The Mysterious Signal

Summer in Everwood started slow. The heat built by noon, flattening the landscape and turning the horizon into a shimmering line of blurred gold. Year after year, the townsfolk swore that nothing ever happened here—no concerts, no late-night movie premieres, not even a midnight diner open past ten. Elara Grayson had wandered these streets for a year now, ever since the move from the city after her parents’ divorce, but the dusty sidewalks and silent nights still felt foreign to her, like she was drifting outside of her own life.

Elara lay sprawled in the grass behind her house, using the scratchy woolen blanket her grandfather had brought from Wales decades ago. The evening air shimmered with the scent of cut grass and honeysuckle. Her trusty binoculars—a battered pair rescued from the attic—waited at her side. She nudged them now and again, watching for foxes or deer or anything to break the monotony.

Above her, the sky darkened. The deep plum of dusk started to blot out the thin clouds. It was her favorite time: the rest of her family inside, the world holding its breath, and the first hint of stars scattered overhead. Tonight, Elara was determined to catch something rare, or at least convince herself there was more than emptiness up there.

She counted stars—Venus, Altair, Deneb—traced constellations with her fingertip. The wind rustled the treetops with a secretive hush. Somewhere down the street, a dog barked and fell silent.

She almost missed it at first: a flicker at the edge of vision, quick and silvery. Elara blinked, heart picking up. She raised her binoculars—a flash flared high above the pines. Not like a plane. Not like anything she’d ever seen.

It zipped left, then hovered, just long enough for her to catch its shape: not a dot or a streak, but an odd, burning teardrop. It shimmered with cold greenish light and, suddenly, darted so fast it seemed to vanish, swallowed by the stars.

Elara lowered the binoculars, her breath fogging the glass. “No way,” she whispered, almost grinning. A spike of excitement stabbed through her—something had happened. It was probably nothing, probably a trick of the light, but for once, it was hers to discover.

Only the crickets answered. Still, she lingered, straining for movement, but the sky offered nothing more.

Back inside, the kitchen hummed with ordinary life: the clatter of dishes, the television’s glow, her mother reading in her armchair. Elara’s own room waited upstairs—posters of swirling galaxies and moons, stacks of books, her old ham radio perched by the window. Grandpa’s radio. She’d fixed it up a month ago, odd wires and all, listening in mostly to static and the occasional trucker chatting about interstate weather.

She flopped into her chair and flicked the radio’s dials, feeling the comforting click as static filled her headphones. It was ridiculous, but part of her wanted to believe she’d pick up something from that light—a transmission, a code, a sign.

For nearly an hour, there was only white noise. She spun the dial, eyes growing heavy.

Then—

A click. A hiss. A voice, warped, squashed, fragmentary:

"...qrrrz—nger!…help…qzrrk...not safe—"

Elara jerked upright, hands trembling on the dial. She mashed the headphones into her ears, heart pounding. It was like nothing she’d ever heard—panic, garbled and faint, as if the speaker had rushed into the room before the door slammed behind them.

"Repeat?" Elara whispered. "Is anyone there?"

But the radio spat only a high-pitched whine. Then, soft enough to make her doubt—

"Help...lost...danger...can you...hear me?"

The signal broke into static.

She grabbed her notebook, scribbling down every fragment she could remember, hands shaking so much the pen looped wild.

Elara’s skin prickled with an electric thrill. She forced a deep breath, looked at the radio, then at the sky outside her window. Could it be a prank? Her mind raced with logical explanations—CB chatter distorted by weather, a lost hiker, maybe a ham operator fooling around. But in her gut, sharp and insistent, was the certainty that these words were meant for her.

She pressed the transmit button—her voice faltered for a split second, but she steadied. "To whoever is out there, I hear you. Please say again. Are you in danger? Are you nearby? Over."

No reply. But now every muscle in her body thrummed with possibility. Everwood wasn’t empty tonight. Something had happened. Someone, or something, was reaching out.

Sleep was impossible. She turned the words over and over in her head, replaying the flashes of light, the desperate signal. For once, the space in her chest where loneliness lived felt buoyed by a new sense of purpose. She set her alarm for dawn, leaving the radio on, notebook open to a page full of scrawled, hopeful questions.

What did the message mean? Was the light connected?

Outside, the rest of Everwood lay silent—still and, for the first time in a long while, not quite ordinary anymore.