The Surveyor

By Sage Groves

Cassiopeia Roberts, known only as Cas to the twelve people who inhabited her town, lingered in the shadow cast by a highway-side gas station in the evening sun. The sky burned as bright as the kindling cigarette glued to Cas’s parted lips, and with every drag she took, her lungs became as hot as the desert sands of her town. 

“Did ya hear about Valerie?”

Cas glanced down at her co-worker sitting on the curb beside her; he was much younger than her, maybe thirty, and had just moved out to her town a few months prior, though the effects of the ruthless sun had already started to appear on his spotting skin.

“Yeah,” Cas deadpanned. “Bitch was getting old anyway.” 

“Still weird though.” His leg bounced nervously and he took another drag. Cas threw the bud of her cigarette on the ground, stepping it out with the soul of her stained shoe. “You going home?”

Cas nodded and sluggishly ambled across the parking lot to her car. She heard the man heave himself up and jog after her. “Hey, uh, I’m leaving too. Maybe we should get something to eat?”

“No.”

Her coworker snorted. “Alright, I get it. Let me at least drive home with you, yeah? It’s not safe living alone out here; it’s getting dark.”

Cas laughed, her voice still scratchy from the cigarette. “What do you know about ‘out here?’ I’ve lived here for a long time, kid. Scary shit happens, yeah—but not when you’re in your own home. I’m safe as long as I don’t step outside my front door.” 

“You’ve heard of the Nightstalker?”

Cas scowled. “He was caught last month and he didn’t come anywhere near this ghost town.” 

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“How?”

“Cause none of us died, did we? Look—this shithole? It’s not special enough for anyone to come to; there’s nothing here. The only reason to stop is for gas.” She jabbed her hand in the air, pointing towards the station. “People come here to dump bodies, not to get them.” 

The man pursed his lips together, and when it was obvious that he had no response, Cas opened her car door. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Benny.”

Earth’s sun had disappeared, enveloping a battered desert home in darkness. Cas’s body was entangled every which way in the small cupboard beneath her dilapidated kitchen sink in attempts to plant a firm connection between the shut-off valve and a rusted wrench. The pipes and Cas groaned simultaneously; the pipes in protest and Cas in utter annoyance as her tattered tank top stuck to her skin with sweat despite the evening hour.

The pipe shuddered, teasing the woman into believing that it would produce water, but it did not. In a burst of frustration, Cas slammed the wrench against the pipe, the impact sending painful vibrations through her hand and into her arm. 

“Damn house is fallin’ apart,” she griped as she removed her aging body from the cramped cupboard. She trudged to her refrigerator and snorted. So am I. 

Cas’s fridge contained three items; a dish of overly soft butter, half of a tuna sandwich, and a carton of milk; they were the possessions of a woman whose care had been battered down from years of monotony. 

She decided on the milk. Folding the gable top back, Cas examined the poorly printed photos on the side of the carton—two girls, ages nine-ish and ten-ish, cute pale faces not yet touched by the harshness of the desert sun, unlike Cas whose skin was speckled with spots of red and white. 

The milk dripped down the corners of her mouth as she gulped, streaming down her chin and neck and finally blending with the sweat gathered in the hem of her shirt. Still slurping, Cas plopped into a La-Z-Boy that was just as worn as everything else in her decrepit home and gazed out her living room window into the void of the Mojave. 

The sun had set barely an hour ago, yet the sky already littered itself with the ghosts of long-dead stars. On the horizon, mountains like uncut gems stood tall in the half-moon’s glow, and before them laid Cas’s town, just as much of a ghost as the stars. 

The desert was just as much of a hell as it was a home for the woman and yet the intoxicating nothingness chained her there. Responsibility and true adulthood escaped those who endured its relentless noon heat and its deadly frigid midnights. 

Cas worked at a highway-side gas station, a few hours a day, a few days a week, but had no kids, no pets, no bills other than electricity and water; she lived as minimally as possible not because she had to but because she wanted to. 

Above all else, Cas stayed in the Mojave because it was quiet. Her ears were seldom burdened by any noise she did not wish to hear and that was something she could not get many places—and it was next to free. 

Creak.

An unwelcomed sound in the silence. 

The sound was followed by another and then another and by the time the woman realized that the sounds were those of footsteps on her front porch, it was too late: a knock at the door. 

“The hell?” No one had ever knocked on Cas’s door unannounced—there was no one to knock on the door. 

Benny’s conversation from earlier that day rang in the back of Cas’s mind. She was safe, as long as she was inside… right? 

Images of the milk carton children flashed across her eyes and although she was far from being a child, that grotesque fear that comes along with being a woman who lives alone churned in the pit of her stomach. 

A kidnapper? The knock came again, harder this time. “You’ve heard of the Nightstalker?” Benny had said not a few hours before.

He was caught… 

There could be another. 

Cas thought she heard a third knock, but it was just the sound of her heart thumping against her ribcage. A killer? The desert is home to many of them; a graveyard that is unkept and unmarked. Cas’s own words swirled through her mind—people come here to dump bodies, not to get them. 

But what if she was wrong?

The thought of her body melting in the sun maybe only a few miles from her home, unfound for eternity, became more realistic in Cas’s mind with every harrowing second. 

No lights were on in Cas’s home except for the kitchen light which was not visible from the porch. I can just pretend I am not home… no, my car is in the driveway. Dead giveaway—

Marybeth Mckinnons!

The neighbor, Marybeth Mckinnons, who lived a mile down the dirt road, called Cas earlier that morning to let her know that she would be coming over—the poor woman’s dog, Valerie, was found dead the night before, seemingly mutilated by an animal, and Marybeth needed some company. The ordeal was strange, Cas had thought, because there were not many animals in the desert that would come after a large dog like Valerie. “Could have been a mountain lion,” Marybeth had said on the phone. It was possible—Cas had been hearing some odd screaming noises in the mountains recently—but she still was not fully convinced. 

Heaving a sigh of relief, Cas chuckled at herself for being so worried, though the picture of her rotting corpse still lingered in the back of her mind. 

“Jesus Cas,” she scoffed aloud. “You let that kid put a bunch of ideas in your head. You’re better than this.”

She pulled herself out of the La-Z-Boy with a grunt and trudged across the room, flicking the porchlight on before swinging the door open. Expecting to see a wrinkled face framed with a gray bob, Cas was thoroughly shocked to see instead what appeared to be a coy smile and the rest of a face shaded from the porchlight by the brim of an old stetson. 

“Good evening, ma’am,” said a thick trans-Atlantic accent. “May I bother you for a glass of water? It’s mighty dry out here.”

What the hell?

Without a second thought, Cas reached to swing the door shut, but instead of the door closing in the stranger’s face, the door was stopped by his elbow. Cas shoved the door, and although she was a large woman, she was no match for the seemingly inhuman strength of the man. He leaned his elbow against the door like he was about to deliver a pickup line; he crossed one boot-covered foot over the other, letting his spurs rattle in the quiet night. 

“I—I have a a g-gun!” Cas’s words sputtered out between hasty breaths. She felt like a fish who had just been yanked out of the water. 

“You seem like a nice lady,” the man continued, ignoring her obvious lie. “Just a glass of water, maybe a coffee if you’ve got it?”

“I don’t.”

Shoving the door again, Cas realized the cowboy held infinitely more power in his one hand than she had in her entire body. The instinct to run took over, but the man seemed to know exactly what she was thinking, and before she could move, he smiled and removed his hat. Instead of finding a charming face like she’d expected, Cas found herself gazing into two pupiless eyes as endless as the void of the desert. 

The eyes grabbed her mind, bending it until she had no fear, no fight, and no instinct to run. Sinking deeper and deeper into the trance, Cas’s mind became numb to the fear of being a potential victim of a serial killer or whatever other horrible intentions she thought he may have had… he’s not so scary. 

And that image of her body in the sand was still glaring at her, though the veil of the man covered it from her eyes. 

“What’s your name, Miss?”

“Cas.”

“Cas?”

“Cassiopeia.”

“Much better, Cassiopeia. The name is Eli.”

“Eli.” Her voice was barely her own. “Would you like to come in?”

“No,” he smiled, putting his hat back on. Cas realized, then, that she never actually got a good look at his face—only those eyes. “Would you like to join me on the porch? It’s a lovely night.” 

“It is.”

And controlled by a brain that no longer belonged to her, Cas stepped outside of her front door.

The two beings walked to a pair of rocking chairs on the lamp-lit porch and sat. Something about looking at the cowboy made the woman’s head pound and her eyes spin; she gazed out at the distant mountains instead, at the light speckled sands of her town. All twelve people—they would have to notice if she suddenly disappeared… right? 

“How long have you lived here Cassiopeia?”

“All my life. I was born in this house.”

“When?”

“Fifty-seven years ago.”

The man inhaled slowly, as if he was savoring the air he was breathing. Cas spared a glance at him—sending a shock of pain through her temple—and she saw a ghost of an image seen long ago on a movie screen. 

The man smiled charmingly. “I was in the Mogaveh about then. Left for a while, came back later, left again, back now.”

“The Mogaveh? Do you mean the Mojave?”

“People always tell me, ‘John, you’re saying it wrong!’” The man knocked his heels together. The sound of rattling spurs rang in Cas’s ears, intensifying her headache. “It’s my accent, I’m afraid.”

“John?”

“Yes?”

“No—I… I just thought you said your name was Eli is all.”

He stiffened. “You misheard me, ma’am.”

“I apologize,” Cas muttered. She hadn’t looked at the man in some time, and the effects of his glare were starting to wear off. Cas’s first instinct was to bolt into a run, but something told her that she would never outrun him, even in his cowboy boots. The only thing she could do was stall her inevitable fate. “You don’t look very old, sir.”

Eli or John tilted his head like he was scanning his brain for a response. Like he was computing.  “No ma’am. Do you mind me asking what year it is?”

“1985.” Cas had almost broken out of the spell completely. If I can get back into the house, perhaps I can get a knife from the kitchen. 

It was a big if. 

“Who’s popular right now? Who's the talk of the town?”

“Harrison Ford?” Her words were breathy, barely audible, but the man acted as if he heard them clear as day. 

“Alright Cassiopeia,” Eli or John said, his voice abandoning all his earlier charm. “Why are you here?”

“I live here.” Her hands and feet were numb—I don’t think I could run even if I had the chance. 

“You know what I mean.”

“No,” she shook her head. “I don’t.”

“There are a lot of places to live on this planet. It seems like this part of the surface is one of the most uninhabitable places to be—it most certainly ain’t comfortable. You know, where I’m from we tend to make our homes in places with less… heat.”

“And where are you from?”

The man did not answer, and that computing expression graced his face once more. Then slowly he opened his mouth to speak; the seconds that passed while his mouth hung open and no words came out felt like a millennium to Cas. She had stopped breathing completely. 

“Would you like to stay here, Cassiopeia?”

His threat was clear.

The yellow glare of the porchlight painted the man in ghastly hue, and while Cas couldn’t see the man’s face under his hat, she imagined that it would be the color of pistachios. As her crippling fear of the unknown continued to augment, the image of the man sitting next to her morphed into anything but a man—she imagined beating yellow eyes, porous skin, rotten teeth. 

Every bone in her body wanted to look at the man, to stare at his appearance to assure herself that it was all in her head. But she couldn’t move, because there was always the possibility that she was correct—no matter how irrational, and the sight of the decaying cowboy was the only thing she did not want to see before her untimely death. 

“Yes.”

“Then I suggest you do not ask those kinds of questions.”

A painful shiver slid down Cas’s back. It had become clear in the woman’s mind that this was a killer of some sort, someone who enjoyed playing games and inciting fear. And as his spell began to further decay, sparks of stubborn anger began to ignite within Cas’s soul. 

“Okay.”

“What is the current state of the world?”

Keep stalling. “Umm, fine? I guess?” Headlines of cold wars and lethal killers flashed across her eyes—the world was far from fine… but something told Cas that he knew that already. “Can you be more specific, John?”

“No ma’am. My name is not John, either; it’s Harrison, I told you that.” Eli or John or Harrison turned his seat to face his host, the old chair screeching on the wooden porch. 

“I—I’m sorry.”

“Quite alright ma’am. But what if I’d forgotten your name? You people take names so seriously. You’ve never even been to αCas.”

Cas gulped… is he on crack? “I’m sorry, I’m not sure I understand.”

The man stiffened like he had suddenly realized what he had said and regretted doing so. “Nevermind. Do you not understand what is happening, ma’am?”

Cas truly had no idea what was happening, she had only assumed she was in danger; there was no doubt, though, that this man was absolutely terrifying. That image of her body lying motionless in the sand haunted her once again, and while it was appalling, it was also enraging. “No,” she admitted, her voice scratchy and her eyes welling with tears both of anger and fear. The woman hadn’t cried since she was a girl, but she didn’t feel like a child. She felt like an ancient woman, plagued by a long life that was now ending in a horrid way. 

“I am a surveyor, if you will, and I don’t have much time. So if you would answer my questions, I would appreciate it greatly.”

Cas still gazed at the horizon, too afraid to look, but the spell had completely dissolved. “Why me?” Her voice was no longer shaking, but it was not because of a cruel acceptance of her inevitable fate, nor was it because she was in denial. 

“Why not you?”

A tear slipped from her eye. 

“Are you afraid, Cassiopeia?”

“Yes.”

Moments fleeted in which the Surveyor did not speak. And then: “Why?”

Cas wiped the tear from her cheek and swallowed the lump that had been forming in her throat. “You have come to my home, and threatened to take me away from it.”

“Cassiopeia, you have nothing,” the Surveyor sighed. “Look where you live, how you live. There are so many things wrong with your planet—why do you still wish to live on it?”

Cas pursed her dry lips into a scowl, and whipped her head around to look at the man, not even caring about the headache his appearance would give her. There was no pistachio face, no rotten teeth, no yellow eyes, just the low dipped brim of his hat and the shaded smile. And while the terror of not knowing what sinister motives lurked under that brim still clawed at her throat, she spoke in a clear tone. “Because it is still my home.”

Silence again. Then:

“Thank you Cassiopeia. I have all that I need.”

With that, Eli or John or Harrison rose from his seat, stepped off the porch, and ambled down the driveway. Cas sat there, chest heaving, tears silently flowing out of her eyes with the anger and fear that had been consuming her body for the last half hour. She could not see the man as he walked down the street, but she could hear the rhythmic rattling of his spurs slowly fading away. 

The woman was alive. The man hadn’t killed her. 

And although Cas had been so sure that he would, now she couldn’t help but think that murder was never his intention to begin with… at least not yet. 

A few moments after the rattling ceased, Cas saw a shooting star fly from the mountains. A shooting star flying up. 

And as her emotions settled, and her thoughts became clearer, a part of Cas knew that that star would be coming back, because all surveys eventually need to be updated.