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That Saturday morning in the summer of 1959, 12-year-old Bobby Vicker’s head was full of the book he was reading (for the second time). It was Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon, and he had seen the film at The Majestic Theatre in the nearby town of Cornersville the previous year.

When Bobby was reading, the characters and plots of books in which he was immersed were more real than the world around him. He entered those worlds fully and willingly, and they held more interest for him than the farm on which he lived with his parents and sisters. The rolling farmland, with its hillocks and occasional craggy peaks, paled in comparison to the mysterious landscapes that Bobby discovered within the pages of a book.

Bobby was stretched out on the lumpy but comfortable couch in the back kitchen of the farmhouse. He almost jumped out of his skin and dropped the book he was holding when a voice broke into his imaginary world. Bobby’s mother was standing in the doorway that led from the kitchen proper to the back kitchen. Wearing her customary apron, Bobby’s mother had a tea towel in one hand and a skillet in the other. As she stood there, she continued to dry it.

“Your dad asked you to go back to the fields and find the pig that got out of the barnyard,” Bobby’s mother said. “You better get that done before he returns home from his fence-fixing on the other farm.”

The Vicker family had two farms – the one where they lived in the clapboard farmhouse, and another one on the adjoining concession road that had no buildings on it. It was used for planting crops and pasturing cattle.

“But Mom, I am at a really good part in this book!” the boy pleaded.

With a resolute look on her face, Verna Vicker walked down the solitary step to the floor of the back kitchen. She set the skillet and tea towel on the freezer which filled the space between the kitchen and back kitchen doors. She walked to the screen door and opened it wide. Raising her arm and with a finger pointing outside to the back stoop, Mrs. Vicker did not need to say a word to get her son off his butt. Bobby folded down the corner of the page he was reading and half-heartedly made his way to the door.

“Dumb old pig,” the boy muttered as he walked past his mother and out the door that she was holding open.

“I beg your pardon!” his mother exclaimed.

“I don’t mean you, Mom,” Bobby blurted out. “I mean that dumb old pig that found a way to get out of the barnyard.”

He was already halfway across the backyard, just past the old hand water pump that they still used sometimes, when he heard his mother call out to him. “You should take Butchie with you.”

Butchie was the family beagle and Bobby’s buddy. The loyal dog was nowhere in sight, but Bobby knew where to find him. Now quite old, the dog liked to spend warm summer days curled up on the coolness of the pavement in the shed that housed farming implements. The shed was on the laneway leading back to the imposing old barn that was at a distance from the house. As he approached the shed, Bobby called out to Butchie, who came to the doorof the shed as reluctantly as Bobby had left his book.

“Dumb old pig,” Bobby murmured under his breath. As he started walking back the laneway that ran alongside the barn and then disappeared on the horizon at the back of the farm, the old dog obediently followed his owner.

The Vicker farm was approximately 200 acres in total and stretched from swampland on one side and a cluster of trees on the other. The land ascended the further one walked back toward the croplands on either side of the laneway. Bobby’s favourite spot on the farm was the highest point beyond the field of crops, where there was a huge, flat rock not far from a small pond and a band of trees. Bobby figured this was where the pig would be found because for reasons no one understood, any farm animals that escaped the barnyard headed for that destination, at the high point of the farm.

With Butchie at his heels, Bobby came to the crest of the hill and saw the huge rock in the distance that denoted the high point of the Vicker farm. The boy stopped dead in his tracks, and his dog did the same. Bobby stared at the rock, disbelievingly. There was someone stretched out on it. Splayed was the word that came to Bobby’s mind. Perhaps something rather than someone was more appropriate, the boy thought. The thing was clad in a green uniform and wearing a helmet. It appeared to have fallen to earth from the heavens above.

The boy moved closer, just a few yards away from the rock and the thing splayed out on top of it. Butchie started to growl. The dog moved in front of the boy, and seemed to want him to move backward.

Bobby stood his ground. He tried to determine if this thing was a man or an alien. Was it breathing? It was not moving; there wasn’t any indication it was alive.

Suddenly, a cluster of clouds crossed over the sun, and the hilltop was shrouded in darkness. A shiver ran up and down Bobby’s spine. Fear coursed through his veins. The boy turned around and ran as fast as he could back down the hill and along the familiar laneway, Butchie at his heels.

~~

His mother said Bobby had an overactive imagination.

Bobby’s father dutifully walked back the laneway with him.

There was nothing on the rock!

Bobby felt regret. Then fear.

Darkness descended…

~~

Only the dog returned home that day.

Originally published in Sage Cigarettes Magazine