Crosstalk

Lincoln, a little drunk, entered his dark home while his car parked itself in its stall. He tugged at the knot of his tie and opened the top button of his shirt. He stopped at the hall bath to empty his bladder on the way to the kitchen—had to make room for more. As he stood at the counter pouring a peaty single-malt he caught his reflection in the glass cabinet. He was worn and tired, as thin and ephemeral as the slit of moonlight that snuck in between the drawn curtains, laying passed out on the hardwood floor. He must have been staring at that ribbon of light for some time, for he sipped from his tumbler but found it to be once again empty.

People, he thought, and harrumphed out loud. Why even bother? The invitation had been out of pity, and he’d known it. Should have just stayed home. But sometimes it was good to get out, to talk to people. Someone other than those damned voices.

To hell with it. Lincoln climbed the stairs, and then the access ladder to his office in the attic: the source of all his troubles, but also, he knew, the solutions.

He’d had the home built on his family’s farm after he’d inherited it. The property was 241 acres, and he’d chosen to build the home here. Whether it was chance or intervention that was to blame, he could never be sure. He sat in his wingback chair watching the moon pass behind thin clouds through the skylight. He was waiting. The voices would come.

They weren’t aliens. They said they were people, like him. But their three-dimensional world was separate from his. Somehow, at this precise spot, there was an overlap, and they could hear him. And he could hear them. At first they only whispered, faint sounds from afar, but once they chose to accept Lincoln as their conduit they revealed themselves at a volume he could not dismiss as wild imaginings. And to him alone. For decades he’d bounced between ignoring them and complying with their confounding requests, and it left him isolated, a fractured man.

Lincoln. Lincoln.

“Leave me alone,” he slurred.

Tonight, Lincoln. Tonight.

“Tonight what?” The wind kicked up, and a dark cloud threw itself before the moon. The office was all one thick shadow.

Tonight, Lincoln, we cross over. We’re coming. Soon.