Chapter 2: The Unblinking Eye

Chapter 2: The Unblinking Eye

Sleep was a luxury Jebediah could no longer afford. The night after his grotesque discovery was a siege. The profound silence from the previous evening had retreated, but what replaced it was almost worse. The sounds of the plains had returned, but they were wrong—strained, timid. The crickets chirped in hesitant bursts, as if afraid of being overheard. The cattle never settled; they remained a tight, trembling mass of muscle and fear in the north pasture, their occasional, panicked bellows sounding like prayers to an empty heaven.

Jebediah spent the long hours in his worn leather armchair, positioned by the front window, the old Winchester resting across his lap. His thumb traced the smooth, worn spot on the stock, a nervous habit that did little to soothe the hornet’s nest of dread in his gut. Every shadow cast by the quarter moon was a predator, every rustle of wind in the mesquite a footstep. He was a hunter on his own land, but for the first time, he felt like the one being stalked.

The hours bled together. Midnight. Two AM. The coffee in his mug was cold and bitter, but he barely noticed. His eyes were fixed on the dark expanse of the north pasture, a place he knew as well as his own reflection, now rendered alien and menacing. He was waiting for the butcher to return.

It was just after three when he saw them.

They didn't rise from the horizon or streak across the sky. They simply… appeared. Three points of light, suspended high above the center of the pasture. They were not the warm, blinking lights of a plane, nor the steady beam of a helicopter’s searchlight. They were a cold, unwavering, and intensely white light, like chips of a dead star.

They formed a perfect, equilateral triangle, hanging in the blackness with an unnatural stillness. Jeb’s breath hitched. A triangle. Just like the holes on Daisy.

He watched, motionless, as they began to move. There was no inertia, no drift. They moved with a logic that defied physics. One light would zip from one point to another in the blink of an eye, covering a thousand yards of sky instantly, silently. Then they would move in formation, executing a ninety-degree turn at a speed that would have torn any conventional aircraft to pieces. It was like watching a ghost’s fingertip trace patterns on a black windowpane.

They were observing. Scanning. He could feel it. The cold, analytical weight of a gaze that was not human. This was the unblinking eye, and its stare was fixed upon his land, his herd… him. A terrifying thought bloomed in his mind: the silence hadn't been an absence of sound, but the result of their presence. They commanded the very air.

For what felt like an hour, the lights danced their impossible, silent ballet. Then, as abruptly as they had appeared, they converged into a single, blinding point of brilliance, shot straight up into the firmament, and vanished.

Just gone.

The night felt empty and somehow even more threatening in their absence. Jebediah didn’t move from the window until the first, pale fingers of dawn began to stroke the eastern sky.

He forced himself to move, his joints stiff, his mind reeling. He had to see. He had to know what they had done. Shrugging on his jacket against the pre-dawn chill, he grabbed the rifle and headed back out to the truck.

The cattle were still spooked, but the raw panic had subsided into a low, weary anxiety. They parted for his truck as he drove slowly into the pasture, their eyes wide and white-rimmed. He was heading for the spot directly beneath where the lights had hovered.

He saw it from fifty yards away, and the sight made him slam on the brakes.

It wasn’t another body. It was something far stranger.

Carved into the vast expanse of his pasture was a pattern. It was enormous, covering nearly two acres, a tapestry of stunning complexity. Swirling lines, perfect circles, and intricate geometric shapes were woven together with a precision that defied belief. He got out of the truck, his boots sinking into the dew-damp grass, his rifle hanging forgotten in his hand.

He walked to the edge of the design. The grass wasn't cut or broken. Each blade was bent, laid down perfectly flat as if by a gentle, invisible hand, creating a contrast between the dark, pressed-down green and the lighter, standing blades. He knelt and touched it. It was cool, damp, and utterly undamaged. No machine he could conceive of could do this. Not overnight, not without leaving a single track or trace of its passage.

This wasn’t the work of a vandal with a rope and a board. This was art, made by a god or a devil. It was a message, a calling card left on his front lawn for the whole world—and the empty sky—to see. The butcher was also an architect. The chilling thought struck him that the mutilation and this beautiful, terrifying pattern were two parts of the same incomprehensible language.

Stunned, he walked the perimeter, his rancher’s mind trying to process the impossible geometry. He felt small, insignificant. A primitive man staring at the wreckage of a spaceship, unable to grasp the purpose of a single rivet. He had thought he was dealing with a predator. This was something else entirely. This was intelligence. Alien, vast, and utterly indifferent to the sanctity of his home.

He finally trudged back to the house, the sun now fully risen, casting long shadows that seemed to mock the intricate design in his field. The world felt thin, like a stage set that could be ripped away at any moment.

He pushed open the kitchen door, the familiar scent of old wood and coffee a stark contrast to the alien unreality outside. He set the Winchester back on its rack, his hands trembling slightly.

And then, the phone rang.

The sound was a violent intrusion. It was an old wall-mounted landline, a relic he kept for its reliability when the cell signal was weak. It hadn't rung in a week.

He stared at it, a knot of ice forming in his stomach. Who would be calling at this hour?

Hesitantly, he crossed the room and lifted the heavy black receiver. "Stone," he said, his voice raspy.

Silence. Then, a crackle of static, like a radio caught between stations. A low hum vibrated through the earpiece, a sound that felt electronic and organic at the same time.

“Hello?” Jeb said, louder this time.

From the static, a voice emerged. It wasn't human. It was a synthesized, distorted rasp, like a machine trying to imitate speech and failing miserably. It was a sound scraped from the bottom of a digital nightmare, full of glitches and metallic echoes. It spoke a single word, drawing it out with a chilling, toneless cadence.

“Jeb-e-di-ah.”

The receiver fell from his numb fingers, clattering against the wall as it dangled by its coiled cord. The electronic voice, a dead and hollow thing, continued to hiss his name out of the earpiece and into the quiet of his kitchen. They weren’t just watching his land anymore. They knew him.