George was about to ask the man what was going on, but the jet engine grew so loud it had to be right above the cabin. George dove under the table, bumping it hard as he did, sending empties and cards and money flying. He hit the wooden floor hard and lay there for only a split second before it seemed to bounce up below him, the entire cabin rattling like a big box of dry wood.
Moments later, George opened the cabin door and rushed out into the freezing night. Jaco, Bernie, Arnold, and Toivo came out behind him, all pulling on jackets or stomping feet into heavy winter boots as they walked. Falling snow ate up the sound, but the woods were even quieter than normal, as if the low-flying jet had intimidated the entire landscape into a terrified silence.
When the sun had gone down six hours earlier, the trees—both lush pines and bare-branched hardwoods—had been blanketed in blazing white. Most of that covering had fallen off, swatted away by the jet’s roar to join the thick snowpack already on the ground.
Clouds blocked out all but a dim, hazy glow of the moon. The only light came from the naked bulb above the cabin’s door.
George glanced at the cabin roof. It, too, was suddenly bare, just a few clumps of snow sticking to the weathered tin. He was a little surprised to see the cabin had remained in one piece. Pots had fallen off hooks and crashed around the wood stove, and all kinds of bat and bird shit had rained down from the old roof, but the one-room building seemed to be fine.
Jaco’s Jeep Grand Cherokee had two feet of snow on it and around it. Other than the Arctic Cat—which was so buried it was little more than a snowbank—the Jeep was the only way to go the crash victims, or to get them help.
Arnold pointed north. A wall of trees lay in that direction, but if you walked that way for about five minutes you would come out on the pristine shore of Lake Superior: untouched, icy rock beaches lining dense, snow covered forest that stretched forever, the black water reaching out so far it vanished into the night.
“The thing was going that way,” Arnold said. “Dark as it is out, the clouds should be lit up where it crashed. We’d see a fire from miles away.”
“Maybe it landed,” Jaco said.
Arnold hawked a loogie and spat it onto the snow. “Where, exactly, might it land? Ain’t no airport around here can even take a prop plane let alone that big-ass thing that flew over, eh?”
Twice in rapid succession, Arnold had said thing instead of plane or jet.
“Mister Ekola,” George said, “what exactly did you see?”
George had known the man since the second grade at Ontonagan Elementary, since the first time Bernie had invited he and Jaco home to play. Even now that George was in his forties—with a son of his own—he couldn’t bring himself to call Arnold by his first name, no matter how many times the man asked.
“Lights,” Arnold said. “Lots of lights. Goddamn big, eh? Don’t know what it was… but it wasn’t a jet.”
Bernie threw his hands up in frustration. “Dad, it was a jet. Your eyes are old as hell, remember?”
Arnold pointed to his glasses. “Had these on. Know what I saw.”
“It was a jet,” Bernie said.
Jaco walked to the cabin’s corner, taking big steps to push through the thigh-high snow. “I’ll check around back,” he said. “Maybe something out that way.”
Toivo rubbed at his temples. “Arnold is right, Bernie—there’s no airports around here. A jet makes that much noise could maybe land on da highway, but other than that, it would have had to crash, and if it crashed, we’d see fires or something.”
George pulled his cell phone from his pocket. “If it was a plane, maybe there’s news coverage. Let me see if I can get a signal.”
“Your phone hasn’t got shit all week,” Bernie said. “I left mine inside, I’ll grab it.” He turned and trudged back into the cabin.
George yelled after him: “And grab the flashlights.”
They had rushed out of the cabin expecting to see pillars of flame, had grabbed coats and boots and little else. Whatever was going on, they needed to slow down, think things through. Being outside at all in this weather could kill. If they were going to go through the woods looking for Arnold’s mystery non-plane, they had to use their heads.
George couldn’t get a signal. Being in the middle of the woods in one of the most rural and remote places in America, he wasn’t surprised. He put the phone away.
“Hey, guys?”
It was Jaco. He’d gone all the way behind the cabin and come around the other side. He was leaning heavily on the corner, as if he were suddenly exhausted. “You need to come see this. Right now.”
He ducked back out of sight. Arnold started after him, the old-timer more sure-footed through the snow than the men twenty-five years his junior.
George fell in behind. Bernie came out of the cabin, one flashlight in his right hand, another under his right arm. He waved his left hand; the glowing cell phone screen he held seemed to blaze like a comet.
“Told ya,” he said. “AT&T works in da big city, Georgie, but out here Verizon gets full signal. Hey, where you going?”
“Come on,” Arnold snapped. “Jaco saw something.”
George followed in Arnold’s footsteps, which was easier than plunging his feet into the thigh-deep snow. Bernie followed behind, putting his feet in the same spots. He handed George the extra flashlight. George turned it on, pointed the beam out in front of Arnold. The old man moved like he had the place memorized—he did, but the snow was deep and who knew what fallen log or stick might lie below the surface?
George felt a little embarrassed that the snow here was untouched save for Jaco’s fresh prints—he and his friends had barely left the cabin at all. Deer camp wasn’t really about deer; it was about drinking and sleeping and playing cards and telling stories, about making fun of each other, about hanging out with the people who had made grade school, junior high, and high school a great experience.
The four men turned the corner, saw Jaco standing between two towering pines, not even fifteen feet from the cabin. A lone set of footprints showed his path through the snow. George and Bernie’s flashlight beams spotlighted Jaco, and the fluffy white that came up almost to his crotch. He had his back to them. He stood still, yet he was shaking, and somehow George knew it wasn’t from the bitter cold.
Jaco looked down, looked at the lit-up white around him, then turned so fast George took a step back. The flashlight beams lit up his glasses, making him look like a movie android about to unleash a death ray.
“Turn off da damn lights,” he said in a snarling hiss.
Out of nowhere, little Jaco, the runt of their litter, had transformed into the scariest person George had ever seen. That wasn’t like Jaco, not at all—he was terrified.
Bernie’s flashlight blinked out. George fumbled with his own, then clicked it off. The entire world blackened for a split second, plunging George into a cold, dark, silent void. His eyes quickly adjusted—and the first thing he noticed was a glow coming from deep in the woods.
A green glow.
His friends had become reverse shadows, their faces and clothes spots of less-dark that moved and turned, all facing that strange light. They walked to Jaco, feet crunching loudly on undisturbed snow until they stood next to their friend.
George stared. He couldn’t tell how far away the lights were, exactly, but through the trees and the thick underbrush he could almost make out a shape. Not the shape of a big jet, like a 747, or even a prop plane for that matter, but instead a thick rectangle, the upright edges maybe twenty or thirty feet high. The lines parallel to the ground were much longer, maybe a hundred feet, maybe more.