Alien Melody - Jason Richardson
Alien Melody by Jason Richardson was the First Place Winner of the 2021 Murrumbidgee Short Story Competition in the Open Category.
The boy woke in darkness. His neck on a small pillow and his blankets in disarray.
These were the times when he wanted his mother, but she had flown away and left him with his father. He was uncertain of the time and, like the stale taste in his mouth, couldn’t define the dreams he’d been having a moment earlier.
The dark troubled the boy, so much that he dared not close eyes in case he missed seeing something move. Something like the shadowy figures that he imagined lay just beyond the window. Sometimes he’d watch for them until his eyelids grew heavy and sleep took him.
The boy knew better than to turn on the light, which his father had ordered to stay off to ensure the solar battery had enough charge to cook breakfast.
There was a sound in the distance, and he considered defying the order. It was high-pitched, pulsing and uneven in volume. An alien song shifting with the breeze across the landscape. A gentle percussive melody fleeting among the hum of the moisture condensers and the occasional scrape of metal on metal from the yard outside.
He lay in bed and listened. As time passed the boy committed the melody to memory. He almost didn’t notice when the song stopped before dawn.
By the time his alarm began he had drifted back to sleep.
Among the sparse patches of prickle-weed were a few stunted trees that the boy walked past on his way to school.
For most of the year the leaves looked dull with dirt, and it was only during the brief wet season at the start of winter that you could be sure whether some limbs were alive.
After the rain the remaining living leaves would shine, while the dried ones paled.
Some days the boy would pick at the bark and sometimes he’d find a bug.
One time he found a spider on the way to school and the teacher spoke about the old days when webs would appear in the corners of houses. It had spindly legs that looked like the fine hairs on the boy’s arms.
This morning, when he looked at the tree, the boy was breathing into the snorkel that was required when walking across the hardened sandstone between his father’s wrecking shop and the town.
On the walk to school, he remembered the way that song had come to him across the dry landscape. The whistling sound as he drew metallic-tasting air through his breathing tube came close to the warbling notes. A counter melody emerged that rose with the shifting echoes moving in and out of phase as the sound of his steps ricocheted against the walls of the town. He closed his eyes as he breathed in and out of the filter to make phrases with a flurry of notes.
By the time he arrived at school the alien song had become a symphony reverberating in his head.
In class the boy looked at the dust stuck to the window and wondered. It was a single-room class with a dozen students who ranged in age from eight to 12.
The teacher opened a lesson on the touchscreen and asked a question: “What does this giant fish share in common with this night bird?”
The boy looked as the screen showed the smooth pale fish in the depth of the ocean, as big as a building; then showed the hairy bird smaller than his hand.
The teacher looked across the blank faces of the children and recognised the sparkle of curiosity in the boy’s eyes.
“Believe it or not,” the teacher continued, “they share something in common with us.”
A girl near the front of the class put up her hand. The teacher nodded in her direction and asked, “Anyone else?”
After a moment of silence, the teacher looked at the girl and asked the simple question “Yes?”
“We’re all mammals,” she said.
“That’s correct,” said the teacher.
As school ended the boy waited for the classroom to empty.
After a short time, he walked to the teacher’s desk and asked about the night bird. Questions spilled out faster than there was time for answers.
“Why didn’t it have feathers? Why were there claws on the end of the wings? Why did the beak have a blunt end?”
“Bats aren’t actually birds,” began the teacher.
Afterwards the boy left with less of the sparkle that had been in his eyes.
Another night the boy woke again in darkness. Along with the chill in the air there was a new variation in the alien melody as it echoed off the bodies of transports in his father’s yard.
He looked out the window at the moonlight reflecting off their broken chasses. It might have been his tired eyes or a trick of the reflections, but the boy thought he saw something move. Something like a shadow silhouetted against the glow of the nearby town. Then he saw it again.
Led by a curiosity stronger than his fear of the dark, the boy slipped out of his bed and moved closer to the window. He could feel cool air around the glass as his nose moved closer, then it shivered up his arm as the boy cupped his hands around his eyes like binoculars to peer past the reflections from soft light in the house. The sound of the morning song grew louder as the vibrations moved from the windowpane through his fingers to his head.
Unconsciously he began to hum along. At first softly inhaling and exhaling like the soundtrack of his walks to school. As the alien melody fluttered in and out beyond the glass, the boy grew louder to fill in the gaps. Before long he was shifting on the spot, half walking with a tempo of symphony that was again in his ears.
A shadow passed closer to the window. Then another. The boy blinked and studied the dark scene within the frame. His hands moved to make a cup around his mouth that connected it to the windowpane, as the song returned to his throat. Shadows shifted as the melody soared, until something violently knocked on the glass.
The boy stepped back in fright.
He was so dazed that he couldn’t be sure, but the music had stopped outside his room or within. There was a sudden silence after the sharp strike on the window.
The boy ran back to bed and pulled the covers up over his body so his eyes could scan over the blankets. In the quiet moments that followed it was clear the song had stopped. His heartbeat throbbed in his ears but gradually began to slow and after a while the boy fell asleep.
As the days of the term wore on the boy continued to sing the song of the early morning. On his walks to school, he would close his eyes while dragging breath through the tube and hear the song through the rhythm of his steps.
The boy began to climb the stairs to school with his eyes half closed. Then fully closed and, before long, without holding the handrail. In echoes of footfalls in the corridor the reflections of the symphony stretched into eternity.
As the year progressed the boy walked with his head down and his fringe covering his eyes so no one would notice they were closed more often, than not. One afternoon the boy decided to ask his teacher about the alien song that pierced through the dark mornings.
“There aren’t many birds left but they do like to sing at sunrise,” the teacher said.
“Sometimes different songs at different times.”
The boy replied it was still dark when he heard the sounds.
“Can you try to copy it?”
The boy inhaled deeply and closed his eyes, then squealed a string of high-pitched notes.
The teacher watched with barely contained amusement, as he could hear nothing.
Outside and away from the schoolyard, a dog began to whine.
The hairs on the boy’s arms rose with excitement.
As the boy looked to the teacher, hoping to hear an answer, a hairy bird crashed into the dusty window.
