It was July, I was on my second month of summer break. My parents and I had headed out to Grandpa’s house.
Aunt Gracie and Uncle Nathan decided to throw a party for James at the skating rink to celebrate his birthday but since James didn’t have any friends, it was just him and I. Our parents and Grandpa chatted, while James and I were skating. Being with all of my family was very fun but the only problem was that James could skate, I couldn’t.
The next day around midnight, James and I were upstairs in our room at Grandpa’s house. We agreed that we were going to go investigate the T.S.I.. Though, the original plan was to go with Marley and Naomi to the T.S.I building in Desertville first, it didn’t work out due to Marley being sick and in the hospital.
So, James and I made a quick plan. Because Uncle Nathan worked graveyard shifts, our plan was to sneak out of Grandpa’s house, sneak into Uncle Nathan’s truck, and hitch a ride to work with him. Once we were there, we would sneak out of the truck and into the facility. We realized that this was not going to be an easy task. Before we could even get out of the house, we would have to pass all four bedrooms and run down the stairs quietly until we made it to the front door and exited. We’d have to hide under Uncle Nathan’s black tarp that was in the back of his truck, and wait until the time hit 12:30am. That was the usual time James’s dad headed off to work.
When the time came around for the plan, we made sure that everyone was in their room and we sprinted down the hall. Once we got to Uncle Nathan’s truck, we hid under the giant black tarp that was in the bed of the truck. As we tried to lay as flat as possible, but tools and other junk made the whole ride uncomfortable. The tools kept pressing into my side. I nearly suffocated from the tarp being over us, and I think that I may have passed out at one point.
We heard Uncle Nathan’s voice saying some type of secret code, and then the gate opened. He proceeded to park the truck. We waited in the truck until we heard no more voices, then we quickly crawled out.
James gasped for air and I stretched my back.
“Whew…” James said, catching his breath.
“I almost died too,” I said.
We could see off in the distance the facility’s bright lights beaming and lighting up everything. So, until we figured out our next move, we stayed hidden from sight.
When the coast was clear, we hid on the side of one of the small buildings.
That’s where we were able to observe the place the best. There were so many buildings, and they all looked the same except for one. We knew none of this was a good idea, especially since we didn’t know where to start. Our main goal was to find Marley and Naomi’s father and to see what else the T.S.I was up to, especially considering our parents worked for them, but we had no clue of where we should look first.
“Let’s go over there,” I pointed to the biggest building on the property.
“I’m sure we can find something there!” said James.
We swiftly ran through the grass to the building. When we got to the door the word “Transportation” was imprinted on it. We could have easily got caught, being that it was extremely lit up in that area.
James tried to open the door but it was locked. So we hid on the side of the building, where the light barely hit us and waited until someone came and opened the door. James ran past me and grabbed the door’s handle before it closed. We ran in and shut the door slowly. We saw the worker turn the hallway.
“Yes!” James whispered in victory, balling his fist.
“Good job catching the door,” I told him. “I didn’t think that was going to work.”
We walked down the very long and echoey corridor. The floors were tile and squeaky. A cold breeze ran through the place. It felt empty, but maybe that was so because it was after hours.
As we passed by office rooms, we could see through the small door windows, that some were occupied with people and others rooms had their lights off and were empty. We quickly passed the rooms, so we couldn’t be seen.
We really didn’t know what to do next or where to go, so we just kept walking. All I could think about was the dark and gloomy presence that filled the place and the gut-wrenching feeling that was inside of my stomach.
When we turned the hall, we almost ran into a worker in a white coat. The both of us dodged into one of those empty rooms, somehow the door was unlocked. We hid behind the desk as we watched her pass.
“Dude,” James said nervously.
“What are we even doing?” I whispered to myself, as I shook my head.
“We’re trying to find your girlfriend's father,” he said.
“Dude, she’s not my girlfriend.”
“Yeah, yeah I know. We’re trying to find the girl you like and her sister’s, father.”
“Right, right,” I said.
James looked around the room and observed.
“Okay. Let's check and see if we can find any other open doors. We can go in those to see if we can find anything. If we don’t, let’s just get the heck out of here,” I said.
“I don’t know man but I don’t think we’re going to find their father,” James said.
“I don’t know either. But, I think we will solve his disappearance.” I said. I was referring to what God had told Marley. Even though I didn’t believe in God at first, He was real to me now. I knew He was real the day that Marley had not died. She looked so pale, almost dead that day in the bathroom. But I had begged Jesus to let her live, and now even though she was in the hospital in a coma, she was alive.
We heard some chattering outside of the door. We continued to crouch behind the desk. I peeked out to see what was going on. It was two white ladies arguing. One of the ladies seemed to be giving orders and commands to the other.
“What do you mean! Why isn’t she dead yet?” she said angrily. She looked older and had long gray hair. She wore black slacks and a navy blue blouse; almost like what my mother wore everyday to work.
“I need you to quickly finish the clean up so we can move on to the next project, do you understand?” she said.
“Yes. But Dr., the others won’t listen to me. I told them that we needed it done by a certain time…” the other woman tried to explain.
“I don’t care! Get it done. Also, I need one of you to call our facility in Ohio for a shipment of jewels. Let them know that they’re not sending us enough. We might be late for our meeting if we don’t get them in on time.”
“I’ll get it done, Dr. Maddison.”
They walked off in the same direction.
“That's Dr. Maddison!” James whispered.
“Dr. Maddison?” I said just figuring it out. “Oh my gosh, that’s Dr. Maddison who sent the letter to Joseph.” She looked like she was a little old nice lady, but was the complete opposite.
“Let’s split up.” I said, “I’ll go look in her office and see if I can maybe find something to help us find Joseph, and you go try to find some other clues.”
“At your own risk,” James said. “We’ll meet back at my dad’s truck,” he took the phone out of his pocket and looked at the time. “Meet me at 2:05am, that’s in 30 minutes.”
I left the room and quietly shut the door behind me. I could see Dr. Maddison and the other woman walk into a room. I kneeled down against the wall. Moments later they came out and exited the building.
I ran down the hallway and peeked into the room they had just left out of, the door read, “Dr. Rebecca Maddison”. I tried to open the door but it was locked.
“Dang it.” I whispered. I looked around and checked the door of the room across; It was unlocked. The door read “Files”.
When I entered the empty room, I turned on the flashlight on my cell phone. The room was fairly large. There were two desks facing each other and file cabinets that ran across all of the back wall, reaching the ceiling. A person would need a ladder to reach the top drawer.
I quietly opened a bottom drawer and looked through the files in there. The names were arranged in alphabetical order by last name. I first went to the W’s.
I couldn’t find the name “Williams, Joseph” as I shuffled through the “W” files or any other normal names. All I kept finding were files with the names like “We-lu”, “Wev-ya”, “Wi-nu”.
“What is this? Some kind of joke?” I said.
Could they have been code words for something else? I opened one file with the name, “We-la” and there was a picture of some kind of alien dressed in a hospital gown. I moved the file closer to me and began realizing that this creature was the same kind of creature like the blue girl in the picture Marley showed me that day. Also the same kind that I saw in my dream.
Then someone came in the door. I quickly ducked down behind a desk and held my breath. I could hear their footsteps getting closer, I closed my eyes knowing that I was caught.
“Benjamin???” It was James.
“You scared the crap out of me!” I said.
“You scared the crap out of me too, bro!” he said.
“Shh! Before someone hears us,” I grabbed him by the shoulder as I put my finger over my mouth.
He quieted down.
“I guess the whole splitting up thing didn’t work,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Every single door was locked except one.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. The room I went into, I found this,” he held up a little blue crystal looking object. “There were tons of these in that room. They also had yellow ones. I’m assuming this is the stuff that guy Joseph was mining. This was probably what Dr. Maddison was talking about when she mentioned the “shipment of jewels”.
I grabbed it from him to take a closer look.
The jewel was a vibrant dark blue and very shiny. It was shaped like a 3D diamond and the size of a dime. For some reason, I got weird chills going up and down my spine, I could feel the energy from the bottom of my feet to the top of my head. I got scared and handed the jewel back to James. He then put it in his pocket.
“I was looking in these files trying to find Joseph’s name, but look what I found instead,” I showed him the file I had just opened. James came over to where I was pointing my flashlight.
“Whoa, is that a...”
“Yes. The same creature that Marley had shown me.”
“The blue girl?” James asked.
“Yes.” I rubbed my neck, as I was starting to get that pain again. (You know, the pain I usually got when it was time for me to go to Dr. Clyde for an appointment.)
“Weird,” he said. “But, what ARE these creatures?”
“I know. It makes sense now, it was probably one of these creatures that Joseph was trying to pass as his niece. He must have took it and hid it in his house, and that’s why the T.S.I wanted to kill him.”
“Makes sense.”
“You know, these names kind of remind me of names from the book, Space Tiers,” I said.
All of sudden James started to stare at me with large eyes. The last time I remember him doing that was when he had to tell our grandma that he was the one who ate the crust off the peach cobbler.
I shined my phone’s light on him. “What?” I asked him.
“Dude your neck!” he pointed.
I rubbed my neck, then I quickly looked at my hand.
“What’s wrong?” I asked him.
“It’s…it’s glowing!” he said, explaining it as his eyes got even larger.
“What are you talking about?” I said.
“Look!” he grabbed me by the shoulders and moved me to the window of the door so that I could see my reflection. I turned the flashlight off. The blue light from my neck lit up the entire room.
“You see!” he said.
I rubbed my neck again, and tried to turn my head as far as I could to see if there really was a blue light coming off of me.
“Why...,” I said, afraid. “What is that...” I rubbed my neck with my hand a couple more times.
“Are you an alien?!?” James said.
“What? I’m not an alien….what are you talking about? It’s me, Benjamin. I’m not an alien!!”
“Your neck is literally glowing BLUE!”
I looked at my reflection more and more unsure of what to think.
What is this? - I thought. What was making it glow? What was inside of my neck?
“Alright, we need to keep it down,” James said.
“I don’t even know what this is. I’m still your cousin, Benjamin. I really don’t know what’s going on,” I walked back and forth from one part of the room to the other, trying not to panic.
“I believe you and I don’t know either. So, just pull your hoodie up and let’s finish here. We’ll try to figure out what’s going on with your neck later.”
I was drenched in sweat and felt like puking.
“Dude, just put your hoodie up. That light is bright!” James repeated.
“Right,” I said, quickly putting it up over my head.
There were no answers for what was going on; at least not yet.
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