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Habitat

by Juliette Beauchamp

The orb appeared on a Friday. Just popped up in the northeast corner of the horse pasture, out where the grass grew thin and the ground was spotted with gopher holes. It was black and not a bit shiny despite the heat shimmers dancing around it. From a distance, as Cole and I rode along the dry creek bed, it looked more like the absence of something. A blank spot in the air.

It wasn’t until we got closer that we realized there was something there after all: a giant, dull marble suspended about three feet off the ground. The horses didn’t like it, rolling their eyes and snorting, but they were ranch-bred and broke and used to doing things they didn’t like.

Cole slid out of his saddle and passed his reins to me. I held his mare as she pawed and swished her tail while Cole walked over to the thing.

“It feels funny,” he said as he got closer. I wasn’t surprised to hear it since the hair on his head had begun to float upwards.

Cole walked around the orb and then swept his arm under and over it, looking for some invisible support or line. There was nothing. He held his hand out to the thing and I almost shouted at him not to, but I didn’t. He laid his palm on the dull surface and held it there for a moment, his hair standing straight up and waving in the slight breeze like a sea anemone in an ocean current. Even the fine, sun-bleached hairs on his arm stood up, glinting in the light.

“What do you think it is?” I asked.

Cole rubbed his hands against his jeans and shrugged. “Hell if I know. Let’s go get Dad.”

We went back to the barn where Daddy was nailing a shoe on his old bay gelding. He straightened up when he heard us approaching, one hand pressed to the small of his back. “You two check the creek?”

“Yeah,” Cole said. “It’s done. Nothing but a bunch of dead minnows left.”

“Damn. We’d better haul some water out. Go get a trough, I’ll fill the tank.”

Cole nodded. “There’s something else, too. Something out in that field.”

“What?” Daddy had turned back to his horse and spoke over his shoulder.

“A big circle. It’s … weird.”

Daddy dropped the hoof and turned back to us. “A circle? What are you talking about, son?”

“It’s a sphere,” I said, ignoring Cole’s dirty look. I wasn’t trying to correct him. “Just floating out there like a…” I trailed off, unable to think of anything to compare it to.

Daddy frowned at both of us. “Y’all aren’t messing around, are you? I’ve got a lot of work to do.”

“No, there’s really something out there.” Cole rubbed his palms together, as if he could still feel the thing against his hand.

Daddy pushed his hat back and glanced up at the sky as if searching for answers there. He must not have found any. “Okay. Let’s go take a look at this thing.”

---

Cole and I found two overturned troughs and brushed the cobwebs out of them and dragged them over to the truck while Daddy filled the big water tank on the trailer. He filled it from the well, all three hundred and thirty gallons, scowling as he did so.

I looked up at the sky, the color of faded denim. We all watched the sky, all day. There were no clouds and no rain in the forecast either according to the weather channel that played on an endless loop in the kitchen. The ground beneath our boots was parched and cracking.

Daddy drove slowly, the trailer swaying over every bump and rut. I watched in the side mirror as water sloshed over the top, the drops sparkling like diamonds on their way to the ground.

We filled both troughs and then refilled one again after the thirsty horses had gathered around and drank their fill. Daddy unhooked the trailer and left the quarter full tank there for the next day.

Then the three of us drove further, towards the dry creek bed and the weird black marble hanging nearby.

---

“Huh.” Daddy pushed his hat back. He pulled a can of dip from his pocket and swiped out a plug. I could smell the wintergreen flavoring of the tobacco. He moved slowly and methodically as he brushed the loose flakes from his fingers and recapped the round can.

I wanted to yell at him to hurry up but there was no rushing Daddy. Only once the dip was firmly packed in his lip, the can returned to his pocket, and his hat resettled over his ears did he move forward to the orb.

He held his hand up, like Cole had, a few inches from the surface and watched as the hairs on his arm bristled. “Either of you touch this thing?”

Cole glanced at me with a quick shake of his head. “No.”

I didn’t say anything. I didn’t like to lie but I never tattled. Not on my brother.

“Good. Don’t.” Daddy spit a long stream of brown tobacco juice.

“What do you think it is?” Cole asked.

Daddy didn’t answer, just went on studying the thing with his hands on his hips and one long leg cocked, a tall man who never seemed quite sure how to arrange his limbs. He walked around it twice, once in each direction, and then squatted to look under it. He looked so much like Cole in that moment; Cole after thirty years of hard work and sun and tobacco.

The orb simply hung there, suspended by nothing; a flat blank sphere about the size of the hula hoop I’d once played with.

Daddy looked at it for a long time and then pulled out his phone and took some photos.

“Cole, you take any pictures?”

“No.” This time he wasn’t lying. We’d been so flummoxed by the orb we hadn’t thought to do so.

“How ‘bout you Liz?”

I shook my head.

“Don’t. And don’t tell anyone about this, you hear? Not until we figure out what it is. And don’t come back out here by yourselves.”

“Yes, sir,” we said in unison.

Daddy lifted his hat again and wiped sweat off his forehead. “What do you think Liz?” He didn’t look at me while he asked it.

Cole flashed me a grin, the dimple in his left cheek appearing. All my friends were in love with him and occasionally, like now, I could sort of understand why.

“Me?”

“You’re the one always reading.” Daddy sounded defensive, as if I’d questioned his judgment in asking my opinion. “You ever read about something like this?”

I hadn’t. I shook my head, disappointed in myself.

“Huh.” Daddy sounded unsurprised by my ignorance. Or maybe he was relieved.

---

Of course we went back out to look at it that night. Daddy didn’t know us very well if he really thought we wouldn’t.

The ranch house had thin walls and Daddy’s room was right next to mine. After the lights went out in his room I waited, fully dressed and sweating under the blanket, until he started snoring. I kept waiting until I heard Cole’s light step move past my door then I crept out of bed and slipped out of my room.

Cole didn’t see me following and I didn’t call out to him.

It was a long walk on foot back to the orb and not an easy one. The moon was full but not high enough yet to light up the pasture and I kept getting snagged by branches and tripping over loose clods of dirt. At least a dozen times I was sure Cole must have heard me stumbling but he never turned around.

When he got there he went straight to the thing and held his hands firmly against it. His hair stood straight up like before and his lips moved like he was speaking but no sound came out. I crouched behind a dried-out patch of bluestem and watched, careful not to make a sound.

After a few minutes Cole turned around and left. Just spun on his heel and marched back in the direction of the house. He passed within three feet of me and even though I was hidden I don’t think he would have noticed me if I’d jumped up and shouted boo.

After he left I went up to the orb myself. It had changed since that afternoon, softened into a less perfect shape like a balloon that’s lost some air and gotten squishy. I didn’t touch it. In the moonlight I could make out faint movement inside the thing, a shifting, scurrying motion that I didn’t like one bit. If I’d had a lighter I think I would have set it on fire, drought be damned. But I didn’t have one and eventually I got nervous out there by myself so I retraced my steps and went back to bed. I didn’t sleep well though.

My dreams were full of things that scurried and scuttled, nightmares crawling just beneath the surface.

---

We all went back out the next day. Daddy had tried to pretend he wasn’t thinking about the thing all through breakfast and morning chores but every few minutes he’d glance towards that corner of the pasture. Finally, after the hogs were fed and the stalls mucked, he beckoned me over.

“Better go check on the horses’ water. They might have drank it all down by now.”

I didn’t think they had and even if they did there was no reason for all of us to go. I didn’t complain though. I wanted to see if the orb had changed anymore overnight.

Cole was leaning against the hog pen watching a new litter of piglets as they grunted and rooted around the lumbering sow.

“Cole! C’mon son.”

Cole flinched. There was a guilty expression on his face that Daddy didn’t notice, but he climbed up in the cab without a word.

The three of us bounced along in the truck, passing the water troughs without a glance. We were like iron shavings dancing towards a magnet, drawn inexorably to the orb.

---

“What the hell happened to it?” Daddy walked around where the orb had been, slapping his hat against his jeans. “It was right here, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, sir,” Cole said.
“Then where’d it go?”
Neither of us had an answer but I noticed Cole’s eyes flicker to the ground where Daddy’s pacing feet were stirring up dust. I looked but didn’t see anything besides some little squiggles in the dirt. They looked like bird tracks.
Daddy stopped moving and frowned. Then he put his hat back on and patted his pocket, his frown deepening when his hand came away empty. His dip can was on the kitchen table; I’d noticed it when I went in for a drink. Daddy never went anywhere without it but he’d forgotten it that morning.
“Well, damn.” Daddy’s shoulders slumped. “Alright. Excitement’s over, I guess. Let’s get back to work.”

---

I was brushing a horse later that afternoon when the light changed. The bright afternoon sun dimmed as clouds massed over the ranch. The sky stayed blue all around us but straight above was a roiling pile of gray thunderheads, the kind you just knew were bringing rain.

We all stopped what we were doing and stood outside the barn, staring open-mouthed up at the sky as the first drops fell. It was warm and gentle, a perfect soaking rain. It rained steadily the rest of the day and all that night and Daddy couldn’t stop smiling.

“Nothing in the forecast. Nothing. But look at it!” We sat in the kitchen after dinner and watched through the bay window as puddles formed where the ground couldn’t soak up the water fast enough. The next morning the yard had a green tinge to it for the first time in months.

After that day we got more rain. It fell every afternoon like clockwork and never extended past the ranch’s property line. It was a miracle. The creek filled and the pastures grew lush. We had to bring a few of the older horses to the barn for fear they’d founder on the sugar-rich new grass.

Neighbors stopped by in the afternoons. They parked their dusty vehicles in the yard and held their arms up to the rain that didn’t reach their properties. They looked at us with shining eyes, as if we had made the precipitation ourselves.

“Blessed. That’s what we are, blessed. We’ve worked hard, and done right, and now we’re being rewarded.” Daddy made us clasp hands and bow our heads before dinner every night, giving thanks for the rain. Since I always sat between Cole and Daddy only I felt the tremble in my brother’s hands as Daddy spoke.

That first week was like something out of a fairy tale. And then the pigs started disappearing.

---

“Liz, how many do you count?” Daddy leaned over the fence, his keen eyes focused on the piglets darting around their muddy pen.

“Twelve.”

“You sure?”

I quickly counted again. “Yep.”

“Damn. There were sixteen last week. I counted before I ordered the three-way shots. Where did four piglets go?”

I looked across the barn to where Cole was oiling his saddle. He’d already done it the night before after getting caught out in the rain. It didn’t need to be done again.

Daddy slapped his hands against the fence in frustration and turned to Cole. “Son!”

Cole jumped like he’d sat on a wasp. His face was pale beneath the mid-summer tan and there were deep circles under his eyes.

“Go find the game cameras. We’d better keep a closer eye on these hogs. Something’s getting to ‘em in the night.”

Cole dropped his sponge without a word and shambled to the house. The grass in the yard was knee-high and it parted and reformed around his legs like water as he moved through it.

“Daddy, have you noticed anything…well, wrong with Cole?”

“Wrong? What could be wrong?” Daddy had apparently forgotten the missing pigs. “Look at this beautiful ranch!”

And it was beautiful. The air was sweet with the smell of roses, the deep red beauties blooming for the first time I could remember, and some new flowering vine I didn’t even know was climbing up the barn, advancing inches a day. It was lush, almost tropical.

“Our cows are fatter than anyone else’s. They’ll get top price at the market. And we have so much grass I’ll be able to cut hay soon. That will save us thousands of dollars this winter. Do you know the last time I was able to cut hay on this place?” Daddy fanned the humid air with his hat. “It’s a blessing. A real blessing.” His eyes gleamed as he spoke and his voice was hushed and reverent.

“But don’t you think it’s weird that it’s only raining here and nowhere else in the county?”

Daddy shoved his hat back on his head. “Don’t question a good thing girl. It ain’t wise.” And he stalked off to the mower, prepared to tackle the overgrown yard.

---

That night I heard Cole tiptoe past my room and I followed him, again at a distance. He was in bad shape, muttering to himself and wringing his hands as he hurried out of the house. It was much darker than the night I had trailed him to the orb and I had to move slowly.

He skittered past the pig pens, staying out of the range of the new cameras, and went to the feed room where bags of grain and animal feed were stacked on pallets. He reemerged with a fifty-pound sack of dog food thrown over his shoulder and a high-powered flashlight in his hand.

I followed him from the feed room across the horse pasture to the newly flowing creek. There was a small copse of red willow trees, their twisted branches casting long, eerie shadows across the water as the beam from the flashlight bounced over the ground. Something was under the trees, something that chittered and scuttled at our approach. The hair on my neck stood up and my heart thumped along a little faster.

Cole staggered to the trees and threw the bag on the ground. The skittering thing rushed out to meet him, moving into the light, and I realized it wasn’t one thing but many, a dozen or more creatures that my mind refused to recognize. They looked like spiders but no spider on earth had ever been that big. They were the size of cats, a crawling mass of furred nightmares moving as one like a flock of birds. They swarmed over the bag and tore it open and suddenly I knew where the baby pigs had gone. I gagged and stumbled backwards, unable to tear my eyes away.

One of the creatures tasted the kibble and spit it out and then all of them turned their bulbous eyes towards Cole and chittered, the sound rising and falling in a hideous pantomime of speech.

“I don’t have any meat tonight. This is good too. Eat this.” Cole spoke directly to the spiders, his hands clasped together as if in prayer. “I can’t get any more pigs for you! When you’re bigger you can hunt rabbits or maybe even deer.”

One of the spiders took a rapid step towards Cole, a growly mewling emanating from it.

“Me? You can’t eat me. Who’ll feed you?”

The spiders turned as one in my direction. Cole followed their beady gaze and gasped. “Lizzie! What are you doing here? Go back to the house, now!”

“No way. I’m not leaving you,” I said even as my weight involuntarily shifted back, my body prepared to bolt no matter how brave my words might be. “What are those things?”

The spiders chittered excitedly and surged towards me, stopping just inches away. My legs turned to jelly; suddenly I couldn’t have run even if I wanted to. Cole took a step towards me but stopped, his hands claws at his sides. The spiders regarded me for a moment then turned away, clattering in their strange language.

“They like you. They say you smell like me.” Cole sighed and relaxed, grasping his hair with both hands.

“What are they?” I whispered.

“I don’t know exactly. They came from the orb. It was their egg sac.”

“The orb?” My mind flashed back to the night I’d watched something moving, shifting, under the dull surface and I wished I’d destroyed it. Gone back to the house and found a box of matches and sent that thing and its nightmarish contents straight to hell. “How do you know what they smell? Are they talking to you?”

“I can’t understand everything they say, but yeah, they can talk. They say they come from somewhere else.”

I gazed at them, fascinated and horrified. “By somewhere else, you mean…”

“I don’t know. Somewhere besides this world. I think … I think they’re aliens.”

The enormous spiders had begun to investigate the dog food, their fangs ripping through the pile of kibbles with frightening intensity.

“You’ve been feeding our baby pigs to them?”

Cole nodded miserably. “They said the rain would stop if I didn’t.”

“The rain?” I sucked in a breath as the realization hit me like a punch in the gut. “Of course. That’s why it’s raining here and nowhere else. The ranch … it’s a habitat!”

“What do you mean?” It was Cole’s turn to ask the questions.

“Remember the frog terrarium I used to have?” It had been simple, just a glass box with a layer of colorful stones and fake plants for shelter. And, most importantly, a cool water mister to mimic the frogs’ natural environment. “Cole, I don’t think the spiders are making it rain. Something else is.” I was animated, the excitement of solving a mystery outweighing my fear. “I think these spiders are somebody’s pets! They’ve turned the ranch into a terrarium!”

Cole’s eyes widened. “What would keep these things as pets? These ain’t like your little frogs. They’ll be dangerous when they’re full grown. Hell, they’re dangerous now.”

The spiders had finished off the dog food and were returning to the deep shadows beneath the trees. Their chittering softened and soon little snores became audible. For the moment they didn’t look too dangerous.

I shrugged. “I don’t know. At least they decided to eat the kibble.”

“Yeah, for now. I don’t think they’ll go for it again tomorrow night.” Cole rubbed his eyes. “God I’m tired. What do you think we should do Lizzie?”

“They look pretty content for now. Let’s go back to the house. We’ll figure it out there.”

We made our way back to the house, stumbling and catching each other across the overgrown pasture as fatigue caught up with us both.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I said once we were out of the pasture and on easier ground.

“I didn’t want you involved. I thought I’d lost my mind when the orb spoke to me. It told me to take care of them, keep them fed and protected while they grew.” Cole shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe it. “But I’m glad you know now. The secrecy has been killing me.”

I rubbed my face, my eyes burning with exhaustion. “We’ve gotta figure something out.”

Cole was quiet for a minute as he trudged along beside me with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans. “We could kill them,” he finally said in a soft whisper. He looked down at me and for a moment he looked old, older than Daddy. “Fire. The shotgun. I’m sure there’s something that will kill them, even big as they are.”

“No!” I grabbed his arm. “Don’t say that. Don’t even think it. We have to take care of them now. We have more to worry about than just the rain ending.”

Cole tilted his head, his eyebrows raised.

“Cole, think about it. What would you do if someone killed your pets? Something else would come if we did that. Something worse.”

---

We told Daddy the next morning over our untouched cereal bowls. Daddy paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth and looked from Cole to me and back to Cole again.

“You’re saying this is where the rain is coming from? Giant spiders that talk to you?”

“Yes, sir.” Cole kept his eyes on the table, his fingers tracing the pattern on the tablecloth.

“I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. What’s gotten into you son?”

“It’s the truth,” Cole said in a small voice.

“Just what the hell are you playing at? That rain is a gift, a blessing!” Daddy leapt to his feet, roaring. “It ain’t from no spiders!”

“It’s true! I saw them last night!” I scrambled out of my chair to stand between him and Cole. “Just go see for yourself before you decide we’re lying!”

Daddy’s expression was thunderous as he clapped his hat on his head and strode straight out the screen door towards the grove of willow trees along the creek.

“Don’t hurt them!” I shouted after him but he didn’t respond. I turned back to Cole. “They won’t hurt him, will they?”

“I don’t know.” Cole leaned on his elbows, watching through the window. “I don’t think so.”

---

Daddy was gone a long time. The morning was getting on when he finally returned, walking past the house and down to the barn. Cole and I were still in the kitchen with our faces pressed against the window but he didn’t acknowledge us.

When he came back from the barn he had something cradled in his arms, something pink and wiggly, and we watched without speaking as he carried the piglet back to the creek.

Daddy didn’t want that rain to end.

---

The spiders got bigger and started ranging away from the patch of willows. Sometimes I’d look out the window and see them, always together in a pack, foraging across the pasture. Their odd scuttling movements terrified the horses but, and believe me I know how weird this sounds, I began to grow almost fond of them. I think we all did. They were inquisitive towards us and affectionate with each other, just like dogs or cats. In a way they became our pets too. They’d follow me while I did my chores, their multitude of eyes taking in everything. They even helped occasionally, rolling along bales of hay when my arms got tired or herding cows to the chute when we needed to doctor them. They were better (and faster) than a heeler.

It still rained every day but there was a marked change in our neighbors’ reactions. They no longer visited and exclaimed over our good fortune. Instead, they parked along the road and watched the ranch through binoculars. No one spoke to us when we went into town for groceries or to get gas. It was like the rain had cursed us, marked us as outsiders. I couldn’t blame them. All around us wells were drying up and livestock dying. Twice we found cattle that didn’t belong to us in our fields, snuck over in the night by ranchers desperate to get some good grass in them. The trespassing animals were dull-eyed and thin, their red hides sagging over jagged backbones. I felt some kind of awful running them back over onto their barren side of the fence.

Just as Cole had predicted the spiders began to catch their own food, mainly gophers and the occasional slow deer, so our remaining piglets were safe. I wondered what would happen when they ran out of wildlife to eat but I didn’t think about it too hard. I’d decided to take Daddy’s advice and not question a good thing.

---

One afternoon, right before the rain was due to start, someone flew a drone over the ranch. Daddy ran outside with the shotgun and it quickly buzzed off but the spiders had been hanging out in the yard, in plain sight from above.

It wasn’t long before the sheriff drove up. He climbed out of his cruiser but kept one hand on the door handle as he glanced around the yard. “Y’all got some new animals ‘round here?”

“Nope.” Daddy crossed his arms and planted his feet.

“Some folks been saying you do.”

“And how would they know that unless they’ve been trespassing?”

“Look, Jim,” the sheriff said, licking his lips, “we all know something strange has been going on lately. Why don’t you just tell me what it is? Your neighbors are getting a little restless. I don’t want to see anyone get hurt.”

Daddy’s face had grown red and I could tell he was about to erupt but he never had a chance. At that moment the spiders came skittering over the lawn, curious about the new vehicle, and the sheriff let out a shriek. They were a terrifying sight. They’d grown to the size of coyotes and they were fast. We’d gotten used to them but seeing an outsider’s reaction made me realize how truly horrifying they were.

The sheriff slipped back in his cruiser and threw it in reverse. Mud and gravel slewed against the house as the back wheels spun in the wet ground. The spiders were excited and milled around the floundering car, unaware of the danger. I yelled and ran towards them but I wasn’t fast enough. The car found purchase and leapt forward into the mass of bodies with a sickening crunch. A wave of green fluid washed over the car’s windshield.

Two spiders were killed outright, their large but surprisingly tender bodies torn apart. The rest gathered around them and began to wail. Their keening drowned out the sound of the cruiser as it roared down the driveway but I watched it go, the wipers on high smearing that green blood around, and I knew trouble would be coming soon.

Daddy and Cole lifted the broken bodies and carried them out to the pasture to bury. The rest of the spiders followed, standing over the grave until night fell. That’s when the lights appeared for the first time, descending from the inky sky and hovering over the ranch.

---

It’s been a few days now and the lights are still up there, visible even in daylight. We don’t know what they mean, not for sure, but I have a pretty good idea.

The ranch is surrounded by miles of shiny new chain-link fence and the driveway is full of tanks and unmarked government vehicles. Armed men are patrolling our yard, their eyes fixed on the sky. The air is charged, like the hour before a thunderstorm. No one seems to know exactly what to do; we’re all just waiting for the aliens to make contact.

I told Cole there’d be trouble if any of the spiders were hurt. I just hope whoever sent them here knows it wasn’t us. We did all we could to protect them. We cared for them.

The sky is blue and cloudless. I don’t think it’s going to rain today.