by P K Stadnyk
We all looked at each other thinking. “No, never until the garden,” I said, and the rest just shook their heads.
“Well, I’ve seen them on the TV in the background on the News when something horrible happened.”
I never watched the news. I found it boring and could never understand what they were talking about.
“I also saw one when I was shopping with my mom in London when the bridge fell down. They were taking some of the witnesses into their cars, but I could find no word about them on the Internet,” Oliver continued excitedly.
That left us thinking, but we still didn’t understand the point of his story.
“That means that somebody is trying to hide what happened. We have to find out who these people are.”
“I wouldn’t do that,” said Joe. “Everybody who knew something or saw something disappeared. Thanks, but I want to stay and live!
“I think we should go tomorrow but they won’t take us with them, so what are we going to do?” asked Alvin.
“I have an idea,” I went to my bed and took the spare keys from inside my pillow. I left them in there just in case. I was glad that my parents forgot about them.
“That’s great but how are we going to get out so nobody will notice? asked Alvin. “And Tom is up there. He’ll surely notice four of us going out.
“Five,” said Oliver.
“What do you mean five?” I asked.
“I want to go as well.”
“No way,” I said. I really didn’t like him.
“I can be useful. I might know something you don’t know.”
“We’ll take him,” said Alvin. “He might be right and he’ll go in front. I’m sure Tom isn’t sitting on the entrance. That would be silly. Then if anybody found him, they’d find the door as well.
“So when should we go?” I asked.
“We should go right after them and come back before they do,” Alvin said.
That was our plan, which wasn’t perfect, but it could work, and then I could see the sky. We went to bed, but I was so excited that I just couldn’t fall asleep right away. I was thinking about the men in black suits and how Oliver was probably a smart kid if he watched the news and checked the Internet. All I was doing on the Internet was playing free games.
Next morning, when I woke up, I felt very heavy. I thought that Bella was lying on me, but she wasn’t. I tried to get up but couldn’t. Something very heavy pulled me back to bed. Then something dragged me to the other side of the bed. I looked over my shoulder and found it was Alvin’s back. We were glued to each other back to back. Joe and William were laughing so hard they were crying, so it was definitely their handiwork. It had to look funny as we tried to get up but, somehow, we managed to get to the kitchen still glued together, and even adults couldn’t keep from laughing. Alvin was walking backwards, but he was moving too fast. I couldn’t catch up, lost my balance, and he fell on top of me. Did I mention he was a little overweight? My mom just shook her head in disbelief, took our shirts off, and confiscated the glue from Joe and William. I bet it wasn’t all what they had.
The rest of the day went nice and smoothly. I was so excited, my heart was racing. When the time came, we were all nervous. Mary and Rob weren’t back yet, but the rest left anyway. It was our turn. Nobody was paying much attention to us, so we made our way to the door. Old Cedric was sitting next to it.
“I’ll take care of him. You go,” said Oliver.
“Are you not going then?” I asked.
“Go without me. You didn’t want me to go anyway.”
“Yeah, but you were supposed to go in front,” I said. He ignored me and went up to old man Cedric.
“Mr. Cedric! Mr. Cedric! I need to talk to you!” whispered Oliver excitedly. “I think I found something! Please come with me.”
So he went, and our way out was clear. I opened the door without any trouble this time. I forgot it was dark in here and didn’t bring a flashlight. We were walking slowly, which was hard to do, as we were so excited. Bella was with me, right next to my right leg. She had changed. Before, she would run in front or behind, looking for something new and interesting, bringing me some old socks or balls she would find.
Then we heard somebody running after us very fast. We didn’t want to be taken back in without seeing anything, so we started to run. Then this person stopped and started coughing. I knew it was Oliver because he could never run to the finish line at school. He always had this cough. We weren’t very happy to see him until he took a flashlight out of his pocket. Again, he was smarter and more organized than I was. I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t like him. Maybe it was because he was better than me in some respects. We got to our exit with nobody injured or falling, thanks to—I have to admit it—the flashlight. When we went out, it was night and we saw no sign of Tom until we heard some snoring. I couldn’t see him at first but following the noise I found him lying with the bushes on his head. His camouflage was great, but his snoring ruined everything. Nice security we’ve got, I thought but, actually, I was glad he slept. I looked around and couldn’t believe my eyes!
The first thing I looked at was the sky. It was beautiful and clear again. I could see all the stars. There wasn’t even one cloud. Then Joe showed me our fish pond. Well, it was weird. They had grown so much that there was hardly enough space for them to swim. The grass was very high, up to my hips, and the flowers were as big as my head. That scared me a little. I felt like a mini version of myself next to them, but the real shock was when I saw the trees. They were massive. Ten people wouldn’t be enough to make a full circle around them.
We went to my house and it was true what they said. My room was exactly where it should be, toys were in their places, and there wasn’t even a thin layer of dust in the house. It was perfectly clean. Mom would be happy to see that. There was nothing to look for in my house, so we went on the street. The massive hole I nearly fell into was gone. Everything looked untouched like the incident on our festival never happened and people just left the place for no reason. Only the plants looked different. Even all the cars were back in front of the houses. Nancy’s home was back too.
We decided we had seen enough, and it was time to go back. The way back was easy, but how were we supposed to get in there? We wouldn’t be able to see if somebody were behind the door. But then our problem was solved by… Oliver.
CHAPTER 8 - WHAT DO WE DO?
He knocked two short and three long on the door and it opened. Cedric was sitting and waiting for us. He made sure nobody got close to the door and, somehow, nobody noticed we were gone.
“Come with us, mister,” Oliver said to Cedric. We all looked surprised and I guess we all thought the same: How did he convince Cedric to do this?! Maybe his curiousness about what was going on took care of it. When we got to our room, we told him all what we had seen, and Oliver added what he told us before.
“What do you think happened?” asked Cedric. “Fools!” he said after we didn’t say anything. “I thought you were better than them. Kids should be open-minded, not like “the grownups.”
“I don’t know what happened, but I think that somebody did some experiments on plants and tried to hide whatever happened to us and our homes,” said Oliver. Now I thought he couldn’t be a kid. He had to be an adult dressed like one with that kind of thinking.
“That’s better,” said Cedric. “I believe the government is behind it all, but I can’t tell you more because you won’t understand. Not even you,” he said, pointing at Oliver.
“Try,” challenged Oliver.
“Did you ever hear of global warming, biological weapons, or that sort of thing?”
“Not really…” Oliver replied, clearly upset, but his face registered other emotions as if he were confused. I was shocked because I expected him to know. However, the word, biological, got me shivering and adding weapons to it only made it worse. I couldn’t imagine them going together.
“Well, kids, leave it alone and live yo
ur lives, but don’t let them tell you that what you see isn’t what you see or what happened never happened. Keep your minds open.” After these strange words, Cedric stood up and left. None of us thought much about what he said because, as I said earlier, most people thought he was crazy.
We were tired after our adventure, but we decided to wait until the others came back to hear what they had found. However, they hadn’t returned after a very long time and our eyes were getting heavier with every minute. We fell asleep but when we woke up, we found out that we hadn’t missed anything. They didn’t come back in the next two days either. People started to panic, but nobody decided to go and search for them. Mom was getting anxious too but told me right away not to do anything stupid. She spent most of her time with Sophie. Even Joe and William stopped making jokes and were worried because their dad was missing too. Their mom tried to cheer them up, but with her being anxious too, it didn’t work to well.
Then one night, I was woken up by sudden noises. I got out of the bed, trying not to wake up anybody. Only Bella got up.
“Stay,” I commanded, but she didn’t listen. She always tried to go everywhere with me.
I hid with her in the corner and listened.
“We’ve been to other parts of our town but the people don’t know anything about what happened here,” said Mary. “They said they didn’t see any cloud or falling fireballs on that day. Some of them don’t even remember us or the names of our streets. They act and speak weird. However, we’ve been staying in our houses, a different one each day, and nobody is coming here anymore. We suggest that we all return to the surface and start our lives again. We can go out every day for a few hours or we can return tomorrow and start living again permanently. What do you say?”
I was glad she was back with us. I felt safer. I didn’t know her well before. Back then, I thought of her more like an old granny, but I definitely changed my mind after seeing how strong and lively she was.
People started whispering between each other and had different opinions, but most of them had had enough of living underground.
“Those who want to go back, raise your hand!” Mary said.
All of them raised their hands except Cedric.
“Would you rather stay?” she asked him.
“I want to go more than any of you. I lived up there for all my life. But how will we protect ourselves if they come back or if anything else worse than we can think of happens? We have nothing to fight them with.”
“I have an idea, but I’ll talk about it later,” said my dad.
“What idea? If you haven’t got guns, that won’t work.”
“We’ll see about that,” said my dad.
“Then it’s decided. We’re moving back but not immediately,” announced Mary. “We’ll be going out there for a couple of days, and if it’s safe, we’ll go back permanently.
Everybody was excited. Tom gave me a secret look and winked. I thought it was weird. Of course, it was! I was hidden! Well, at least, I thought so.
I went to my room, woke Alvin up, and told him everything. He got excited too.
“Do you think your dad has weapons?” he asked. I didn’t see or know of any, but when I thought of all these locked cabinets, I couldn’t say no. When the rest woke up I told them everything, and they promised not to tell anybody. Then we all went to the kitchen. We waited for them to tell us something, but they just kept quiet.
“Mom, are we going to stay here for long? I want to go back home,” asked Maya.
“I don’t know, sweetheart.”
“But he told us we would go back very soon,” she said, pointing straight at me. That’s why I didn’t like to talk or play with girls. All the adults looked at me suspiciously.
“Is that true, Mom?” shouted Maya. She probably missed her friends and hoped to play with them again soon, but they were… gone.
Girls couldn’t keep a secret; that’s for sure. I wasn’t going to tell anymore secrets to a girl.
Tom was laughing when he passed me, and whispered in my ear, “I think you’re in trouble, and, by the way, I wasn’t sleeping. I owed you one for saving my life before.” He winked again and walked away.
Dad just smiled at me and said, “You need to find a better cover next time.”
To be honest, I thought my cover was great and I was completely invisible. Bella looked at me with confusion in her eyes. She probably thought the same.
CHAPTER 9 - HOME, SWEET HOME
Days passing by slowly; the checks were good, so everything was ready to get back to their homes. Then when the day came, we were all packed, waiting in excitement and tension. At first, we felt like intruders, but, finally, we made it home! They decided we should stay in one house for the time being. I felt weird and couldn’t stop looking over my shoulder. Bella was with me all the time, but I still didn’t feel safe. I felt like an alien on my own planet. I noticed that others had the same problem. There was too much open space. I went to my room with the other boys (not Maya) and we had a real playtime with video games and other toys. We soon forgot about living in the shelter. Then we had a supper and Dad came back with a big black bag and went straight to his bedroom. He had a cabinet in there that was always locked, so he probably went there.
We were exhausted, so we went to sleep. I shared a room with the boys again, which I didn’t mind because I probably wouldn’t sleep by myself. It didn’t feel like the room I had before. After some time, people got calmer and started moving back to their houses. Then we were left by ourselves. We had been underground for over two months, which, for me, felt like years.
Days and weeks passed and if somebody would come, they wouldn’t know what happened to us. Missing people were still missing, and we didn’t have a clue whether they were dead or taken by men in black suits. We got used to the strange nature, even though the trees were getting bigger and flowers were getting weirder. Everything was getting back to normal. Almost.
Nobody ever mentioned anything about the event, and we soon stopped talking about it. After a few months when everybody thought it was just a long-forgotten nightmare, Kate, a journalist came to film a program about small communities. Everything was going well, trying to make our town look as normal as possible. She was in her 30s with blond hair and green eyes. We all were dressed in our best clothes as if we were going to church. She stayed in our town for a few weeks, and when she was about to leave, we organized a party for her, since she became like one of us. It was the first party we had had in a long time. People had a lot of fun and we remembered how much fun it was to have parties and parades. Everybody was singing, laughing, drinking alcohol, and talking, but somebody said too much...
The next morning, she was gone, and nobody could find her. The program she was filming never made it to the television. People said that Grace was at fault. She was an old nosey woman living at the end of the same street. I would always see her gossiping with somebody. People were always saying that one day, she would say too much. After a drink, she started talking to the journalist and wouldn't stop, even when people gave her warning looks or tried to stop her. She told her everything that happened to us, about the weird weather, how isolated we were from the outside world, how strange people were, that nobody remembered how they found themselves living here, and finally about our last parade. Then Kate, the journalist was very interested and decided she would stay for a one more week. But the next morning, she and Grace were gone. The strangest thing was that they didn’t leave a note or anything, so people got curious and tried to contact somebody from the office where Kate worked. They said nobody with that name worked for them. Then they called the police but they didn’t do a thing either.
People got very miserable after this and were getting more miserable every day. Our community wasn’t there anymore, people tried to keep back from each other. The worst was the fact that nobody did anything; we just accepted things as they were.
My parents got quite isolated too, especially with Sophie. I wa
s getting jealous more often. I felt they were giving all their love and attention to her. She was getting bigger with every day and I found her cute and funny, but I was getting lonely. My friends didn’t stay out for long because parents called them home earlier than ever before, and I had nobody to play with, even in video games. Joes, William and Alvin were the only once left of my friends. Well, there was Oliver too, but, somehow, I couldn’t imagine calling him my friend. The rest of the kids weren’t allowed to do much; their parents even picked them from school every day.
My friends sometimes sneaked out of their houses at nights to come to my house to play or just to talk but they couldn’t do it as often as we would wish. My parents caught us once, but they only smiled, pretending they didn’t see anything and went out of my room. It calmed them down that I was with my friends. Surely, having real friends was better than imaginable ones. They probably thought I was losing my mind and talking to myself.
So that was it. People were living their own lives, some without friends or a smile on their faces. Some of them, if they were walking on the street and saw somebody, would just speed up and pass them without even looking. They were scared of something, something they couldn’t understand, and I found it very hard living in our neighborhood after some time.
During the meetings with my friends, we started to wonder if it would ever be ever normal again, how long we were really been underground, and what was going on? I mean it was always a little weird to live here. We decided we would do research and try to find out. I decided I could ask my parents, they stayed most normal compared to others, but, again, I had to do it in a least noticeable way, so they wouldn’t think I was up to something.
CHAPTER 10 - A STRANGER AND SOME HOPE
Time went by and, to tell the truth, I had no idea what month it was. One night, I was awakened by screaming coming from Nancy's house. She wouldn’t stop, so I got up and went to wake up Dad. He wasn’t very happy, thinking I had another nightmare, until he heard it. We went outside.
