Sandra couldn’t remember just how she came to be in front of the barn with the cupula, but there she was. She’d spent most of the day walking in the woods, conscious to walk towards the lake instead of up the hill where Samson warned her not to go. But she’d forgotten about the sleepy autumn sun and its proclivity to slumber behind bruised mountains.

The soft, navy twilight began to contort the forest in ways she didn’t understand. There were no shadows except for the ones her brain put there. Pockets of brush transformed into vicious wolves and demons and harmless doe. The trees twisted their branches into stickly fingers grasping at the sky and fleshy prey crunching through the dead woods. More than once she was positive she saw something running the cliff line only to squint her eyes and realize it was just another dead log covered in mushrooms and rotting moss.

At some point she decided to climb the nearest hill to get a view of the surroundings. Halfway up she checked her phone, the glaring screen blinding her and ruining her night vision. No service. When she looked back up, the hill seemed to stretch forever into the horizon. It was then she made the decision to finish climbing. Then, in that decision, she became aware of the overwhelming solitude surrounding her.

                She was safe, she knew she wasn’t really lost, so why panic? Instead she should enjoy the encroaching darkness, find an opening in the trees and lay down in the detritus, look at the stars and think about what lay out there in the cosmos. It wasn’t often she could think. She resolved then to take the chance she had and enjoy the nebula of the Milky Way.

                The barn with the cupula sat atop that hill. Samson had called the man who owned the barn ‘Moose’ and said he was friendly enough, if cranky.

                In the twilight Sandra could only see the outline of Moose’s decrepit cabin. She couldn’t see his obsessive concentric mowing circles that centered on the barn. She couldn’t see the pickup truck with a busted front window and wooden bumper. What she did see was a barn door left open, if only slightly, with a peculiar shimmering light showing through the crack. It was like the UV and IR spectrum crashed together and had a cataclysmic struggle with the visible spectrum. It was intoxicating and alluring and horrifying and wondrous all at once. Sandra could count on one hand the number of times she was rendered immobile with awe. This was one of those moments.

                She looked up at the night sky and it was then the clouds decided to move for her. She frowned. It wasn’t supposed to be a super moon tonight, but there it was, massive and beaming like a flashlight. The stars stuttered around it in brilliant diamond formations and it was all couched together by the faint purple cloud stripes in the sky. The nebula was wondrous tonight. Something told her she should go into the barn. That she might have a better view, that something was waiting for her. There was a small voice in the back of her head screaming. Warning her to stop, turn around, and head down the driveway. It told Sandra her brother would be waiting for her. That he would be worried.

                The voice won out, but only slightly. She pulled her cell phone out to text her brother but found that she had no service. Shrugging her shoulders, she stifled the shouted warnings of her conscience and opened the door to the barn.

                The inside was rustic, if clean. Straight hand carved beams were sistered together with thick wrought iron lag bolts. There was no lacquer on those beams, but they gleamed as if there was a fresh coat. Three of the four walls were similar in construction, massive hand hewn beams stretching out the height of the barn. The fourth wall, seated on the northern side of the barn, was constructed with rough cut stone. Thick layers of grout were smoothed and worn with age. No dust gathered in the corners and there were no cobwebs to be seen. The place was immaculate, if coldly open.

                To Sandra’s surprise there was no path or ladder to the cupula. Instead, those same hand-hewn beams supported the barn here and there, attached to more beams which acted as supports.

                But none of that surprised her. There were dozens of barns with similar constructions in the Valley alone. No, it wasn’t the barn that shocked her, that tickled her curiosity. It was the legion of mirrors attached here and there throughout the barn. It was the mirrors inside of the cupula. Everywhere she looked there were mirrors. Each one seemed to strengthen the moon and star light. Bouncing to and fro in ethereal beams of inscrutable light. At first, starting at the cupula, the beams were white and acted just like normal lightbulbs. But the further the light was bounced and dissipated the color changed. About halfway down the light started to fracture and strip itself. As if the constituent components were slowly breaking down. Each mirror beyond the first continued to redirect each flavor of light, further separating it from its origin. Then, as purple, blue, yellow, green, and all those colors were finally wrenched from each other, a final mirror redirected them to the center of the barn, directly under the cupula. It was this perfect circle, about the size of a human being, that the peculiar glow from the barn door arose.

                Sandra studied astrophysics in college. She worked in a lab for her Master’s before dropping out due to personal reasons. She’d never heard of light behaving like this… like it was someone’s personal paint brush. She started to run through everything she knew about light, about how mirrors worked, and nothing could explain what she was seeing.

                She endured flashbacks of Tom sitting on the couch, begging her to be more present, less aloof. Of her professor leaning over her shoulder, whispering in her ear about the wondrous nature of the unknown. Of nights spent in solitude huddling over her computer, restlessly combing through her lab notes for a hint of inspiration. Of her parents, one lonely night outside, opening the door to her tent and asking her to come inside. They told her the stars would be waiting for her tomorrow, that she would catch a cold. It all never seemed enough for her.

Sandra had known from a young age that all of her questions could be answered within the stars. That the abyss of the unknown held wonders and horrors that could explain everything to her. If she could stand on the precipice of madness and knowledge she always would. To her, the only thing that made sense in the world were the things she didn’t know, that she could learn. Without something to learn she’d be lost and confused and angry at the world. And that’s what happened to her. To her parents, to Tom, and to Boston. She got lost in what she knew.

Cold, hard, claws latched on to her right wrist and Sandra stifled a scream. The man who was known as ‘Moose’ must have noticed his barn door open and, in the midst of her thoughts, had managed to sneak up on her. Her head snapped to look at him. She was mildly shocked at what she saw. Not at how the man was dressed, that was to be expected. His dark blue jeans were crusted at the bottom with mud and they were colored with dust from manual labor. His button up shirt was cut off at the shoulders and open just at his sagging old man breasts. He had these brilliant teeth held behind the snarl on his face. She wondered at his perfect teeth, they seemed more than a bit out of place on his ragged person.

“Whatchu see in there?” His voice was gruff and smooth at the same time. Like there were two voices echoing from within his throat.

“I uh, I’m sorry it got dark and I got lost-“

“Why are you here?” His tone of voice compelled her.

Sandra felt her face flash a weak smile even as she felt the clammy air turn hot and tense, “I uh… I got lost, like I said and I climbed the hill to see where I was.”

“I didn’t ask how you got here, I know how ya got here” He motioned around him, “I asked why are ya here?” He pointed at the center of the barn and at the starlit mirrors.

Sandra smiled again and leaked a nervous burst of breath, “I uh… I think its beautiful.” She said, casting her eyes to the floor, almost embarrassed.

Moose tightened his grip, “What’s beautiful?”

“The stars. The light. The barn…” She looked into his eyes then and was shocked to find clear azure pools shimmering in the star light. They were wet, like he wanted to cry and his eyebrow were arched with… concern? “I… did you make this?”

Moose nodded.

“Why? How?

“I made it to be shared. To sit in. To love the stars. To love where I was born.” His voice reverberated through the room. It was like there was another speaking alongside him, something deeper and more inscrutable.

Sandra went silent, not exactly sure what to say. She wanted his claws off of her wrist, but she also took comfort in the act. Like he was grasping onto her because he must.

“I’m sorry, it must be very private to you and I have invaded that privacy. I just…” Sandra thought for a moment, “it was like… it… it…” she toyed with the words

“It called to you.” Moose said, his voice doing that peculiar double voice act. “What’s it like, Sandra?” How he knew her name, she didn’t know. But for whatever reason it comforted her.

Sandra began to relax though those cold claws still dug into her wrist, “Its like standing on the edge of a crystal clear lake, seeing that the lake is empty, then returning at night. You know its empty, but every time you dip your toe in your brain tells you that you’re in danger. That the wrong step could awaken a deep, dark, god of that lake whose only goal is to consume you.”

“It’s like being consumed,” he said, his blue eyes watering.

“Yeah,” Sandra whispered, “its like being consumed by curiosity.”

He let go of her wrist and she resisted the urged to rub it, he seemed friendly enough, and he seemed like he was interested in waxing poetic about space. She took a step closer to the center of the barn, still marveling at the fractured light. “How did you do this?” She asked.

She felt him shake his head, “I didn’t do nothin’, just revealed what was always there.”

“Ok, but… but this shouldn’t be theoretically possible, at least not without a prism or glass coated mirrors…”

“It ain’t about what’s possible, it’s about what is. And what is in this room and the light in it and the stars showing you the light. Stand in the light and you’ll get what I mean. You’ll see more than you wishta and more than ya thought ya could.” Moose let his words hang in the air and Sandra felt the tendril of curiosity draw her in further. What he was saying made peculiar sense. Of course standing in the light wouldn’t do anything, but staring at the stars also technically did nothing, and she loved doing that.

“Ya see,” Moose continued, “there’s more out there than any uh ya think. There’s places where mol’en lava freezes and unfreezes together. Where bacteria live on the edge of a black hole because its all hotter than ya expect. There’s places where ya should be able to breath but can’t and in not being able to breath ya find that ya can.”

Sandra looked back, her arm outreached to the beam of light focused in the center of the barn. Moose looked peculiar. As if his skin had begun to sag and melt off. Like there was a myriad of stars beneath that sagging skin and as if within that myriad of stars were scales. His eyes looked sad and longing and his long, claw like fingers were softening around the edges. “You talk like you’ve seen it. Have you seen it?”

Moose smiled. It was then that his teeth made more sense. His smile was radiant and coy and joyful. It reminded Sandra of the first time she saw the night’s sky. “When yer born out there, without purpose, or parents, or others uh yer own kind, ya get confused. Ya don’t know what yer for, what yer meant to be, or even what the hells goin’ on out there. I came here to find my own peace, my own meaning, but I built this to remind me where I came from.”

When he finished his sentence and by the time she comprehended his words, her hand had already reached into the beam of light. The last image she remembered before she came too was the creature Moose had morphed into.

His skin was Black. It was so black that it was cataclysmically black. So deep and dark and dangerously it glared black that it warped the air around it. Soft ripples of dense matter radiated and perpetuated its being. But within that black, there were scales of brilliant and sparkling light radiating all at once as twisting and contorting rainbow flashes. He was skinny and emaciated but full of tender light emanating from within all that black. His hands were claws but not claws. They seemed to be in all places at once, just like his shoulders, his legs, his feet, his head and even his skin. Those bright white teeth had transfigured into sharp incisors that also seemed to stretch and retract within the uneven light. He was tall, but not so tall that Sandra was shocked, just tall enough that he probably wasn’t human. Everything was angular and rounded at the same time. It all made her think of quantum mechanics, how some things were there and not there at the same time. When she focused on one limb, it would come into clarity, but the moment she looked at something else it changed.

One tear escaped the corner of her eye as the light enveloping her hand forced her head into the air.

She’d done it.