One Dark Night

Everyone loves a good old barn.

They have been around well, it feels like forever. And just about everyone in the country has one. Actually if your neighbour didn’t have a barn, you’d be forgiven for thinking something was wrong with them. Besides, where else can generations of children go and play til night falls and the sound of parents calling across the corn fields echoed that it was dinner time? Where else would teenagers find their first forays into the adult world of love and adventure of the human flesh? And where would the animals and occasional wandering gypsies find safety and shelter throughout the rain and icy winters?

Quite simply an Old Barn is iconic to many of us. They conjour warm and fuzzy feelings, familiarity and a constant in our hearts and minds. They evoke nostalgia and fond memories of a long lost youth, tied to our childhoods that made us who were are. But and there is always a but, there is also a dark side to these ancient structures that stand throughout time. Sometimes they also have a darker history, a chilling reminder of events in our lives that destroyed who we were. A history of death, mystery, disappearances and sometimes even murder. Which brings us to the point of this particular reflection. Although it pains me greatly to relive that chapter of my life. That which I thought was buried deep enough, long, long ago never to be revisited, until recent events ripped open that jagged scar. That day when I was a mere ten year old boy, sitting out on the patio of our homestead on a painfully cold mid winter’s eve, that was the day when my life changed forever.

I am sure you have heard of crop circles and strange sightings in the sky over remote and sometimes not so remote places. Or the conspiracy theories of alien visitors, abductions, disappearances, implants and obscure events. Cults that believe life on Earth to be nothing short of an experiment of our caretakers who watch from above, sometimes checking on us or visiting when they want to make some necessary changes. Those visits are probably what started the whole alien theory in the first place. I often overheard snippets of stories during our family trips to town when I was a kid. News of the month would be when strange lights were seen in the sky which always just happen to coincide with someone in town disappearing without a trace. Their homes left in perfect order just as if they had stepped out to go to the shops or to work, just they never returned. I remember hearing old Joe disappeared while out hunting. Aunt Bessie vanished out gathering berries one day. John the timber cutter vanished from his shift at the mill. No evidence was ever found of the missing. No bones left if they had been attacked or eaten by bears, coyotes and or any number of other wild scavenger animals we have in the woods. The older folk of our remote village on the edge of the Great Forest, population one eighty-two spread over a thousand miles of forest. Well that was before the last unexplained visit. Now I think there’s only a hundred and fifty.

No one ever knew whether the missing residents actually left or were taken, naturally or otherwise. So many theories, yet never any evidence. Every now and then someone would come into town, mention they hadn’t seen so and so for a few weeks. Then a few of the men from the village would gather and go check on the ‘missing’, only to find their homes complete as if they had just stepped out for a bit. Every few months the men would revisit the homes of those reported missing. But the missing never returned. Well that was til that mid winter’s eve event that to think about brings chills to my soul. That night was much like any other. After dinner every night our family would sit out on the porch of our rustic homestead that had been in the family for over a hundred years and simply chat and take in the fresh air and clear skies. That particular night was bitterly cold and mist covered, but I loved sitting listening to the senseless chatter of my family while I stared up at the sky and watched the stars come out one by one. I knew every constellation, every galaxy by name, it wasn’t as if there was much else to do at night but study the skies.

That love of astronomy was also the reason I personally found it hard to accept the alien conspiracy and abduction theories that were becoming more prevalent on the news grapevine. Every time someone’s neighbour disappeared, it had to be the aliens that did it. As if any intelligent life form would waste time watching over a civilisation who hadn’t even travelled past the moon yet? And if there were other life forms or species capable of travelling the galaxies, wouldn’t they be far too advanced to pop by our planet stealing people, and to do what? Experiment on us, for what purpose? I know if I had the power and technology to be flying among the stars, I certainly wouldn’t be dabbling around any primitive species. I would be more inclined to be exploring other galaxies, to find the end of the universe.

Regardless, all I knew and believed about life on earth and elsewhere changed that fateful night. As the mist settled over our cornfields, stretching as far as the eye could see, only the solitary lantern light gently swinging as my father walked out to the old barn to check on ‘Razy’ our golden mare who was heavy with foal and due any day. She had been distressed for the last week and father would go out every night after dinner and go sit with her for hours hoping to comfort her. Sometimes I would go with him. This particular night I chose not to. Instead I sat on the porch and watched the lantern bobbed along with father’s long gait as he walked along the dirt track. The old barn’s sharp angles and deep shadows looming in the distance in the only clearing this side of the corn fields. Once father had stepped inside the lantern light disappeared, the barn vanishing beneath the cloak of mist as it rolled in further. Nothing unusual there. About an hour later I heard the most blood curdling scream I could imagine that sent my sister and I racing to the barn hoping old Razy had finally given birth.

My older sister and I leapt from the porch and raced along the wagon tracks towards the barn. Halfway there, we heard a deep humming sound before something dark swirled overhead and a flash of wind rustled the cornfields like a tornado beside us as we ran. At first I thought it had been a big owl swooping past, but what happened next changed everything. Dozens of lights as big as our wagon suddenly boomed over the entire cornfield and the old barn turning night to day. My sister Alice and I stopped dead in our tracks. Never in our lives had we seen anything so strange and blinding. And that awful humming sound that made our bodies shake as we fell to the dirt track in horror. Then there was that blood curdling scream again. Alice screamed, I screamed. Neither of us knew what to do as we lay frozen in terror on the icy ground.

‘We have to help Papa.’

They were the only words I mumbled before the strange lights and humming sound moved from the cornfields to directly over the old barn. Alice and I got back to our feet and ran and towards the building now lit up like the sun. So painfully white, but we kept running, trying to get to my father and to Razy, screaming out to our father. Surely the terrifying sounds we heard were just our poor horse enduring a painful labour. What else could possibly make such a dreadful noise? As Alice and I just about reached the old barn, the lights above suddenly turned and aimed directly on us. Now we were totally blinded and stood rooted to the spot as there was no way to see anything beyond the pure whiteness all around. Alice grabbed my hand, both of us shaking uncontrollably. How long we stood motionless that night I still don’t remember. It felt like hours but could have been just heartbeats. All that was obvious was one moment the blinding light was there and the next it vanished filling the void with a silence that was deafening.

‘Papa!’ I called out bursting through the barn door with Alice somewhere behind me.

On the fresh hay before us was Razy, nuzzling her new foal who was crouched beside her both their eyes white with terror. At my feet blood was everywhere. So much blood soaked the hay around Razy and her baby. It didn’t seem possible that Razy could have lost so much blood giving birth surely. I didn’t see Papa, just his lantern swinging gently from the post above the horses as if a sudden breeze flushed past. That was when I noticed his Papa’s trusty hat which he never took off, it was sitting on the ground at the edge of the blood soaked hay behind Razy.

‘Papa!’ ‘Papa!’ I could hear Alice calling from behind me. ‘Where’s Papa?’

‘I don’t know.’ I said as I bent down and patted Razy’s head. Her eyes so large, wild looking and white, her coat trembling. Whether it was from the cold night, having expended so much energy giving birth or simply the strange happenings of the evening.

I remember my Mamma arriving not long after, her eyes filled with tears and hysteria once the blinding lights and the strange humming machine vanished. Together we searched for hours inside and around the massive barn, but we never found Papa or ever saw him again. All we had from this terrifying night of no explanation was his hat with a blood soaked trim and a new born foal with a jagged blaze of white down his forehead. A mark identical to that torn in Pappa’s hat. We called the foal Lightning and to this day we still don’t know what happened in the old barn that night or to my father who we never saw again.

There were no answers from the local authorities, only theories just like all the other reported disappearances that went before us. Of strange machines from beyond the stars arriving in our remote community and of locals vanishing from their very lives. All I know is that event ensured I no longer dismiss the stories of the disappearances reported throughout the Great Forest, for we too had been touched by mystery and the sadness. My mamma was never the same after that strange night in our old barn and six months on she gave in to her grief. We found her lying on the same spot where we found Papa’s hat. She had taken her life. Fifty years on and still, every night when I gaze up at the stars from that same porch, I wonder just who it is that could be staring right back at us and whether tonight will be the night the strange lights return.