We left the hot bar, swaying out into the even hotter summer night. Stale air trailed after us for a few steps. The night had been ramshackle and carefree, one of the best. There had been no sickness, no drama and no hassle, only ringing laughter and raised glasses.

“You coming back for a couple more and some decent music?” I called to Cal, who had swaggered off to water the dusty grass behind the bar.

“Yeah, wait up.” Came the muffled reply.

I waited, kicking small stones in the dust.

A minute or so later we were on our way once more, laughing as we went.

We always walked by the side of the river, watching the water endlessly rushing by. It was strange, it always looked the same but the water was always different, never the same drop returned.

As we stared out over the perpetual motion of the water we saw a strange silver-blue light illuminating the sky far beyond the opposite bank. I looked at Cal, he looked at me – yes, we had both seen it. The light shone there like the halo of some miniature unseen city where the lights did not have the sickly orange glow of other towns.

“What do you think that is?” I asked, genuinely intrigued.

“I don’t know man, could be the aliens. Could be their ship landing on the hill.” Cal said, as if this were the only reasonable explanation.

I looked at him again, his eyes shining as he stared off towards his imagined intergalactic travellers. “Come on, you always have to give such a ridiculous significance to these things. Remember when you read that book. What was it called? The bible code. You really thought there were secret messages hidden in the lines of the bible.”

“There are messages in the bible, the time just hasn't come for all their prophecies to be fulfilled man. Let’s go see if I’m right about this too!” Cal declared stubbornly.

That was it, all thoughts of further drinking evaporated; this had become the timeless battle of the wrong and the right. “Yeah, let’s go see how wrong you are.” I replied.

We began to stride for the bridge when Cal suddenly stopped. “How far do you think it is to that light?” He asked.

I stopped and looked out over the water as it slid silently by, “Dunno, mile, maybe two.” I shrugged.

“So it’s outside the town then?”

“Well, yeah. Town stops half a mile past the bridge.”

“Hadn’t we better bring a torch or something then?” Cal must have been more sober than I thought.

“Good call man. Lets duck in at mine. There’s a torch out in the shed, should do us for this trip.”

We collected the torch after much rummaging. Cal managed to stand on a rake, one of its teeth piercing his boot and shooting out between his toes. “Argh!” He screamed, “My new boots!”

“Shh, keep it quiet." I replied, "Let’s go.”

As we emerged from the garden and looked up the light made it seem as if were the moon had fallen to earth behind the trees on the other side of the river. We stared at it again for a moment.

We set off once more, saving the torch for when we reached the edge of town.

The light remained always visible but never seeming to draw nearer, unreachable like some nocturnal rainbow.

This was only an illusion however as, by the time we had walked for half an hour the light had grown stronger and had started to cast strange shadows through the leaves and branches around us. We were walking along the main road out of town and every few minutes we would shut off the torch to see how bright the light had become around us.

The night had begun to cool around us as we walked, the eerie light exaggerated the effect making us shiver. We had both grown more uneasy with each step, yet we were drawn on by some compelling force.

Finally as we rounded a bend the source of the light blazed before us. We could not see what it was as we shielded our eyes, only that it was bright and that it shone at an odd angle from the place where the road met the trees.

We moved outwards into the forest to approach from an angle not so blinded by the light. Leaves and twigs crackled beneath our slow foot steps. Then, finally, we saw it.

The light was the blazing headlights of an upturned car which lay in the ditch on the outside of a bend. The angle it had come to rest at meant it’s halogen headlights sent their blue-white rays up towards the clouds above. The beams cut through the night.

We could hear the car quietly clicking and hissing as we drew nearer. The passenger door was open and a young woman lay in the bloodied leaves, she wasn’t moving. The driver was still held in place by his seatbelt, his neck bent to some unnatural angle. We could tell he was dead from ten feet away. We moved towards the girl. She too was dead, there was no pulse and her skin was growing cold in the night air.

A blanket was splayed on the roof of the car above the back seat, Cal pulled it out and laid it over the girl’s body. I went to the driver’s door, reached in through the window hole and turned off the lights.