Fiction: Meet the Neighbors

Don't read this.

After this story got rejected by a magazine 20 years ago, I decided the editor had a point and didn’t bother submitting it elsewhere. But then I saw this question on X:

Well, here you go. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

It was a warm day in October that they came.  I was just twelve at the time, but I remember it clearly to this day.  Who wouldn’t? 

I was out back chopping some firewood that afternoon. I had been working for maybe a half-hour or so when I heard a strange rumble over the sound of the axe hitting the wood. 

I looked out across the hills behind our house, searching for storm clouds and thinking that it was an odd time of year for thunder.  The horizon was clear, except for a few white puffs sitting high in the sky, but the rumbling grew louder.  Within seconds it had risen to a roar. I looked around the sky, thinking an airplane was flying too low. 

Sure enough, coming into view over the house, was a plume of white moving through the sky, like the exhaust of the jets that flew out of the Air Force base over in Mellon County.  Only this trail was bigger, and it looked like it was on fire at its front end.  A rocket, maybe? Or a comet falling? 

By now the roar was splitting my ears, and it was enough to shake the house.  Ma came out onto the back porch to see what was causing her home to vibrate and followed my gaze to the object that appeared to be rapidly falling from the sky.  As the thing streaked over our backyard, looking larger as it got closer, it slowed down, and the roar died down to a rumble and then to silence. 

Emerging from the white smoky plume was a silver sphere, not scorched at all in its fiery descent and glittering in the low afternoon sun.  It slowed to a halt and hung suspended from the sky like a giant Christmas-tree ornament.  I turned to look at Ma, seeking adult confirmation of what I was seeing.  She didn’t see me looking — her eyes were locked on the thing in the sky.