The FAA reported the formation to them. A Delta pilot en route from Seoul to Seattle was readying for her descent when she spotted something bulging out of the clouds. She described it as an upright UFO. Instead of a saucer or cigar on its side, it was a vertical formation. It would have sounded crazy except for the shaky cell phone video that accompanied it. The clouds were thick and the shape phased in and out of view, seemingly stationary but never entirely visible. She estimated its height as somewhere between five hundred and a thousand feet. “It was already weird, but then it got weirder,” she said. “When it came out of the clouds for the last time, I swear I was looking at a face.”

The DOD met her and her copilot at the airport and confiscated her cell phone before she could share the video with anyone else, then escorted them to a room below the concourse where they were interviewed and frightened into signing NDAs. All flights were diverted away from the area, and a containment squad immediately set off for the Olympic Peninsula.

The owner of Hemlock Hills did not live on-site but visited twice weekly for trimming and pest control. “That’s the nice thing about Christmas-tree farming as opposed to dairy farming. You can leave the trees be. Their teats don’t get swollen.” His name was Red, and he was seventy-two years old and favored camo and denim. He sported a gray beard stained yellow from all his smoking. It had finally started raining again in earnest about a week ago and he’d decided to tromp around the acreage and see how his trees were holding up. He found the ground bulging and cracked in places. From these points of inflammation grew fleshy white stalks, some of them as big as him. “No, I don’t own a goddamn cell phone, and I never goddamn will,” he said. And no, he hadn’t taken a photo, but he had called in the problem to both the UW Extension and his insurance company, because this could obviously effect his bottom line. “I’m supposed to be retired, you understand? This was supposed to be easy money, tree farming. But between the damn drought and now this damn fungus, it’s turning out to be a genuine pain in my asshole.” He was offered a check then, one that was the equal of all future profits. He was happy to give up the land to them for what he called “Hawaii money.”