In the field outside her bedroom window, a lone figure crept slowly in the darkness toward the house. Its movements were jerky, like jump cuts in a film, and its arms were impossibly long and bone-thin. The creature wore a broad round hat that cloaked its face in shadows. The hat brim glowed white in the sharp moonlight. Anna stood frozen at the window for what seemed like hours—unable to move, to breathe, to do anything but stare at the intruder walking closer.
How long had she been at the window? She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t remember anything at all, like why the sky was filled with star formations she had never seen and why a gaseous cloud, the deepest color of purple, stretched across the southern sky. Who put that nebula there? The corn stalks in the field were at least five feet tall and swaying like waves in a dark green sea, even though the air was stale and unmoving. They were just seedlings yesterday. Didn’t know corn grew so fast.
The moon, much larger than normal and twice as bright, sat low in the sky, just touching the horizon. Another creature emerged from the cornfield. A twin. It wore the same black outfit, the same hat, and walked with the same herky-jerky movements toward the house. The night was dead silent. No wind. Nothing except for a low-pitched hum that seemed to come from the two approaching figures in the field.
Anna knew they were coming for her.
Ping!
The sound came from nowhere, distant and muted.
Ping!
The sound was sharper this time—closer. The figures in the field seemed to have heard it too. They stopped walking at the same time. In perfect unison, the brims of their hats lifted, slowly revealing their bone-white faces in the stark moonlight.
Anna tried to scream, but her lungs felt frozen. Paralyzed.
Ping!
Anna opened her eyes slowly and blinked several times to clear her vision. She was lying in bed. Her pillow was covered in sweat, just like her hair. She was still disoriented, and her heart raced in her chest, but at least she was awake. Her bad dream was over. That’s what it was. A bad dream, right?
Her phone was blinking on the side table: an alert from the sensor she had installed in the field that afternoon. The home screen read 1:45 a.m. It took Anna a moment to process what was happening, then her eyes snapped open wide. She hopped out of bed and made her way across the room toward her laptop. She stopped by her bedroom window. As much as she didn’t want to look, she couldn’t help herself and turned her gaze out into the field. For a moment she was sure she’d see those bone-white faces staring up at her. But the field was empty, and the moon was back to its right size and place in the sky. The night was alive with a chorus of crickets.
It had felt so real, Anna thought, more like a memory than a dream. And, unlike most dreams, the images in her head showed no signs of fading. She took in a deep breath and made her way to her desk.
“Let’s see if this camera is working.” Anna sat down and blinked, adjusting to the bright blue glow of her laptop in the darkness.
Anna cleared the messages from her screen and logged into her cloud drive. She yawned while waiting for the host to resolve.
“Come on, come on, come on.” Anna impatiently tapped the Return key.
Several video feeds appeared as text links on her screen. She clicked on the link titled Lake Station, but the video feed was black even though the counter below was ticking off milliseconds. Anna opened the settings for the remote camera and adjusted the light sensor. Anna started to make out a fuzzy white image moving slowly in a sea of black.
“There we go,” Anna said to herself.
More fuzzy white images appeared. Intruders! As she adjusted the light settings, the figures became clearer then snapped into focus.
“Aww, how cute.” Anna couldn’t help herself. A small deer stared directly into the camera lens. Its big fawn eyes lit up like shiny silver dollars. Behind the fawn was a group of deer drinking water at the edge of the lake. “So you’re the little guy that triggered my camera.”
For the next two minutes, the stream of images showed the fawn licking the camera mount, which made Anna giggle out loud. She absently watched the small herd graze for a moment and was ready to shut down her laptop when the small deer closest to the camera popped its head up in alarm. All the other deer followed suit. Then the deer were gone. Just like that. Wow, they’re fast. All that was left was the blur of a small white tail exiting the camera frame.
“Where did you guys go?” Anna said out loud to herself.
Something had scared them, but what? The screen was blank again except for two faint red lights that appeared in the center of the video frame. They were so faint, Anna wasn’t sure if they were early-season fireflies. But with each passing second the lights grew brighter, like a car driving toward the camera with its headlights on.
Anna didn’t remember seeing a road on the other side of the lake, but she couldn’t think of any other explanation. Suddenly the two lights stopped. Instead of veering left or right, the lights floated straight up. Anna let out a gasp and realized she had been holding her breath for the last thirty seconds. A ring of smaller red lights appeared in the next frame, circling the two original lights like a floating hula hoop. The object began to spin in a blur. Its bright light cast a strange red glow across the trees and the knee-high grass and the surface of the lake. A flash, then static. The camera went black.
Anna stared at the screen for a second, then realized she might still be able to see the real thing if she were fast enough. She stumbled from her chair and barely caught her balance by the time she made it to the window. She leaned out just in time to see a red light float silently along the edge of the trees.
Unlike the night before, the light didn’t disappear but continued on a course away from the trees and up into the night sky. Anna watched the light climb at a sharp angle, growing fainter until it was swallowed up by a bank of clouds across the valley. The clouds flashed pink like cotton candy, then returned to dark silhouettes outlined by moonlight.
The light was gone. But now she had a record of its passing. Now she had video.
“Uncle Jack!”