Robert tossed the letter to the floor and grabbed the next one from the top of his stack. He tore it open with his finger and pulled the postcard picture out first. There was a picture of a desert storm scene. It was a lone bare tree on a butte with lightning flashing a sinewy vein in the distance. “Arizona.” Robert had an eerie feeling as the air left his lungs. This letter was a bit longer.

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Dear Robert,

 

I’m not certain it really happened, although it feels all too real. I’m sure you will be equally suspicious of reality as I, but the memories, and the evidence, and Uncle Ralph’s recollection of the events of last night were all too exact with my own to question.

 

We were sitting out on the back porch watching the sunset change the color of the earth in the valley. At first we could hear, no, we could feel a great deep rumbling. It was very sudden that a massive, cigar shaped, piece of machinery came from behind us, over our heads, shaking, moaning, and falling apart. It was like a zeppelin but longer and thinner, smooth on all sides, lights along the spine, it was something solid like an airplane but without wings or a tail and was the size of a football field.

 

We ducked in the back door and watched peeking through the window to see it fall and crash in a massive bone rattling crunch just out of sight behind a butte. There was an explosion and a fire whose light haloed the ridge. We hid in the house for what seemed like hours, the sun went completely down and the fire lit the sky before we went to see what happened with this great event. When I finally looked at my watch I realized it couldn’t have been more than twenty minutes to a half an hour that we anxiously fidgeted in the house.

 

We feared it could be a military test of some sort. Uncle Ralph told me about bomb tests in the desert, but that he hadn’t heard of any near Phoenix. When we hiked to the top of the butte we could see there had been no bomb. This was a gigantic structure and the closer we inspected, it looked alien, or unnatural to earth. Although there were fires in the structure we were able to work our way into it. It was still intact and we could even walk through portions that appeared to be corridors seeing buttons and tiny TV screens in full bright color! Never before had I truly known the scared feelings of cave man facing the unknown. We only briefly went inside the structure for fear that it would collapse, explode, catch fire, or release some kind of gas or radio waves that could instantly kill us. I do wish I was more bold to looked around more. Most of what I remember of the corridor is in tunnel vision because I think it might have been too much for my brain to take in.

 

As we started back up the butte to safety we saw something smooth and out of place in the dim light of the fire. Closer, we saw it was a small body, only four feet tall, smooth with large eyes, large round head, and long fingers. It was wearing tight fitting jumpsuit-like clothing that did not feel like cloth. It was more of a plastic, smooth but comforting to the skin. Uncle Ralph called out as I stared at the creature to say he found two more about a few feet away. We aren’t sure if they were ejected from the structure or were fleeing the wreckage but they were motionless when we found them. Ralph said we should take them back to his house so that coyotes and vultures didn’t get to them.

 

They may have been small, but damn were they heavy to carry. They seemed to weigh two or three times heavier than you would expect a child of their size to weigh. We struggled to get them to the house and I don’t know how Uncle Ralph was able to carry two of them. That old man is stronger than you’d think. He put the bodies in the icebox on the porch before collapsing and sleeping until noon today. I don’t know any more. I feel my brain has been taken out of my body fiddled with by clumsy scientists who maybe dropped it a couple of times, kicked it around the floor and put back in my head. Everything is different…

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