It wasn’t easy to gather all the Richardsons in Mayport. Raised poor in the coastal Alabama town, most had scattered to other states in search of more money, a better education, or something new. Some had simply run away. Nora Richardson was impressed her grandmother had pulled off the feat of convincing her long-lost relatives to come visit her one more time—especially Nora herself, who had every reason to avoid the place she once called home.

Mawmaw was the only Richardson who still lived in Mayport. Nora was concerned, but not surprised, when her conversations with Mawmaw about coming back to visit were nearly incoherent. Mawmaw had spouted nonsense ever since Nora was a child, and that was no different now. But from what Nora could discern, a date was set and, thanks to Mawmaw’s years of dedicated service at the country club, they had a venue. So Nora traveled south, back to the place she tried so hard to forget.

Mayport was a different place than it had been nearly two decades ago when her parents shoved her into their old, rusty van and drove north. Main Street was a ghost of its former self, just empty storefronts with cracked windows and ripped awnings. Nora stopped in front of a rusted newspaper machine when the yellowing paper inside caught her eye.

“NEVER FORGET THE MAYPORT FOUR!”

The article was dated two years ago—a grim reminder of the loss Mayport suffered. A reminder Nora didn’t need. The faces of those little kids—so innocent and young—stared back at her. Polly’s face stared back at her. A tear rolled down Nora’s cheek.

#

Nora chased Polly across the back yard, the humid air not a hindrance. 

“Slow down!” Nora tried to keep up with Polly, following the bright blue of her little sister’s NASA jumpsuit as she ran towards the wetlands behind Mawmaw’s house. “Mawmaw said we can’t go in there.”

“Oh Nor-Bear, why you always gotta follow them rules?” Polly spun around, grinning at her sister. The blue of Polly’s outfit was stark against the bright green surrounding them. “You know Mawmaw won’t know one way or ‘nother if we go in there!”

Nora had a hard time taking her sister seriously when she used that silly nickname, but Polly was right. The moist forest, with its towering swamp pines and chestnut oaks, always scared Nora. That and she hated getting bit by the swarming mosquitoes, which were always worse inside the treeline.

“I’m not going in today!” Nora stopped and lowered herself to the damp grass. 

Polly stuck her tongue out. “Ok-ay, lame-oh! I’ll be right back.”

Nora lay amongst the overgrown blades and smiled. Ma and Pa had dropped them at Mawmaw’s earlier that morning, and days at Mawmaw’s were always the best—no one to yell at them and unlimited sweet tea. Plus, Mawmaw’s collection of mystery novels never disappointed.

As Nora speculated on her next Agatha Christie, Polly dropped to the grass beside her. 

“Be careful or you’re gonna get grass stains all over that jumpsuit,” Nora said. The NASA outfit was her sister’s favorite, and she saw herself as something of an astronaut ever since they visited the Space Center in Huntsville months ago. Nora noticed Polly’s sleeve was pushed up her arm, which revealed a dark-gray mark leading up towards her elbow.

“Polly, what—”

Polly grabbed her sleeve and pulled it over the bruise. “It’s nothing, Sis.” Polly’s smile never wavered.

A silence thicker than the Alabama air expanded between them. A lump rose in Nora’s throat when Polly’s quiet words shattered the saturnity. “It was an accident, he didn’t mean it.”

Nora was the big sister. Big sisters were supposed to protect. She tried to shove her emotions back down, deeper inside her body where no one would ever see them. Where Polly would never see them. Nora needed to be the brave one. She needed to be the big sister..

“I won’t let it happen again, Polly.”

A sudden meowing from behind them dispelled the heavy moment, and Nora collected the neighborhood cat into her arms.

“Shadow!” Nora said, as she snuggled her face into his wiry fur.

“Shadow gets to run off whenever he wants. Why can’t we?”

Nora continued to nuzzle the wandering feline as she tried to process what Polly said. Leaving wasn’t an option, so she didn’t see any use talking about it. Pa knew the police; they’d never make it far. Where would they even go?

“What if we could leave this place forever?”

Nora let Shadow glide from her grip and looked over at Polly, shaking her head. “Pa would find us.”

“But there might be a way. In the wetlands—”

“Stop Pol, just stop.” Nora was angry now, upset that her sister would consider something so stupid. “I let you sneak off all the time, but not like that. Never like that.”

Nora jumped up from the grass. As the sisters walked back towards Mawmaw’s house, Polly said, “I wish you’d listen to me. Just once.”

#

When Nora arrived at the country club, dozens of family members were already there, Mawmaw included. The old woman had only a short walk on a path through the wetlands in her back yard to reach the golf course. It was the same walk she had done every day of her life. 

The manicured grass was profoundly green and looked surreal around the white tents set up for the reunion. Under each one was a collection of round, white tables, all decorated with pictures of the Richardsons over the years. 

Nora caught a whiff of barbecue pork from the cavalry of crock pots as she wove through the crowd, admiring the photos. In every one, there were smiles. Laughs. Nora lingered on a picture of her and Polly with their parents in Mawmaw’s back yard, their faces glistening in the southern heat. Even in the photos that were supposed to be happy, she saw the anger. The hate.

Mawmaw approached from behind. “You be missin’ her, but she okay. Polly’s okay. Don’t you worry.” She spread her flabby arms and Nora collapsed into them, allowing herself a careful sob while she inhaled Mawmaw’s stale butterscotch scent.

“I just wish she—” Nora broke off, grabbing a napkin from a nearby table. “I just wish I’d had a chance to say goodbye.”

Since Polly disappeared, Nora’s life had never been the same. She coasted through jobs, doing enough to get by, but not enough to move up. Her personal relationships fared even worse—the only men who wanted to spend time with her were carbon copies of her abusive father.

Nora watched as more Richardsons arrived at the country club and made their way to coolers filled with beer and crocks simmering with home-cooked meals. Mawmaw embraced each and every one, forcing them into a conversation with a proud smile on her face. 

When Nora saw Ma and Pa approaching Mawmaw in the food tent, she cringed. Deep down, she’d hoped they would’ve stayed away, lost in their drunken haze. 

As Nora pinballed between tables, she heard the bickering sneers from her Ma, directed at Mawmaw: “…just leave us alone, will ya?”

Pa shot Nora a glare as she approached, and they all turned to face her.

“Ma, Pa, how nice of—”

“What, you didn’t think your ol’ man wanted to waste his time comin’ all the way back down here for a day?”

“I… it’s nice to see you, too. There’s barbecue right here—”

“Ya, ya, why don’t you go get me a beer or somethin’, huh?” Pa hadn’t aged well. He grinned at her, his yellowing teeth poking out from behind his cracked lips like errant, drunken soldiers.

Ma was already halfway done with a sandwich, her sunken, pockmarked face stuffed with pulled pork and coleslaw, grease dripping down the front of her torn shirt. “Look at her jus’ standin’ there. She always was the useless one.”

A razorblade twisted in Nora’s chest, slicing into pieces what remained of her heart.

Pa grunted in agreement and sat at one of the tables, the edge digging into his distended stomach, and took a swig of booze from his flask.

Nora burned crimson, holding the sharp pain in her gut; if she managed to keep it in all those years, she could do it now. She turned to Mawmaw, vowing not to continue the conversation with her parents, and led the woman away. 

“Make it an Ultra, hun!” Pa said, his voice chasing Nora from the tent.

As Mawmaw watched this confrontation, the wrinkles on her face deepened, carved like memories in an aging oak tree: enduring and permanent.

Despite this, the day carried on. Clouds danced in front of a slow-moving sun and the autumn air was crisp, a rarity in Alabama. Nora did manage to catch up with distant relatives she hadn’t seen since childhood, politely laughing at the memories they shared of her and Polly, while trying to avoid the reek of stale beer that reminded her of those dark nights when Ma and Pa came home late.

#

When Mawmaw’s screen door banged open well after dark, Nora’s father stumbled in, the pungent scent of alcohol overwhelming the house. Ma followed, and Nora wondered how they made it home. A sick, dark part of her wished they hadn’t. Mawmaw cowered in the corner.

Nora escaped out the back door, knowing a shouting match was coming. She paced in the grass as she overheard the confrontation, the clammy air sticking to her skin like plastic wrap.

“The damn girl knew she wasn’t s’posed to go out there,” Pa said, his tone grating.

“It’s your damn mother’s fault, we should never be leavin’ our kids with her.” Ma’s speech was so slurred that Nora could barely understand it. 

Nora wanted to walk across the crunchy, dead grass toward the wetlands, to try to find Polly and make them stop yelling, but she was scared. 

“She went through, ya hear? She was done fed up and I told her to go.” Mawmaw’s incoherent ramblings were getting worse. Less and less of what she said now made any sense.

Several low growls echoed across the back yard and Nora spun. The noises came from the direction of the wetlands, and she took two steps toward the forest. She prayed her sister wasn’t out there, having to defend herself against some vicious animal. The sounds stopped, and all she could hear was the cacophonous buzz of the cicadas.

Nora was so entranced by the heavy darkness in front of her that she jumped when the metal screen door slammed behind her. Mawmaw slouched into a cracked plastic lawn chair and let out a single sharp sob. “Polly gonna be ok, ya hear? She gonna be ok.”

#

As midafternoon approached and the sun made its slow descent to the horizon, the food in the crock pots was depleted and the ice inside the coolers began to melt. Nora sat on the wraparound porch at the country club building, which was on a hill overlooking the reunion. She sipped a spiked seltzer and recalled memories of that night Polly never came home as she watched her family bounce between the massive tents from afar. 

The blue lights. The search parties. Pa becoming more violent. Ma becoming more distant. The fear truly set in when they learned that three other kids also went missing that night. Lucas, Connie, and Shirley. Nora didn’t think Polly was ever friends with them, but they did live in the same rundown neighborhood as the Richardsons. There were rumors of a serial killer.

After a while, Ma and Pa couldn’t take it anymore—everyone looking at them, asking about them—so they drove north. Away from the dread. Away from the unknown. 

Nora didn’t think it was possible, but she realized now how much she missed Mayport. She wished Polly could be here today. She wished they could say goodbye to Mawmaw together.

Without warning, a great white light shot from the wetlands in the distance. The chatter from the reunion ceased. The solid beam rose straight into the air, its glow steadily fading into the clear blue sky. Nora rubbed her eyes and wondered if the blazing emanation was a trick of her imagination.

The Richardsons began to point, to call attention to the unnatural glare. At first, the radiant shaft was no different than a spotlight one might see at a concert, but with each passing second it became brighter, eventually brighter than the sun. 

Nora rose from her seat and let her sunglasses fall to her nose, but she was still unable to look directly at the beam. The pressure in her ears began to change rapidly like that time her parents drove her and Polly through the Talladega Mountains. Out of the corner of her eye, the light grew not only in brilliance, but also in size. 

As it continued to expand to the size of a skyscraper, the ground shook. The pressure in Nora’s ears continued to increase, eventually popping and causing Nora to nearly stumble from the porch. She grabbed the sides of her face, her hands coming away red as blood dripped from her ears.

The apparent earthquake worsened, and Nora eventually faltered, plunging down the wooden stairs, but her eyes never left the wetlands treeline. 

One by one and then all at once, the trees split apart, cracking and splintering and eventually flattening to the ground. Echoes from bursting hundred-year-old trees reached Nora across the golf course grounds, and before she could wonder what could cause such carnage, she saw it. 

From the destruction rose a magnificent metal beast, like a long-forgotten and destroyed ocean liner breaching a white-capped ocean. 

The sun reflected off the steel hull of the machine as it launched skyward. It vaguely resembled a modern spacecraft, with large round thrusters on the bottom expelling fire that burned the vegetation below. But its cobbled-together round shape was wrong. Different. It was like nothing Nora had ever seen before.

The spaceship traveled in a beautiful arc, peaking hundreds of feet in the air when its propulsion system died and gravity took hold, bringing the unfamiliar hunk of metal barreling towards the astonished family.

#

The pile of library books Nora had accumulated over several months crashed onto the desk in front of Mrs. Foley. It was her last day at Mayport Middle.

“You’ve worked up quite a collection here. Did you manage to read all of these?”

Nora nodded and forced a smile. Mrs. Foley was always nice to her, giving her all sorts of mystery recommendations.

“You’ll be missed here, Miss Richardson. Polly, too.”

The name of her sister cut like a hot iron through her gut. Nora forced a laugh and tried to make a joke. “As if Polly ever liked the library.”

Mrs. Foley’s smile was earnest. “You’d be surprised. She was here all the time, looking for proof of aliens or something. Some new planet.”

Nora remembered that NASA outfit Polly always wore and sighed. It was hard not to always think, “what if?”

#

Nora woke with a pounding headache and struggled to remind herself what had happened. The spaceship, the crash. It must have knocked her unconscious. She pulled herself from the ground and wiped blood from her brow, from her face. Everything was silent. She stumbled down the hill to where the family reunion had been set up, hoping, praying, that people were okay.

The perfectly manicured golf course grass was now blackened and riddled with embers of fire. The tents that once provided shade were no more, the tables and chairs and crock pots scattered into pieces. 

Nora stepped closer to the carnage. There were large pieces of the ship strewn everywhere, crackling from the extreme heat. One of these sheets of metal moved slightly then shifted to the side, and Nora watched as a distant cousin—Laura, she thought—rose from below the simmering steel. 

The woman reached for Nora, tried to call for help. Her mouth moved frantically, but only blood poured out. 

Nora was frozen in place, wanting to help but afraid any action she took would further injure the woman. 

In a feat of inhuman strength, Laura pulled herself from under the rubble. A sharp edge of metal from the spaceship’s hull caught the front of her leg and peeled an entire layer of skin from her shin, but she barely seemed to notice.

With blood dripping from her wounds and a scrap of flesh flapping below her knee, Laura lurched toward Nora. Her jaw continued to flop open and closed, but the only sounds she managed were grunts. Nora opened her arms to catch the woman, but before she could, Laura collapsed. Her dying cousin’s lungs rattled one more time as her own blood suffocated her, and then her eyes settled, losing their frantic plea for help, still focused on Nora.

Nora sobbed, falling to the ground as she stepped away from the dead woman’s pleading stare. She was desperate. She needed to find someone to help. Anyone.

She pulled herself up and continued on, looking for survivors. Fiery annihilation surrounded her as she searched for what felt like hours, kicking hunks of metal aside and extinguishing small embers with her shoes.

Eventually, Nora found her Ma and Pa. Her father’s body lay twitching across the same chair he sat in while eating his lunch. There was a burning hole in his chest where his flask had popped open; the alcohol ended up killing him after all. 

 Ma didn’t need to witness her husband’s last raspy breaths as his guts burned from the inside out because her body was severed at the waist, her death likely instantaneous. A thin but very sharp piece of metal lay on the ground near Ma’s body, coated with blood and entrails.

Tears fell down Nora’s face. Seeing her parents dead like this, their bodies completely ravaged by some unexplained disaster, she felt hollow. After the years of abuse she endured, after driving away her little sister, they deserved this. And yet, she continued to sob.

The worst of all was when Nora found Mawmaw. She dropped to the ground next to her grandmother. Nora didn’t care that the thin skin on the front of her knees was burning as she knelt on the simmering grass. Mawmaw was riddled with fragments of glass and metal, the materials incandescent and eating away at the woman’s frail wrinkles. Somehow, though, Nora saw her eyes blink in recognition.

“I knew…” Mawmaw’s voice was raspy, barely audible. Nora felt like she had cotton balls stuffed in her ears and lowered herself closer to her grandmother.

“It’s okay Mawmaw, I’m going to find help.” Nora didn’t know how or where she might do that, but she needed to try. She looked around for anyone, anything, that might help her grandmother.

“I knew she’d come back,” Mawmaw said, blood bubbling from her mouth and dripping down her withered face. “She promised…”

Her words, as had been so common over the past several years, made no sense to Nora. All she could do at this point was try to ease her grandmother’s suffering. 

“Help is coming.” Nora’s empty words had no audience, though, as the little life left behind Mawmaw’s eyes finally extinguished. 

Nora continued to shuffle through the cinders and still crackling chunks of Richardson meat as she made her way closer to the impact site. She saw someone there, moving. A child? 

“Hey! You! I need help!” The small figure spun and stopped Nora cold. The faded blue jumpsuit the child wore was familiar.

Nora assumed she was hallucinating or perhaps suffering the side effects of some sort of head injury, and she dropped to the burnt grass. Her head felt like it weighed a million pounds, and black dots scurried like frantic ants across her vision. Nora assumed death was claiming her as the approaching image of her little sister became more and more real. 

Nora looked away from the delusion her mind was forcing upon her, and instead stared straight up at the blue sky and puffy white clouds, while tears rolled down the sides of her face. She hoped the end would come soon.

#

Phone calls to Mawmaw back in Mayport became less and less frequent as Nora maneuvered her way through high school. When they did happen, Nora was always frustrated.

“The girl’s alive. All them kids are. But no one wants to listen to Mawmaw.”

Nora stopped arguing eventually. If her grandma thought Polly was alive, then maybe that was okay. Maybe she could be happy.

#

“Wake up, Nora! C’mon, Nor-Bear, wake up!”

Nora’s eyes shot open.

She was propped against a tree. It felt like there was a man with a chisel trying to carve his way out from inside her skull. When her eyesight cleared, she noticed she was in the woods. Why was she in the woods?

Small fingers snapped in front of her eyes. “Earth to Nora!”

“Stop, my head,” she said, trying to quiet the thundering voice that had brought her back from the brink of death. She brought her hand to her temple, as if her fingers could mask the pain. When her gaze lifted, the child with the blue jumpsuit stood in front of her.

NASA, she thought. That’s the NASA logo.

Nora screamed. “Go away! Get away from me! You’re not my sister!”

Yet it was. Or at least, it was close enough. Polly’s young face stared down at her, just as Nora remembered it, same as all those photos she looked at earlier. Despite this, there was an unfamiliar wisdom behind those eyes, a wisdom that no child could bear.

The kid put her small hands on either side of Nora’s face and smiled. “Shhh, quiet now, you’re awake. Everything’s going to be okay.”

Nora’s breathing was fast and raspy, and she couldn’t seem to slow herself down.

“It’s me, Nor-Bear. It’s Polly. I promise it’s me and I promise you’re okay. Your vitals are normal.”

“My vitals…?”

“I’ve been trying to come home all this time, and we finally figured it out.”

“We…”

“We, yes. Lucas and Connie and Shirley. You remember them, right?”

Nora closed her eyes and tried to die. Or maybe she was trying to wake up. What she was seeing, what she was hearing, none of it made sense. She wanted—no needed—to escape.

“Nor-Bear, open your eyes. I know this doesn’t seem real, I know it doesn’t make sense, but I’m trying to show you. If you just look here, please, I can show you.”

Nora sensed the child moving off to the side. Unwillingly, Nora opened her eyes. The girl was leaning over the edge of a massive hole in the ground.

It wasn’t a normal hole, like one that was dug—it was something alien. Something awful. 

Nora gazed at the unnatural occurrence, trying to process what she saw. 

The hole was probably twenty feet across. It was pure darkness, a darker black than she thought possible. 

Nora’s instinctual urge to protect her sister kicked in and she lunged forward, trying to pull the little girl from the precipice.

Polly let Nora help her, but when they fell back to the muddy forest floor together, the kid laughed. The laugh was almost right; it was almost Polly. But Nora knew it wasn’t really her, knew it couldn’t be her.

“It’s okay, sis,” this Polly—Fake Polly?—said. “It’s not dangerous.”

Nora, finally feeling awake, looked around her. The wetlands. She was in the Mayport wetlands. Flattened and splintered trees surrounded her. This hole, or whatever it was, appeared to be ground zero. 

“I see you’re processing it now. Nor-Bear, it’s really me. I came on the ship, I came home!”

Nora stayed silent, her eyes bouncing between the hole and Fake Polly.

“Look in, you’ll see,” Polly said.

Nora inched her way closer to the hole. When she looked down, she saw a planet. It was lush red and green, with oceans and atmosphere and clouds swirling above. It was beautiful.

“When we were kids, you know how much I loved the wetlands. This is why. I saw that planet.” Polly’s eyes glittered as she spoke. “I wanted to know everything about it, so I read all the books I could about space, but I never found anything about that place down there.”

Nora was unable to process the words Fake Polly was saying. Everyone was dead, and this child was talking about what she used to read at the library?

“Reading books wasn’t enough—” 

“Stop. Stop stop stop.” Nora held her head in her hands. “Everyone is dead. Mawmaw is dead, and Ma and Pa.”

Understanding leaked into Fake Polly’s face. “I’m sorry about that, about Mawmaw especially. The ship was meant to land…”

Nora laid back and curled her legs to her chest. This must all be from her head injury. None of this was possible.

“Nor-Bear, I know it’s sad. I get that. But this discovery…it could change everything.”

Nora remained in the fetal position, refusing to address the abomination that was talking to her.

Fake Polly continued with her absurd explanation. “When the books weren’t enough, I went back to the hole. I needed to see what happened if I put something in it. First it was rocks and dead animals. But the most exciting was when I used the neighbor’s cat. Remember that skinny little cat? The one always eating Mawmaw’s garden?”

Nora was flooded with memories of Shadow. She cried for two days when he had gone missing. That same summer Polly, her Polly, had disappeared. “Bobcat got ‘em, most like,” the neighbor had said.

“When I threw him into the hole…” Polly stopped and shook her head. “Nora, you should have seen it.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Nora said.

“There’s so much to explain, I know, and it’ll take time,” Fake Polly said. “But we’ll have plenty of time.”

Nora spun. “What do you mean?”

“We live down on that planet now. Me and the others. Even Shadow.”

Nora stared at Fake Polly, in disbelief at what she was saying.

“Not only that, Nor-Bear; the planet is magical. None of us have aged. I can’t wait to show you what we’ve built.”

“What do you mean…” Nora shook her head and backed away from the hole.

Fake Polly smiled. The same smile, but different, the one that didn’t look right. “I want you to join me, Nora.”

Nora couldn’t just leave, abandon everything she knew. But then again, what was left?

“I won’t force you Nor-Bear. I will only ask you.” Fake Polly’s face was almost sincere, but there was something in those eyes. Something else. “Follow me, please. You won’t regret it.”

And with that, the apparition that was her little sister was gone. Nora looked into the hole and saw Polly floating away, floating back towards that planet. She was holding out her hand, waiting for Nora to join her.

Nora, kneeling on the edge of a phenomenon she would never understand, closed her eyes and recalled the carnage and death she had witnessed. In her head, she could hear Polly all those years ago. “I wish you’d listen to me. Just once.”

Nora finally did.