[Other Original] The Weylen Happening

Part I


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I was six years old when I could recall the first odd event that happened on my family's old farm. The year itself passed without incident, not a single event of note to indicate what would be the start of nearly three decades of struggle for me and my family.

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Well… Almost nothing. That summer was the year we welcomed Mr. Wilcox into our homes.

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The farm itself was about as simple as you can get. Roughly 300 acres passed down from father to son, and one of the smaller plots of the nearby area. Little outlets of forest still remained at the edges of the plots, left due to it being both too much effort to remove now, and a no-man's land between the individual farms. Feuding families like the buffer between them, safe from the peering eyes of the men working the field and the mothers in the house. Others kept the woods out of a fear of misinterpreting property lines, many of the deeds themselves were generations old with outdated maps or even contradictory. Out here trust was cheap, while lawyers were expensive.

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Like so many farms across the nation, or family grew the great American crop of corn. We sold what we could to the nearby towns and farmer's markets, but at the end of the harvest most of it was bought by my father's friend, a government man who could pull the strings a little in my family's favor. When I was younger the amounts that they negotiated at made my head spin, how could my father complain about finances when he made more money than I knew how to even count? I wasn't until I was much older that I understood how expensive everything was, and how often that one sale was to last us from Autumn until the spring harvest, not to mention the cost of machinery necessary to keep a farm of our size. Bills haunted my father's dreams until his death, and when he would finally pay off the old seeder or tractor, soon it was time to buy a whole new one.

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It was close to one of these harvests when we stumbled across Mr. Wilcox. I was returning from a day playing in the fields with my older brother, Will, when we both came home to a stranger sharing coffee with my parents. My first thought was that he looked more like a bear who somehow figured out how glasses worked than a man. His thin, professor-like glasses were barely visible behind a large, ragged beard and long, oily hair. His clothes didn't fare much better, with his tattered jeans and wrinkled plaid shirt just slightly too large for him. My parents introduced him as a wanderer looking for seasonal work, and with the harvest so soon it was likely they would rent out the old barn in exchange for his help with the harvest.

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Now, to six-year-old me the idea of losing one of my, admittedly dangerous, play spots but potentially not having to work so hard in the coming weeks formed an uneasy alliance in my head. Mr. Wilcox must have noticed the worry on my face, as he reassured me in his vaguely European accented voice that the barn would still be there when he left, and I would soon have my play area back. His words had an odd calming effect on me, it always had, and soon the idea of the barn being off limits soon left my mind. At least it would have, it if wasn't for Ma telling me that I really shouldn't be in there anyways, warning of rotting boards and rusty nails. Little defiant me told her that I already knew, and lied about not even liking the barn that much anyways.

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Despite out odd meeting, I soon found myself hanging around Mr. Wilcox more and more in the following days. When he wasn't busy with some chore Ma or Pa asked him to do he sat by out little lake reading various books with dusty leather covers. Now both clean shaven and with a proper haircut, Mr. Wilcox's appearance matched his professor-like pattern of speech. If I had not seen it myself, I would never have guessed the scholarly man in front of me was the same ragged being who sat in our dining room not even a week ago. Even though I would later realize I was likely more a pester to him than anything else, he always seemed to enjoy talking about the books he had with me, from Dickens to Twain, and even the occasional Poe. He didn't seem to mind answering all my questions, always having an answer as if he had written the books themselves.

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By far the most interesting moments I shared with him were the times I would sneak out to the lake and watch the night sky with him. He proved fairly knowledgeable about the constellations in the starry sky, pointing them out in a way that even my brother with his astrology book couldn't, but it was obvious that his real interest on that night sky was the moon. Often he would stare up at it completely lost in thought, seemingly enthralled by it, often not even aware of him muttering while transfixed on it.

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One those nights he told me stories that it seemed he had rehearsed a thousand times, all about the moon above. He would speak of the moon as if it was a living, breathing creature, her eyes forever gazing upon the world. The cycles of the moon were liked to a great eye blinking shut, and the full moon was a magical time when her eyes were gazing fully at her children. He told me that certain of us were chosen to one-day return to the moon, be one with her once again. He told me that this land was her favorite, and almost all her children were born here, way back to the days when Europeans had no influence on the New World. Many of his stories revolves around the people who once roamed this land before us, living in worship of the sky above, and those special ones chosen to lead. Every night I would hear stories of the great Gazes-at-Stars, who could cure any ailment with a single touch, or the great warrior Sits-Under-Moon, who could not be pierced by arrow or spear alike.

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Part of these stories always unnerved me, however. It was soon that I began to notice how all of these stories tended to end with our hero with nothing left until they left to rejoin the moon, from Gazes-at-Stars losing his entire tribe to lucky Seamus McMillians finding his newfound fortune in tatters. Eventually I worked up the courage to ask him, and he softly explained that the moon wanted nothing more than for her children to return to her. Young me easily brushed this off as the moon being lonely herself, and said no more. When I think back to it, I can't shake the feeling that his voice ever so slightly quivered during these explanations.

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Six-year-old me also never caught the occasional look over his shoulder with a concerned expression as he shooed me back to the house, saying it was past my bedtime enough as it was. I always thought he was just looking back to moon, but when I look back at it I can only picture his eyes peering off to the edge of the woods.​

Soon the harvest came and I spent less nights stargazing with Mr. Wilcox, simply too tired to stay awake until dusk, much less full nightfall. Still, on several nights when I awoke to use the bathroom I could see him out by the lake, sometimes gazing up at the moon, and more recently gazing at the water itself. When I asked him what he was doing, he simply reassured me that he was checking his reflection, and that of the moon. Then he had asked me what I saw when I looked.

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I heard him shuffle behind me when I stepped loser to peer over the edge.

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His hands now on my shoulders, I looked down and saw nothing but the moon above.

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When I looked up and told him, he gave me a faint smile and told me that what I saw was good. He said he was sorry if his sudden request scared me in any way, and then told me to go back to bed.

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It was only when I started walking away that I noticed how tight his grip on my shoulders were. Or how shaky his hands were as he pulled them back. Giving one last look back. I saw him gazing at the forest's edge.

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I subconsciously avoided him from that night forward, and soon the harvest had come to an end. Pa sold the last of the crops to his government friend, and it was time for Mr. Wilcox to leave us. He ate supper with us that evening instead of in the barn, and mentioned he was leaving in the morning. Ma tried to convince him to stay a little longer, since he was such a help, but he insisted and Pa said he understood, and it was none of their business to pry.

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I tried to sleep that night, but just tossed and turned. The previous time I had snuck out to see Mr. Wilcox remained in my head, and soon I couldn't bear the thought of him leaving without answering the questions I still had. My curiosity got the better of me, and I left my bed for the lake, one last time.

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I saw him on the shore, like he had been that night that now seemed so long ago, gazing at the water once more. As soon as he heard me approach, he turned around and said he was expecting me.

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He said that tonight was the night he left. I told him that I knew that, and he mentioned how much he missed his home.

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Tonight he was going to return to his mother, he said.

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I was speechless after he gave his proclamation, not sure what to say. He told me that we were more similar than he first thought, and offered to take me there also. I told him I wasn't sure.

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He offered to take my hand if I was scared. All we had to do was walk forward, and look above, we could gaze at the brightness together, a look of genuine worry on his face.

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After I rebuked him a second time that warm smile of his returned, and he said he understood. He had one last gift for me then, and it was under the loose board in the barn, just waiting for me. It would be there in the morning, and that I should go back to bed. Not wanting to argue with him, I let him be and started back towards the house. Before I got too far away he gave me one last piece of advice; if I ever saw what appeared to be a small moon off in the forest's edge, try my best to forget I ever saw it. I should never pay too much attention to whatever it may be.​

When I rounded the corner, curiosity got the better of me once again, and I took one last peek at the lake. There I saw Mr. Wilcox walking slowly, eyes fixed above. He walked deeper and deeper into the lake, until his head disappeared under the waterline and never reemerged. Above the moon shined in its full radiance, dominating the sky. I couldn't recall seeing a single star that night.

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I told my parents about it, but they told me it was simply a dream. Mr. Wilcox was an odd man, and the idea of him just leaving in a normal way made my brain think up of something more magical to make it really seem like it was gone. True enough, all of his belonging were moved out of the barn, as if he had picked up and wandered on in the middle of the night. To ease my fear Pa took me out to the lake and gave me a pair of swimming goggles to check for myself. I must have searched for hours in the following days, but could find no trace of him in that lake.​

It was yet a few more days before I remembered his "gift", his sudden disappearance clouding my mind. Waiting until Will was loudly snoring, I snuck out to the barn once again. I checked every board on the floor until one finally pried loose. Reaching into the pitch black hole in the ground, I grasped something made of leather. Hauling up my find to investigate it in the pale moonlight, a thick book now lied on the ground. It's faux leather cover was dyed a light blue, and the only thing that identified what the book was even about was a silver crescent moon on the cover. Flipping it open, I was greeted on the first page by Mr. Wilcox's messy sprawl of a signature. Seeing that this might be his diary or some other journal about what I had witnessed a few days ago, I readily turned it to the next page only to find a mess of hastily torn page fragments. Someone had gotten to the book before I had, and apparently wanted to keep whatever was lurking inside a secret.

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I wanted to throw the book in disappointment, but some part of me decided it was worth hiding still. I gathered what little shards of paper I could find, and ran back to my room with the book hidden under my shirt. With the book under my mattress, safe in my young mind, I tried to drift off to sleep once more.​

But one thought kept creeping back into my mind. On my way back inside, I could swear that I saw a bright, but gentle light off in a cluster of trees, shining as brilliantly as the light of the moon.​

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