Bent Heavens

Set in the small town of Bloughton, Iowa, the story opens with a flashback to three years before the main action. Liv Fleming, then a freshman, watches a naked man stagger into the town square. Onlookers identify him as Lee Fleming, Liv's father, the beloved senior English teacher at Bloughton High. EMTs load him onto a stretcher while his only coherent words are "Biologic evidence!" Lee had been missing for four days, and the narrative establishes that eight months later he will vanish forever.

The story jumps to the present, the last Sunday before Liv's senior year. She is roused by Doug Monk, her childhood friend, for their weekly ritual: checking six traps Lee built in the woods to catch the "skinners," alien beings Lee claimed had abducted him. Doug, a socially marginalized boy who survives on trail mix and illegal fireworks sales, is the only person loyal to Lee's memory. Liv wants to end the ritual but cannot bring herself to say so.

Flashbacks reveal Lee's decline. After returning from the hospital, he told Liv and her mother, Aggie, that aliens he called skinners had abducted him. He described specific entities: the Whistler, who stood out of view making sounds; the Floating Pumpkin, an orange orb; and the Green Man, a terrifying ten-foot figure. He converted the garden shed into a workshop called the Armory, filling it with handmade traps and named weapons, including Maquahuitl, an Aztec-style bladed club, and Mist, a double-bladed thrusting weapon. Doug, who lacked a father figure, became Lee's devoted apprentice, abandoning his dream of building a corn maze on his family's land, the Monk Block. Lee grew increasingly ill and led hunting expeditions in the surrounding woods. On the final hunt in Black Glade, Iowa's largest forest, he recognized an abandoned farm and became terrified. He handed Liv his annotated copy of James Galvin's poetry collection Resurrection Update, climbed over an electric fence, and disappeared forever. Liv forced the book on Doug and felt a secret, shameful relief at her father's departure.

Senior year begins. In English class, Liv is paired with Bruno Mayorga, a charismatic new student from a Mexican-American family that has moved frequently due to his mother's undocumented status. The teacher announces the school will produce Oliver!, the same musical Lee directed in his final production, a performance in which he wove his alien delusions into the staging. Liv erupts in class and is suspended from cross-country. At home, Aggie copes with two jobs and wine.

On Friday, Liv discovers that Amputator, a spring-loaded jaw trap, has caught a humanoid creature with translucent skin, bulging blue eyes, three-fingered hands, and visible internal organs. She calls Doug, who takes charge. They drag the creature to the Armory and restrain it. In its hand, they find Lee's wrist compass, a birthday gift from Aggie. Liv straps the compass to her wrist and nearly calls 911 but hesitates. Doug argues against involving anyone, insisting authorities would confiscate the creature and Lee would be forgotten. He proposes interrogating it through pain. That night, Liv returns alone and kicks the creature repeatedly, channeling years of grief. Doug finds her and encourages her to hit harder.

They settle into a routine of feeding the creature and interrogating it with escalating violence. Doug calls it "Subject A" and keeps notes in Resurrection Update. A begins speaking single words: "Car," "Bow," "Hole." Doug dismisses these as meaningless and cites military interrogation protocols to justify further abuse. He eventually uses pliers and a knife to extract A's teeth and cut out its tongue. Liv is horrified and begins secretly giving A painkillers. Meanwhile, her relationship with Bruno deepens as she isolates herself from friends and is kicked off cross-country.

When Liv mentions the words "Car, Bow, Hole" to Bruno, he recognizes the phonetics of Spanish and suggests they form the surname Carbajal. A may have been trying to communicate a name all along.

Doug plans a public reveal of A to vindicate Lee's reputation. Liv drugs her mother and moves A to a hiding spot, replacing it with the family dog in a football helmet. When Doug unveils the tarp before roughly twenty teenagers, they find a grinning dog. The crowd erupts in laughter, and Doug is humiliated. He confronts Liv, confessing that A is the only thing of value he has. He smashes the shed's door with Maquahuitl, one of Lee's weapons, and storms off. That night, Liv brings A into her bedroom and sleeps beside it, sharing body heat. Before dawn, Doug enters quietly and carries A away, saying he will take care of it.

Liv attempts to rebuild her life. Her mother empties every bottle of alcohol in the house. Doug stops appearing at school. In the library, Liv searches for Carbajal and discovers Carlos Carbajal, a journalist arrested for trespassing on restricted federal property near Bloughton. She drives to his apartment, where he reveals the creatures are not aliens but humans: life-sentence prisoners subjected to radical surgery under a classified government program called Biatalik. The program aimed to eliminate degenerative disease but evolved toward military applications. Major Dawkins, the Flemings' neighbor, was involved. Carbajal tells Liv her father is dead and that she and Doug are no better than the program's doctors.

Liv drives to the abandoned farm and descends into the Biatalik compound beneath a silo. She finds a surreal underground dwelling where mutated prisoners live a simulacrum of domestic life. Dr. Faddon, the program's lead surgeon, explains that Lee had stage-four lymphoma and came voluntarily, hoping to be cured. Lee's "alien abduction" memories were confused recollections of procedures: The skinners were doctors in blue scrubs, the Floating Pumpkin was a surgical lamp, and the Green Man was a Frankenstein movie poster. Liv stabs Faddon with Mist, one of Lee's handmade weapons, and shouts for the prisoners to flee.

The full horror crystallizes: Subject A is Liv's own father, transformed beyond recognition. He clutched the compass because it was his own possession. The family dog had recognized Lee all along.

Liv receives a text directing her to the Monk Block, where Doug has finally built his long-dreamed-of corn maze. In an outbuilding, she finds mason jars containing harvested parts of A's body. She crashes through the corn using her father's compass and reaches the center, illuminated by Roman candles. Beneath a tarp lies not A but Bruno, who had left Liv a voicemail about approaching Doug and was captured instead. Believing the body is her father, Liv drives a pitchfork into it as an act of mercy, then discovers it is Bruno when his phone rings.

Doug attacks Liv, pressing the pitchfork handle against her throat. Lee appears, having chewed off his own arm to escape his bonds, and strikes Doug with Maquahuitl. Doug stumbles into the fireworks, catches fire, and disappears into the burning cornfield. Lee collapses; swinging the weapon has driven his exoskeletal ribs into his heart. Liv holds him, recites Galvin's poem, and watches him die. She leaves his body for authorities as testimony. Liv calls 911 and carries Bruno out of the burning maze, whispering "Live" into his ear. In the novel's final line, she hears him whisper back: "Liv."