The Rearranging Sky|A Sinister Sister Creative Production Production

Briar Bell was the sort of amateur astronomer who knew the sky by habit. She could find Orion without thinking, identify Jupiter through thin cloud, and tell when a star was a planet simply by the steadiness of its light. So when she noticed something strange on the night of October 3, she blamed her telescope. “Ben,” she called. Her brother appeared in the observatory doorway, carrying two mugs. “What broke?” “The universe.” Ben handed her a mug. “Again?” Briar rotated the telescope. The stars had shifted. Not by the tiny, predictable amounts caused by Earth's rotation. They had moved into lines. Three clusters burned brighter than the rest. Briar wrote their positions in her notebook. WE REMEMBER YOU. She stared. Ben laughed uneasily. “That's impossible.” “I know.” The next night, Briar returned. The stars had moved again. The sentence had grown. WE REMEMBER YOU. WE REMEMBER WHAT YOU DID. Ben stopped smiling. “What did we do?” Briar looked at him. “I don't know.” For six nights, they watched. Each evening brought another word. WE REMEMBER YOU. WE REMEMBER WHAT YOU DID. WE REMEMBER THE NIGHT YOU CAME. WE REMEMBER THE BOY YOU LEFT BEHIND. Briar's hands began to shake. Ben noticed. “Briar?” She closed the notebook. “I think we should stop.” “Why?” “Because I remember.” Ben went pale. Neither spoke for a long time. Seven years earlier, they had explored the abandoned Bell Observatory outside town. They had found a strange metal object buried beneath the floor, humming like a distant radio. Their youngest brother, Beau, had been with them. The object had opened. Stars had appeared inside it. Beau had reached toward them. Then the light swallowed him. Briar and Ben ran. They never told anyone. They said Beau had wandered away. He was never found. At midnight, the stars moved again. Briar looked upward. HE IS STILL WAITING. Ben stumbled backward. “No.” The next line formed. HE IS STILL WHERE YOU LEFT HIM. Then every star in the sky went black. Except one. It hung directly above the abandoned observatory. Briar grabbed Ben's coat. They drove there without speaking. Inside, the old building smelled of dust and rain. The trapdoor beneath the ruined telescope was still there. Briar opened it. The metal object remained below. But it was no longer humming. It was breathing. A pale light pulsed beneath its surface. Then a voice whispered from inside. “Briar?” Ben began crying. “Beau?” The light brightened. A hand pressed against its surface. A boy's hand. Small. Unchanged. Briar reached for the object. Ben caught her wrist. “What if he's not alone?” From somewhere above them came a sound like millions of tiny voices speaking at once. Briar looked through the broken roof. The stars were rearranging themselves again. This time, there were only four words. HE BROUGHT THEM HOME. The metal door opened. Beau stood inside. He looked exactly as he had the night he vanished. But behind him stretched an endless black landscape filled with unfamiliar stars. And thousands of figures were standing beneath them. Watching. Beau smiled sadly. “You took so long.” Briar couldn't move. “Beau…” He stepped forward. “The stars have been trying to find you.” Ben whispered, “Who are they?” Beau looked upward. “The people who were left behind.” Then every star in the sky came back at once. And the enormous sentence was complete. Briar read it slowly. WE REMEMBER YOU. WE REMEMBER WHAT YOU DID. WE REMEMBER THE NIGHT YOU CAME. WE REMEMBER THE BOY YOU LEFT BEHIND. NOW WE WILL SHOW YOU WHAT IT FELT LIKE TO WAIT. Behind Beau, the darkness opened wider. Briar heard thousands of voices whisper her name. Ben's hand found hers. The stars began to fall.