Tue Jun 24, 2014 12:27 am by 
My great-great-grandfather rode in one of the first wagon trains into the west. Admittedly he didn't get very far; Half way across the continent his manifest destiny choked up a snapped axel, a dead wife and three oxen driven mad by syphilis. My great-grandfather scraped out a little more good fortune for the family name. He worked the hundred and six acres his father had left him. His hands must have bled like rivers as they tore stones from the ground, shovelled soil and shit and practically dug his own neat grave. Grandpa was the first to go to High school. Four miles away, he walked every morning and every evening, staying up until the small hours of the morning to finish his chores. Maybe that's why he was such a night owl, working the farm until early morning while he spent his days in town as a Mechanic. The farm eventually had a couple of hands and its own tractor, a modern miracle. I remember being amazed by the big red thing, churning its way through the earth forever. My Pa was the first to go to College. He got educated, he knew that was the secret to building your Eden. You learn the best ways to irrigate the soil, to raise the cattle, to plant the orchards so that God smiles kindly on you. He became a preacher and managed the farm on the weekends, now worked by all kinds of folk.
What was my claim to fame? What benchmark did I leave my boy? I chose government work. I figured with the way my family story went, by the time I was fifty I'd have a son in the White House. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was a neat fit to me. I wasn't much but average in the ways of looks and mannerisms so I got along well with all sorts, even the Negroes my Pa hired to pick the corn. Sometimes though, I could feel a runaway future bearing down on me like a steam train. When I could got back home for the holidays, I'd look out at the pokey little hometown on the horizon and see it filled with huge buildings like those in New York. I could see the world full of places like that, full of good honest White American Citizens. The Old World was a step behind me and my kin as far as I was concerned and I was happy to tell it so. I didn't expect the Old World to listen.
The meteorite landed at the edge of the farm, in the year of our lord 1911. It was my second year as an Investigator, with my black car and black tailored suit, but I wasn't in town for business. Just another Thanksgiving with the Pa and the honest men he kept around. I was in town when it happened, sizing up a pretty young thing I figured could be the mother of the next President of the United States. She was giving me the run around, batting her eyelashes and keeping her distance from what I presume she thought was just another rogue. The jukebox played something sickly sweet while I ordered us slices of apple pie and cream. We were about to dig in when the sky above mainstreet burned terribly bright. A thunderous sound shook the road and the windows before a the trailing fireball crashed with such a shudder that I thought the earth was writhing in disgust, attempting to dislodge the debris.
People on the sidewalk were looking out toward The Farm. Sheriff Lancaster offered me an escort out there, already sitting in his car and eager to get his blue lights going. The Doll gave me a sad smile and said we could try again some other time, but something in my gut told me that runaway future of mine was on the start line, ready to start running. I climbed into the stately car given to me by the state and gave her a wink, just in case the mounting feeling of dread was nothing.
The Farm was empty when we arrived. Lancaster said they were probably out in the southern field already poking the damn thing that fell. I simply nodded, that dreading turning into a black cancerous tumor. We walked mostly in silence, the Sheriff and I. We were classmates once upon a time. We were friends then, maybe.
We found them in the copse of trees bordering the McClutchen land. Branches were burning and a mound of earth had been lifted neatly and tossed to the side, like God himself had decided to work the land of the Orchard. The meteorite sat in the bottom of the basin and seemed barely bigger then a pigskin. Pa was stood on the edge of the small crater, with one of his Colored Boys in the pit poking the cooling stone with the edge of his pitchfork. I removed my suit jacket and handed it to Pa with a couple of muttered sentences, unbuttoning my shirt sleeves so I could roll them up. I needed a closer look.
The Boy scrambled out as I slid in. I knew why the moment I could get close enough. There was a sense of... something in the ground here. Something just below. I gingerly touched the rock and found it was smooth and metallic, fitting into my palm easily. There was a warmth still locked inside it but it wasn't the source of the dread. No, as I brushed the soil away I knew the chipped stone beneath was what was making my teeth ache and my heart pump incredibly hard.
It was flat and engraved, but curved in just a noticeable way near the edge closer to me. It stretched out away from under the loose earth, like I was knelt near the edge of an immense coin. I touched it I felt strange symbols, scuffed away through time and erosion but strangely sharp for how ancient they were. The language was both familiar and entirely alien, a conflicting maddening itch that made me feel like I could almost taste the strange new constanents and vowels. Had I known this language once? How had I forgotten it? No. It was making itself familiar to me, I was learning it by simply being away of it. I had already learned it, my father had taught me so long ago. I had always known that these words were a misguided warning not to ever come to this land, not to tend farms here or build homes or ever look at this horizon.
The Meteorite was a key. I could feel it's shape in the metal core. A key to weaken the stone, so what waited beneath could finally escape. Something immense moved beneath the earth and a great thud smashed against the buried disc, stretched out under the entire orchard. Whatever ancient people had buried this here wept with fear, were weeping with fear, never had the chance to weep or feel afraid.
The terrifying thing was that I remembered it now. I remember the huge flesh stalk, with it's multitudes of tendrils whipping through the dark skies it created above it simply from existence. As I drove out here from the diner and the doll with Sheriff Lancaster, I watched the eyes on it spin insanely across the surface. I remember waking day after day as a child, sitting up in my bed and drawing back my curtains to the never ending, beautiful madness of it. My father had lived by it for all of his life, taught me to never go near it without him, taught others that it was the one true god and that The Man Christ was a false idol. My grandfather walked four miles to a high school, where he'd cut the throats of the willing sacrifices and cart them back to feed the thing as it churned forever through the soil, eternally from the beginning to the end. My Great-Grandfather toiled ninety nine acres of farmland around it, his hands bleeding as he shoveled the flesh of his "crops" into it's many gaping maws. My great-great-grandfather broke an Axel when it angrily lashed out at his trespassing. In repentance he gave it his wife and all of his oxen, swore to serve it, bred new children to feed it.
Now I knelt at it's pit, close enough to hear it speak words which echoed through time, words the generations of my family would hear. Pa and Brother Lancaster herded the folk into one of it's gnashing mouths, shooting any that tried to struggle, butchering the infants from their mothers arms. It said that my son would be it's greatest oracle. A woman from the town had been promised to me, promised to make another child in my bloodline that would spread the influence of a god who's name was too terrible to speak.
I had created a true paradise, I would create a true paradise, a paradise had been created for me.
What was my claim to fame? What benchmark did I leave my boy? I chose government work. I figured with the way my family story went, by the time I was fifty I'd have a son in the White House. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was a neat fit to me. I wasn't much but average in the ways of looks and mannerisms so I got along well with all sorts, even the Negroes my Pa hired to pick the corn. Sometimes though, I could feel a runaway future bearing down on me like a steam train. When I could got back home for the holidays, I'd look out at the pokey little hometown on the horizon and see it filled with huge buildings like those in New York. I could see the world full of places like that, full of good honest White American Citizens. The Old World was a step behind me and my kin as far as I was concerned and I was happy to tell it so. I didn't expect the Old World to listen.
The meteorite landed at the edge of the farm, in the year of our lord 1911. It was my second year as an Investigator, with my black car and black tailored suit, but I wasn't in town for business. Just another Thanksgiving with the Pa and the honest men he kept around. I was in town when it happened, sizing up a pretty young thing I figured could be the mother of the next President of the United States. She was giving me the run around, batting her eyelashes and keeping her distance from what I presume she thought was just another rogue. The jukebox played something sickly sweet while I ordered us slices of apple pie and cream. We were about to dig in when the sky above mainstreet burned terribly bright. A thunderous sound shook the road and the windows before a the trailing fireball crashed with such a shudder that I thought the earth was writhing in disgust, attempting to dislodge the debris.
People on the sidewalk were looking out toward The Farm. Sheriff Lancaster offered me an escort out there, already sitting in his car and eager to get his blue lights going. The Doll gave me a sad smile and said we could try again some other time, but something in my gut told me that runaway future of mine was on the start line, ready to start running. I climbed into the stately car given to me by the state and gave her a wink, just in case the mounting feeling of dread was nothing.
The Farm was empty when we arrived. Lancaster said they were probably out in the southern field already poking the damn thing that fell. I simply nodded, that dreading turning into a black cancerous tumor. We walked mostly in silence, the Sheriff and I. We were classmates once upon a time. We were friends then, maybe.
We found them in the copse of trees bordering the McClutchen land. Branches were burning and a mound of earth had been lifted neatly and tossed to the side, like God himself had decided to work the land of the Orchard. The meteorite sat in the bottom of the basin and seemed barely bigger then a pigskin. Pa was stood on the edge of the small crater, with one of his Colored Boys in the pit poking the cooling stone with the edge of his pitchfork. I removed my suit jacket and handed it to Pa with a couple of muttered sentences, unbuttoning my shirt sleeves so I could roll them up. I needed a closer look.
The Boy scrambled out as I slid in. I knew why the moment I could get close enough. There was a sense of... something in the ground here. Something just below. I gingerly touched the rock and found it was smooth and metallic, fitting into my palm easily. There was a warmth still locked inside it but it wasn't the source of the dread. No, as I brushed the soil away I knew the chipped stone beneath was what was making my teeth ache and my heart pump incredibly hard.
It was flat and engraved, but curved in just a noticeable way near the edge closer to me. It stretched out away from under the loose earth, like I was knelt near the edge of an immense coin. I touched it I felt strange symbols, scuffed away through time and erosion but strangely sharp for how ancient they were. The language was both familiar and entirely alien, a conflicting maddening itch that made me feel like I could almost taste the strange new constanents and vowels. Had I known this language once? How had I forgotten it? No. It was making itself familiar to me, I was learning it by simply being away of it. I had already learned it, my father had taught me so long ago. I had always known that these words were a misguided warning not to ever come to this land, not to tend farms here or build homes or ever look at this horizon.
The Meteorite was a key. I could feel it's shape in the metal core. A key to weaken the stone, so what waited beneath could finally escape. Something immense moved beneath the earth and a great thud smashed against the buried disc, stretched out under the entire orchard. Whatever ancient people had buried this here wept with fear, were weeping with fear, never had the chance to weep or feel afraid.
The terrifying thing was that I remembered it now. I remember the huge flesh stalk, with it's multitudes of tendrils whipping through the dark skies it created above it simply from existence. As I drove out here from the diner and the doll with Sheriff Lancaster, I watched the eyes on it spin insanely across the surface. I remember waking day after day as a child, sitting up in my bed and drawing back my curtains to the never ending, beautiful madness of it. My father had lived by it for all of his life, taught me to never go near it without him, taught others that it was the one true god and that The Man Christ was a false idol. My grandfather walked four miles to a high school, where he'd cut the throats of the willing sacrifices and cart them back to feed the thing as it churned forever through the soil, eternally from the beginning to the end. My Great-Grandfather toiled ninety nine acres of farmland around it, his hands bleeding as he shoveled the flesh of his "crops" into it's many gaping maws. My great-great-grandfather broke an Axel when it angrily lashed out at his trespassing. In repentance he gave it his wife and all of his oxen, swore to serve it, bred new children to feed it.
Now I knelt at it's pit, close enough to hear it speak words which echoed through time, words the generations of my family would hear. Pa and Brother Lancaster herded the folk into one of it's gnashing mouths, shooting any that tried to struggle, butchering the infants from their mothers arms. It said that my son would be it's greatest oracle. A woman from the town had been promised to me, promised to make another child in my bloodline that would spread the influence of a god who's name was too terrible to speak.
I had created a true paradise, I would create a true paradise, a paradise had been created for me.
