Photograph by Amy Hart
After dinner, Gentry sprawled in his rusted lawn chair and watched the fireflies near the pine trees in his backyard. Like the beating lights, his thoughts blinked from one to another.
The dirty dishes on the counter.
His grandmother’s porcelain sink.
The fresh-cut hay on the farm he’d visit as a child.
It was then, as he finished his second smoke of the evening, that he noticed it. A pinprick of yellow-orange light three feet above the summer-scorched grass. Like a firefly had flickered on but forgot to turn off.
Gentry dropped his cigarette butt in the coffee can at his feet and ambled over to the light, his joints creaking and popping. He swatted and blew and even clapped it between his hands. Still, it shone.
He looked for the light’s source. The house was dark. A curtain moved and he wondered whether Allie was awake, but decided it was just the breeze. Stalks of weeds also swayed. The weeds enveloped the storage shed and jutted through the chain-link fence and clutched the minivan that hadn’t run in two decades.
There was no explanation for the pinprick of light hovering over the backyard.
Gentry and Allie had married forty-two years ago on a Saturday in late winter. They spent their honeymoon in the mountains, where they failed to catch fish, laughed by the campfire, and squeezed together for warmth each morning until the sun had melted the dew from their camper windows.
The early years were like that. It was their camper, their fire, and their laugh. Then came Gentry’s job and the fixer-upper house and the two sons who grew and left, and, amidst it all, a silent separation occurred. It was no longer theirs as much as his and hers—his frayed lawn chairs on the patio, her porcelain figures on the bookshelf, his basement boxes of ham radio equipment, her color-coded bins of yarn. Like sand dunes in the wind, their respective belongings had accumulated in mounds throughout the house, piles that marked his territory from hers. Thus, quiet boundaries emerged, invisible lines neither wished to cross.
So, Gentry stood at the border of her breakfast nook. On her table sat heaps of junk mail, leaning stacks of scrapbooking albums, and a glass terrarium that, from Gentry’s view, made her torso appear small and far away.
“There’s something in the backyard,” he said.
Allie sipped her tea. “I’m fine right here.”
“Don’t make sense unless you see it,” he said.
Since the previous night, the pinprick of light had grown brighter. As Gentry and Allie entered the backyard, the little light sizzled and popped like a sparkler. It hovered three feet above the grass in the same spot as before.
“What is it?” Allie asked. She refused to come closer than the edge of the concrete patio.
“Don’t know. Showed up last night.”
“Why is it here?”
“Don’t know.”
“Well, don’t touch it.”
Gentry had walked to the sizzling light and placed his face inches away.
“It’s got a tiny black center,” he said, squinting his eyes. “Like a teeny donut.”
He extended his forefinger. Allie told him to stop.
“Ouch,” Gentry said, jumping away from it.
“Is it hot?”
“No, but it pokes. Like a needle. I’m even bleeding a little.”
Allie winced.
“I told you,” she said.
Gentry picked up a flat piece of bark and waved it near the light.
“I can’t blow it out,” he said.
“Leave it alone.”
Gentry fanned harder.
“Leave it alone,” she repeated. “Just leave it be.”
Once inside, Allie ate breakfast and watched her morning shows and then retired to her sewing room. Gentry tried to do his usual things, too, but couldn’t help returning to the backyard to check on the little light. He wondered what it was and why it was there. The light gave no answers as it glimmered and glowed.
“That thing’s a new discovery,” he said to Allie at dinner.
Gentry sat in his worn recliner, his bowl of stew in his hands. Allie sat on her loveseat, her Tupperware of enchiladas on her lap.
“I checked the internet,” Gentry continued. “Been nothing like this before.”
Allie arced over and released a fit of coughs that echoed off the fiberboard walls. She tried, in vain, to contain them with a balled-up napkin.
“That can’t be true,” she finally said.
“No. I checked. People seen blinking lights and stuff in the sky, but none like this.”
Gentry’s feet bounced on the floor as he took another bite.
“This—this is something special.”
Allie’s spoon scraped and clacked against the plastic.
“Best be gone tomorrow, whatever it is,” she said.
Gentry grunted a sort of yes, yes, you’re probably right kind of grunt and pretended to pay no more attention to what was hovering above their lawn. As soon as Allie went to bed, however, he visited the backyard again. In the darkness, it radiated a flickering, blazing, tangerine glow that beckoned like a hearth on a weary night. It seemed to Gentry to even pop and sizzle a little louder as he watched.
It reminded him of the summers he spent as a child on his grandparents’ farm. Every evening, full with dinner, he’d set out in a direction to see what he could discover, like dragonflies, or weird-looking rocks, or strange rusty tools in the barn. This light felt like that. New and weird and filled with possibility.
The next morning, Gentry stood again at the border of her breakfast nook.
“It’s bigger,” he said. “Come see.”
Outside, the pinprick of light had expanded into a ring, about the size of a hubcap, with an outer edge that blazed orange like a hot filament. Floating over the same strip of grass as the day before, it faced the back corner of the house where Allie had her sewing room. Its center was black as asphalt at night, a blackness that gave no impression of depth or dimension.
“This isn’t good,” Allie said. She stood against the back of the house, her hand still on the patio door.
Gentry walked around the ring, taking it in from every side.
“Can’t believe how thin it is,” he said. “From the side, it almost disappears. You gotta come see.”
Allie stayed put.
“We should call someone,” she said. “We should call the police.”
“The police? What are they going to do? Arrest it?”
Allie cursed under her breath. “Someone’s gotta do something,” she said as she turned to go back inside.
Gentry understood her words. She meant he should do something. He should make it go away. But he didn’t want to. This ring had come to Gentry for a reason, he was sure of it.
He wanted to touch it, to run his palm along its fiery edge or put his hand into the black center, but he remembered how his finger had stung the day before. Instead, he found a knotty tree branch about the length of a pencil. Slowly, he inserted the wooden probe into the ring’s center and just as slowly, the end disappeared in the blackness with no resistance. If his eyes were closed, he’d have thought he was moving it through thin air. But when he removed the branch from the blackness, the inserted half was gone.
As though it had been chopped clean off.
He inserted it again, and again the part that entered the void of the ring didn’t come out.
Gentry stood and stared. What had happened to the branch? Had it been atomized? Teleported? Mutated into something . . . else?
Allie’s voice startled him. Gentry turned to see her at the patio door with her purse and shoes.
“It’s time,” she said. “You coming?”
Gentry waved the severed stub of the tree branch at her. “Look what it can do. I don’t understand what’s happening.”
“You said you’d come to my appointment.” She clenched the strap of her purse. “Time to go.”
He flashed a look like she was crazy and motioned to the ring. “Can’t leave with this here.”
He pushed past her into the house and filled a box with odds and ends from his garage. When he returned to the backyard, Allie was gone.
Careful not to let his fingers touch the face of the ring, Gentry tried each object from his box: a dried-out marker, an old cell phone charger, a broken flashlight, a sooty oil filter, and a set of plastic tent stakes. The ring sliced each clean while Gentry gaped like a kid at a magic show. He spent the rest of the day finding objects to put into the ring, confirming again and again that whatever entered its black center did not come out.
In the setting sun, Gentry sat on the grass, piles of decapitated items at his side. He wondered why Allie wasn’t more excited about it all, why she didn’t see it the way Gentry saw it, as a mystery. A prize. A dazzling adventure.
Gentry once viewed her as an adventurer, as forever game for something new. How many times did they say they’d spend retirement traveling? She’d even made a list, in an orange notebook, of the places they’d like to visit. Although he hadn’t seen the notebook in years, it was only in this moment that he realized it was gone. That’s the funny thing, he thought, about lost items. It’s impossible to identify the precise moment when their lost-ness officially began.
Lights inside the house turned on. Allie was home. He had no desire to talk to her. The light of her sewing room brightened and he knew she would stay there the rest of the evening.
In the morning, Allie wasn’t at her nook. Her wooden dining chair was pulled out and its seat cushion lay on the floor, as if Allie had been careless or hurried when getting up.
Gentry walked to her sewing room and almost knocked on her door but changed his mind. He went, instead, to the ring.
Again, in the night, it had grown. The top was as tall as Gentry and the bottom now touched the ground. Its center was still a barren void. Stepping closer, Gentry let the inky black of the ring’s center fill his view.
He thought of his grandparents’ farm. Gentry remembered how dark it got without the streetlights of the city. From the farmhouse, in the dark of night, the road beyond their gravel driveway would disappear and the aluminum grain silo on the next farm over would blacken away. So, too, would the corn stalks and the fruit trees and the angled roof of the barn. It was as though the entire universe was nothing more than his grandfather, asleep in the recliner, his grandmother, humming along to the radio, and ten-year-old Gentry.
Something moved. Inside the ring, something moved. It was something black but less black than the rest of the ring’s interior. The glowing edge of the ring popped and sizzled more loudly.
As if a switch had been flipped, the interior of the ring blazed on like a spotlight. Gentry jumped back as fast as his stiff joints allowed. His eyes hurt from the sudden change in brightness.
When he could focus again, Gentry beheld that the orange filament edge of the ring now contained a shimmering luminescent core. Below its surface were shadowy strands that cut and curved into dim shapes, like a scene behind white frosted glass. Gentry strained his eyes, trying to make out what it could be. The forms appeared random and strange—like the curling crests of clouds—until Gentry’s brain snapped it all into something familiar.
It looked like his grandparents’ farm. The tractor and the rope swing and the rusty gate, in a shadowy outline form.
“That thing ain’t right.”
It was Allie. She stood in the backyard doorway.
“It’s changing again.” Gentry could hardly contain his glee. “The center’s turned—”
“I can see it from my sewing room.”
“It’s the farm,” he said.
Allie flashed an incredulous frown. “You see a farm?”
He stood next to her and pointed.
“The shadows, just below the surface, do you see? If I squint a bit, I can make out the shapes of the field and the old blue tractor and the barn they had before it burned down. It’s my grandparents’ farm, I’m sure of it. I don’t know if this ring is magic or science, but it’s a gift either way.”
“I called my brother to come down,” she said.
“Your brother? What’s he going to do?”
“Get rid of it. Said he’ll be here day after next.”
“I don’t want to get rid of it. I want to get inside.”
She pointed to the box of odds and ends Gentry had used to test the ring the day before.
“It’ll vaporize you.”
“There’s got to be a way in. Why else would it be here?”
Allie’s voice caught in her throat.
“And you’d go? Just like that?”
“I was happy on the farm,” he said. “It was the perfect place for a boy like me. I could run around. Get into stuff. When you’re that age, you don’t have a concern in the world.”
“Not a concern in the world,” she repeated, the words like sawdust. “And what if it only works one way and you’re stuck there?”
“I’ll be back through,” he said. But he wasn’t sure. The thing had popped into existence. Maybe it would pop out of existence just as quickly.
“Gotta find a way in first,” he said.
She gave a small nod and left. Not a nod of agreement, but a sign that she was done talking.
Pacing and staring and mumbling to himself, Gentry spent several hours in front of the ring. There had to be a way in. It showed up in Gentry’s yard. It was meant for Gentry, so Gentry must have some key, some secret to unlocking it.
He stared at the piles of decapitated objects he’d tried to put through the ring the day before. They were objects of dull plastic, worn wood, or rusty metal. He looked at the edges of the ring, which now blazed brighter than ever, and the center of the ring, which had turned into shimmering silver.
Gentry had an idea. He needed something reflective, as reflective as possible.
He hurried inside and searched. On Allie’s bookshelf, nestled among her porcelain figurines, sat a statue of a girl with a paintbrush, an award she’d won at the state fair some fifteen years ago. Its chrome-like surface shone like a polished mirror.
Outside again, Gentry stood before the ring. It seemed to be made of light, he thought, so maybe the way to penetrate its surface was to reflect that light. Pushing the mirrored statue into the ring, he watched the end disappear, same as all the other objects. But when he pulled it back out, the statue was completely intact. It had entered and exited the ring undamaged.
Gentry jumped up and pounded his fist in the air. He tried it three more times with the same result.
Now he knew how to pass through the ring. Reflection was the key. He’d have to go to the hardware store first thing in the morning for some supplies, but he was sure it could be done. He fell asleep thinking of the farm.
In the middle of the night, Allie’s gentle push woke him. She sat beside him in bed, her head framed by the dim light of the bedroom window.
“What if we ignore it?” she said.
Gentry groaned.
“What if we pretend it isn’t there? We can fix up the van and go camping again. Or take some other trip? That thing in the backyard will go away. Has to. What if we just lived our lives like it wasn’t there?”
Gentry mumbled something about life and chances and opportunities not passed up.
“That thing isn’t what you think it is,” she said. “It’s not your farm.”
In the brief minutes it took him to fall back asleep, Allie didn’t lay back down.
Before breakfast, Gentry returned from the hardware store and got to work. He took no time to ponder whether the suit he was building was genius or absurd.
Careful to cover every inch, he wrapped a set of work boots, gloves, and canvas pants with foil duct tape. Using thermal mylar blankets, he fashioned a tunic that extended almost to his knees. With the most reflective staples he could find, he attached two aluminum dryer tubes for arms and covered the seams in the remaining foil tape.
As each piece came together, Gentry grew more confident that it would work, and laughed at the thought of greeting his grandparents dressed like a glistening astronaut.
By lunch, all that remained was the helmet. He planned to use an old disco ball they had bought—who remembers why—at a yard sale. It was light and hollow and Gentry figured he could cut a hole in the bottom and a slit for his eyes. To see, he’d attach a reflective visor from an old motorcycle helmet.
Gentry was sure the disco ball was in the closet of Allie’s sewing room.
He knocked on her door, but there was no answer. He considered waiting for her, to say what he was doing, but decided instead to just be quick.
Bounding softly toward the closet, awash in the musty, grassy, sour scents of yarn, he noticed something on the desk below the window. Next to Allie’s yellowed sewing machine was a printout. A lab result.
Gentry remembered why she had gone into town the other day. She had a doctor’s appointment, and he had promised he’d go with her.
Gentry swore at himself as he sat at the desk. He looked over the results, unsure of what they meant, but noted that most of the numbers were marked as heightened or abnormal. It saddened him she’d had to get this news—whatever it was—alone.
He looked out the window and gasped.
Allie’s sewing room faced the backyard, and he viewed the ring. Its circumference was the same blazing filament as before, but its center was now as clear as anything else he’d seen. It was a park with trees and a playground and a shimmering turquoise pool, a place Gentry had never been in his life.
When he stood, the scene dimmed. When he sat at Allie’s desk, it was clear again.
It was like the baseball cards he’d get as a child from the corner store. At one angle, it was a player at bat, but twist the card and the image would shift to the player swinging. The center of the ring was the same. From any other angle, it was dim shapes and patterns behind a silvery surface, but from Allie’s sewing table it was this park, clear as day.
Gentry found her standing in the backyard, just feet from the portal.
“Saw it from your window,” he said. “Definitely not my grandparent’s farm.” He bowed his head. “I assume it’s someplace special to you?”
She nodded. “The park next to my school, when I was a little girl.”
The ring buzzed like electric lines on a summer day.
Gentry pointed to the chrome-surface statue on the lawn.
“I think it worked because it was yours, not because of the reflections.”
Allie smiled. The harsh lines around her mouth and eyes faded some, and she looked peaceful in a way Gentry hadn’t seen in years.
“I suppose,” she started and then stopped. “I suppose I just want to feel the way I did back then.”
Gentry’s heart pounded and his throat tightened.
“Wait—what if we forget about all of this, like you said? Pretend it isn’t here?” He motioned to the broken van. “We can fix it up. Go camping?”
But she had already stepped into the ring.
For a second she flickered, oscillating between the Allie Gentry knew now and the Allie he had once known, the woman who trod through streams and sang while washing dishes and played with the buttons on his shirt, and Gentry felt the urge to tell her he understood why she wanted to go, because he’d sensed it, too—the stiffening of his soul—and he wanted to say he was sorry for not seeing it, for not believing that she felt what he felt, that she was just like him.
But she was gone. The ring, too, puffed out of existence.
Gentry was left, alone, in his backyard.
Christopher Braniff is a speculative fiction writer known for blending humor and heart with thought-provoking explorations of the human condition and all its quirks. He lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.