The three of us start our vigil well before nightfall. All weapons are locked and loaded. All gear has been checked and double checked. Now we can only sit and wait. We decided that a rotating guard would be best. We will move from spot to spot as the night progresses.

Several hours in, Daniel is sitting at the table, facing the window, “I just need a little break,” he explains.

“Ya, me too,” I say, taking a seat beside him.

He focuses on the darkness outside, eyes bloodshot and hollow, “To think, I’ve got proof of extraterrestrial life on my laptop. I’ve got that, and I can’t do anything with it. No internet or cell. I can’t get it out there. And I might die before I can.”

“The dictionary definition of so close yet so far.”

“Yep.”

“It wouldn’t matter anyway.”

“What makes you say that?”

“A bunch of frowning atheists with neckbeards would just say that it’s bad CGI. Say that it’s nonsense and call it an obvious fake.”

His face lights up with a grin, “Ya, and call anyone that believes it every mean name in the book.”

I chuckle, look out the window again, “Probably find a way to call them a racist, too.”

“Don’t they always?”

“True.”

His eyes stay fixed on the window, “I never thought that I would even find anything. Sure, I believed in a lot of paranormal stuff. But I really just wanted to travel around making money and having fun. I treated it seriously, but deep down inside I always knew that it was just entertainment. I was selling my viewers a fun ghost story or cryptid hunt. Any evidence outside of a garbled EVP or a mangled track in the mud didn’t even seem like a possibility.”

I don’t know how to respond to that, so I just say, “We had better start again.”

He agrees, gets up and heads into another room. I do the same. How crazy must it be to be him right now? Like a religious man finding himself standing before the thrown of God.

I enter the living room, which is empty. Where is Jerry? The question hits me like a speeding semi.

He should be in here. I dart into the hall, glance into the other rooms. Daniel is in the office, looking out of the window. I check the bathrooms, nothing. I even check his son Caleb’s room, which we had never had need to enter before.

Out of desperation I look outside. There he is, standing outside, under the carport.

I open the door, start down the steps, “What the hell are you doing?”

He holds up the cig in answer.

“You can’t do that inside?”

“No,” he says flatly.

A short pause as my brain processes things, “Are you more afraid of your wife than aliens?” I ask, incredulous.

He chuckles sheepishly, “Ya.”

The smell of the smoke brings back a flood of memories.

Robinson, O’Keefe, and Miller always seemed to be smoking. A lot of people always seemed to be smoking.

They told me that I would end up being a smoker by the end of the tour, insisted on it. The stress would break my resolve, and I would turn to the cancer sticks. But they were wrong. I take a weird pride in that fact.

Miller lost both legs to an IED. Robinson didn’t make it back at all.

He suddenly cranes his neck upward, points at the sky, “What’s that?”

It’s not that high above the trees, or at least it seems that way. A deep red light, pulsing steadily. As we watch the light it fades out, switches to rich amber, and from there to a brilliant yellow.

I force myself to look down, scanning the area for threats. Jerry raises his rifle, examines it through the scope.

“Anything?”

“No, still just looks like a point of light.”

“Go get Daniel,” I command, before adding a quick, “please.”

“Ya,” he says, turning around and heading back inside.

It goes purple, dark blue, back to purple again. The light is clear and crisp, like those new Christmas lights that they have. Cold abruptly washes over me.

Daniel makes his way out of the house and gets up beside me. Inquisitive eyes are quickly drawn to the object. He watches it in wonder for well over a minute.

“What do you think?” I ask.

“Not a plane. Looks similar to other sightings.”

“You think it is a spaceship?”

“Could be. Such things are poorly understood, but often assumed to be spacecraft. Some theorize that they are really interdimensional in nature. Hell, some people even think that they come from the deep ocean.”

I mill it over for a few seconds, decide that we should just go inside. We turn, our mistake earns us immediate punishment.

Blinding light rushes between us. A flash of flame on the door, and now a burning hole. The two of us turn, automatically taking aim at the strange light.

I let two quick rounds fly. Then I start actually trying to aim. It is a difficult task, as I have no clue how far away or even how high the object is. Before I can squeeze off an additional shot, another pulse of light races past me.

It did not come from the UFO. It came from a tree where the road curves out of sight. Daniel has drawn his sidearm; he sends a few rounds in the direction of the attack. Another burst of light, my iron sights find the location, hot lead screams into the night.

Gunfire from inside of the house. I tell him to head inside, he clambers up the steps while I lay down suppression fire, pats out the fire as he heads in. Then I duck inside, as another pulse of energy hits the dirt.

The shots are coming from the girl’s room

“I’ve got this!” Daniel yells. Taking the hint, I head to the back. Jerry steps out of the room before I get there. He bolts into the bathroom and turns the sink on.

“What happened?”

He takes a towel off of the rack and wets it, “One of the things from the camera. It shoots lasers out of its arm. Or at least something on its arm. I hit it, I know that I did.”

“Did you kill it?” I ask as he dashes back into the girl’s room.

“No, but I made it think twice,” he says, before he uses the towel to put out a fire that is starting to spread across the back wall.

My mind works its way toward a conclusion, as I move to the window and cover him while he deals with the fire. If their objective is to kill us, they can easily do it. It would be as simple as setting the house on fire and shooting us down as we flee the blaze. No, they want us alive. For what reason, I can only wonder. And if what the paranormal investigator has told us is true, I can only fear it.

Hours pass. We keep our vigil. Caffeine hits and fades, its magic fleeting.

Three in the morning. Jerry is in the office. A panicked scream is followed by a burst of gunfire. I am in the kitchen. I turn to go help him, catch a hint of pale skin and black fabric near the edge of the pool.

I dive, the pulse of energy passing overhead. I pop up, intending to take a shot at the creature, only to see my sights filled with grey. One of the clawed beings is climbing in the window. I fire rapidly. Deafening explosions, metallic impacts are followed by a high-pitched screech. The thing falls over, a hideous gargling sound escapes its impossibly thin mouth.

My blood freezes solid. The sights move to the figure next to the pool. I squeeze off a round; the creatures shoots a bolt from the device on his wrist. My bullet finds its mark, the thing tumbles onto its back. There is a loud hiss on my right side, a burning sensation on that side of my head.

Before I can fire again the burning gets worse. My hand leaves the trigger guard, goes to the side of my head. I can hear something sizzling. I jump up, run to the sink. After wetting the dish towel, I put it to my wound. I stand there in agony, pressing the towel hard in the vain hope that it will ease the pain.

I hear gunshots, along with the sound of those strange energy weapons.

“The ones with guns are covering the ones with claws! Don’t let them get close!” I shout.

Flickering light draws my eyes to a spot near the kitchen door. Now I am running across the room again, this time using the dish towel to put out a fire. The shot must have only grazed me, impacting the wall. I put it out, stomp on the smoldering splinters that litter the tile.

I check the window again; the creature is still lying there. No sign of the clawed one, but there is a trail of green liquid leading away from the house. I poke my head into the hall, “Everyone okay?”

Two yas, one from the living room, the other from the office, follow. I glance out the back window, only darkness. Another shot from the office. Jerry yells out a threat.

“Watch out for fires,” I call out, as I enter the nearest bathroom. Fear pushes past the pain as I check my face in the mirror. Reddened skin, nasty blisters, the freak really did a number on me. I could be worse, but it is still pretty bad.

I step back into the hall. What is that sound? It is coming from the kitchen, or more like the yard outside of it. Distorted moaning.

The thing in the black bodysuit that I shot is still alive.

A pale form moves from out behind the pool. A long-fingered hand reaches down, grabs ahold of the limp body. This one is different, taller, less lean, the mouth wider. Those eyes are still the massive black almonds, but I can see life in them, unlike the lenses of the other creatures. It is a kind of life that is completely unknown to me, but it is still life. Its wrist lacks the device, and strangely, I can see a high collared cape bellowing.

I take aim, think better of it. Best to let them deal with their wounded, as they may afford us the same courtesy. I quickly question the logic of this. These beings aren’t human. Who’s to say that they have any values or even emotions that are comparable to our own.

The rest of the night is long. I run between windows, powering past the pain. The enemy keeps silent. The sun is as welcome a sight as ever.

I head into the living room, find Jerry staring out the side window. His eyes stick to the ravaged side of my face, “Jesus, are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine. We need to get some rest. I will keep watch first.”