This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Connect-Committee-56 on 2024-11-06 18:14:06+00:00.
I was about twelve years old when I first took notice of my ‘condition’. I had lived in the middle of Philadelphia all my life up until that point, and I had no reason to consider the night sky nor could I if I wanted to for the ever-present light pollution bombarding my light receptors. That is, until I met my lifelong friend, Jared. About three weeks after my twelfth birthday in March of 2009, my father got a job with the National Forestry Service, which transferred my family across the country to a very small town just south of Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming.
The move wasn’t nearly as hard on me as some might expect from a kid of that age. Honestly, I hated Philadelphia. Where we lived, I seemingly could never get a wink of sleep due to the constant traffic, which made school days miserable for me. In fact, I was probably the happiest I had ever been the week my mom and dad announced the move.
By the beginning of Summer break, we had officially moved into our small, ranch-style house among the small community of about ten other houses called Shuever, Wyoming. That first day when we drove from the airport in Denver to the town, I had serious jet lag and slept most of the time. But when my mother finally eased me back to consciousness upon our arrival, my head spun at the vastness of the sight before me. I had never seen such an expanse of open land in my life, a land mute, deaf, and blind to the man-made jungle spread across the rest of the planet. It was perfect. More so than I could have known.
That same day Mrs. Wilkins, who lived next door, invited us over for lasagna, which made my stomach cramp after the ten straight hours of moving boxes, and we all gladly accepted and essentially left immediately. The Wilkins’ house was quite a bit like ours, and the rest of the community for that matter: a small rancher built from dark brown brick and gray-blue metal roofing. We were all greeted by her husband, who led us across the house, down the central hallway, and to the right where there stood a modest table prepared with a from-frozen lasagna, various sodas, and butter-garlic breadsticks. And already seated at the table was the Wilkins’ only child. The one who I would come to know as Jared. He was about two years younger than me and spent most of the time with his head down, trying to keep from drawing any attention to himself.
Honestly, not much happened at that table. The Wilkins were all noticeably quiet for most of the time. Not awkwardly so, but they were just not quite as outgoing as many of my friends from Philadelphia. It was a nice change of pace. After about half an hour, Mrs. Wilkins finally spoke up, “Jared, why don’t you show Tyler to your room? Maybe you can show him your telescopes!” Jared grinned meekly and motioned for me to follow him back down the hallway where his room was. At the end of the hallway to the left was an off-white painted door with a faded bronze knob that was not unlike many of the doors from my old school which had not been renovated since the eighties.
With some force, Jared opened the door and I was bombarded with vibrant shades of blue and white. His walls were covered with posters and signage from long-accomplished missions from NASA. There were at least two Apollo posters, and several others for Mercury, Gemini, and the shuttle programs. Diagonally across the room from his bed was an admittedly impressive display of five telescopes, ranging from two to ten inches in diameter. After taking a pause to fully appreciate what I was seeing, Jared spoke up for the first time, “So…uh…yeah. These are my telescopes…” He trailed off, naming models and numbers that meant nothing to me. I had never cared to know about space, but hearing the crescendo of passion in his voice actually began to pique my interest. “So…I’m guessing you go stargazing out here a lot?” I asked. He responded, “Yeah, at least once or sometimes twice a week depending on the weather. I try to keep track of relatively close objects to see if I can determine their paths. I have schoolwork to do tonight, but you can go out with me and my dad tomorrow night to see for yourself!” “Uh…yeah! Sure!” I replied, this was probably going to be my only friend for a long while, so I wasn’t going to pass up his offer. “We can meet at my house tomorrow night at 8:00 if that’s okay with you.”
“I’ll ask mom, but I should be able to do that.” I responded, somewhat off put by his sudden preparedness. I spent the rest of the evening listening to Jared Wilkins ramble on about his now very apparent hyper fixation, squeezing in the occasional question or passing comment. By the time I had been in his room for two hours straight, I started to regret my decision of taking up his offer to go stargazing, but ultimately decided it was for the best. By 9:00 that evening, my mother called me back to the other side of the house to thank our hosts for the meal and make plans for the next night’s excursion, which my parents both wholeheartedly agreed to, seeing my need for a friend in this new and quite empty place.
The next day was somewhat of a blur. More unpacking and organizing interspersed with quick breaks to eat. We all tried to keep our food consumption to a minimum, considering the nearest town with supplies was an hour-drive away, but my parents assured me that they would get more food once we were all unpacked. Before I knew it, it was time to go next door. I had expected that they would just take the telescopes to their backyard and watch from there, but instead, they had a Kawasaki Mule loaded down with all our viewing equipment, cameras, and sleeping bags.
Jared explained that they were planning to go to a place called Reiner’s Point where there was no light pollution whatsoever and that they were planning on spending the night there to see planets that only appear in the early morning hours. I still agreed and we made the ten mile drive across the mostly empty land which was flat at first, but swiftly began to incline when we entered a sudden band of fragrant pine trees. From there, we drove for two more especially grueling miles heading nearly straight up over boulders and downed trees, which ended up taking longer than the previous eight miles, and by the time we reached the plateau above, the sun was almost fully sunken.
Reiner’s Point, it turned out, was a corner roughly situated on the southwestern edge of the plateau that was slightly higher than the surrounding land. It appeared slightly burnt and smelled of old charcoal where they had camped many times before. Of course, they weren’t planning on starting another fire tonight, though. We busied ourselves setting up the telescopes, and I mainly just helped out by holding parts for the other two who obviously knew what they were doing. All the while, Jared and his father were making comments about objects that were becoming visible as the sky darkened and how they had moved positions throughout the year. Jared then tugged at my shirt and pointed roughly northeast, “You see? There’s Capella, about 40 degrees off from Polaris. Using that, we can find the Andromeda Galaxy through the telescope. Isn’t it awesome! Bet you never saw anything like this back in Pennsylvania.” I looked almost directly up to where he was pointing and squinted and shook my head and rapidly blinked. For some reason, I couldn’t see anything.
I thought that maybe my eyes hadn’t adjusted yet, or that somehow my eyes had been ruined by my lifetime of near constant light pollution. “I…I don’t see it.” I said hesitantly, trying not to sound stupid. Jared continued to point vigorously, “It’s right there. The brightest star in this direction…don’t you see?” “I…don’t see anything up there…it’s just black.” I said, and immediately Mr. Wilkins stopped what he was doing, adjusting the telescopes to the correct focus, and seemed to contemplate something, then glanced over at Jared, who’s eyes had seemed to freeze over for a few seconds. There was an awkward pause for another 30 seconds or so before Mr. Wilkins finally spoke up. “Do…you wear glasses, son?”
“No, I’ve never worn glasses in my life. I’ve always read fine and never had problems with seeing far away things.” I said, concluding that I should probably ask my parents to go see an eye doctor, if there was one to be found within 100 miles, if I couldn’t even see the stars. I don’t know…maybe the sudden onset of symptoms could indicate something more serious? Maybe I injured myself at some point during the move? As if to respond to my very thoughts, Mr. Wilkins spoke up again somewhat coldly, “There’s an eye doctor over in Casper. You should see if your parents can take you there. His practice is on the end of Grant Street, should be easy enough to find from there.”
I was admittedly confused by his imperative attitude when he said that. I could see just fine…at least, for the most part. It wasn’t that serious. I just continued squinting into the ink-blackness, desperately trying to make out anything. Eventually, I think I counted about two discernible points of light with maybe three others, although I was much less sure if they were actually there. I pointed to the two points I saw, “Actually…I think I can see two stars now, one right above us and one over to the north.” Jared explained, “Those two actually aren’t stars. That one right above us is Saturn…that one over there is Jupiter. That’s really all you can see?” I r...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/nosleep/comments/1gl507e/the_prophets_eye_part_1/