by J.T. Lewis
The Abducted
By
JT Lewis
*****
Copyright 2012-2014 J.T. Lewis
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This book is a work of fiction. The
names, characters, places, and incidents are products of
the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and
are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to
persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or
organizations is entirely coincidental.
*****
The Abducted
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The Abducted
It was just a party.
There were six of us, three guys and three girls, our ‘gang’. We were a pretty tame group as gangs went, didn’t drink or smoke, and all of us were near the top end of our class.
Nerds, one and all!
I only mention this to assure you that there is no reason to think that mind altering chemicals were in anyway involved in the story, nor were any of us prone to mental illness.
We were prone however, to inventive and imaginative thinking, which one could point to excitedly, justification of the unlikelihood that my story was in fact true. But I assure you, we as a group and I in particular, were no more inventive than any other of the multitude of people of our age. Point of fact, we had less incentive than most to create a story such as I bring forth to you today, for you see, we just wanted to be …normal!
But I digress, it was a party. It was about 9:30 on a cool September night when we moved the party outside, kicking a soccer ball around the yard. Eventually we migrated to the side of the yard where a tall water tower loomed over the landscape.
Looking up, I noticed a large bright light floating toward us out of the west. Thinking it an airplane and initially giving it little thought, I soon realized that it had stopped moving, and that there was no noise emanating from it at all.
Motioning to Bill, the closest to me, I pointed out the anomaly. Soon, the whole group was looking up, the ball forgotten. We all seemed mesmerized by the floating orb perched above the water tower, seeming to stare at it for minutes…
And then, it was gone!
***
There was no zipping off…no noise…just gone.
Thinking I had missed something, I looked over at my friends, who were lowering their heads and going back to kicking the ball!
What the hell?
I started asking what had happened to the light, receiving answers ranging from shrugged shoulders to outright annoyance at my insistent questioning. Eventually, I let the subject drop, thinking I must be crazy and not wanting to hammer that idea home in everyone else’s mind.
June’s mom had said she would have something special for us to eat about 9:45 or 10:00, so we started drifting toward the warm kitchen for our surprise. We were met by a surprise all right, but it had nothing to do with food.
“Where the hell have you been?” June’s mom literally shouted when we entered the bright kitchen.
June, the ballsiest of any of us anyway, stood her ground with a righteous indignation that drew admiration from the rest of the group.
“What the hell do you mean? We were out in the yard…by the water tower.”
“You most certainly the hell were not by the water tower. I called out at 9:45, and there was nobody around. I even sent Nick (June’s brother) down the road to find you. The food is ruined!”
I realized two things with clarity at that moment:
-They used the word ‘hell’ a lot around there,
-And that the hands on the clock were telling anybody that wanted to look that it was…11:00!
I hate to repeat myself here, but…what the hell?
Surprised at the time, May and Sandy, the youngest two of our group had to get home, worrying more about their dads’ reactions than anything else we may have encountered this night. I had bigger worries at that moment.
Cornering Bill and June in the living room, I carefully crafted my next question as if the rest of our lives depended on it.
“What the hell just happened?”
Glancing quickly at each other, June responded with, “My mom’s just crazy.” Bill nodded in agreement…he was the quiet type.
“Whether your mom is crazy is not the point,” I replied. “The point is, it is now 11:00, and we were not kicking that damned ball for an hour and a half!”
Sitting down on the coffee table, then moving to a sofa at her mother’s insistent “get your ass off the furniture,” I waited for their faces to transform into an understanding and all-knowing look.
It didn’t happen.
Jason moved into the living room then, carrying a paper plate of now-cold food. “Hey, this stuff is pretty good!”
I scooted over to the next cushion, giving him room to sit next to me before posing the same question to him. He stopped chewing momentarily, a blank look crossing his face before shrugging his shoulders and taking another bite. Speaking through the crumbs of food in his mouth, he simply stated what everybody else in the room already knew but were too afraid to say.
“Must have been abducted by aliens.”
***
The room erupted in laughter, as everyone leaned back and had a rousing laugh at the thought…everyone but me.
“Lighten up Gabe,” June said through the tears, “We just got our wires crossed on the time is all.”
I sat there, still not convinced. “Ok, then what about the light…over the water tower?”
“I remember the plane flying over,” Bill remarked. “It was low, had its landing lights on. We’re only thirty miles from the airport; that’s like inches to a plane…happens all of the time.”
June and Bill got up to get some of the cold food while I sat still next to Jason. Alone in the room, I asked him, “So, you don’t remember the light hovering over the tower…and everyone staring at it?”
I don’t know if it was the moment’s hesitation, or the quick twitch of the eyes looking toward the kitchen that convinced me that he at least suspected something amiss from the night’s activities. There was something else there too, was it fear? It was a momentary look that gave me the confirmation that he deduced there was more to it than he was letting on.
Working through his demons quickly, he looked me in the eye with a smile, shrugging his shoulders once more as he repeated, "It was just a plane.”
***
Driving home that night through the dark backcountry roads, I was more than a little spooked. I kept looking to the sky, looking for confirmation? Maybe it was more of an avoidance mechanism, like “If I see it in front of me, I’ll go the other way.”
In any case, I made it home and went immediately to bed, though I lay awake for hours as I thought about the strange evening’s events, my mind still spooked. Rehashing again and again the timeline of the evening, points of my existence that night when I absolutely knew what time it was on the clock, there was no way I could in any way rationalize an explanation that made up for the missing hour and a half.
Finally falling asleep after three, I seemed to have a fitful sleep. Waking up after noon that Saturday, I felt anything but rested. My muscles hurt like I’d played a football game the night before, although we had done nothing strenuous.
Trudging
stiffly downstairs to the kitchen, my head ached more than a little. My mom met me with a concerned look on her face.
“You ok Gabe? It sounded like you had a couple of nightmares last night…I heard you yelling from my room. After the second time you yelled, I headed to your room, but everything was quiet by then. I never heard another peep out of you the rest of the night.”
I certainly felt like I had been fighting something the whole night. I couldn’t remember any of the dreams I had experienced, but I remembered the feelings they had elicited in me, those of danger… and fear.
Quietly eating my bowl of cereal while my mom flitted throughout the kitchen, I was amazed again at how much my muscles hurt when I moved. Something just wasn’t right about this.
Finishing breakfast, I went back to my room and pulled out my journal. I wasn’t a dyed-in-the-wool journaler by any means, opting instead to record only the highlights of my life to that point, which were few. This seemed to be, if not a highlight, at least a mystery worthy of inclusion. I carefully recorded everything I could remember of the night before, including what my mom had mentioned this morning. After I was done with the words of my story, I went to the next blank page and started sketching.
Starting with the water tower, I then drew in a nondescript light source representing the floating orb of light. I then searched my mind for the next part of the sketch; for I had decided to try to include my impression of my friends just before they went back to “normal”. That moment when the light had disappeared, and I had looked over at them before they had resumed the game. I closed my eyes to try to recreate what I had seen in my mind.
The image that finally came forth surprised me both in its content, and its intensity. For the briefest of moments as I had looked upon their faces in my memory, they had all shared the same clear expression on their face…fear.
I hadn’t noticed it that night, but it had been there, and I was sure it had been there.
Doing my best to represent that moment on paper, I think I finally embodied the essence of the fear that they had exhibited. Although good enough for my uses, the picture definitely wouldn’t have won any prizes. Nevertheless, I was satisfied with my rendering, and replaced the book on the shelf.
Having a feeling that this was not the end of this particular story, I determined to leave a few pages open in my journal for future additions.
Although I would not call myself comfortable with everything that had happened, I sensed that there was a mystery unfolding, and I would be remiss to let it melt away as if nothing had happened.
***
After arriving at school early that next Monday, I sought out my friend Sandy at her locker, something that was part of our daily pattern anyway. Getting past the usual pleasantries, I then asked her offhandedly if she remembered anything strange about the party on Friday.
“I remember how mad my dad was that I got home late. He grounded me from driving…for two weeks! How come you guys didn’t tell me it was so late?”
Expressing my dismay that her parents would dare to deprive her of her driving privileges, I then casually mentioned the seemingly lost time of the night. Not skipping a beat as she angrily flicked her curly red hair behind her shoulder, she lamented, “I don’t know, but it sure has affected me…for two weeks!”
Well, no help there. Her reaction told me that she definitely had no other concerns about that night. The only effect that it had had on her was to put a crimp on her personal independence.
Slamming the locker with annoyance, she stalked off to her first class. I looked at my watch, seeing that I didn’t have time to get with May before the start of classes. I would however be able to see her at lunch…as usual.
May Andres was the current love of my life…she just didn’t know it. The only friend in my group that I had known since first grade, we had grown up together, yet not together.
Of course, much of that early avoidance was based on the fact the she was…a girl. I had only recently developed an interest in those mysterious creatures. When we gradually gravitated toward one another, it was outwardly based on the commonality of our goals and classes. My infatuation with her as a budding woman was my secret, and one that I was as yet lacking the bravery to put out there for the world to see.
We did have, however, the same lunch period. And we were the only ones in our group to have said lunch period, allowing me to spend a glorious forty-five minutes alone with her daily.
It was heaven.
I determined this day however to work our common experiences from last Friday night into the conversation. Of all of the people I knew, she was the most intelligent and levelheaded. Surely she more than anyone else would remember something to confirm my thoughts. I spent the rest of the morning antsy, able to think of nothing else except my upcoming lunch with May.
Finally the bell rang announcing my lunch period, and I made my way hurriedly to the cafeteria. Getting in line next to May, she looked up through her brown bangs, giving me her normal, beautiful smile as she started picking out her lunch items. I was too nervous to be hungry, so I chose only an apple and a soft drink.
“You on a diet?” she asked, eyeing my tray.
Laughing off her inquiry, I shrugged, saying I just wasn’t hungry. Taking our usual table, we settled in and started on our food, talking about the classes of that morning and homework assignments. Finally working up my nerve, I started slowly.
“Nice party on Friday.”
“Yes it was, although my dad wasn’t too happy that I got home after curfew.”
“Yeah…about that…”
Looking up expectantly, there was a glimmer of something in her eye…dread?
“It seems we may have lost some time somehow,” I started, attacking the subject gently. “Kinda weird.”
Nodding imperceptibly, she looked back down at her food, grabbing a fry and biting the end off as she maintained her quiet demeanor.
“You remember anything strange that night, like the light?”
“What about the light?” she said quickly, looking up with interest.
“The light hovering over the water tower, do you remember it?”
“I remember thinking it was a plane,” she answered matter-of-factly.
“So did I…initially, but then it disappeared…”
She quietly maintained her position, reaching down and picking up another french-fry and chewing on it slowly.
“It seems to me, that after we initially saw the light… that seems to be the time that we…lost track of the time…”
Another fry, more chewing, she was a really cute chewer I noticed about then. Swallowing her last bite, she then glanced up with a determined look…a very sad yet determined look. Half whispering now, she laid out her thoughts, succinctly and to the point.
“Look Gabe, I know what you’re saying, I do. We saw the light about 9:30, and then it was gone. We went back into the house and it was 11:00. I can do the math…something happened…what I don’t know.”
“But I do know this!” she continued with even added determination. “I’m in a fight for my future here Gabe. My dad isn’t rich…if I don’t get scholarships for college, I won’t be going. I don’t have the time to investigate mysterious happenings; nor do I want the stigma of ‘crazy’ that may be attached to any story that comes out of that night.”
“Do you understand where I’m coming from here, Gabe?” she asked pleadingly. “Whatever happened, if it happened, I can’t be involved. After this, I will deny knowing anything about anything concerning that night…I just can’t afford it.”
I was shocked by her speech, but understood immediately where she was coming from. Nodding my head finally, I whispered, “Ok.”
Smiling up at me with those pale blue eyes, she warmly said, “Thanks Gabe, you’re a sweetheart!”
She then changed the subject, and we spent the last of our time together talking about classes and school gossip. Our friendship was even closer after that, a close
ness based on a lie.
But I didn’t care, for at least two reasons I could think of. Firstly, I would do almost anything to be close to May, as long as it was legal, and there was probably a question whether even that would matter. Secondly though, she had confirmed what I had experienced, and even though I had basically agreed never to talk of it again, it was good to know that at least I wasn’t crazy.
Although, I guess crazy is a relative term.
***
We finished high school with honors, and with no further discussion of the mysterious night. If there could be a correlation to anything concrete, it seemed that everyone in our group did even better at school after that night, sort of like we had been charged up with jumper cables! All of us advanced several places up the rankings in the next two years, taking the top six spots in grade average of the class.
I guess you could say we now had a superpower…a mental superpower.
In the mean time, I had entered little more into the journal concerning my experiences, only the discussion with May, and notes on a couple of dreams that seemed a little too real. Mom continued to worry over my frequent nights of thrashing and yelling, but for the most part I didn’t remember them, and my young body quickly recovered from any lost sleep.
I was, in fact, enjoying my newfound intelligence boost right up until I started college.
That’s when the real shit started.
***
The headaches were becoming intolerable.
It was just before Thanksgiving, and I was making my way slowly to my last class before going home for break, or should I say weaving. I could barely stand the pain, and it was affecting my balance. There were few people left on campus, but the ones that I came across gave me a wide berth. They were probably thinking I had a hangover.
I wish!
Making it through that last class was my only goal for that day, that and getting home. Flying through the test with ease, I made my way back to the dorm. The headaches usually subsided some after lunch, so I had opted to drive myself home as planned. I wasn’t looking forward to the four-hour drive, but I figured I could muddle through it.