Bring Him Home

It was a searing hundred degrees outside the day I turned eighteen, the morning I peeled out of the trailer park before the cops could kick in the door. The '94 Tempo had no AC and a radio that switched stations any time I hit a pothole deeper than a golf ball—I was headed west on the tail end of a two-day speed binge and a swell of adrenaline. Everything I owned was in the passenger seat: her daddy's Mossberg and an army green JanSport stuffed with a pair of jeans and a few t-shirts, a wad of someone else's cash, her picture tucked in my wallet. A warm bottle of diet Pepsi in the cupholder.

By noon, the stretch of road ahead had burned a black line down the center of my vision, swimming in the arid heat. I was cruising on fumes, the pounding in my head overtaking the dull throbbing of the stitches in my side. It'd been nothing for miles—prairie grass, then sagebrush, then sand and tumbleweeds stretching out in every direction. A state line, somewhere. Twenty bucks at a near-deserted gas station, and an hour and change later, a man with his thumb out at the side of the road.

Nobody'd ever bothered to tell me not to pick up hitchhikers. So when he grew from a speck into a young man not much older than me, I let up on the gas to get a better look. Navy blue polo shirt, cargo pants, a hell of a lot more clean-cut than the dusty expanse surrounding us. It was a long way from the last town and a whole lot farther to the next, which begged the question: how in God's name did he wind up out here? Call it naiveté, but my gut needed answers.

"Where you headed?" I shouted through the open window once I'd skidded to a stop. Already, I was dumping the gun and the bag into the back seat. It didn't actually matter where he needed to end up—I could use the company for a stretch. Better than the radio static and the wind in my ears.

The kid didn't say a word. He just stood there like a stump, staring at the Tempo like it was the first real junker he'd ever seen. I waved him over. No bag at his feet. If I left him out here, odds were good he'd keel over from the heat or dehydration before some other kind soul came along. He smiled, an awkward tug at one corner of his mouth, and climbed in.

"Got a name?" I tried.

He buckled his seatbelt. I shifted into first and started rolling.

"Hablas inglés?"

Nothing.

I gave up after that. A glance his way every now and then sated no curiosity—hands in his lap, icy blue eyes fixed at twelve o'clock. Smooth skin; too smooth. It took me a while to put my finger on it, but his presence brought a change in the air pressure. I could feel it in my ears, in the mounting ache in my side where the wound still wept into its gauze. Clear skies ahead, no rain coming. Just a road that got fuzzier by the waking hour.

Time wasn't working right—the sun dragged itself across the sky by inches at first, then by leaps. By the time the horizon bled orange and pink, not even my knockoff Ray-Bans could fight off the glare. My eyelids had turned to sandpaper. My stranger still hadn't opened his mouth all day. Not even when we passed a sun-bleached roadside sign advertising a motel coming up around the bend: the Seventh Sunrise Inn. Color TV and a swimming pool. An anachronism if there ever was one.

The motel was a lonely little outpost, twenty rooms arranged in a horseshoe with a gas station at the far end and a convenience store slumped between them. I pulled up to the front office.

"Okay, buddy. End of the line. Time to hop out."

He tilted his head. Studied me with the same treatment he'd given the middle distance all day long. He didn't move to get out, didn't utter anything to the tune of, "thank you for saving my ass from dying out in the desert." Nothing like that. Instead, his hand snaked out and grabbed my shoulder. Squeezing. Hard. Ice-cold. I shrugged him off and recoiled, thought of the gun behind the passenger seat—too far, too slow. So I put on a face.

"You touch me again, we're gonna have a problem. A big one. You hear me? Problema. Comprendes?"

He nodded. He understood. Still didn't speak, didn't answer me. Just studied me a little while longer before he got out of the car, walking backward, as if I was the one that fascinated him and he was in no hurry to say goodbye. He hovered by a rusting Impala while I grabbed my bag, winced at the pain, and hiked to the office. I didn't look back.

I paid cash at the front desk, counting out rumpled bills for a single night, no ID or credit card required. A lumpy queen bed and the smell of an air conditioner that hadn't worked in years. That was all I needed—somewhere to lay my head. I was crashing hard. Shadows twisted. Bugs in the periphery. The faucet I'd cranked on to wash my face whispered. Here in this shitty motel room, I was destined for the soundest sleep of my life.

It came fast, but not in peace. I was standing on that same road in the dark. Somewhere out there, the roll of thunder. I turned around—I knew he was there—to find the faceless man. A hand on my shoulder, gripping like a vise. Ice-cold. And in the rainless storm, words that could shatter glass, one single command: "Bring him home."

I woke up gasping for air, fists balled up and raised to fight off an attack that didn't come. Then, the noise that jolted me awake, a second time: knock, knock, knock, a fist on the door. Not the police; I knew what that sounded like. This knocking was patient, a drum beat. I squinted at the cheap digital alarm clock beside the bed. One in the morning.

I knew who it was.

Just ignore it. Maybe he'll go away.

You'd think that, wouldn't you?

Again. Steady and relentless.

I rubbed at my eyes, shivered under the burn-pocked sheet glued to my skin by cold sweat. Time to get him to fuck off before he woke up the whole motel—before the cops showed up for real and hauled me off on the warrant, never to see the light of day again.

I rolled out of bed and stomped my way to the door, threw the dead bolt and yanked the door open.

"What?"

He stood on the stoop, blank as ever. He took a deep breath and parted his lips. Trying to talk. All that came out was a hoarse, labored squawk. He coughed and tried again.

"Augh."

He shuffled back, raising his open palms. Harmless. He gestured to me then, beckoned with that finger, and jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. A half-turn of his body.

Follow me.

I could have shut the door. Turned my back. Walked away. Done a lot of things. Safer things. But I didn't. That thumb had a magnetic pull to it, some subconscious power over my half-conscious brain. Instead, I slipped on my shoes, grabbed my keys, and followed the strange, mute man into the night.

He walked fast, taking long strides, leading us across the parking lot to my car. He looked at me, expectant. I unlocked it, got behind the wheel, and he jumped in on the passenger side.

I was a puppet on a string. He pointed to my seatbelt. We weren't going anywhere until I buckled up. He did the same. Then he pointed straight ahead, to the dark and empty highway. Drive.

"I've lost control of my life," I told him.

His silence was agreement enough. I pulled out of the parking lot and drove.

A quarter moon hung in the sky—just enough light to catch the horizon, the occasional cactus, a gas station billboard. Last chance for beer, ice-cold, twenty miles. The station came and went. Half an hour in silence, no radio. Then, my stranger waved a hand in my face. Pointed at a gap in the sand, an unmarked road coming up on the right. I obliged him. No telling what waited for us at the other end. A desert ambush? A bullet in the head, a shallow grave, and a sedan on its last legs tagged for a chop shop?

Sure, I could imagine all the bad outcomes. That didn't explain why I kept following him.

Maybe I just didn't care.

The car rattled as the cracked pavement gave way to hard-packed sand and stone. No signposts here, no gas stations, nothing but the desert.

And then: lights, out in the distance. Three orbs of chemical blue shimmering in the starry sky. Hovering in a straight line, motionless, ten feet above the ground. My stranger pointed. I drove us closer.

The smaller the distance between us and the light show, the louder my nerves sang. Like touching a live wire. Electricity crackled in my brain, sizzled in my sinuses, buzzed in my ears. I tasted blood. Smelled Pine-Sol. Heard a shrill ringing that went on and on and wouldn't stop. Then, everything wrong with my body shoved itself to the forefront of my senses, from the lingering hangover to the puncture in my kidney. Agony.

In the blink of an eye, the lights were right on top of us. My stranger's gesticulating was frantic. Stop here. Right now. Get out of the car. I groaned and clutched my side.

"Go by yourself," I told him.

He shook his head. Come with me.

So I killed the Tempo's engine. The headlights blinked out. With no small amount of hesitation, I threw open the door and staggered onto the road. He was right there with me, rounding the hood of the car to help me limp into the blue spotlight waiting for us.

Slowly, the lights rearranged themselves. A triangle, maybe twenty feet above, spinning in place. A softer, violet hue. Reminiscent of the sunset.

"What are these?"

He placed a finger to his lips.

Shhh.

He waved up at the lights with both arms. Welcoming them home. His eyes said to me, "Do you see now?"

Without thinking, I found myself copying him. I smiled, then laughed, staring up in wide-eyed wonder.

No clue how long that lasted. What happened next: one of the lights came to hover just above my head, blinding and thrumming as loud as my heart in my throat. Goosebumps prickled up my arms, raised the hair at the back of my neck, then flushed me ice-cold. The sensation overtook the aches in my head, the burning in my guts, drowned them in frigid ocean in the span of a few seconds. The desert sands grew a blanket of ice around my shoes.

I'd lost sight of him completely. Everything outside my head became muddled, distorted. Instinctively, I reached to the stitches in my side. Still sewn into my skin, yes, but no wound there at all. Just medical-grade thread through flesh. The gauze bandage fell from under my t-shirt. Dry. Bone dry.

The lights faded all at once. Just stars. Sand under my heels. I turned in a circle. Nobody there. Dead silence. Just my crappy sedan on this unnamed road to nowhere, the engine still clicking warm in the heat of night. Empty inside. Nobody sitting, nothing waiting.

I climbed in, feeling different.

What I had gone looking for when I drove a complete stranger into the night down a road through the wilderness, God only knows. Whatever it was, though, the question itself no longer lingered. He. They. It. Whoever was calling the shots—they answered, plain as day. Right there—no blood, no pain. I'd brought him home.