“There’s a man in our driveway.”

I pushed my heavy eyelids to open and was blinded by the rays of light streaming down from our fluorescent bulbs. It was morning. I yawned, more out of habit than necessity, and realized that I was still sitting at our kitchen table.

As if she read my mind, the next words out of Lily’s mouth were “you fell asleep here again, didn’t you?” Her tongue clicked the roof of her mouth.

“I must’ve.”

“Is it getting worse?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Go answer the door”

Before I could apologize for the night before, she escaped to somewhere else in the house.

Groggy and with needles hitting my kneecaps, I got up and stretched; the muscles and tendons in my back and thighs extending and relaxing. Life doesn’t have many true pleasures, but stretching after a night’s sleep is one of them.

I want tea, but I think I had better go see this man in the driveway, first. Walking to the front door, I saw he had read my mind.

His name was a mystery. I only knew him as the man from Nagai. He was short and round, with greying hair. Indistinct and unmemorable. Wearing a three-piece suit, holding a cup of tea in one hand and an umbrella in the other-- even though we weren’t expecting rain. 

“Mr. Benton.”

A chill ran down my spine. His voice was cold, inhuman, and otherworldly; barely more than a whisper, with notable pauses in between syllables. It had scared me as a child, and it scared me now.

“Ye-yes?”

“Come with me.”

He turned around and walked briskly to his black Acura, shining under the early morning sun. He sat in the front seat and stared straight ahead, waiting for me. 

Walking down and opening that car door was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. Getting in, I turned back for a split second and saw Lily standing in the window, smiling at me. She’s vindictive.

I sat down in the passenger seat and waited for the man to turn the key.

“You usually ask.”

I gasped. The man rarely talked outside of necessary conversation. Small talk wasn’t part of his routine.

“Wh-what?”

“Ask it.” Still a whisper, but this time forceful. I could feel the hairs on my arms stand on end.

“Wh-wh-where are we going?”

“Vermont,” he said, and turned the key.

Of course, I knew that I thought, as we set off down the street towards the State of Freedom and Unity. Not that there was much of either, these days.

It would take at least half a day to get there-- probably longer-- and it would likely be spent mostly in silence. We would do what needed to be done and then drive back in silence again. That was what weighed on my mind: this profane task was to be done with me stuck in my own thoughts. And, as easy as it had been for me to fall asleep lately, it has become harder to do on command.

I looked at the man. He wasn’t scary, or at least he wouldn’t be if I had seen him standing on a street corner, or at a grocery store, or trying on that three-piece suit he seemed to favor. Does he favor things? I know he can, but does he? Is that part of his routine?

His eyes, black as night, didn’t stray from the road ahead for even a second. He took no notice of me, he didn’t turn on the radio, he didn’t check his speed or his gas gauge. He stared straight ahead and never wavered.

I’m not sure if he really was from Nagai, or if he has even ever been there. I do know that Ertragen had a branch there, but I don’t even know what they do. I run the company, but I have no idea what that branch does. They send in the expense reports-- mostly recording metallic ore, circuitry, and defibrillators-- but that is all. They could be building Tethers for all I knew, but I think they were up to something else. A clandestine project for an enigmatic organization.

“Do you remember your father?”

The man spoke and it shocked me. We were somewhere in New York now, I think. It was hard to tell: the closer you got to Vermont, the more everything looked the same. Charred earth and red sky, bare trees extending from the ground like gnarled gravemarkers, and cracked asphalt.

“I- I think so.”

“What do you remember about him?”

“I remember . . .”

I trailed off. It was getting harder to remember some details every day.

“Do you remember his funeral?”

I did. It was sunny and hot, not unlike most other days. I remember thinking to myself I guess the angels aren’t weeping for him. We were outside, sweat pooling under our armpits as we baked in the afternoon sun. The priest I had hired to do the service-- unfitting since my father was hardly a practitioner-- droned on and on about a God few believed in even then. The five people standing there for the service listened politely but were all preoccupied with their own thoughts. The only person I knew, besides myself, was Don, an old friend of the family, and he was dead by the end of that week.

After the coffin was lowered six feet into the ground, I remember Don called me over to the side of his wheelchair.

“Freddy,” he said, rasping, air not quite reaching his lungs, ”I need you to go talk to that man over there.”

I looked. A small man with a big belly stood in front of my father’s gravestone, staring at the words JAMES NOAH BENTON. Before that day, I didn’t even know Dad had a middle name. 

“He’ll take care of you. He’s from Nagai.”

As I stepped towards the man, he turned towards me. Cold eyes stared through my skin, grasping at my soul.

“You were his son?” Whispering, slow, malicious.

“Y-Yes.”

“Did your father tell you what his job was?”

“No! I mean, uh, not really.” I hoped that that wasn’t a wrong answer, somehow.

“Good. Come with me.”

The man from Nagai turned around and walked methodically to the front gate of the graveyard, but stopped in his tracks after only taking a few steps, and turned back.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

And that was the end of it.

“We’re getting close.”

I stirred awake from my memories. The man was telling the truth: ahead of us stood the remains of a gas station, canopy broken in two. I used it as a marker, a barrier between my world and the other one. I knew that we were less than five minutes from our destination. The sign promised Regular for 2.38. I wondered, as I do every time we drive by that station, how gas became so expensive since.

We started passing dilapidated farmhouses, most barely standing up. Walls blown in, roofs caved. One had completely fallen down since we were last here, the bottom floor finally giving away under the weight of the second story and the roof that had been lying lazily on top. Barns had their sides and doors blown off and sat motionless, barely anything distinguishing their original function besides the basic shape that was sketched from the still erect posts. The few trees that were left hung to one side, trying to straighten but only ending up being gnarled and dying.

It was difficult for things to grow here, it was simply far too hot with not enough sunlight. I remember one day the man and I came here with a thermometer, a sort of grisly experiment. The temperature stood at 103 degrees Fahrenheit, among the hottest places on Earth, and barely inhabitable. Not that anyone lives here, anyway.

We turned down the road into town, passing what used to be Jeremiah Grisham’s old farmhouse. Old Jeremiah was a Civil War vet, and after he died they turned his farm into a museum dedicated to the war. It was just one of those roadside attractions you see being made fun of on the internet: a couple of dusty uniforms and an old Starr revolver. Not much of a museum, but not much of anything now considering its entire left side was blown off.

The town sat empty, motionless, with statues lining the main street. The buildings, the ones that were still standing, were worn and broken, many only recognizable as once being inhabited if you held up an old photograph next to them.

We stopped in the middle of the town square and sat motionless for a moment. Welcome to Ellis, I thought.

The man turned to me and whispered, “Let’s go do this.”