As Black As Night-A UFO Encounter

The following short story is based on a nonfictional account that actually happened. However the character's names and geographical area has been changed for privacy purposes. This story is about about a young, ordinary girl who worked in a sweet shoppe for a good part of her early years. Her name was Corey Branson. All of her life she lived in the backwoods of New Hampshire, in an area where rolling hills and mountains come down to greet farms swollen with mainly dairy animals. This was an area green and lush during the summer months with cattle strolling along the fenced in roadsides. During the winter it could be a harsh environment on occasion, mainly because of the heavy amounts of snowfall that this area sometimes experienced.

It was an area where nothing unusual ever happened either, accept maybe for the state police having to break up an occasional disagreement between a few locals at the town gin mill. Sometimes when you live in an area of the Northeast like this, there isn't much to do but drink like a fish. Unless of course you developed a fondness for snowboarding, skiing or sledding and possibly icefishing, which most folks enjoyed during colder and brutal winter months. Corey Branson, on the other hand had no interest in bars or snow sports for that matter. She however always had a keen interest in space, astronomy and the unknown. Some folks thought Corey to be a bit strange, but the towns people on the other hand, knew her to be a sweet kid with a big heart, just trying to put herself through college. And a girl that was always curious of the unknown or unexplained.

One early evening, near the end of a long work week, Corey started for home. The sun began to set as dusk fell upon the small New Hampshire town. The last rays of sun, could be seen reflecting off of the White Mountains in the distance. Crags near the mountain peaks high above, began to cast shadows in the valley below. Cattle mooed softly nearby as a coyote howled in the distance. Corey made her way from downtown, along the roadside to her home which bordered the countryside and a farm. Her stepfather, Bert and mom Gene, would be there waiting for her.

Just because it was Friday at the end of the week, didn't mean that work was finished. No Corey had been taking courses at a nearby University and wanted to complete her degree a year early. So to accomplish this task, she had been taking night classes three days a week, which would take her well into the summer months. After working at the sweet shoppe, she would hop on a bus, to take the twenty mile drive to attend the three hour classes. But beforehand, she would also find herself engaged in helping her mother Gene out with the household chores.

After returning home that evening about 10:30. Corey noticed something to the Northeast, that had caught her attention. At first as she looked closer at the object moving slowly in the distance. At first she thought that it was perhaps the planet Venus rising slowly, or even a plane as it made its way through the now blackened sky en route to a local airport. As she approached the walkway leading to her home, Corey quickly entered the doorway and threw her belongings, including text books on the kitchen table. Her mother and stepfather, had been upstairs watching television in their room, unaware that Corey had just arrived at the house. Out of sheer curiosity, she decided to go back outside and investigate the strange light she had seen, moments earlier before being dropped off by the bus.

As she strained her eyes a bit, looking back out over the North, Northeast region of the sky, she no longer had noticed the bright white light moving slowly in the background along the mountainside. Instead she was nearly frightened out of her shoes, when she took a deep breath as she peered upward. There as black as the night sky, she saw the object. It moved slowly and steadily as it loomed nearly straight above her. As it approached closer and closer, she could see just how large the vehicle, or craft was. It must have been as big as a three story house she thought and just as wide. All that could be seen in the darkness of the night, was one small, bright, steady beam of light in the center of the object.

As the UFO, approached even closer now, she became excited and could hardly believe her eyes as her mouth nearly dropped down to her chest. The darkness of the craft of which she had never witnessed anything of such magnitude before, was embedded with what looked like intricate pieces of machinery. Yes, thousands of bits and pieces of sophisticated looking machinery that looked as it was actually sewn right into the UFO. Which now was hovering silently about a hundred and fifty feet, over her head. At this point Corey had to force her legs and feet, which seemed utterly frozen in place, to turn herself around in the direction of the front door of the house. But getting there safely, she thought, might be another story alltogether.

After a few moments of panic, she was finally able to free herself, from the past, almost hynotic state that she had found herself in a few moments earlier. Corey than turned and ran quickly to the door and upon opening it, shouted as loud as she could for her folks upstairs. She yelled frantically from the base of the spiral wrapped staircase, trying to get the attention of Bert and Gene, her folks who were in the bedroom above. After they realized all of the commotion going on below, they decided to go outside to investigate with Corey. However Corey had ran back outdoors into the blackness of the night, slamming the door behind her.

When her mom and stepfather had finally reached the bottom of the staircase, they grabbed their windbreakers near the door. Upon placing the jackets on, they exited the door quickly to join Corey. However when they went outside, she was nowhere to be found. Bert and Jean yelled into the cool New Hampshire night for their daughter. Yelling at the top of their lungs. They continued to do so, to no avail. Not even a mutter, not even a whisper was ever heard again from Corey.

In the distance all that they could see was a bright, steady white light making its way across the country side, eventually disappearing behind the outline of the White Mountains. A silent but brisk breeze, common during the late New England evenings, quickly brushed across the Branson's face, as they continued to stare out into the dark countryside. A lone coyote howled in the background, its bark muffled by the now, heavy mountain air.