Round and Green

VOCAL contest: Green light

It was New Year’s Eve, 1987, and I was sitting on a dock on the St. Lawrence River, the infamous Thousand Islands, with my husband, Jeff. The night was clear and dark, with the moon just beginning to wax. It was 4°F and the River was frozen solid. The quiet was almost deafening: no insects, no animals, no people, and not even fireworks. So different from the decades of summers my family had spent here at our cottage. We were all alone for a cozy, quiet, long weekend for New Year’s Eve.

The cottage was small, with no heat, no running water, and no electricity. But we had a fireplace with a big bed in front of it and plenty of firewood and candles. We brought our own water and food, and decided to just wing everything else and try to enjoy each other with no distractions.

The closest island to the cottage, Round Island, was a quarter of a mile across the River. After sharing some Tullamore Dew, we grabbed the bottle and a flashlight and decided to walk over, right across the three feet of impenetrable ice. We knew the island pretty well, but it was a lot easier to navigate without the summer vegetation. We headed for the tennis courts on the east side of the island. Our footprints intertwined with each other in the dusting of snow that seemed to perpetually cover everything there.

As cold as it was, I remember it was also very romantic. We were sitting on the court talking, laughing and kissing, like we did when we were young, when suddenly the sky lit up. Up to this point, I had only heard about the Northern Lights but had never seen them. Everything became awash in a bouncing, green light, speckled with black sky and white stars. It seemed to pulse like an electric current, or a heartbeat. Just when we thought the night couldn’t get any more perfect, it did.

It seemed like a good omen, this amazing natural phenomenon happening just after midnight on the first morning of the new year.

The next night at about midnight, we had just gone to bed when suddenly we could see that familiar green glow again, coming from the sky. Jeff sat up and said, “I just can’t resist. I have to go watch them again”. With that, he put on his boots, coat, and trapper hat and went outside. I thought about going with him, but I was cozy, warm and drowsy and decided to stay in bed waiting for him.

At some point I must have dozed off, because I awoke to the first orange light of the morning, peaking through the curtains. When I rolled onto my back, I saw Jeff standing at the foot of the bed, naked and staring at the space behind the bed. He was motionless and didn’t even seem to be breathing.

“Jeff?”, I said. “JEFF?!!”. I kept yelling his name and got no reaction. The longer it went on, the more I started to panic. He didn’t even blink. I found myself afraid to touch him, my husband of 16 years. I got out of the bed and stepped behind him. That’s when I saw the marks: two deep, black burn marks, one to the back of his neck, and one to the base of his spine. There was no blood. I got close to him and realized he smelled like paint thinner, and I couldn’t imagine why.

I finally got back on the bed on my knees and faced him. I grabbed both of his arms and shook him hard while yelling at him. He finally blinked and looked down at me. All of a sudden he said, “I’m okay”, very matter-of-factly. Not satisfied with that answer, I made him sit down and wrapped him in two wool

blankets.

When I asked him what happened, he said he didn’t know. He also didn’t know where his clothes were and couldn’t explain the burn marks on his body. I felt the panic in me start to rise again and told him that I was taking him to the nearest hospital, forty-five minutes away.

“No, I’m fine”, he said. We were arguing about it until he told me I would have to dress him and physically drag him down the driveway and into the car. Jeff had always been stubborn, especially about doctors, and this was no exception. I settled for putting him back in bed and wrapping him up in the warmest covers I could find.

When I was sure he was asleep, I bundled

up and went outside. Now that the morning was brighter, I could see our double boot prints from the night before, having taken the same straight path to the island and then back again. But then I saw the other prints: one set made by a man’s boot going toward the island, and one set barefoot, coming back.

I went back inside, checked on Jeff, layered myself up, and decided to follow the new footprints to the island.

When I got to the bank of the island, I followed the boot prints into the vegetation, where they became harder to see. Assuming I wasn’t following a trail that some animal had made, I continued to track the prints until I ended up at the tiny post office and it’s docks, next to the tennis courts. It was unlocked, and inside I found Jeff’s clothes and boots. They were all

crumpled and covered in something gelatinous and sticky that didn’t freeze, even in this weather. I rolled them into a ball, keeping the sticky parts on the inside as best I could, and went back across the River. When I got to the cottage, I threw them into the dry bathtub since we couldn’t use it anyway.

About four hours later, Jeff woke up and seemed perfect normal. He didn’t want to discuss the event anymore and said that he just wanted to play gin rummy with me and cuddle by the fire. His burns looked better, not as angry as before. I made some Dublin Mules and we relaxed, as best we could. Each of us even wrote out a bucket list and then shared it with the other. We talked about vacations and fun things to do in the future, and for dinner we had turkey sandwiches and potato chips that I had brought from home. Eventually we both agreed we were tired and got into bed.

At about midnight I awoke to Jeff getting out of bed and heading towards the door again, a green light flowing in from outside. The panic came again and I yelled, “Jeff, NO! Please don’t!”, but he was outside before I could even sit up straight. I bolted after him wearing only a t-shirt. I couldn’t believe what happened next.

The green glow wasn’t coming from the sky but from an object on the surface of the ice on the River. It was cylindrical, about 6 feet wide and about 15 feet tall, with the green light projecting from all sides. Before I knew what was happening, Jeff ran towards it in a sprint, right through the yard, down the dock, and across the ice. I followed while screaming for him to stop, the ground so cold that even my adrenaline couldn’t kill the pain in my feet.

At eleven inches taller than me, he outran me and when he reached the object, something opened and he went inside. Before I could even react, the thing took flight. It went straight up, then moved towards the open area at the end of Round Island, where the channel opens up. There it hovered, straight up and down, like a test tube in a lab. Suddenly, it shot straight up into the black sky at an incredible speed and with no sound, still glowing green. When it got so high that I almost lost sight of it, it began to plummet even faster than the speed it took to rise.

It hit the ice so hard that it penetrated right through, like a knife through Jello. And then it was gone, and Jeff was gone with it. The green light disappeared somewhere in the River and I was alone.

Hours later, in shock, and still trying to understand what had happened, I sat and cried while I read the bucket lists that would never be fulfilled. It was then that I noticed that Jeff had written on the back of his, sometime after he let me read it. It said, “ I knew they would come back for me”.