Gullible Bennie

[Leslie]

GULLIBLE BENNIE


His name was really Benjamin Arable, probably after some distant farmer forbear, but everyone knew him as Bennie Gullible. Even back in his school-days other kids used to gull him; they would tell him wild untruths and he would believe them, such as the time they told him there was a man-eating lion escaped from the circus and roaming the park through which Bennie usually made his way home, so he walked the considerable trek around the outside of the park and got home late. Naturally his Mum didn’t believe his explanation. Or the time they told him that next day was to be a school holiday, so he was absent and in trouble both at school and at home.

He didn’t improve with age, just grew a bit taller – not a lot – filled out, but not to the extent of becoming fat, kept the same childishly innocent expression on his round face, the wide, dark eyes making him seem slightly surprised all the time. Which he probably was, as he discovered so many surprising things in the world. It wasn’t so much untruths that people told him, it was peculiar things he came upon that he was too willing to believe.
He read a magazine item about human bodies being destroyed through spontaneous combustion; there were illustrations, photographs of incinerated corpses. He was totally convinced and studied the proposed causes, after which he modified his diet and his way of life in an effort not to make himself susceptible. When tragedy struck a few streets from where he lived and an old man burned to death in his bed, Bennie hurried to the scene hoping to inspect the corpse and test his knowledge. He tried to persuade the constable obstructing the doorway that he had valuable intelligence to share with the examiners, but the constable was dubious. He did call those within and a Fire Officer emerged. Bennie explained that he had studied the phenomenon of human spontaneous combustion; the Fire Officer told him that he, personally, was content to settle for a burning fag-end dropped on the bedclothes when the old man fell into drunken asleep. Bennie was disappointed at not being allowed to view the remains and at the narrow mindedness of some officials.

He saw a film about Vampires, read some literature purporting to be serious material on existence of genuine present-day vampires and, for the next few months, stared fearfully at the teeth in every open mouth that passed his way. It wasn’t easy; best when people were smiling or laughing out loud, but showing peculiar interest in people’s mouths is a bit odd outside of a dentist’s surgery. He collected a few odd looks himself and one or two promises of violence. He did spot some fairly pronounced canines that almost convinced him, but obvious vampires seemed few and far between. He took a liking to garlic, as protection, which didn’t win him any extra friends.
Next he read a story concerning doppelgangers and was afraid every time he walked in the town that he might meet his double, and so die! There were some near fatal incidents when he mistook his reflection in shop windows for his other self. He became confused, trying to spot people’s doppelgangers, especially if identical twins came along or a person returned soon after having gone by. Bennie’s life was full of anomalies and few explanations.

It was a good year for harvests and the standing stalks offered fine material for the creation of crop circles. They appeared mysteriously overnight, a fascinating variety of patterns that enthusiasts declared were symbols of great meaning left by extraterrestrials for the human race to interpret. Sight-seers travelled miles to study the patterns, to photograph them, to share their assumed interpretations. Even national news-papers published pictures and articles. For Bennie it became the greatest event in his life so far; he carried cut-out pictures to show to anyone interested or not interested; the crop-circles and their possible makers were his only topic of conversation. Eventually one cynic, apparently with insider knowledge, challenged Bennie,
“Come with me tonight and I’ll show you how the circles are made.”
“You’re on!” Bennie declared at once.
They met by arrangement at midnight, Bennie’s fears of ghosts, vampires or doppelgangers more or less vanished in the presence of a companion. Using the cynic’s car they motored to an area some distance from any field already decorated by alien artists. The car was tucked away off the road and the nocturnal investigators sneaked along to a cornfield that shone intermittently under a moon traversed by clouds. Figures, alternately silver or shadowed, moved amongst the stalks with curious locomotion.
“Here. Take a closer look,” said the cynic, handing a pair of night-vision binoculars to Bennie.
Bennie looked and saw two human shaped forms progressing with a peculiar unhuman action through the field.
“Are they aliens?” he scarcely dared to breath.
“Aliens bollocks!” his disbelieving companion retorted. “That’s two students from the college and they’re flattening the grain with planks of wood. Very basic. The only clever bit is working out the mathematics of the pattern.”
“Are you sure?” Bennie asked, extremely disappointed.
“Yes. I could even tell you their names. So, there you are, that’s how crop-circles are made. No aliens involved..”
Bennie said no more. They went back to the car and to the town.
Bennie gave the cynical destroyer of dreams a kind of thank-you and went home. He had seen one example of a crop-circle being made, but that didn’t mean that the students weren’t copying something that aliens had created in the first place.

By chance he saw a computer printed notice in the window of a local store that announced a meeting to discus crop-circles; the meeting was to take place the next night in the Community Hall of a village some miles away across the moor. The opportunity could not be missed.
Diligently, Bennie checked over his old car, topping up necessary fluids and making sure that the lights all worked. Allowing good time he motored the ten miles to the meeting.
Crop-circles led on to aliens and what they might wish to impart through complicated patterns of crushed corn stalks. What the different shapes might signify. What force the aliens might have used. Why had the aliens not revealed themselves?
So on to reported sightings and landings and crashes, to encounters and abductions, to the consequences to mankind. Bennie’s head was in a whirl by the time the meeting finished; so much information to log and make sense of.
After the official function had finished people stood about carrying on fervent discussions; by the time Bennie went out into the car-park the night was well and truly dark. A fresh wind was chasing clouds across the sky, switching on and off a half-moon and a myriad stars. He stood beside his car and looked heavenward, wondering from which of the distant galaxies the strangers may come.
Drying leaves on a nearby tree shuddered in a swirl of wind; Bennie was startled from his reverie, imagining the sound to be that of a sweeping cloak, such as Dracula might wear, rustling as the evil being crept toward him. Quickly, he secured himself inside the metal sanctuary of the car and left the scene.

He had travelled a lonely two miles when he caught the first sight of headlights coming from astern. He was comforted to know that he was not alone crossing the bleak, high moor.
After another two miles the lights were close behind him. Now they were becoming a nuisance; Bennie and his car were not capable of much speed at the best of times, with powerful lights behind him he found it difficult to see ahead and so went even more slowly. No matter how slowly he went, the vehicle behind made no move to overtake.
Another mile, they were on the highest, loneliest part of the moor. Why did the following vehicle stay there? Wild fears came into Bennie’s mind. Not impossible that Dracula used a car! If not Dracula, plenty of other vampires could use cars, be on the hunt for blood!
Who was following him, stalking him? Some of the alien abductions started like this, people travelling in cars, time that couldn’t be accounted for!
Then the lights on his car began to fade, the engine lost power, the car slowed, stopped with a dead engine and no lights.
“Oh God!” Bennie cried aloud, “It’s aliens, they’re after me!”
He shrank where he sat, hunched his shoulders and closed his eyes. The other vehicle had stopped behind him. He heard the thump of a door being closed; he did not hear any footsteps but a rapping on the window of his driver’s door jolted him with fright almost causing a faecal catastrophe. He remained hunched and shrunken in a vain hope that he was so small he had disappeared.
The rapping on the window came again. Bennie knew that he would have to respond, that he would have to open his eyes, look at the knocker-in-the-night.
What awful thing would he see? Would the alien have a monstrous face? Would it have a face at all? Would the sight drive him mad?
Again, the rapping on the window. Bennie capitulated. Bennie looked.
He saw a smiling human face and above it a peaked cap bearing a logo that he recognised, the logo of the Rescue Service to which he belonged!
The agent of rescue signalled Bennie to wind down the window. This done, he said,
“You seem to be having some trouble, Sir.”
Bennie agreed, “It just died on me.”
The rescuer suggested, “Open the bonnet, Sir, and I’ll take a look.”
He did some manipulations in the engine department and asked Bennie to try to start the motor. No success.
More manipulations and another unsuccessful attempt to start.
The mechanic slammed the bonnet shut and asked, “Where are you from, Sir?”
“Moorholt. The next town up the road,” Bennie answered.
“No trouble. We’ll winch your car aboard and take you home.”
The driver moved the recovery vehicle in front of Bennie’s expired machine, which was quickly winched and secured. Bennie tucked himself into the comfortable corner of the seats behind the driver and mechanic. In the warmth and security of the cab he almost fell asleep. The rumble of the fat tyres on the road was reassuring, the tone changing as they gathered speed. The change in the sound reminded him of something – of the change he’d heard on a holiday flight when the plane left the ground. Curious, he opened his eyes and looked out of the side window, to see the lights of Moorholt falling away below. He looked ahead and saw only the stars.
“What?” he exclaimed.
The mechanic looked back and said, “Do not be afraid, Earthling, we will return you safely.”