The six found easy rhythm as they trudged through the winding forests of the Appalachian Mountains. Periodically, they'd pause at some recognized landmark, and the group would wait expectantly while small and timid Shaun stepped forward to appraise. Once he found his bearings, and could remember where he'd gone next, he'd point off in one direction or another, and so the group would continue. In-between such wayfinding stops, Skinny led the way, shepherding the group over fallen logs, across small streams, beneath craggy overhangs, and even past a dark and breezy cave.
As they walked, idle chatter broke out in smaller groups, and occasionally all would come together while Skinny told a story in that boisterous manner of his. When Skinny told stories, everyone listened intently.
“And so get this," Skinny continued. "Brian Krenkshaw—he still wore those funny glasses at the time—he’s tryin’ to tell me that his hamster escaped while at the same time I’m tryin’ to talk to my Ma on the telephone, and so of course I get mixed up, and I tell—“
"Wait, did anyone else just hear that?" interrupted Shaun.
"Hear what?" Logan asked.
Shaun stood in silence, listening, but heard no further sounds. "Voices? Something? I don't know…" He looked down, kicking his feet nervously, but then he noticed something about the ground and a perplexed look settled on his face. "It was really close to here…. I recognize this place."
Skinny's story was now entirely forgotten as everyone turned towards him… a sudden serious mood prevailed.
“You… you sure it was near here?” asked Ronnie.
“Yuh-huh. I had just passed that craggy cliff and was heading east when I saw it. It has to be around here," Shaun replied.
The boys looked around and at each other, ready for their task. They then looked to Skinny, awaiting specific instruction.
“Well, let’s get started then!" Skinny said. "We didn’t walk all the way out here just for the hell of it… let’s split up and search the area. Logan, you take the north. Wade and myself will take the east. Parker, Shaun, you guys take south. And Ronnie, you got the west.”
* * *
While Shaun closed his eyes and tried to get his bearings, comparing the scene around him to one he held in his memory, Ronnie was the first to venture off. As the distance between him and the gang grew, he also felt a growing unease—a hard-to-shake feeling that he was being watched. He turned an ear upwards, listening for sounds that seemed out-of-place, and he heard a gentle scuffling of dirt and leaves nearby… was that a skittering squirrel? A gust of wind? Or something else?
He turned uneasily to the source of the disturbance: it came from behind a large, gnarled tree that creaked in the gentle winds overhead. He momentarily considered retreating to the group, but quickly dismissed the thought—he'd been entrusted with the west. And so he approached the tree, mentally commanding himself to calm, and he ran inquisitive fingers along the dry bark. It felt perfectly ordinary. After summoning as much courage as he could muster, he began to trace a path along and behind the tree, expecting to find something waiting on the other side. It was a relief, and not all that surprising, when he found only more empty woods.
* * *
To the south, Shaun and Parker walked loose circles around a tall rock formation, heads swiveling left and right. To Shaun, all of this looked somewhat familiar from the original sighting, but not quite familiar enough. And then there had been that mysterious sound… voices on the breeze? Maybe a higher vantage would help. As Shaun broke from the rock and picked his way up a sloping hill, Parker set off in a different direction.
Parker thought then of his mother, how she did this sort of thing professionally. How might mom go about looking for clues? He pulled his pants up just a bit higher, put on his best, stern face, and then dropped to a low, crouching stance, moving forward with deliberate slowness. His eyes were glued to the forest floor, scanning for footprints or clues or even a broken stick out of place. In the movies, it was always a broken stick that alerted the sheriff to the criminals hiding in the woods. How was Parker supposed to know which sticks were broken by suspicious feet when the floor was covered with zillions of sticks in all manner of shapes? He picked one up, studying it closely. It was definitely a stick, there was no doubt about it. It had a bend, ish, and sorta looked like it might have been broken on one end—but didn't all sticks have to break on one end to fall from the tree?
He sighed and tossed the stick back to the floor. Deciding that the stick idea was a bust, he instead stood and looked for plausible hiding spots. There were a bunch of bushes, he noted, and they were plenty dense enough to hide inside… and so, one at a time, he walked to the bushes and started pulling back their fronds, peeking inside for anything suspicious. The first one cleared, empty save for a panicky chipmunk, and the second, unsurprisingly, was also clear… down and down the line he went, shaking each bush in turn and finding them empty.
His fruitless search was interrupted as Shaun called him over.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," Parker said, knowing that the young boy must be uneasy left alone in the woods… especially after what he said he'd allegedly seen here. He made his way towards the hill, deflating just a little bit that nothing extraordinary was found.
* * *
To the north, Logan wandered around with hands in pockets, kicking rocks and watching them roll and clank against the stones of the clearing. He spotted a large, rounded one jutting out on a tangled root… big enough where kicking it would probably hurt. Instead, he ambled up to it, and then gently set his foot against it. He snapped his leg forward, nearly tossing the rock free, and he watched with satisfaction as it sailed through the air and struck a tree across the clearing. A game came to him: how many more kicks could he make before missing a tree? He looked around, and eventually spotted another suitable candidate: a large, oval-shaped stone with the smooth sheen of a river rock moved out of place. He moved towards it, but, before he could reach it, a branch snapped behind him. He paused mid-stride and peered over his shoulder, seeing only the waving greenery of the forest. There was nobody in sight, but no animals either… what had made the sound?
“Guys, I really don’t like this place. It gives me the creeps,” Logan shouted towards the group.
“Amen to that brother… I’m just about ready to get going,” came the faint, distant shout of Wade.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
* * *
To the east, Wade and Skinny inspected a toppled tree, its trunk half-rotted and covered with writhing insects. Strange mushrooms and funguses sprouted from its surface, and the whole of it was covered with a slimy sheen—sap, or something worse.
"Man, that is gross," Skinny said, stepping in close to watch the line of ants marching along its surface.
"That is gnarly," Wade agreed. "Fifty cents if you lick it."
"There is no chance in hell that I'm gonna lick it," Skinny said, pulling back. "But I'd give you a dime if you did it."
Wade immediately leaned over the mossy log, and Skinny shielded his eyes. "It was a joke, just a joke!"
After a few seconds of silence, he dared to peek through his fingers, and Wade was standing there, a wide grin on his face.
Skinny dropped his hands in amazement. "Did you… did you actually—"
"You owe me a dime," Wade said.
"Man, you are nasty," Skinny said.
"A dime's a dime," Wade said, as if that explained it.
Beyond the rotting log, the two found a picturesque clearing with rocks perfect for sitting. As they approached for a break, they heard the footsteps of the rest of the group milling in—their searches had apparently been just as unsuccessful.
“Well maybe it’s because I don’t exactly know what an alien spaceship looks like, but I’m pretty sure there’s none over that way,” said Parker, finding a sitting spot in the middle of the clearing.
“I told you guys, it’s not a space ship!" Shaun shouted, also entering the clearing. "Just a space traveler. Here." He reached into his backpack and removed a comic book. The rest of the group filed in around him.
“Like this guy," Shaun said, pointing at a figure on one of the pages. Skinny took the book for inspection as Shaun continued. "He appeared in a flash of light and looked around for a second. Maybe he wasn’t accustomed to our atmosphere because he fell over right away, dead probably. And it was right…" Shaun trailed off, looking at the ground, eyes widening. "This is the clearing," he declared, before taking a few steps to his right. "It was kinda about here.”
“Wait wait wait," Wade began, "you mean we came all the way out here to look for comic book aliens that you thought you saw like almost 2 weeks ago, vaguely somewhere around here?”
"What did you think we were looking for?" asked Skinny.
"I thought you said it was some homeless guy," Wade said.
"Why would we be out here looking for a homeless guy?" Ronnie asked.
"I don't know… it still makes more sense than an alien that Shaun thought he saw out in the woods," Wade replied.
“I didn’t think I saw, I know I saw it. And it was here,” said Shaun, stomping his foot for emphasis.
“You were here or it was here?” asked Wade.
Shaun's confidence began to wane. “…I was here. Or somewhere close to here. The alien was like only 20 feet away…”
Parker interjected next. “20 feet? I thought you said you went up to a body and touched it… That’s how you knew it was aliens!”
"Touched it?" Shaun balked. "I was far away and didn't know if it was dangerous! In the comic books they're almost never unarmed… Why would i want to go touch it? And besides, it was dark."
"Oh, perfect," Wade said, "so you couldn't hardly see it and wouldn't even touch it."
"Guys…" Ronnie said, but the arguing pair didn't seem to hear.
"That's the point of this here!" Shaun said, gesturing about him. "We're here to go find it, and, if we do, touch it. As a group. Y'know, strength in numbers."
"Guys!" Ronnie said again, louder this time.
Wade barreled on. "Oh my God, so this whole things has been a waste of your and my—"
"Guys!" Ronnie shouted. The group paused and turned towards him. "I think I found it," he said. He pointed towards a dark mass on the ground about thirty feet away, partially covered by pine needles and leaves. All filed in to investigate.
* * *
As they drew near, the scent was the first thing they noticed, though it started as a mere hint hanging in the still summer air. As they closed the distance, it began to assert itself loudly until its presence was undeniable, bordering on unbearable. Young Shaun retched involuntarily. "Wow, now that's rank," Wade replied, nearly seeming impressed at the stench. He pinched his nose and stepped closer to the mass on the ground. "Well, well, well, it looks like we found your man after all," he said. "Skinny, you wanna make that dime back?"
"Man, I ain't even gonna answer that," Skinny said.
Ronnie was next to approach the thing on the ground, but he immediately shuffled backwards, eyes searching frantically for a clear space. He found one near Logan and immediately threw up his lunch. Logan could identify the pretzel pieces in the puke, a fact that made him almost as uneasy as the mass on the ground did. The pungent stench of vomit mixed and mingled in the air with the putrid scent of rot… Skinny fanned the air in front of his face as he stooped lower to investigate.
The corpse on the ground was partially-decayed and bloating, its surface covered with wriggling insects of uncountable types. It looked decidedly more human than extra-terrestrial, with all the right number of limbs… the thing was even wearing a dirty plaid shirt, a green-and-black checkerboard pattern that nearly served as a rudimentary sort of camouflage. On the top of the body was a leather briefcase clutched in moldering hands. Its center was punctured with a single bullet hole, the fabric surrounding the hole peeling inwards towards the dark inside.
"Well there he is," Skinny said.
"I told you guys!" Shaun shouted in triumph, before frowning with the intense concentration required to not add to the vomit pile still-growing with each of Ronnie's retches.
"But I don't know about this being no alien…" Skinny said. "He looks pretty human to me. Human shape, human clothes… heck, I'm pretty sure I know somebody who owns that exact shirt. And that's a pretty human briefcase he's got right there…"
"But—but—I saw him appear. Out of nowhere! With the flash, and then he fell over…" Shaun said.
Wade pointed at the case. "Lookie here. His case has a nice bullet hole on the front. What you saw must've been the flash of a gun, and then he keeled over after being shot. You, because you read too many comics, might have thought it was aliens, might have thought he just appeared, and because of that you never called the cops. You're a real airhead, you know that?"
Shaun was visibly crushed. He searched for the words to defend himself but none came to mind. Instead, he stood there with his chin raised high, the beginnings of tears welling in his eyes.
"Hey guys, look at this," Logan said. The gang wheeled around to see him raising a hand up in the air. The hand was stained black. "Check out all the trees and everything around here… it's all covered in the stuff."
Several among the gang started running their hands over trees and leaves of the shrubs in the area and as they pulled their hands back, they confirmed that the area was indeed coated in a fine layer of black something.
"Now, I don't know of no guns that put out that much smoke," Skinny said. Shaun's eyes lit up.
Wade wasn't convinced. “You guys are being ridiculous. It’s clearly a murder scene."
"…Maybe," Skinny said, stroking his chin and staining it black. "But I dunno. This ash suddenly changes things up."
"It wasn't anywhere else but here!" Shaun chimed in, his enthusiasm quickly returning.
"Oh, come on guys," Wade said. "I'll prove it right now. Let's open the case and I'll show you once and for all that this guy is human."
"No, wait!" Shaun protested, stepping defensively between Wade and the corpse.
"Why should I wait? Short of a forensics kit, this is the only way to tell what we've got here…"
Shaun looked torn. “I know! But in the comics, the only thing more dangerous than the alien is the alien’s things! None of their gadgets or weapons are ever human-friendly.”
Wade shook his head. "So the comic books warned me I shouldn't? That's all I needed to hear to open this thing…"
He pushed back Shaun, and, with one hand over his nose, he bent down close to the body. He peeled a clutching hand backwards, which reluctantly moved with a sickening series of pops and crackles. Somewhere near the elbow, fluid began to leak down onto the shirt and mixed with the dirt to create a sticky, crimson mud. Wade stepped back for a moment and wiped his eyes with his arm before stooping back down again to tend to the second hand. He pried it free of the case one finger at a time and then, with a triumphant flourish, he lifted the case away from the body.