All Will Be Revealed

The body floated six feet above the ground, resting on an unseen surface. The underside wasn’t pressed flat as if the corpse merely sat on glass. The thick grey sailcloth the body was wrapped in was bunched and wrinkled. It looked as if it had been tossed in the air and had somehow come to rest. The gender, race, and age of the figure inside were indeterminate.

They’d come out thinking this was a search for victims of an avalanche in the hills of Colorado.

The rockslide occurred early on a clear March morning. It’d been a light avalanche season soon coming to a close. No one had reported any missing persons in the area, but after seeing a 1978 Ford Bronco with a dented and primer-splotched exterior parked at the trailhead for a couple of days, they decided to run the plates. They were fakes. Now it wasn’t just a search compelled by a natural disaster, It was an investigation.

Three investigators headed up the trail. First, there was the dog. His name was Bark Twain. The two humans on the search were Dorcas and Jason. Jason was named after his mother’s high school boyfriend, Dorcas was named after a famous relative, and the dog’s name was more like a title. It was this small town’s tradition to name their only K9 officer after the dog who first held that position, a bloodhound who started sometime around 1905. The Chief at the time had been a big fan of Huck Finn.

Dorcas wrangled Bark Twain, and Jason wrangled himself - both of them were dealing with a handful. Both Bark and Jason had minimal training but were qualified enough to look for things in the woods.

Dorcas took her job seriously, and when they came across the wrapped body in the clearing of silt, rocks, and sand, she immediately started determining proper protocol in her head. Even though it was an unidentified object floating above the ground, Bark had indeed identified it as a body. But she could not write, “We found a floating body in the woods” into her report. She might have been witness to this fact, but as a member of law enforcement, it wasn’t her job to speculate the nature of this event as she saw it, her job was only to record things as she found them with reasonable, dry, context.

Jason, on the other hand, wanted answers. As they approached, his hand started falling up towards the floating figure like a child reaching for a toy.

Dorcas verbally clapped at him, “Officer, go back to the car and get the kit.”

Jason didn’t appear to be listening as he continued to reach.

“Officer,” she said with a clipped and lowered tone. “Get the kit please.” Jason looked at her, gave a half frown and nod, then started the fifteen-minute walk back to the parking lot.

The kit was their crime scene kit, which they’d left behind. She thought they might find something, but it was much more likely that they’d find nothing. The car thing was odd, but shitty old cars get abandoned for all sorts of reasons. The fake plates were weird, but she’d met enough “sovereign citizens” in these parts not to be too surprised by it.

As for the landslide, if it had swept someone away, there were a lot of places to be swept away to. They might find evidence of someone buried, but probably not.

Dorcas ran her report through her head. Would she even acknowledge it as a body? They couldn’t see any physical evidence. Bark had sat and yipped as he was trained to do. At least that was some sort of evidence of something. It also had that familiar outline that humans can instinctually identify as one of their own.

She sniffed. What was that smell? Not decomposition. Was it ozone? The weather was calm and sunny amongst an otherwise cold breeze. If there was the smell of a body, it wasn’t “loud” enough for her nose to pick it up.

Upon Jason’s return with the duffle bag, he asked with a touch of irritation,

“So, uh, we’re going to take pictures and measure of its, um… placement in the air?”

They seemed to be on the same page.

Bark was tense, as Jason completed these ill-defined tasks. He took pictures from all four compass points. Even one while lying on the ground beneath it. It kind of looked like a wad of chewing gum against the sky.

As he lay there he turned to look up at Dorcas, “What now? Call the County Sheriff? We send them pictures and videos of this thing, and tell ‘em it’s a body because Bark says so? Won’t they just think we’re screwing around?”

Dorcas, deep in thought said, “We don’t know what this is. Do we?”

“Sure don’t,” he responded.

“Let’s leave as much of the ball in their court as possible. I can convince them out if I have to. I’ll invite Sherrif Reba out for a coffee, or something. We can’t seem to ignore this, so she won’t either.”

“I say we take off the cloth. At least see it. Get a picture of a body if that’s what it is. That can’t be ignored.”

“No. Too much mystery. If we unwrap it we could be destroying evidence. We don’t know what we need to preserve. I mean, even you resting on the ground beneath it could be a problem.”

“I wouldn’t call this resting D. I’m underneath a body that’s… well, it’s buried in the sky. Six feet above my head.”

Dorcas pondered, “Could this be a reflection? Is this just an image?”

“A reflection?” Jason was again irritated, “A reflection of what, D?”

“Something about you mentioning that it’s ‘buried’ six feet above you… could it somehow be like an optical illusion of something buried six feet below?”

“A reflection of something underground?” he asked incredulously.

It was her turn to frown, “Don’t act like I’m being strange. ”

“I doubt it,” he pointed at the ground. “It’s casting a shadow. Glitch in the Matrix I think,” he said staring back up at the wrapped figure.

“Like whoever is running this simulation messed up the code.”

“I don’t know how to frame this in reality.” she sighed.

“D,” Jason pleaded, “Let’s take off the cover.”

“I said no, Officer.”

“D, I know you think I’m dumb. Just let me take it off, and you can tell everyone Jason fucked it up! Totally believable! If we uncover a body, if we have human remains, we have something. They can deny a floating lump, they can’t deny a dead body.”

“What happens if that cloth is what’s holding that up there? What if you disturb it and it falls?“

“You think it’s a flying carpet?” he laughed.

“At least I’ve heard of a flying carpet!” her voice broke for the first time.

“If you take off that cloth, and this body or whatever falls, we’d be losing evidence.”

“Aliens are real now. Maybe it’s an alien body?” he speculated.

She barreled through it, “Our job is to preserve the objective truth of this batshit situation. It’s not our job to manufacture a reason or purpose.”

Jason rolled over onto his hands and grunted his way back up on his feet.

She pointed at the ground. “Let’s go.” at this Dorcas turned with Bark to walk away.

Jason reached up toward the figure. She caught his movement in her peripheral and yelled, “STOP!”

He slapped his hand against the side of the figure and tugged on the cloth just a tiny bit.

“I feel an ankle!” he shouted. He’d later argue that he barely touched it.

The cloth, empty, fell to the ground.