The Copse
by
Ed Benjamin
A mountain home in northwest Arkansas, United States
Present Day
The man stood in the copse of pine trees that filled the area behind his home. He was standing at the edge of the mountain and looking down into the valley watching the road snaking up the hill. All of a sudden, a glint of sunlight caught his eye. He looked up. It was near dusk and he saw the flash of sunlight as it bounced off an object in the eastern sky.
It was an object all right but there was something strange about it. It was too low and too bright to be a plane. It moved funny too. It seemed to hover in the air like a helicopter but he couldn't hear any noise. It was floating in the air near the ridge and it wasn't over two thousand yards away. If it were a helicopter or any other motorized air- borne vehicle, he felt that he would have heard it.
The wind was blowing from the east. Since he was west of the object, he felt certain that he would have heard something if there were anything to hear. Save for a slight hissing sound that was more of a hum than a hiss, there was nothing.
He concentrated and strained his ears. Nothing!
The craft's movements diverted his attention from the lack of sound. It descended. As it came down, it began to make erratic movements in the air. They reminded him of a leaf falling. He thought the object might be a balloon or a blimp of some sort but the periodic upward movements it made as it descended belied that assumption.
Besides he could see it clearly and it certainly wasn't any blimp or balloon that he recognized. The craft had clean, well-defined lines and it appeared to be constructed out of a ceramic of some kind. Although he had the impression the craft was ceramic; it glinted in the sun like burnished metal.
Then, there was the light.
The sun was in the process of sinking fast in the west. The nether world of dimness that presages the coming of the night had engulfed the mountain. Yet, the object remained bright. It was an amazing sight. The light from the craft seemed self-contained; it didn't illuminate anything on the ground below it. It just glowed.
The man continued to watch the object from the shadows underneath the trees. It jigged up and sideways and then headed for the clearing. The man stepped out and waved his arms as if to warn the craft against landing in that particular spot. Then, something intuitive inside him decided that exposing himself to the craft wasn't a good idea. He thought better of it and backed underneath the trees so he could continue watching.
After a few jigs, the oval-shaped craft settled down onto the surface. The man watched as three small beings came around from the far side of the craft and walked to the edge of the clearing.
He wished desperately for his binoculars. He strained his eyes to see what the creatures looked like. All that he could determine was that they were small, humanoid, and it seemed to him that they moved strangely. They didn't walk like he understood walking but moved in a gliding motion silhouetted against the brightness of the craft.
He guessed that they were moving somehow without touching the ground. After all, he knew it was very muddy where they were. They didn't seem to have any trouble getting around. Two more beings appeared and began to explore the area outside the craft.
These creatures, whatever they were, didn't seem to be human even though they resembled small children. He wished he were closer so he could see more, but then he was glad he was able to watch unobserved.
Then, the craft began to move slightly. It didn't happen all at once. First, the left side dipped a little, about three feet, as far as the man could tell. Then the right side caught up. The man snickered. These things, whatever they were, had landed right smack in the center of Anderson's Bog, a sinkhole of local repute.
The occupants of the craft had also realized that something was wrong. They began to glide toward the other side of the sinking craft. Soon after they disappeared, the structure began to glow with a brilliant intensity. The light got brighter and brighter as the craft shuddered for a moment or two.
Then the light became dimmer and the craft settled back into the bog. Then the light glowed, brighter than it had a few seconds before. The ship began to vibrate and shake the earth around it.
The man imagined the strain that the interaction of the muck and ship had created. All of a sudden, the craft just popped out off the bog with a jerky movement that propelled it about two hundred feet into the sky. It seemed to the man that the motion should have created a "pluck" noise as it separated from the earth, but he wasn't able to hear any sound at all. He was too busy laughing.
He had begun to realize that he was viewing some sort of space ship, a UFO, others called it. Here they were, God knows how many light years from home, after traveling billions even trillions of miles to get here on earth and then they got stuck in the mud.
He continued to laugh.
He laughed so hard that his sides hurt. Tears were streaming down his face. This was too much. Wait till he told people what he had seen. They probably wouldn't believe him, but that didn't concern him now. He was too busy laughing.
As he laughed, he had closed his eyes. He was bending over, holding his sides and still laughing. He paused for a moment and opened his eyes. The craft wasn't in view. He looked around. The craft had moved to the north to a position about three hundred feet from him.
Although the ship was thirty yards in diameter, it seemed to the man at that moment that it was a least a mile long. The man had the distinct impression that the occupants of the craft knew he was there under the canopy of pine boughs.
Apprehension crept into his thinking. All of a sudden, things didn't seem so funny. He felt himself getting scared.
His thoughts turned to flight. He turned in the direction of the path that would lead him to the safety of his house. He started to run. Suddenly, he was unable to move. His legs felt wooden, dead. His own body seemed unable to respond to the idea of flight. No matter how hard he tried, his legs wouldn't operate. He felt grateful he still seemed to be breathing. Then, fear began to overwhelm him. The apprehension and dread he had felt turned to terror. At that point, he heard the voice inside his head.
DO NOT BE AFRAID!
