The Incident

Oakvale was the type of town in the middle of nowhere with a church on every corner and a cracking main street filled with potholes. The type of town where everybody knew their neighbor and their neighbor knew everybody. 

And it was all I had known for the first eighteen years of my life. Up until after the incident.

It started as a cold spring morning: the air hung crisp, and soft tendrils of mist wove through slumbering trees. The glass of the passenger seat window cooled the flush of my cheek. My fever was finally waning—for the past few days I’d been suffering from the worst case of the flu of my life—but I was still a bit shaky and pallid. Dad pressed down on the accelerator, working his old pick-up truck to the limit. We sped by a sign standing amidst dead grass and melting snow that told us HELL IS REAL.

It was all over the internet—the solar eclipse. According to my Aunt Cheryl, our own pearl of the Midwest was in the perfect location for a total obscuring of the sun. We had gone out to purchase those special glasses from the convenience store in order to not blind ourselves and whatnot. Per usual, we were running late, so Dad was flooring it for the mile stretch out of town before we reached The Clearing. 

The Clearing was the unofficial town meeting spot—a patch of wild grass bordered by thick forests on one side and cornfields on the other. At least a dozen cars were already parked when we arrived

The Thompsons, a large family with seven children, greeted us with a level of enthusiasm unnatural for the early hour. It wasn’t just the Thompsons, though, it seemed as if everybody in that clearing was afflicted with a fervent anticipation. 

“Five more minutes!” my science teacher, a tall, stringy man, called out.

I accepted the thermos of black coffee offered by my dad, who was largely responsible for forcing me to get up at an unholy hour despite my illness.

“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Sadie,” he’d told me before casting a disapproving glance at my mountain of blankets and pillows. “It won’t hurt for you to get some fresh air.”

Now, as the morning chill bit my ears, I had the distinct feeling that he was wrong.

I slipped on my eclipse glasses in unison with the rest of the crowd. The moon slowly passed across the sun until it fully blocked it. 

I swear to God, the temperature must have dropped at least five degrees as the darkness consumed us. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other as I waited for the moon to continue its path and clear out of the way of the sun.

But it didn’t.

Minutes passed, and the unrest in the crowd grew. “This is highly unusual.” I heard my science teacher announce, which didn’t help calm anyone. More time slipped by. We stood, clad in hats, and scarves, and coats, and boots, and waited for the moon to move. It still didn’t.

When it became clear that it was, in fact, not going to become light again, the crowd woke from its reverie with a chorus of whispers and grumbles. 

“What’s going on?” I whispered to my friend, Anna-Lee. She only shrugged in response and followed her family in the procession towards the parked cars.

Before anyone had the chance to start their engines, a loud screech broke the tranquility of the morning air.

“Where’s my Susie?” Mrs. Thompson sobbed. Collectively, we checked around us for the pig-tailed girl, but she was nowhere to be found. An off-duty Officer Stephens rushed over to the distraught woman and began peppering her with questions. When did you last see her? Who was she with? Would she have run away for any reason?

It was dark, not pitch-black certainly, but dark. And it was cold. Freezing cold. I wanted nothing more than to be back at home and curled up in my bed. But as a search party began to be arranged, I realized that prospect was increasingly distant.

I pulled out my phone from deep inside my jacket pocket, and with trembling hands began to search if the eclipse-stalling situation was a global phenomenon. That was, until I realized there was no cellular. It wasn’t unusual for reception to be spotty where we lived but something about it unsettled me anyway.

My dad grabbed a flashlight from the trunk of our car and I turned on my phone’s. The trees at the edge of the clearing had gnarled branches that reached out like skeletal fingers clawing at the sky. As we began to meander through the woods, each of my heavy exhales left behind tiny puffs of vapor that danced around briefly before dissolving into the chill. Dad and I took turns calling out Susie’s name. As the other groups joined us, our overlapping yells developed into a sort of dissonant concerto.

We continued on in this fashion until the energetic pricks in my feet subsided into an uncomfortable numbness. The air was heavy with the scent of damp earth and decay. Dad’s bad leg combined with my lingering ailment led us to lag behind the rest of the search party. Only when we rested our voices from the repeated strain did I notice how our calls were utterly alone in the forest. 

“The others must be too far ahead of us to hear,” I said, more to reassure myself than anything.

Dad hummed his agreement and we lapsed back into silence. Moments passed before he abruptly asked, “Why did the tree go to the dentist?”

I rolled my eyes before responding. “Why?”

“Because it had a root canal!”

I climbed over a fallen tree, covered in moss and fungi. “That’s so dumb.”

“You’re too cool for my jokes now huh?” I could hear the smile in his voice. “Well here’s another one. Why don’t skeletons fight each other?”

“Why?” No response. I tried again. “Why Dad?” Still nothing. 

I whipped my head around. His flashlight lay, abandoned, on the forest floor.

“Dad!” I shouted, turning around in a circle. I grabbed his flashlight and pointed it through the dense foliage. My breathing became rapid and shallow. “Dad!”

The thud of my feet against the ground matched the pounding in my chest as I set off in a sprint back towards The Clearing. In my haste, I tripped over an unruly root and sprawled across the floor. I pushed off the ground and wiped the dirt off my face. There was a rustle in the bushes behind me. I directed the beam of my flashlight onto the source. A deer with a misshapen head stared back at me. It didn’t startle when it saw me, like a deer typically would, instead it started walking towards me. It moved in an unnatural, disjointed way, and that’s when I realized that all of its knees were bent backward. I clamped my hand across my mouth to muffle a scream as I turned on my heel and ran. 

It felt like hours that I ran through the forest, but I didn’t dare look back and see if that creature was following me. When I reached The Clearing, I stopped cold. All of the cars were still parked. Nobody had returned. 

With a sinking feeling in my chest, I realized that I’d dropped my phone back near the log and I didn’t have the keys to the car. I gasped for air, but each breath felt shallow and insufficient. Surely, the others would come back soon. Leaning back onto our truck, I sank to the floor. I buried my face into my knees and began to sob.  

After a while, through bleary eyes, I looked back up at the sky. The sun was still eclipsed by the moon, but it was directly above me instead of hanging low in the sky like before. I shook my head, as if it would help me comprehend the bizarreness of the situation.

By that point, it became clear that the only sensible course of action was to walk back to town and alert the authorities. With a shaky exhale, I stood and made my way onto the road.

As I walked, I couldn’t shake the feeling of unseen eyes boring into the back of my skull. Every rustle of leaves or snap of twigs sent a jolt of paranoia through my veins. Half a mile in, my flashlight began to flicker. Another hundred feet and it sputtered out. I glanced over my shoulder constantly. Every time I turned, there was nothing but the oppressive darkness staring back at me.

Finally, I reached the city limit sign. 

Oakvale: Population 241.  

Main Street looked deserted. I peered into Eleanor’s Diner. Nobody. The hardware store. Nobody. The convenience store was empty. Lord, forgive me—I broke the eighth commandment and stuffed a pocket knife into my jacket. The door swung shut with a clang and a jingle as I exited. 

Suddenly, headlights cut through the fog. A red Chevy Camaro sped toward me. I flagged it down and it screeched to a halt. The driver was a handsome man with perfectly coiffed hair and aviator sunglasses.

“Need a ride?” he asked me, his pearly-white teeth gleaming.

Out of desperation, I agreed and slid into the passenger seat. “Can you call the police? Something strange has happened in our town.”

He didn’t respond, only floored it on the accelerator.

“Sir?!” I cried. The man still wore his grin, and as I looked closer there was something off about his face. His skin was stretched taut in places where it shouldn’t be and had a sort of waxy sheen. His sunglasses too. Why was he wearing sunglasses in the dark? 

I tried to open the car door. It was locked.

Out of nowhere, the headlights illuminated the deer from before. It was as disjointed as ever, stumbling towards us. The man made no move to slow down or swerve. I reached over to the steering wheel and yanked it hard to the right. We turned down an embankment and crashed into the tree line. I’m going to die, I thought. But I didn’t.

The first thing I noticed when I woke was the sky. Blue, brilliantly clear, and light.

It was light.

My head throbbed but I managed to stand on shaky legs. Blood trickled down from an open wound on my forehead. Distantly, I heard people calling my name. 

The search dogs found me first, then the police. I was questioned, and then brought to the hospital to treat my concussion.

Apparently, I had disappeared during the eclipse. Everything I remembered about that day was wrong. The sun was only obscured for four minutes. They theorized that some lingering effects of my flu made me delirious and wander off into the woods. That I had stumbled onto the road and got run over.

They theorized, but I knew they were wrong.

At the hospital, they handed me my personal effects—my clothing, phone (they found it in the woods,) and at the bottom of the pile: The pocket knife.