An altar is like an airport where spirits take off and land

― Steven Chuks Nwaokeke

Harold Thackery had spent thirty years managing small airports, but Rockfield Airstrip immediately felt different. The single runway stretched like a dark scar across the landscape, bordered by three weathered hangars and a control tower that seemed to lean slightly to the left. The place had an odd stillness to it, even when planes were landing.

“You’ll get used to the isolation,” said Leland, the aging groundskeeper who had shown him around. “Just don’t stay after sunset if you can help it. The air gets… heavy.” Harold had dismissed this as local superstition, the kind that accumulated around any remote location, but noticed how Leland’s eyes kept darting to the sky even in broad daylight.

The first month passed without incident. Harold established his routines, familiarized himself with the regular pilots, and even began repainting the faded markings on the tarmac. It was during this task that he first heard it---a sound like distant propellers, but with an irregular rhythm, almost organic in its pulsations. When he looked up, the sky was empty.

The radio interference started next. Pilots reported losing contact for precisely three minutes when passing over the northeastern corner of the property. Equipment checks revealed nothing unusual. Harold began logging these incidents, noting that they always occurred at exactly seventeen minutes past the hour, regardless of weather conditions or time of day.

“There’s something in the clouds,” whispered Valerie Roth, the night dispatcher who had worked at Rockfield for fifteen years. She had called Harold to the tower at midnight, pointing to a pattern in the darkness above---shapes moving against the stars, blotting them out in geometric configurations that seemed purposeful, intelligent. “They’ve been watching us for years, but there are more of them now. They’re getting ready.”

Harold intended to dismiss her, perhaps recommend some time off, but that night he found the logbooks from 1963. The entries from the previous manager detailed the same phenomena---the sounds, the radio blackouts, the patterns in the sky---culminating in the unexplained disappearance of an entire cargo plane and its crew. The final entry simply read: “They’re not from the clouds. They’re not from anywhere we understand.”

The next morning, Harold found strange markings on the runway, symbols etched into the tarmac with impossible precision. As he photographed them, he realized they matched the flight patterns recorded in the tower logs for the past week. Someone---or something---was mapping their movements, learning their routines. And as the sun set behind the control tower, Harold finally saw them clearly---vast silhouettes hovering just above perception, watching the tiny airport with ancient patience.

The radio crackled to life. “Control, this is Charlie-Niner requesting emergency landing. We’ve lost power and…” The transmission dissolved into white noise, then whispers, then something that wasn’t quite language but carried meaning nonetheless. Harold understood what Leland and Valerie already knew---Rockfield wasn’t just an airport. It was a waypoint for travelers from somewhere else, using familiar shapes to mask their true nature.

And tonight, they were coming down to introduce themselves.

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