by Bob Bannon
“I understand,” Jonah said. “I’m an alien. I’m a threat to the human race. And the only reason my dad is my dad is because my alien body has his DNA.” He said it so calmly he actually believed he might have gotten past all of it, until he threw up again.
He was an alien. How could he be an alien? A little ball of wet sand? Couldn’t he remember anything from his childhood? Why couldn’t he remember the smallest, simplest thing? Was it all true? How could it be?
He was panicking. He felt it deep in the empty pit of his stomach. His breath was coming in hitches.
Just then, the green gem began to glow.
Jonah was bent over with his hands on his knees, the gem hung just below his face. It lit up the ground. He looked up and saw Athena Stapleton gasp. She backed up until her legs hit the bench of the picnic table.
She saw him stand. He was sheet white and had a thin layer of sweat dripping from his forehead. He was bathed in the pale green light. It looked like he was going to say something. Just then, the branches of the tree behind him exploded into flames.
Athena clutched her purse to her chest, skirted the picnic table, and jogged in the direction of the parking structure. She was probably moving as fast as her aged body would move her. When she came off the wet grass and hit the pavement, she moved faster, although, at her age, it was definitely not a sprint.
The gem went dark. Jonah was surrounded now only by the light of the flames in the tree in the darkening evening. He turned and looked at it. The whole tree hadn’t gone up, just the branches, but if something wasn’t done about it, the tree would burn to the ground, and he wasn’t quite sure the cold, frosty grass would stop it.
He turned back and watched her hurry away past the parking structure.
“Wait!” He yelled. “Please, wait!”
He felt like he might burst into tears. He ran after her. It was easy to catch up to her and block her way.
“Jonah, I have done everything I can for you. I told you everything I know out of my respect for your father. But I cannot be involved with you. I cannot put my family in danger.” She looked back at the tree that was on fire. Somewhere in the distance an alarm sounded at the fire station. She turned back to him. “Either from you or from the people who are after you.”
That struck him hard. Was he a danger? Were the ‘dangerous men’ just men and he was the dangerous one after all? Tears ran down his face.
Athena put a hand under his chin. “I believe your father was right in taking you.” She said. “I don’t believe you’re a great threat to this world. He should have had more time with you. He should have told you. I think he could have helped you more by telling you.” She slid the back of her finger tips up his jaw line one more time. “He probably began to think of you as just a boy. Such a boy.” She finished with the same astonishment as when she first sat down at the picnic table. She was looking deep in his eyes.
She took money out of her purse and pushed it into his hand. He didn’t look down at it. His eyes stayed on her face.
“I can’t help you anymore.” She said. “Do not come back here, Jonah Havensby. Never come back here and disturb me again. It won’t be safe for either of us.”
He tried to say something but he just began to blubber through a stream of tears.
“You run now, Jonah Havensby,” she said. “You run and you do not stop running. You survive. Like your father wanted you to. You do not share your secret with anyone. You trust no one. You run now.”
Jonah stood there, huffing for breath and wiping his tears on his coat sleeve.
“Run!” She said.
And he was off. He did not look back. What started off as a jog, quickly became faster, and then faster still. Soon he was into a full-out run. He ran faster and faster. As he did, his tears dried. The only thing he concentrated on was the run. He didn’t know what his destination was. He just ran. He ran until he blacked out.
XVI
When he woke, Jonah was on his stomach. He felt sunlight on his face. It was daytime. He rolled over and felt a dull throb in his left eye and decided to keep his eyes closed. But this was different. This was what it felt like when the pain subsided. It was as if the pain had started a half-hour ago and was winding down now.
He also was dimly aware that he had been sleeping on his stomach before he rolled over. He never slept on his stomach in the nest. It was too uncomfortable. He was aware that he was under the electric blanket, but something else was different. He wasn’t on the ground. He couldn’t feel the wood underneath him.
He sat up and opened his eyes. What he saw when he opened them terrified him so much that he tried to back against the wall, but he wasn’t on the floor. As he backed up, he fell out of the camping hammock, which tipped over with him, blanket and all. That didn’t stop him though. He scooted himself right into the back corner and looked around.
He was in what looked like a wooden cabin. There was a slanted wood roof, walls with several windows and a light wood floor. All of it seemed to have been treated with some kind of finish that made the wood gleam in the daylight.
He looked to his left and there was a red metal box next to him that hummed. It had cords running this way and that out of it. When he scooted near it, he could tell that it was an electric generator. Both sides of it held electric outlets, only two of which were not in use. He looked to see where the power cords went, but each of them seemed to go under the floor. One of the power cords went from an outlet and then back into the generator, but there was no telling where it reattached. It seemed to Jonah that this power cord was self-recharging the generator. The readout on the machine was all the way into the green, which said it was fully charged, and an orange light above that told him that the generator was plugged in and charging.
When he looked past the generator, he could see that the room curved around and went into another room.
He stood up on wobbly legs. He still had no idea where he could be. He wasn’t sure that someone hadn’t finally captured him and put him here. He wasn’t sure if he should explore.
When he began to look around the room he was in, the first thing he noticed was the overturned camping hammock. It was exactly like the one he had slept in at the cave. There were two more set up right next to that one. Were these those hammocks?
He passed by the three hammocks. He didn’t bother righting the one he had knocked over. There was a shelf here, built right into the wall. One had five books on it. Things his father used to read, he knew. He had seen one of these books in the footlocker in the cave.
Next to that were two sets of silverware and his hunting knife that he kept in his backpack. Next to that was a small microwave oven. He looked at it suspiciously. He looked at the back of it and followed the power cord down to the floor. It was plugged into an extension cord that disappeared into the floor. He came back up and tentatively pushed the door button. When it opened, the light inside it turned on. He shut the door again.
Jonah looked up past the shelves. He saw where the wall met the slanted roof, although it didn’t look like the wall connected all the way into the roof. He followed the roof line around, when his eye was caught by something else. There was a twinkling of light. He went over to it and looked at it. It was a white Christmas light. As he followed it up through the slanted roof, he saw that each beam that held the roof in place was wrapped in white Christmas lights. If he had woken up in the night, it would have been the first thing he would have noticed. He couldn’t see where they plugged in, but he was sure it was one of the cords on the generator.
His foot kicked something under the shelves. When he looked, he saw that it was one of the footlockers. All three of the footlockers were open there along the wall, and well organized. One held clothes, the other held what appeared to be about a month’s worth of canned food. The other held various tools and other objects. He could see various batteries and two flashlights as well. He bent to look at the first, the one with the clothes, and discovered the red swe
ater he had traded out at the second cave. At the end of the row, he found his pack, neatly placed against the wall.
Someone had brought everything he owned in the world back to this one place that was obviously filled with things that were stolen from various locations over the last two months. He was sure he was in a cabin built of stolen lumber. Had the military men who were after him ‘acquired’ all of these stolen items and built a cabin somewhere in a remote location? Somewhere far away where they could torture and kill him?
He looked up again. When he followed one of the beams in the roof to where it should have met the others, he found that the central wall of this cabin was a large tree trunk. A very large tree trunk. That’s why the room was curved. He went to it and touched it with his hand. It seemed like this tree was still alive. It had bark on it. He peeled some away and crunched it in his hand and dropped it on the floor.
He looked to the right, to where the room curved into another room. He wondered if it would be guarded. He leaned his back against the tree trunk and slid his way around it, step by step. He stopped when he got to what appeared to be two shower curtains hanging from a metal bar. The curtains separated this room from the other room. They were light blue and had some kind of Hawaiian Aloha pattern to them – a pattern of brightly colored flowers. If he hadn’t been so scared, he would have admitted to thinking they were pretty cool.
He slid his foot right up next to the shower curtain and slid his hand to the edge of it. He opened the curtain by the tree trunk just an inch, just enough to see to the other side. After he looked, he grabbed the curtain and slid it all the way to the far wall.
Here he found a room with a mirror and a shelf on one wall, a window on the other wall, and the stolen claw-foot tub in the center.
Jonah went to the wall with the window. Just under the window, a piece of metal pipe came in through the wall, sealed off by a metal lever. Under this contraption was a large metal pot that reached up to his knees. When he lifted the pot, he could see that it rested on an electric hotplate, but it also had a tube at the bottom of it which led into the claw-foot tub. He replaced the big pot, back up onto the hotplate and examined the metal lever.
He pushed the lever up and water surged through the pipe. He wasn’t prepared for the water pressure that came through and, since he was so on edge anyway, it scared him enough that he dropped backwards and banged his head against the tub.
He got back up on his knees and went back to the pipe. It was filling the pot quite quickly. He cupped his hand under the stream of water and brought it to his mouth. The water tasted cold and fresh. Not like out of a tap, but good nonetheless. He bent up to the pipe and drank directly from the stream of water. When he moved the lever back down, which took more pressure than lifting it up, it cut the water off. He looked into the pot and saw that the water had filled the bottom of it, but he noticed the water wasn’t staying put.
From behind him, he heard a gurgling and, when he turned, he saw that the tube from the bottom of the pot hand been fastened to the rim of the tub. The water from the bottom of the pot was now surging through that tube and into the bottom of the tub.
He looked inside the tub and found that there was a stopper on a chain that could be used to block the drain, but, at the moment, it was just sliding around in the water. The water was going into the tub and then moving right down the drain.
He inched back, expecting water to come flowing all over the floor. When it didn’t, he looked back into the tub. It was definitely draining, but not onto the floor. He put his face down against the floorboard and looked under the tub. What he found here was another piece of tube that led from the drain somewhere beneath the floor.
Someone had taken the time to fashion him some indoor plumbing. Cold water came into the pot from the wall. Then he could use the hotplate underneath to warm the water, which then led into the tub for a nice relaxing bath.
Just then, he heard a rustling from the other room. He wondered if whoever had captured him had come back. He went to the wall that was the tree trunk and put his hands against it. Ever so slowly, he inched his way back around the tree trunk. He was sure he wouldn’t be able to overcome his captors, but he wanted to see them before they saw him.
He moved around until he heard the rustling again and then he stopped. He made it just around the shower curtains and he still hadn’t seen anyone, but the rustling seemed to be coming from the wall just around the trunk. He slid forward and then craned his neck to see the other side. No one was there.
He moved away from the wall and looked at the whole room. On the far side, where he thought the noise was coming from was a large metal pet carrier. It was pushed up next to the wall under a window. Next to that, was a small coffee table with a twelve-inch flat-screen television sitting on it. In the far corner was a large red punching bag that hung from the ceiling. When he made his way toward the punching bag, he saw a door out of the corner of his eye. A door! He hadn’t seen it before because it was built on the exact opposite side of the tree trunk from where the shower curtains hung.
He started for the door when all of a sudden Grouchy came out of a large pile of shredded newspapers inside the pet carrier with a hiss and a high-pitched bark.
The surprise made Jonah trip over his own two feet and he went down on his hands and knees. He was practically face to face with a very angry raccoon who hissed and screeched and even made a few more barking noises. All the while, he threw himself against every wall of the carrier, sometimes moving it an inch or two this way or that, but making no headway in freeing himself.
“What are you doing here?” Jonah asked him.
Grouchy’s tirade continued.
“Okay, calm down. It’s not my fault. I’m just as much a prisoner here myself. Not my fault.” Jonah tried to explain as he got to his feet, but the raccoon was having none of his explanation.
Jonah shook his head and moved to the door.
He was expecting it to be locked, so when he turned the handle and jammed his shoulder against it hard, he was surprised when it flung right open.
He had opened the door so hard that he was flung against the wooden railing of the patio outside. That’s when he realized he was looking straight down into thin air, the ground was very far below him.
He scrambled backwards and hit the outside wall of the cabin. Except that this was no cabin, it was a tree-house. In a very tall, very large tree.
He looked up and he could see a sea of other trees around him. He was up in the canopy of them. Everywhere he looked were green branches and brown bark. The roof, it seemed, was just long enough to keep the branches of this tree at bay. Some hung over the end of the roof, like the tree was trying to reclaim the house.
What he thought of as a patio extended all the way around the house, and the house wrapped halfway around the tree. Next to him on his left, up against the railing that spanned the entire length, was Eric’s bike, tied to a rope that extended through a pulley system that hung from the end of the roof.
He tentatively took a step toward the railing. He put a hand on it and tried to shake it. When it didn’t move, he put his other hand on it and shook it again. When he found it to be sturdy. He moved toward the railing and looked down.
He couldn’t even hazard a guess as to how high he was. He could see the ground, covered in leaves, but there were also several branches below him as well. He backed away and moved toward the door.
He backed all the way into the house in a low crouch, kind of finding his center of gravity. Once he was back inside, he put both hands on the tree. Somewhere in his mind, he knew he had been walking freely around the house, but now that he knew it was very high up, he no longer trusted the floorboards. At least Grouchy had calmed down and disappeared back into his newspaper nest.
Jonah backed off of the tree, still crouched, and left his hands up as if he were balancing. He moved to the center of the room. He jumped up, fully expecting to crash through the floor when he landed. He did
n’t, so he did it again. He did it three more times, each time jumping higher and higher, and each time expecting to fall to the ground far below. When nothing happened, he began to tentatively move through the tree-house once again. He moved this way and that, sometimes sliding his feet instead of lifting them.
When he made his way to the wall by the small television, he noticed something sitting on the floor. When he picked it up, he saw that it was a small digital movie camera that had been placed on the notebook containing the mysterious notes. The read-out on the camera said that there had been something recorded on it. When he looked down at the notebook on the floor, he saw that it had been turned to the page with the note about Athena Stapleton. Underneath that note, in the same fluid handwriting a new note said:
Play Me
It was already connected to the television. When he found the play button and pushed it, the television screen lit up. A moment later, he saw the tree-house, the room that he was in right now. The camera bobbed and weaved as if someone were holding it, then it turned as if someone had balanced it on the television to face the room, but there was someone in the way. He saw the bottom of a necktie and a long white coat, the kind of coat doctors wore. The kind his father often wore when he worked in his lab. Jonah’s breath hitched and he nearly dropped the camera. Instead, he sat down on the floor and put the camera gently down in front of him.
But when the person moved back and came fully into the frame of the television, it wasn’t his dad, but, maybe, it sort of was. This man had a receding hairline and shock-white hair. He wore a lab coat over a starched button-down shirt and khaki pants. The necktie didn’t come all the way down to his waist, where it should be. It stopped right at his belly. He had keen gray eyes, like his father and he wore thick glasses, just like his dad. This man was almost like Jonah’s father and Albert Einstein got mixed together in a blender. That’s exactly what this man looked like.