Chapter 5

My father, Mick O’Dell IV, inherited our farm from his father, Mick O’Dell The Third. One day my father got this crazy idea to dig a hole in the middle of the farm in order to stop the town north of us from taking over our land and incorporating it as part of their town. I think my mom talked him into it. She was always the intellectual driving force in our family.

I am my parent’s first child and they named me Mick O’Dell the Fifth. The story is that my mother, Angel, told my father that she wanted me to be named Mick the Fifth and when he asked why, all she said was “Trust me”. I remember hearing that phrase a lot growing up.

Mom and dad were the greatest people I could imagine, and I could imagine a lot. My father taught me how to run the farm and my mother taught me how to read, write and do math. My mother taught me accounting because my father wanted me to take over the farm. My mother also decided to teach me something called physics. I don’t know to this day why I had to learn physics, but I’ve got to admit that it was very interesting.

Physics became interesting because my father also gave me a love for reading science fiction. As a child I would sit on his lap as he read H.G. Wells to me. His favorite, “The Time Machine” became mine as well. As I read books like “Master Of The World” I could see how Jules Verne used physics to make the stories more realistic.

One day my mother sat me down and told me that there was an old book by Jules Verne that she thought I would enjoy. It was called “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea”. Her exposing me to physics let me see that a boat could sail under the water and “Journey To The Center Of The Earth” allowed that there could be many worlds within worlds.

My brothers never seemed to be as close to my parents as I was, and they certainly didn’t share my love for the farm. As soon as they could, all of them, in turn, left to go back East to college. The last I heard was that they had earned degrees and married and were never coming back. It was no great loss to me as we never shared any common interests or loves.

I settled into my new role as manager of the farm. My father put me in charge after my last brother had left. I felt like a huge hole in my life had been filled. This is what I was meant to do. My father shared his knowledge of the farm business as I grew up, and now he was able to sit on the porch, drink his whiskey, read his books, and enjoy his years of labor.

Then the world threw me a curve ball. I woke one morning to see my mother and father driving one of our wagons off to the South. I never saw them again. We found the wagon the next day when it became apparent that they had not returned from wherever they were going. We found the wagon at the farthest southern reach of our land, but no sign of either of them, not even footprints. They’d just vanished into thin air.

It was a dark and stormy night several months later, when I was settling down in my favorite chair to read a story by a new author. The new, bigger house that my parents built after I had taken over the management of the farm and when they began to dig the hole, had a comfortable den with a fireplace. I would sit in my father’s old chair in front of the fire, with a comforter over my legs and a small glass of sherry on a table next to me and lose the cares of the day in a good story.

Tonight, as I listened to a thunderstorm roll across the valley, the new author I was interested in was Edger Rice Burroughs, and the story was called “Under The Moons Of Mars”. The protagonist was Captain John Carter, a cavalry officer formerly of the Confederate Army of Virginia. The beginning of the book set up the high moral character of Captain Carter and grabbed my attention within the first few pages.

Captain Carter was being chased by Indians in Arizona while looking for gold after the Civil War. He had taken shelter in a cave when there was a flash of light. At the very moment that I read about the flash of light, there was a tremendous strike of lightning near the house. It seemed to be just outside my front door. The accompanying blast of thunder was immediate, and its shock wave blew out one of my front room windows.

Needless to say, at the same time, I managed to levitate out of my chair and onto my feet. I dropped my book and ran to close the shutters over the broken window. While I was locking down the shutter, I caught sight of something in my front yard. There seemed to be a figure laying on the ground with smoke coming off of it.

The horror of the thought that one of my workers had been struck by lightning caused me to explode out my front door and into the storm with no rain gear. I sprinted to the form and fell at its side to find it to be a naked female that was curled up in a ball as if she were protecting herself from being attacked.

I shook her and she moved, ever so slightly, so I scooped her up in my arms and took her into my home. I thought her to be a child because she was very small and weighed next to nothing. I placed her on my chair and wrapped my comforter around her for warmth and modesty. I tried to get her to sip a bit of the sherry, but she could not take it and it ended up dribbling down her chin.