We'd been talking about a report one of the teen-agers had given us, something about ghostly eyes in the bushes near the Auction Barn. We'd asked if they'd been drinking or smoking something stronger than cigarettes, but they assured us they hadn't. Not that we fully believed them - why would they admit it to a retired cop and his friends if they had?

"What's that supposed to mean?" Tolbert's sister, Tracy Brandt, asked.

"Well, I was a cop here for fifteen years, and we've gotten a lot of reports about some funny things happening down there..."

"Oh, you know these fishermen! Always drunk!" Jasper scowled.

"Well, I'm sure that's a lot of it," Tolbert replied, "But some of the stories don't come from fishermen."

We all looked at each other, wondering whose credibility Tolbert would trust that much.

"You know Kohn?"

We nodded. "The captain," Jasper confirmed.

"Well, back when he and I were patrolmen together, we saw something down there..."

Kohn swung the cruiser down the old river road at the north edge of town.

"Might as well see what's going on down here," he remarked to his buddy, Tolbert.

Tolbert laughed. "Yea, we might get a couple under-agers. Wait'll they see us driving up - it'll scare the bejaezus out of them."

The old river road swung south along the river, now swollen from the dam downstream. Its winding curves paralelled the old river's course from the site of the old bridge to the Cattle Auction barn. When it was above some good farmland, the road had been in use, but it now lay deserted and overgrown, a great place for under-aged kids to hide and drink.

The cruiser joggled along the road, hitting halfway-unearthed tree roots and potholes no longer thought necessary to patch. Tolbert rolled his window down and listened for the sounds of a party being quieted, but heard nothing more than the lapping of water against driftwood.

The lights of the Auction Barn came into view and Kohn sighed. "Nothing tonight."

Tolbert checked his watch. "Time for break. Want to radio in? Or do you want to drive up to the Barrel first?"

"I'm sick of microwaved food. I brought a sandwich, how about you?"

"Same."

They pulled into a gravel turn-out and Kohn shut the engine down. Tolbert radioed in, and they got their bags out of the back.

"Sure is a quiet night," Tolbert remarked. Stars twinkled over the river and one shot across the sky. Far off, on the other side of the river, the red light of a radio tower blinked on and off. Water lapped at the bank below them. Crickets sang.

"Do you hear something?" Kohn asked around a moutful of bologna.

Tolbert listened. He heard the water and the crickets, but nothing else.

Wait... Was that a sound? Or just the idea of one? Tolbert strained to hear, but his ears told him there was nothing beyond what he'd already identified.

And yet, there was something different that he couldn't put his finger on.

"Look."

Tolbert followed Kohn's silhoutted gaze and saw lights down on the river. It was late, and he knew for a fact there were no fishermen out tonight. Nobody was out there, they would have noticed the lights before now if there had been.

The lights were red and green, and rising up from the surface of the water as if floating on an invisible cloud. Blinking, rising, they were at the same level as the car and then above it before either cop could finish chewing what was in his mouth. Finally the top of the car hid the lights from view and the two men glanced at each other.

But the strange show wasn't done yet. A blinding white light shot down from the direction the blinking lights had gone and Kohn and Tolbert stuck their heads out their windows to have a look.

The light was coming down from a blackness darker than the surrounding sky. They couldn't see the blinking lights for the glare of it. Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the light switched off and only the blinking red and green lights remained. As the two policemen watched, the blinking lights and their dark connecting form took off rapidly up-river until they disappeared around the bend.

Kohn swallowed his mouthful. "I'll be damned," he said. "Did you see that?"

"Yea, but if you ask me in front of anyone, I'll swear I didn't."

Kohn licked the mustard off his fingers and started the car. "Good. Because I was going to say the same thing to you. Time to make another round."

The car backed onto the paved road and started up the street.