Faces in the Field - Part II

The Vision’s Echo

Morning arrived as a gray hush over the land, a light without color. Dew silvered the grass, and the mowed lines of the field gleamed faintly like the ribs of a sleeping creature. A mist hung low, clinging to the shed, the trees, the hollow between house and field.

Eric Davidson stood in the open doorway of his garage, the cool air brushing against his arms. He had not slept. All night the image from the window had repeated behind his eyes, the blazing symmetry, the eyes suspended in white fire. It had burned itself into him, a silent afterimage behind every blink.

He had told himself it was nothing more than light, some trick of the atmosphere. He wanted to believe that. But the feeling that the night had looked back at him would not dissolve.

He stepped out into the yard barefoot, the grass damp against his feet. His breath made thin clouds in the air. The field beyond the garage stretched wide and quiet, every blade of grass tipped with moisture.

It should have looked the same as it always did. Yet something about it was wrong, or rather, too still. The usual chorus of morning birds was absent. Not a sparrow or wren broke the air. Even the crickets had fallen silent.

He walked to the edge of the mowed field, where the grass turned wild again. The mower tracks were still visible in the dew, leading like pale lines into the distance. His eyes followed them until they met a small rise in the earth he didn’t remember. It was subtle, a rounded shape interrupting the smoothness of the field.

Eric frowned. He was certain it hadn’t been there the day before.

He crossed the distance slowly, the dew darkening the cuffs of his jeans. As he approached, he saw that the rise wasn’t soft like a mound of soil. It was harder, the edges too precise. He knelt.

The smell of wet earth and roots filled the air. With his fingers, he brushed aside the thin layer of grass that clung to the surface. Beneath it, the dirt gave way to stone, flat and gray, its texture rough but deliberate.

More grass peeled away, revealing a shape. A curve. A line. Another.

He paused.

There, half-buried in the soil, lay a face.

Its features were blunt but symmetrical, carved deep into the stone: eyes like half-suns, a wide nose, a mouth pressed in a solemn line. Around it, faint rays radiated outward like spokes. The pattern was simple, old, and impossibly familiar.

Eric sat back on his heels. The cold of the morning pressed into his knees.

For a long time, he stared at it, trying to make the details shift into something ordinary, an old stepping stone, a decorative slab long forgotten. But he could not convince himself.

This was the same face. The one that had hovered in the sky.

He glanced around as if expecting someone else to be there, but the field remained empty. The mist was beginning to lift, pulling upward in thin gray threads.

He reached out a hand and laid it flat against the stone’s surface. It felt warm, warmer than it should have been after a night of cool air. The warmth seemed to pulse faintly, in rhythm with nothing he could name.

A flicker of dizziness passed through him. For a moment, he felt as if the ground beneath the stone were breathing.

He drew his hand back quickly.

“Probably trapped heat,” he murmured to no one. His voice sounded strange, swallowed by the open air.

He stood and scanned the field again. The grass around the stone was pressed down in a faint ring, as if something heavy had descended there.

The sun broke through the clouds, spilling weak light over the field. It caught on the damp edges of the stone, turning them almost metallic. Eric shielded his eyes. When the light hit at just the right angle, the carved eyes seemed to stare upward toward it, aligned perfectly with the rising sun.

He stayed there until the dew began to steam away.

By midmorning, the birds returned, cautious and distant. A crow landed on the power line and watched him with its head tilted.

Eric finally turned back toward the house, his thoughts dull with exhaustion. The image of the stone face followed him. He made coffee and sat again by the window, looking out toward the spot. From this angle, he could just make out the dark oval in the grass.

He tried to read a few lines from the newspaper but found himself glancing up every few seconds. The cup in his hand cooled untouched.

At noon, he went back outside with a small shovel. He told himself he only wanted to see how large the stone was, whether it was a random piece of masonry or something placed intentionally.

The first scrape of metal against stone echoed sharper than it should have. He brushed more dirt away, tracing the outer curve. The circular pattern continued farther than expected. The stone was wide, perhaps three feet across, its edges smooth beneath the soil.

When he leaned close, he thought he could smell something faint rising from the exposed surface, a mineral scent mixed with something like sun-warmed iron.

He touched it again. Still warm.

The warmth deepened through his palm, not hot but steady, almost comforting. Yet beneath it was a vibration, so subtle it could have been the trembling of his own hand.

He withdrew once more and sat back.

The light had changed. The sun stood high now, and the air carried a hum of insects again. The world was reassembling itself around him, pretending nothing unusual had happened.

Eric stood and dusted the soil from his hands. As he turned toward the house, he paused one last time to look back.

The carved eyes caught the light and seemed to shimmer faintly, though no wind stirred, no shadow passed.

He could not be sure if it was the play of sunlight or something moving beneath the surface.

He told himself he would cover it back tomorrow, let the grass grow over it again.

But that night, long after he went to bed, he dreamed of standing in the same field while the sky burned white, and when he woke before dawn, the memory of that silent, waiting face was as vivid as the first time he had seen it.

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Next - Part III: The Silent Companion