Epilogue: The Year the Sky Opened

I’m writing this from the same desk I left end of spring term. The cheap pressboard corner unit in a University Dorm room (still smell the dorm room concert energy we had end of term), cluttered now with faded field notes, tapes I haven’t labeled, soil samples in baggies I have 2 weeks to log. Classes start in two days.

When we had all set out the beginning of break, I thought we’d gather stories. A few blurry photos. Maybe get lucky with some kind of trace evidence. But we collected more than that. We gathered people—each carrying parts of a bigger, older thing we’ll never fully see. Like dust catching light only when the sun tilts just right.

We drove hundreds of miles. Logged six core excursions, ten smaller cases, and dozens of discussions I wish I’d recorded more carefully. We slept in vans, motels, barns, and one or two places we maybe shouldn’t have. We ate gas station sandwiches. We argued. We laughed until it hurt. We listened—really listened—to people who risked embarrassment, ridicule, and worse, just to share what they saw.

And it wasn’t just sightings.

We found things out there.

We found tones in the trees, and circles carved into wheat. We found cattle too still, cave art too old, stories too exact. And we found people haunted not by what happened, but by how no one ever believed them.

That part—the human part—never stopped affecting me.

⸻

Who We Were

This group started as ten.

By the end, six remained:

• Egiel, still sharp, still unswayed by mysticism but softened somehow.

• Josh, now more interested in the why than the what.

• Jennifer, who never lost her lens or her steady nerve.

• Mathew, full of questions I don’t think he wants answered.

• Donna, who claims she’s out, but will be reading abduction reports by next week. We mail each other constantly.

• And Grandpa, the professor, “SANTA-POPS”, the compass. I still don’t know how much he really knows. But he never steered us wrong. Don’t think he ever will.

As for me—well, I was a case examiner once. Still am, till I decide to let my license run out. Just one with a very different beat now.

What I Believe Now

People ask what I believe now.

Do I believe in aliens? In ghosts? In travelers from dimensions we can’t name?

My answer:

I believe something strange is happening.

Something layered, something old.

Something that doesn’t care whether or not we give it a name.

But most of all, I believe this:

The moment we stop paying attention is the moment it disappears.

So we have to keep watching.

We have to keep listening.

And maybe more than anything—we have to keep telling the stories.

Even if we don’t understand them yet.

Closing the journal until Spring break.

Write it down.

Tell someone.

We’re still listening.