The Farmhouse
Fred Leary
He had bought Elderberry
Farm through a local
real estate dealer named Gerry Weisel in the spring of 1965. He was some type
of doctor, but those in the town all knew him simply as Reginald Snowe, when he
made his furtive visits to town for groceries. For the most part, he kept to
himself in the unobtrusive, natural-shingled farm house on a little knoll at
the end of Elderberry Lane.
The fields had gone fallow
and the collapsing
barn had not seen a cow or a chicken for a very long time. However, in a shed behind
the house, lived a man named Raoule. Snowe referred to him as a “farm hand” on
a town census form.
People who trespassed on
the property, day or
night, were quickly met by Raoule and his Winchester shotgun. The man was
better than a watchdog. Rumors abounded in the rural Connecticut town, but no
one could say just what Snowe was “up to.” They only knew that occasionally on
clear, starry nights, a strange vibration apparently emanating from the
farmhouse, could be felt through the shoes on your feet…
Whatever he was doing also
interfered with
radio and television reception and some folks claimed that they got a strange
“ticking” sensation in their heads. Snowe frequently left the farm in his old
GMC panel truck. No One knew where he went. A feller named Darby Conant and his
son Ebb were coming back from fishin’ one day. They decided to chance cutting
through the posted property.
The panel truck had just
backed up to the rear
of the house. Darby and Ebb hid in the bushes and watched. Raoule came out and
he and Snowe unloaded the contents of the truck into the walkout basement.
Boxes. “Emerson Radio Co.,” and “Radiomarine Corp.” There were rolls of Bx wire
and rolls of rubber hose, several metal drums and bundles of copper and brass
tubing.
Another time, Snowe had
a truckload of lumber
delivered and he and Raoule constructed an oversized, eight-sided cupola on the
roof of the house. At night sometimes a low whirring noise came from the
church-steeple-like addition. When things became too noisome, the county Sheriff,
Hank Kudgel, got wind of it and decided to have a look-see and find out just
what was going on at the lone farmhouse.
When the Sheriff’s
black-and-white ’55 Ford
“radio car” pulled into the long dirt driveway, the place looked deserted. The
lawman had not gotten to the front door, before Raoule came from another door
around the corner of the covered porch.
“Can I help you, Sir?”
he said.
Kudgel tipped his Smoky
Bear hat back on his
grey buzz-cut hair.
“I believe you can.
Is Dr. Snowe at home?” the Sheriff
asked.
“He’s busy.
He doesn’t want to be disturbed.”
“Well, that’s
what I come about. What the devil
are you two up to out here anyway?”
“Up to?” Raoule
asked, smirking.
“Yeah, up to!”
“Meteorology.”
“Meteor-whategy?”
“Studying the weather,”
Raoule said dryly.
“You ain’t some
kinda commie spies, are ya?”
“Hardly,” Raoule
retorted. “The Doctor may need
my assistance. May I go?”
“I guess so, but I’ll
be back to see the Doctor
at some point.”
“Righto,” Raoule
said and went back in and shut
the door.
Sheriff Kudgel fixed his
hat, sidled over to
his car, got in and roared backwards out of the driveway. If he had known what
they were really “up to,” he would have called in higher authorities…
It was a clear night. The
moon looked like a
big, yellow disc. Jupiter and Saturn were visible to the eye and spun
broodingly in the western sky. The “machine” Dr. Snowe and Raoule called
“Adornis 607” literally filled every room of the dwelling. The machine that was
constructed with “Avium-K,” (an alien fuel source, which went missing from the
government’s 1947 Roswell site collection) had found its way into Snowe’s
possession. (one grain of Avium-K, roughly the size of a BB) could power 50,000
homes for a hundred years. It was the machine that they painstakingly built
over ten years, in several locations before they found the isolated farmhouse.
Dr. Snowe was sitting in a seat, in front of a 12” diameter, black-and-white
picture tube, (round).
“All right, activate
#51, Raoule…now, #16, now
#31…they went through a long list. Innumerable gauges sprang to life. Ichorous
dark green liquid filled miles of clear tubing. Hundreds of vacuum tubes
glowed. The doctor slowly turned the “gradated modulating dials.” The “lens
cone” in the cupola on the roof moved its invisible beam, probing planets in
far away galaxies, in the unplumbed depths of outer space.
The snowy screen suddenly
became a blurry alien
landscape…Dr. Snowe held the lens cone position and turned a series of
fine-tuning knobs. He switched on a nearby sound speaker. In the foreground,
there was a clump of tree-like tubes with serpentine-like “heads,” swaying
hypnotically. From the right side of the screen came what looked like a metal
wire “tumbleweed,” with a glowing ball of brilliant light at its center. The
eyeless “serpent heads” all bit onto it and a fight ensued. Snowe watched
intently. The faraway battle reflected in his bulging eyes. Eventually, the
ball of light was consumed by the translucent serpent stalks and lighted their
bodies. The metallic-looking
sand at its base began to fall away and the “thing’s” segmented lower body,
looking like a giant shrimp, “fanned” its way free and it moved out of view.
Snowe and Raoule watched
as the “mountain
range” in the background raised up on uncountable legs and lumbered away like a
gargantuan silverfish. The doctor noted a dozen coordinates on a steno-pad
under the heading of, “Planet #GT-1.” Afterward, a vacuum tube popped and the
picture tube went all fuzzy. Raoule replaced the blown tube. They had lost the
signal.
After spending night after
night in the glow of
the picture tube, scanning deep space, “Look!” Raoule shouted. A dirge-like
groaning came from the speaker. On the screen, a long procession of tall,
gaunt, robed figures endlessly marched out of the aether. Each carried a
spinning orb. When they reached a certain point in dark space, like a blank
curtain with a large tear in it, exposing a brilliant, blinding light. As each
passed the glaring furnace, they solemnly threw the planet they carried into
the inferno. Then they crept away, to gather more planets. The doctor and
Raoule watched in horror as worlds were destroyed. They eventually shut it
down. The sun was coming up. That day, they didn’t energize “Adornis 607.”
Instead, Raoule got drunk and Dr. Snowe sat in an Adirondack chair on the
porch, chain smoking cigarettes.
Two nights later, the machine
energized on its
own! The machine had been left on the coordinates, “PS-2,” or so they thought.
There were troubling sounds coming from the speaker. When they hurried into the
room, there was a silhouette on the television of a humanoid entity with 6”
horns on its head. Its facial features were mercifully hidden in the shadows. A
thundering, echoing voice said, “I am Sicatur Adastra, the Omnimpotent one from
the stars. Who dares to disturb me? Congratulations, Son of Dirt, you have
learned secrets no human-insect should know…your world now must be purged in my
fire! We are following your signal!”
Raoule screamed, “Turn
it off!”
“No, Raoule, the Earth
must be purged. All hail
Sicatur Adastra!”
“You’ve gone
mad!” Raoule shrieked. “They’ve
located us!”
“Kneel before the
Great One!” Dr. Snowe
shouted.
“Shut it off!”
“No, you fool,”
the doctor said and he shoved
Raoule down the open cellar stairs.
“We’ve almost
located you,” the loud crackling
voice said from the speaker.
Raoule, impaled by a steel
rod, through his
midsection, staggered in the kitchen door, holding the shotgun. The first
barrel blasted Dr. Snowe. The second barrel blasted “Adornis 607,” blowing out
a bank of vacuum tubes. The picture tube went dark.
The bodies of Dr. Reginald
Snowe and his
“farmhand” were found in the rubble of the farmhouse that had been inexplicably
crushed flat, into its foundation hole. Raoule’s shed was also flattened as
well as the collapsing barn and several large oak trees. Even more
disconcerting was the pilot that had flown over the site days afterward and
reported that, from the air, the indenture in the ground, which encompassed
Elderberry farm, looked like a giant footprint…
Sheriff Hank Kudgel said
it was an explosion!
No one cared to disagree…
Finis!
