe was a doll, nothing but plastic and a smooth blank between his legs? He was still made in man's image, and a man was a man because he did have something down there. What was the point of a GI with no manhood? What kind of thing was that to do to a guy?

We shot the shit out of that space alien, Thomas thought. What kind of thing was that to do to a guy? And now Thomas had a dead alien from who knew where dumped in his unfinished work shed, where he had planned to hang up the carcass of his deer to let it cure in the cold November air. But no deer, no venison. An alien instead, from some planet way the hell out there... from thirty thousand light years away, like in that black and white movie from the '50s, the one that was always playing on the television late on a Saturday night.

Thomas loitered outside his chicken coop and stared at its drab grey walls, its wooden slatted sides and the wooden shingles on the roof. Black cracks in the wood stared back at him, sharp and silent.

There was going to be a space probe landing on Mars in a year or so, he couldn't remember exactly what the date was supposed to be. Then he did remember - July 4. Yeah, his favorite holiday. July 4, 1976, the Bicentennial. There wasn't no life on Mars, and the canals were just a hoax or a fluke of the atmosphere or something. So this thing didn't come from Mars, Thomas thought, and so the space probe wouldn't stir up a hornet's nest of elk-bobcat monsters when it touched down. One small leap for... well, that wasn't right, but anyway Mars wasn't the problem. Mars was fine. Thomas would be sure to have a drink come July 4 and the landing of the space probe. He thought he might like a drink right now, in fact.

Thomas headed into his house, found a mostly-empty fifth of bourbon. Did that make it a... a third? No, fractions worked the other way. They got bigger as the amount got smaller. This was a... Thomas scrutinized the bottle. A seventh, maybe. A seventh of bourbon. He drank it straight up from the bottle. Not all of it, but a fair amount. Took his time about it. Didn't want to be too drunk or crazy when the Marines arrived, Hox and his loud voice yelling all the way. The guys would be back in what, about three hours? Unless the Marines brought a chopper. They might bring a chopper, Thomas thought. It was okay if they did. He had a few acres. They could land 'er here.

Kenny was right, it was some hunting trip. God damn! The bottle sloshed and the wind made faint sad moans up in the chimney. The light was maybe getting bluer, fading some. It was getting on toward dusk; and the guys wouldn't be coming back until after nightfall. Wasn't that usually when the flying saucers were zipping around? Those grey guys, they had to be fixing their ship. The Marines were gonna want to see where the ship came down. Hox would probably take them there tonight. Hox, at the wheel, crashing across the prairie and yapping away. Thomas hoped he didn't have to go along too, or answer a lot of questions. He really just wanted to sleep.

Sleep, or wake up. If this was a dream, it was the longest dream a man ever had. But didn't they say that you dream a whole day in just a few seconds?

Life was but a dream. Thomas sang the line. That meant nothing more than a dream, right? So why "but" a dream? Why not "just" a dream? "But" was a contradiction, not a minimizing. "But" my ass! Thomas giggled and gurgled at the pun, almost choked on his bourbon, and then started a melancholy sing-song.

But Mary, why would you want more from life? Your life is but a dream. But Brook, your life will be so hard, so can't you just be different? I mean, not different? But it's okay, kid, it's just a dream. Thomas quit singing, turned serious. This was important: You know how your mother told you to just wake up if the dream turns nasty. Keep that in mind, son. Do what your mother tells you.

Staring at the fading light, bluer all the time, Thomas found new questions. But Kenny, if you knew, why did you stick by me? Not because when we were younger we used to ... well, all the guys did that. It didn't mean anything. Did it? But Kenny, you stuck by me better than Mary, and she said the vows.

But it's okay all around, everyone, Thomas assured the shadows in his sing-song. Life is but a dream.

Thomas started awake. It was twilight, and the house was silent except for the occasional faint moan of wind. But he had heard something, right?

Then there was a bang from outside. From the shed?

Thomas bolted to his feet, paused at the door to switch on the porch light, and then raced outside. He was halfway to the shed when the door jumped against the padlock. He'd put the padlock on? Well, of course he did, it was right there, holding the door shut. Or maybe Hox did that.

The door jumped again, and Thomas stopped in his tracks, unsure. He was only a few paces from the shed now. He forgot to bring his rifle from the house. God damn it! Now he remembered - his rifle was still in the bed of Hox's pickup. Between hauling the elk thing into the shed and getting washed up, he'd clean forgot about it.

The door jumped, and in the weak porch light it was worse than creepy, worse than scary. What the fuck was Thomas going to do without his rifle? Why wasn't the thing dead? Was the saucer about to come buzzing overhead?

Then the door splintered open, and the space thing stood there - gray and slick - its fur all gone, but a thick gel coating its thin, taut body. Its eyes were open now, and they caught the dim light from the porch, glowing green. Its muzzle opened and its teeth were very, very white and very, very goddamn fucking sharp, and there were a lot of them.

Thomas started walking backward toward the house. In his head he thought he heard a voice, as if his dream was still going on.

Its fur melted into a goop. The goop was pure protein. Hair is protein, right? The protein fed the wounds. You can't kill something like that with a rifle, with a goddamn .22, it's alien life, it's tough and mean and it came a long way. 30,000 light years! The wounds healed up because the goop was protein with something else in it, something... healing... Fur melting, triggered by an enzyme... triggered by the wounds, the bullets...

Thomas suddenly understood that the space thing was telling him things, reaching into his mind with concepts that tangled up with his own shocked, disjointed thoughts.

And now I am going to kill you, the space thing told him.

But this was a dream. All of it was a dream. That was why it felt so real. After so many months of numbness, so many long nights, this was finally the night he got to sleep and stayed that way. So why was he dreaming about monsters? Shouldn't he be dreaming about Mary, about his life with her and the kids? Mary called this kind of thing an anxiety dream. She went to college for a year, when they lived in Boise. When they went to Lucky Peak on the weekends to swim in the lake.

But that life wasn't for him, never worked out. Why did he do that to Mary, to himself? He loved his kids, but come on. He should be dreaming about another life, a different life, a life with Kenny. Maybe not Kenny, but some other guy -- like Kenny, with Kenny's kindness and friendship.

He thought about Kenny. He thought about his wife, his kids, his life so confused and misspent. He offered all of it to the elk-bobcat. See? he said. This is all I have, and it ain't much. Can't you just whistle up your space ship and go home now?

And this was all a dream, anyway, so it should have been as easy as that. Except, Mary was right: It was an anxiety dream and things were only going to get worse.

The space thing was charging at him, coming fast, starting from not very far away at all and covering ground.

Thomas watched with horrified fascination. It won't get me, he thought. You always wake up from the nightmare before you hit the ground. Before the guy with the gun pulls the trigger. Before the monster from outer space gets you with all its teeth.

I'm going to wake up.

Life is but a dream?

And then the monster got him.