Saucer in the Dunes

36 Retrieval

I woke up sometime in the night with a terrible headache. I couldn't remember even having a headache before, but it sure felt bad. My radio was off. I thought Mom must have come in during the night and turned it off as she had done so many times before, but that was not it at all. The power was out. The radio wouldn't come on when I tried, nor would my table lamp. I lay there staring into near darkness at the stippled ceiling. It was glowing ever so slightly blue, but why?

Slowly I climbed out of bed, trying not to make any noise and trying even harder not to move my head too much. I went to the window, where I could see the sky through the backyard. The source of the blue glow was somewhere in town, that direction anyway. The sky was much brighter in that direction, even if the woods blocked my view, but there was definitely something going on over there. I thought about waking Mom and Dad, but instead, something came over me, and I felt I should return to bed when I did, I closed my eyes and quickly dozed off.

My dreams started almost immediately. It was like I was floating in the air above our town. I was looking into the night sky at all the stars. There were millions of them, more even countless more. One star shined a little brighter, a little more blue than the others, right in the tip of the big dipper. The casual observer would never have noticed, but it was also the first to appear in the night sky. It hung there, cloaked, until it started to descend toward Kingston. It was a ship, a teardrop-shaped ship!

Suddenly I was inside, looking out through the front of the craft. It moved slowly, floating in nearly, and did not trigger a single alarm with anyone in air traffic control towers in Savannah or Fort Gillem. It came in over the McMillens's large neatly planted rows of soybean on the property that faced I-75. It glided low, casting an odd shadow over the land as it went. The teardrop was seamless inside and out and looked to be made of light blue mercury.

I was looking through what seemed to be a window, but I could not touch anything. Embedded into the walls before me were soft lights of many colors and shapes, strange symbols, all illuminated but inaccessible. There were also glowing blue lights that pulsed outside, and just as I noticed them, they were suddenly extinguished, and it was near-perfect blackness. I could sense someone or something close to me. For the first time, I was filled with fright. I started to scream, but the glowing blue lights began to come on inside, distracting me for a moment.

Then there, sitting next to me, was Kema. He looked straight at me. I looked at him. He looked confused, as I am sure I did. I tried to speak. I could feel my lips and jaws moving, but there was no sound. Kema was trying to talk, too, only I still could hear nothing. Only the sound of what I thought was a quick rain shower starting could be heard. This was the craziest dream ever!

The craft moved across rooftops and upset the sleeping dogs, who began barking one after the other as we passed. Then we moved across the school playground and the ball field. We crossed Walker Creek several times as it wound through the little community of Kingston. Finally, we crossed the downtown main street and square, where we came to rest over Mr. Ronson's store.

We floated there in near silence for a moment, its smooth shape barely reflecting any of the moon's bright light. Then a blueish-white light came on, wide at first, engulfing the entire building and some of the others around, then the beam focused and narrowed to the size of a basketball and aimed directly at the corner of the store, right in front of the railing. Dirt, grass, and sand began to vibrate, then fall away to the right creating a small ditch that continued to grow in size as the beam swept forward. It moved along the front of the store, stopping just the other side of the postered front doors. The light then shut off as we gently floated aside, facing the side of the store with the red and white Coca-Cola sign painted right onto the old brick.

Kema looked at me and shrugged. The light again came on and once more focused, this time running down the complete side of the building in a matter of moments. The freshly disturbed earth piled high and spilled out onto the sidewalk, but the beam kept sweeping back of forth along the store, removing more and more dirt from beneath the brickwork. In only a matter of a few minutes, the craft had excavated a small cave under the old store, big enough for a man to walk into. Kema and I kept looking at each other in disbelief. Mr. Ronson was going to have a stroke! But still, we were unable to speak about what we were thinking and seeing.

Then suddenly, the light was gone. The craft still hovered in the moonlight for a few moments. From underneath the flat surface of our teardrop craft came a yellowish-orange light; it was faint at first but grew brighter as the source of the light, an opening in the craft's underbelly, grew larger. It stopped, at which point another focused light, this one green, shone directly into the dark excavated hole under Mr. Ronson's store. The light emanated a high-pitched hum that I could feel rather than hear. Whatever it was disturbed, the sleeping birds in the row of sycamore trees across the street in the park. They fluttered and flew around in the night sky as something encased safely in the green light moved from the cave and out across the ditch and finally into the belly of the craft. When the light went away, so did the hum, and it was quickly replaced by the whooshing sound of a quick rain shower again as the ship glided gently back across our little community, gradually picking up speed as it went before finally making the ascension back high into the cloudless night sky to disappear completely.

I had the sensation of falling, tumbling out of the sky. I bolted upright in bed, sweating and shaking. I remember seeing Kema's face as we seemed to be dropping back to Earth out of the night sky, then all went black. I sat for a few moments and caught my breath. I then got up and went to the window and looked out. There was nothing. No glow, no strange stars, nothing. I got back in bed, turned the radio on, and found Dynamite Don. He talked about satellites and old science fiction movies, The War of the Worlds in particular. It was a little frightening, but I listened anyway, pulling the sheets up to my chin as I lay back in a futile effort to fall asleep.

That was the first night I remember really being frightened. Like, maybe there was something to be scared of. It has been fun thinking and talking about it all with my friends, but I didn't think any of us really thought anything would come of it. It was like living inside one of the hokey television shows I watched. But I was scared. Something had changed in my mind, and this being alone at night had to change. I had to have a way to talk to my buddies, Ronnie, at least any time I needed. The only way to do that was to get my walkie-talkies in working order again; I would start that ball rolling in the morning.

I didn't know whether the dream was real or not, but one thing was for sure if it was real, then Kema was across town, maybe thinking about the same things I was. I felt pressed more than ever to find out what was hiding out there in the dunes. I had seen it; I had seen the exact spot in my daydream right before I crashed and screamed and scared Mom and Dad. That was strange, but if I closed my eyes and concentrated, I could see the place again. I knew I could identify it; I just had to find out where it was. We had to get out there; we had to work on getting out there and fast.

I don't know why; maybe it was the sound of Dynamite Don's voice; he sounded tired, like a substitute teacher trying to teach all his listeners something, but many of them just didn't want to listen. Nearly every time he put a caller on the air, they criticized all his talking and asked him to play more music. He would play a song or two but would always go back to his stories and questions, and ever since the night the UFO was spotted all over South Georgia, he had been trying to get to the bottom of the story. Maybe he was having the same sort of dreams I was. That would account for it. I was worried, and that night lying in my bed, was the first time that Summer that I admitted it to myself. Tomorrow I was determined to admit that to all my friends and see if they felt the same.