I'm forever drawing connections where none exist, or, to be more precise, where many other people would not draw connections, which is another thing entirely.
The hovering ball of blue light.
The blow out.
The strange man from the Monte Carlo.
The silver eyes shining from the dark car.
All these things in the space of fifteen minutes. My mind draws connections, and I'm left to puzzle over their legitimacy.
I don't believe in UFOs, not in the popular sense, anyway, that unidentified flying objects are extraterrestrial space craft. I do believe in extraterrestrial life, but I know, as a scientist, that the odds of its getting from planet to planet, much less crossing interstellar distances, are remote. Anyway, what we saw that night didn't look like a "space craft." I'm entirely willing to entertain the possibility that the blue ball of light was some unusual electrical discharge, though I couldn't begin to imagine what its origin might have been, or why it shone so brightly but didn't seem to radiate any light at all. Was it something meteorological? Seismic? Man-made? Insects? I have no idea whatsoever. I can only say it was one of the strangest things I've ever seen.
As for the big man in the Monte Carlo, well, one meets strange people on the highway late at night, and sometimes they don't smell so great. It's the silver eyes that still bother me, from time to time. A couple days after the interrupted trip to Jefferson and Woodbine Cemetery, Death's Little Sister got together in the East Athens attic we'd converted into a practice space and, at some point, someone finally mentioned the odd events after the show. I think we'd all been avoiding talking about that night-the light, the Monte Carlo and its driver-and I don't remember who finally brought it up. I also don't remember who suggested that the silver eyes might have been a dog's eyes, that there might have been a dog in the car with the man, which also might have helped explain the odor. But I do remember how that suggestion upset Mike, and he insisted that there hadn't been a dog, just a kid sitting up front, and that there had been something "all wrong" about the kid, but he wouldn't elaborate, and we didn't press him.
I think that, all those years later, when I sat down to write the short story that grew into the novella In The Garden of Poisonous Flowers, I'd hoped that by burying some of the events of that strange night in fiction I might divest them of at least a modicum of their weirdness. But it doesn't seem to have worked. Lonely country roads still make me nervous now, and they never did before. I watch for lights in the sky more than I once did, and dread the glint of silver eyes from the windows of passing cars.
Caitlín R. Kiernan
9 January 2002
Liberty House, Birmingham
For the other three-quarters of Death's Little Sister: Barry Dillard (guitars), Michael Graves (bass), and Shelly Ross (keyboards).