Heritage and Shimmer (5 page)

“They hated us so badly that they broke open
our doors and forced us to walk in a silent procession past that
alien’s body to make us look on what we did. They loaded us onto
windowless trucks and drove us for hours to an empty field. And
there, those soldiers gunned us all down and covered our bodies in
a mass grave before returning to New Bethany to build this memorial
of fiction and lies. Perhaps they hoped that they might appease any
alien that might come to our world wanting revenge by sacrificing
our lives. Perhaps they hoped this memorial would pull mankind
together by creating a new threat upon which everyone could refocus
their hate. Perhaps those weren’t the motives at all for placing
all those headstones on this hill.

The alien is the only body buried beneath
this memorial. I hope that creature rests peacefully beneath the
simple headstone at the back of all of these rows, because I doubt
anyone’s spirit from New Bethany does. I haven’t yet convinced a
soul visiting this cemetery to dig up that little coffin they
buried in the ground and look at the truth hidden in that box.
Maybe this cemetery will release me once that truth comes to the
surface. I can’t guess what else would. And maybe I’ve judged the
two of you incorrectly. Maybe one of you will follow me to that
small alien’s grave.”

Simon turned his back upon his guests and
floated away, likely towards that small headstone beneath which
some unworldly creature rested. Jayce glared at the undertaker’s
back, but Beverly sighed for the sadness that lowered upon her
shoulders. She was surprised that her feet hesitated a heartbeat
before following her fiancé back to his dented vehicle. Pulling her
seatbelt over her shoulder, she wondered what would become of that
ghost doomed to swing a sickle blade though it could cut no weed.
She wondered how she so easily accepted the idea that Simon was a
shade instead of an intruding hologram as Jayce believed. She
closed her eyes, and though she thought only a moment passed, the
empty countryside again scrolled through her vision when the breeze
streaming through the passenger window woke her.

Jayce squeezed her knee. “I hope that
memorial didn’t give you nightmares. I promised you that we
wouldn’t see any ghosts.”

“Is that what we saw?”

Jayce chuckled. “Of course not. Whoever’s
trying to corrupt that memorial probably wants you to think it’s
some ghost. They’re probably trying to use our old superstitions to
pull us back to the way all of us where before the aliens tried
invading. That caretaker was only a trick of light, Bev.”

“Just like the rest of the holograms?”

Jayce nodded. “Just like the rest of the
holograms.”

Beverly stared over that flat landscape. “Do
you think the ground will ever recover? Do you think the green and
the gold will ever return to these fields?”

“Of course it will,” Jayce smiled. “We know
better now thanks to the Starwatch. It’ll just take some time to
recover from what the aliens did to us. We might not live to see
color return to the fields, but our children will.”

Beverly smiled. “Three girls and a boy?”

Jayce grinned. “Three girls and a boy.”

* * * * *

Humanity’s children didn’t fall into
extinction in the generations that followed the aliens’ arrival,
though the birth of any boy or girl became difficult and rare.
Sadly, defects and deformities increasingly afflicted each new
generation – hands that held too many fingers, eyes that grew
blind, heads that swelled out of shape from tumors and knots,
shunted arms and legs that forced many a human to move upon hands
and feet like the animals of old. Yet miracles remained, and enough
children survived long enough to procreate with a mate so that
humankind didn’t vanish from the barren soil.

The children always hungered. Their stomachs
grumbled and made each girl and boy a wild creature, their bodies
naked and barefoot as they scavenged for morsels to soothe their
appetites so that they could push on a day, a month or a year
longer. With each generation, the sense of smell grew stronger to
compensate for the weakening sense of sight, so that scent directed
hungry and young stomachs to the best locations to dig at the earth
until fingernails bled for buried food.

Humanity survived, and the rains finally
returned. A boy grunted and cursed as the rain battered his back as
he followed his nose to a hill topped with chiseled stones. The boy
scampered about those rows of headstones, and he hissed and hid
from the ghosts he summoned as his curious fingers pressed at the
buttons installed into each marker. The shimmering ghosts terrified
the child as they spoke to him in a language the wild boy couldn’t
understand. Yet that boy did not flee, for a strange scent filled
his nostrils, making his stomach rumble for the possibility of a
morning meal.

The rain had collected into a stream, and
that stream’s currents had eaten at the ground until a coffin,
sized to hold a child, tumbled out of a collapsed segment of the
hillside. The wild boy scratched at that small box. His fingers
turned raw, but the boy didn’t stop until he removed the boards to
look upon what had been buried for generations.

The alien’s corpse hadn’t decayed at all. The
earth couldn’t absorb the remains of a creature that originated on
another world. The alien’s large, black eyes still pleaded for
mercy. Its long fingers still curled in pain.

And the alien still wailed within that
hungry, wild child’s mind, until that boy himself sobbed for the
pitiful crying that invaded his thoughts before fleeing from that
carrion no matter how badly his stomach hungered.

* * * * *

About
the Writer

Brian S. Wheeler calls Hillsboro, Illinois home, a
town of roughly 6,000 in the middle of the flatland. He grew up in
Carlyle, Illinois, a community less than an hour away from
Hillsboro, where he spent a good amount of his childhood playing
wiffle ball and tinkering on his computer. The rural Midwest
inspires much of Brian's work, and he hopes any connections readers
might make between his fiction and the places and people he has had
the pleasure to know are positive.

Brian earned a degree in English from Eastern
Illinois University in Charleston, Illinois. He has taught high
school English and courses in composition and creative writing.
Imagination has been one of Brian's steadfast companions since
childhood, and he dreams of creating worlds filled with inspiration
and characters touched by magic.

When not writing, Brian does his best to keep
organized, to get a little exercise, or to try to train good German
Shepherd dogs. He remains an avid reader. More information
regarding Brian S. Wheeler, his novels, and his short stories can
be found by visiting his website at
www.flatlandfiction.com
.