COUNTRY

WHAT IT IS

It was just past suppertime when Davey Doucet received the phone call from Will Offley asking Doucet to come out to the farm. He arrived to a tranquil evening, the sun a few hours from setting and a visibly upset Offley pacing in a nearby field. Will quickly confessed to an incident that happened a lifetime ago in a foreign country he once lived in. In 1977 Will was a former SDS member and a visiting student in West Germany. Unfortunately, he got caught up in some shady activities involving the Badder-Meinhof Gang and was arrested by the state police. As often happens, the arresting officers, Lehman and Wagner, made the charges go away for unnamed favours they may need in the future.

Over fifty years passed, nothing was ever said about the arrest until one day Wagner knocked on the door. He wanted help flushing out Bill and Emma, not knowing that they actually lived on a secluded area of Will’s property. Offley had no choice, he agreed to help. At every meeting with Wagner he stalled, pretended, lied and fed Wagner false information, hoping he could somehow whisk Bill and Emma to safety.

And what of the shoebox, Doucet wanted to know, he saw Lehman and Wagner give him in the field? It came with a death threat if he didn’t hold on to the hundred grand inside until someone came for it.

WHAT IT IS NOT

Justine Flagstaff had a few weeks left in Pennsylvania and was using her time visiting state libraries so she could better prepare backgrounders to the stories she was working on. This is how she ended up on a Beaver County farm.

The tedious job of pouring through microfiche at the public library in Beaver Falls led Flagstaff to a short article from the now defunct Beaver Falls Chronicle. The report described how in 1967, Leo Barnard, a well known farmhand, witnessed a triangular spaceship touch down in Beaver County on the night of June 21. A newborn infant was teleported from the ship and placed into a bell-shaped sphere. The transparent sphere swirled at high velocity and the infant appeared to grow older and older until the rotation suddenly stopped and a twenty something male emerged and disappeared into the night.

Leo Barnard left Beaver County the following day and has not been seen since, although it is Flagstaff’s intention to find Leo’s whereabouts.