Earl Williams didn’t like new things. He had lived and worked on the same maize farmstead in Wisconsin for sixty-eight years. The barn had never been replaced, only repaired. All his farming tools had been left to him by his father. Even the tractor, which Earl still referred to as the “new one”, had replaced the old tractor in 1987. The only thing Earl owned that was made in this century was his hearing aid and he hated the blasted thing.

It was a warm evening in Kenosha county. Earl had just finished his dinner and was rolling a cigarette on the front porch, when his hearing aid began that infernal crackling sound again. It had started less than a week after he had bought it and he always responded the same way.

“Gawd DANG IT TO HELL!”

Earl whipped the hearing aid out of his right ear and began turning the tuning dial back and forth, in some vain attempt to interact with technology that was utterly beyond him. He hadn’t even wanted the stupid thing. His wife, Ginny had convinced him that he needed it last time they had ventured into town.

“Ooh this would help, Earl. I am tired of shouting at you when you’re in the same room” Ginny had gingerly shown him the box, as though discovering it by accident.

“Hmph” Earl had huffed in the store. “’fore we had these, if someone went deaf, we just spoke louder! Haw haw!”

Ginny bought it anyway.

As Earl sat there on his weathered chair, grumbling about “techno-whatsits” and twisting the dial, he noticed that one of his dogs, Champ, had sat up and begun barking. He thought nothing of it, and reluctantly replaced the hearing aid, satisfied that he had fixed it. The crackling had stopped. This was not due to any technical skill on Earl’s part, he had merely turned the volume dial all the way down to “off”.

He stood up, and suddenly was aware of a light coming from his field, only about thirty yards into the maize. His tired eyes squinted and his ever-present frown deepened into a scowl.

Local teenagers were always sneaking into his fields, to feel each other up and to smoke their dope. He wasn’t having any of that. He reached behind him without looking and took the ancient shotgun off its hook on the wall. It wasn’t loaded. The farm shotgun was locked safely in the house, in a gun cabinet. This one was mainly for display; and scaring teenagers straight, thought Earl with a grin.

He strode into the maize field and disappeared from sight.

A few yards in, Earl saw the light clearly ahead. It had an odd, golden hue which he felt was unnatural, somehow. When he was sure he was only inches away from where they must be, he cocked the shotgun loudly, strode into the clearing and yelled-

“HEY!”

Except it wasn’t two half-naked teenagers he saw.

A creature, at least seven feet tall loomed over him. It was a burnt, orange colour and had a huge, spherical head, which appeared to be devoid of any facial features except eyeballs. There were at least fifty of them, which blinked and swivelled luminescent pupils towards Earl as he approached. The creature was roughly humanoid, and covered in thick, bumpy skin like an alligator. It raised its arms, four of them, and long, squid-like tendrils snaked out towards Earl. Behind it, an implausibly curved vehicle the size of a yacht hovered five feet off the ground. It was the source of the golden light.

Earl’s jaw dropped, but his arms reacted instinctively. He gripped the shotgun tightly and pointed it straight at the creature’s chest. Before Earl could say anything, the creature let forth a wet, gurgling sound that sounded like old porridge being sucked down a waste disposal. It didn’t appear to have a mouth, but the source seemed to be the creature’s head, all the same. The shotgun in Earl’s hands went limp. The metal suddenly took on the consistency of a wet sock. The creature raised its arms up high, and the gurgling sound grew louder.

The fight went out of Earl as the reality of the situation dawned on him. He dropped the shotgun to the ground, where it settled like a discarded cardigan. A cold sweat forced its way out of his dust-filled pores. His heart was beating so quickly and violently that his blood vessels ached with the strain. His lips began to quiver as he tried to speak.

Words failed him and he fell to his knees. The immense creature loomed above him. The lithe tentacles snaked closer to Earl. One even caressed his shirt collar. The creature let out a softer gurgle, almost like a sigh.

If Earl was scared before, now he was shitting bricks.

He clasped his hands together, a gesture he hadn’t made since Sunday school, sixty years earlier. He looked up to the heavens and begged for some deity to save him from this nightmare.

Another tentacle touched him, this time it wrapped around his right bicep. The creature took a step closer and this time, the sound that it made was like a wet, booming roar. It was like a chainsaw at full power was going through a barrel of wet-dog food.

Earl’s eyes rolled up into his head and he fainted.

Back on the strange craft, three of the tall, tentacled creatures stood in the main room. Two stood on one side, while the third, the one that had encountered Earl, spoke to them. If Earl had been present, instead of unconscious mere feet from the door, it would have sounded like several birds chirping, but at an incredibly low frequency. It was short bursts of noise intersected with clicks.

One of the creatures reached up and pulled its head off its shoulders.

It was of course, only a helmet, or more accurately, a mask. Beneath the bizarre, discoball of eyes, was a surprisingly normal looking face. Two large, dark eyes were above a flat nose, with a thin sliver of a mouth. If Earl had been able to understand the chirps and clicks, he would have heard a surprising conversation, even considering the situation at hand. The one with the mask off spoke first.

“WOW! That was hilarious! Did you see how it was all shakey?”

“Dude, dude, dude. You are, in-sane!” said the taller of the other two. It was wringing its tentacles nervously, clearly excited by what had transpired. It went on.

“I can’t believe you just did that. We could get in so much trouble!”

The one missing its mask puffed up proudly at this.

“So what? I don’t care” It sneered, oozing false bravado.

“I just touched it, only a tiny bit. And then it was so scared that it started holding hands with itself!” The creature threw its head back and made the gurgling sound again. The other two mirrored it.

“Anyway, let’s get out of here. I want to try again at the next spot before we have to be home, you guys in?”

The other creatures nodded excitedly. The smallest one spoke up.

“Yeah, but before we go… I want to write something here real quick. It’s a good spot for it.” It looked around for approval.

The tallest creature, the one who had scared Earl, made a show of thinking about it. In a display of juvenile over-acting, it relented.

“Ok sure, but it has to be reeeeeally dirty”.

This prospect excited the smaller creature immensely. Once the ship had risen to a few hundred metres above Earl’s field, the smallest creature leaned out of the door and pointed a large device like a fluorescent tennis racket down below. He fired a dark purple beam out of it and the door of the ship slid shut. From within, the gurgling sound was louder than ever. The ship shot off into the night sky with impossible speed.

Earl came to slowly and shuffled back inside as fast as he could to tell Ginny what he had seen. Within hours, news crews, police cars and more than a few nosy neighbours were strewn around the property. Beyond the melted shotgun and Earl’s incredible testimony, there was a huge piece of evidence in his field that couldn’t be overlooked. Kenosha county WI became a tourist attraction.

Over the years that followed, Earl told his story over and over in great detail, waving the melted shotgun he kept as evidence. After he was finished with his extraordinary tale, he would wave his arm behind him, gesturing to the enormous crop circle that dominated his maize field.