Unidentified

It was a clear night. The sky stretched open and immense, stars scattered across it like spilled salt. Most burned white, dull and distant, but a few glowed strange—red, amber, even a faint green. The desert held still beneath it all, frozen, as if the world had paused to look up.

It was beautiful.

Beautiful enough that JJ almost forgot why he was standing in the middle of it.

He looked down at his phone. The bright screen brought him back to reality. The coordinates matched. He was standing in the exact spot where his older brother, Chris, went missing. Or at least where they found his phone laying in the dry sand.

It had been years since Chris left…or disappeared rather. The notion was still foreign to JJ. The feelings were still fresh and they hurt even though it had been so long.

His parents believed that Chris had committed suicide. They had a note from him that said goodbye. But the note that JJ received said otherwise. It detailed that Chris had in fact, been abducted by an alien species and taken to their home planet for studies. He said he didn’t know when or if he would return and urged JJ to live life to the fullest. It never said goodbye.

JJ never imagined Chris giving up. Others misunderstood Chris’ weirdness for depression. In JJ’s eyes that was a fact, his older brother was a strange man but depressed he was not. He couldn’t have been. JJ was ten when Chris went away and his memories of his brother were all so amazingly great. Hunting for UFO’s, watching cool movies and shows, playing video games, and just having fun.

Chris always had an infatuation toward the unknown, especially aliens. He spent hours everyday listening to podcasts and watching videos that covered the phenomenon. Then one day that stopped cutting it and Chris went out and started looking for himself. He even started his own YouTube channel and edited his hunts and findings. Those videos served as a portal into the past, allowing JJ the ability to hear and see his older brother again.

Most of Chris’ ventures were had in Saucer Desert, the local mass of sand that was also a hotbed for supposed extraterrestrial activity. Its real name wasn’t Saucer Desert but that’s what everyone called it.

He would go out there five nights a week and stare at the sky, searching and scanning for activity. A few times JJ joined him. He had filmed a few weird occurrences. Bizarre movement in the sky, lights out in the desert, some strange sounds. But nothing that was definitive proof, which is all he wanted.

The night that Chris went missing was a night like many before it. Chris went out alone into Saucer Desert to hunt for unidentified flying objects and capture them on camera. But that night he simply didn’t come back and had left two contradicting notes.

Police searched for him the next morning and found his car and his phone. They found some tracks but wind covered most tracks that formed in the soft sand of the desert. His phone records were clean. There were no signs of a struggle or anything like that. Chris was just gone.

The police searched for a week or so but stopped after they realized nothing would turn up. It was a gutting feeling for JJ and his family. What if Chris saw something and went after it, falling into some crevasse or something? What if he was just hurt and stranded somewhere? His parents wanted a body. Closure. They didn’t get any.

The last thing the police gave JJ and his family were the exact coordinates where Chris’ phone was found.

Something about Chris’ disappearance felt…off. JJ couldn’t quite place it. It hurt. That’s all JJ knew to think about it. Why would he leave two notes? Why would he leave his phone? So many questions.

JJ tried to shake the unnatural feeling away. His eyes found their way back up to the triumphant skies of Saucer Desert. There had to be a million stars at least and they seemed to stretch for eternity. Suddenly, JJ felt small and insignificant, powerless. Chris’ obsession with the unknown became clear and obvious. Who wouldn’t want to know if we weren’t alone in the universe? And how could we be? It was infinite.

Although it had been years since Chris’ disappearance, this was the first time JJ had been out into Saucer Desert since then. He had just turned seventeen and gotten his own car. His parents couldn’t stop him from going anymore. But he could have come before then. He had friends with cars. That unnatural feeling caused him to stall.

Now he just had to figure out what to do now that he was there. How could he prove that Chris didn’t commit suicide but was taken instead? JJ sighed. Even though he was at the exact spot of his brother’s abduction, he still had more questions than answers.

JJ recalled the note that Chris had left for him. He took a picture of it and looked at it now through his phone. It was both extravagant and farfetched. It spoke of a bright green light and little grey creatures coming out of a classic alien saucer. JJ wasn’t a fool. But the lack of a body had kept that childlike hope alive.

His eyes moved from the star-littered skies onto the dark sandland parallel to him. The rolling hills loomed between cacti and rock piles. Mountains and high cliffs sat to the right within walking distance. Both space and the desert before him seemed immeasurable. Chris was either somewhere up there, light years away. Or a skeleton somewhere down here in this sandy hell.

A flash caused JJ to jerk his head back up toward the boundless sky. He searched for a moment, then found the source of the flash. An intense green light that was rocketing below the stars. It was low, seemingly in the atmosphere of Earth. JJ gasped and flowed the beacon.

He took a step and the dot stopped, almost as if it was watching him. His breath caught. The thing wasn’t flickering or darting like the few in Chris’ old videos. It waited for him. Then started off again and JJ followed. It crept in the air now, moving turtle-like. JJ walked with it, slow and steadily. The thing would often move back and forth as it continued to the right, navigating JJ around a cactus or two. He couldn’t believe what was happening.

JJ finally got to the base of a rock infested mountain. He looked up to make sure the green light was still there and it was. He took a step over a mound of rubble and it began to move again.

JJ climbed and the light did as well, getting further and further away. It beckoned him to climb up and up.

He was sweating now and exhausted in the dark. The mountain was steep and a difficult hike, although not impossible. He wondered if the police searched the rugged mountain.

He reached a clearing, a flat path that appeared to wrap itself around the summit. Big, bowling ball sized stones dominated the path.

The light lingered up high in the sky, still and peculiar. JJ stared up at it, full of anxiety and hope. That same childlike hope that he’d hung onto for all these years. Was this his brother finally coming home? If he was, why lead him to the near top of a cliff?

The green light then pulsed, flaring a staggering emerald wave over the sky. JJ was taken aback by the sight he was beholding, shocked at the paranormal occurrence unfolding in the sky before him. His brother would have loved this. That was the only thing he could think about.

The sky returned to a still painting and the green light was gone.

“Why?” JJ asked the air.

His flashlight swept the ground. A shoe jutted from behind a rock. JJ recognized it before he reached it. The shoe was still attached to a foot. The foot to a leg. The leg to what was left of a person. An empty pill bottle lay on its side nearby, catching the beam of light.

JJ staggered backwards, almost falling off the cliff down to the rough terrain below. His breath was impossible to catch and tears flowed easily from deep within him. He plopped himself down and sobbed.

Why? Why lie to him?

JJ’s stomach was in knots. The childlike hope had turned into such a sour emotion, bitter and filled to the brim with disappointment.

He stayed on the rocky cliff for an hour, refusing to look at the skeleton just a few feet from him. Instead his eyes moved to the view. The colossal amount of stars were impossible to count, but JJ tried anyway until the worming thoughts overwhelmed him.

His brother was never taken by aliens. He came up to this cliff and took a bunch of pills. His parents knew this, or at least some version of this. They had accepted it even though there was no evidence. But now JJ was facing the grim reality barely hidden in the rocks beside him.

JJ couldn’t look at what was left of his brother, the brief look he got was enough for him. But he knew why Chris would choose this place to go. The skies were endless up here. JJ imagined that Chris would sit here until the world ended, watching the skies for UFO’s. And he was here now and had been here all this time. He’d probably seen dozens by now, maybe even hundreds.

The note Chris had left him wasn’t meant to be believed forever, only long enough for a little brother to grow up.

Chris hadn’t wanted him to grieve. He had wanted him to search.

To look up.

JJ lifted his eyes to the sky. The stars were still there, endless and bright.

“I get it,” JJ said softly. “Goodbye.”

The desert offered no reply.

He stayed there, watching the stars, the way his brother always had.