by Jean Fischer
“See?” said Sydney’s grandmother. “God is sending us a message, just like He did to Noah on the ark. He’s telling us we don’t have to worry about the waterspout. It won’t hurt us. A rainbow is God’s way of saying, ‘I promise.’”
“Let’s go stand in the end of it!” Bailey was already out the door and running down the stairs toward the beach. Sydney followed, but by the time they got to where it looked like the rainbow ended, they realized it was out over the ocean.
“You can’t touch it,” Sydney explained when she caught up with Bailey. “Rainbows are sunlight bouncing off raindrops. I’ve chased them before, but you can’t catch them. They move with the rain.”
Bailey looked at her sand-caked feet. “Hey, look!” she said. “I’m wearing sand shoes.”
She dropped to her knees and began scooping wet sand into a big pile. “Come on, Syd, let’s make a sandcastle or something.”
Sydney sat near her friend and helped form sand into a mound. “You know, don’t you, that the tide will come in and wash it away.”
Bailey patted the sand with both hands, sculpting it into a tower. “I don’t care,” she said. “Building it is the fun part.”
“I see something we can use,” said Sydney. A cylinder-shaped container was half-buried in the sand nearby. Sydney went to get it. “This’ll work,” she said. “We can put wet sand in here and mold it into turrets.”
The container that Sydney found was a tall, insulated coffee mug. The top was screwed on so tight that she couldn’t get it off. She tipped the mug, and water dribbled out of the tiny hole on top. She shook it, and the inside rattled.
“Something’s in here,” she said. Sydney shook the mug again, but nothing fell out. She shook it harder. Still nothing. Then she peeked into the hole.
“I can’t see anything,” she said. “This is kind of gross. We should wash it or something.” She walked to the water’s edge and swished the mug in the ocean. Then, once more, she looked inside. Nothing. She turned the mug upside down and shook it hard and fast.
A beam of light jiggled across the sand!
“Bailey? I think it’s glowing!”
“Huh?” said Bailey, who hadn’t been paying attention.
“It’s glowing. The mug is glowing!” Sydney repeated.
She turned the mug upright. A bright beam of light streamed out of the tiny opening. She put her eye to the opening, but the light was too bright to see what was inside.
Bailey put her hand a few inches above the tiny hole. A small circle of light reflected on the palm of her hand.
“Weird,” she said. “What do you think this is?”
“Beats me,” Sydney answered. “I’ve never seen a coffee mug that lights up.”
“Me neither,” Bailey replied. “Maybe it’s not a coffee mug at all. Maybe we’ve stumbled onto something else.”
“Like what?” Sydney asked, handing her the mug.
Bailey sat down and chewed her lip, a nervous habit that she vowed to break. “Like, maybe, some sort of secret weapon,” she said. “Something the UFO left behind.”
“If it were a secret weapon, we’d probably be dead by now,” Sydney told her. “Your imagination is getting away from you again.”
The girls sat for a few minutes pondering the odd gadget and then—
“Hey, the light went out!” Bailey exclaimed.
UFO!
The object was indeed strange. It seemed to light up only after Bailey or Sydney shook it for a while. Then, it cast an eerie glow for about five minutes and went dark. They brought it back to the beach house, and Sydney put it on a metal bookshelf in the guest room. She had the idea that they might try to dissect it later.
When the Camp Club Girls met in their chat room after supper, Sydney told them about the mug.
Kate: A coffee mug that glows from the inside? Why would you need it to light up inside?
Alexis: Maybe it’s so you can see how much coffee’s left.
McKenzie: But you have to shake it to make it light. That doesn’t make sense, because if there’s hot coffee, you’ll get burned when it leaks out of the hole on top.
Elizabeth: I think you can close the hole. My mom’s coffee mug has a flippy thing you turn to open and close the hole. Oh, and by the way, the kind of mug you have is a travel mug. Some of them aren’t supposed to be submerged in water. At least my mom’s can’t.
Sydney: Maybe it got dropped in the ocean and the salt water wrecked it or something, and then it washed up on the beach.
Bailey took the laptop from Sydney.
Bailey: Hi, Bettyboo. Hi, everyone else.
Elizabeth: You know I don’t like being called Bettyboo.
Bailey: Just kidding, Beth. I have a theory about the mug. It was half buried in the sand. I don’t think it washed up on the shore. Someone put it there. I think it’s some kind of secret weapon.
She bit her lip hard and waited for someone to reply.
Alexis: Something like that happened in one old alien movie I saw.
McKenzie: Why would you think it’s a weapon?
Bailey: I don’t know. It’s too creepy to be anything ordinary.
She pushed the laptop back to Sydney and went to get the mug from the bookshelf. She grabbed the handle, but the mug wouldn’t budge.
“Hey,” she said. “It’s stuck.”
“What do you mean?” Sydney asked.
“It’s glued to the bookshelf, Bozo,” said Bailey. “I can’t pick it up!”
“Oh for goodness’ sake,” said Sydney. She set the computer on the twin bed, where they had been cyber-chatting, and she went to help Bailey.
Sydney grasped the mug’s handle. Bailey was right. It was stuck. She pulled hard. The mug let loose, almost catapulting her backward.
“See?” said Bailey. She examined the spot where the mug had been. “I don’t see any glue or other sticky stuff.”
Sydney moved closer to inspect the bare spot. All at once, the mug shot out of her hand and stuck itself to the shelf. “It’s a magnet!” Sydney gasped. “Look at this.” She yanked the mug away from the metal shelf and then let it fly back. “I didn’t notice it when I put the mug here before.”
“Way cool!” Bailey squealed.
Sydney hurried back to the laptop to tell the girls. When she looked at the screen, she found a string of messages.
Alexis: Syd? Bailey? Where are you?
McKenzie: Hey, did you log off without saying goodbye?
Kate: Where did everybody go?
Sydney: Sorry. Bailey went to get the mug, and we found out it’s a magnet! It was stuck to my metal bookshelf.
Kate: DANGER! DANGER! Do not—I repeat—DO NOT put that mug anywhere near the computer.
Bailey was just about to plop down on the bed next to Sydney with the mug in her hand. “No!” Sydney yelled. She shoved Bailey off the bed and onto the floor.
“Hey!” Bailey protested. She sat there looking startled. “What did you do that for?”
“I’m sorry,” said Sydney. “Kate just wrote that the mug is very dangerous—”
Bailey shuddered and flung the coffee mug over her shoulder. It landed somewhere across the room. “What’s the matter with it?” she asked nervously.
“You didn’t let me finish,” said Sydney. “It’s dangerous to put it near the computer.”
Sydney told the girls what had just happened.
Alexis: Well, at least now you know that it’s not a bomb. The way you two are messing with it, it would have gone off by now.
Bailey joined Sydney on the bed. She read what Alex had just written.
Bailey: Not funny. Why is it dangerous to put a coffee mug next to a laptop?
Kate: I read a magnet will kill the pixels on your computer screen, so it’s best to keep the mug away from it. Can you take a video with your cell phone?
Sydney: No, but I can with my digital camera.
Kate: Good. Stand away from the computer and shoot a video to show us what you do t
o make it light up.
Sydney retrieved the mug from a corner of the room.
“You hold it,” said Bailey. “I don’t want to touch it.”
“It won’t bite you,” Sydney answered. She got her digital camera out of her dresser drawer.
Bailey took the pink camera out of Sydney’s hand and turned it on. She switched the button to VIDEO MODE. “All set,” she said. “Ready?” Bailey pushed another button and started recording. “The case of the mysterious cup. Take one!”
Sydney held the mug and shook it hard, but nothing happened.
“It stopped recording,” said Bailey. “The LCD says, ‘Out of Memory.’”
“My camera only takes a forty-five-second video,” Sydney answered. “Don’t start recording as soon as I shake it.”
Bailey deleted the first video, and the girls tried again. Sydney shook the mug hard and fast, but again, the time ran out before anything happened.
Sydney sighed. “Hang on a minute. I’ll shake the mug to see how long it takes to light up.” Sydney shook the mug hard, but it wouldn’t light. “Bailey, I think you broke it.”
“I did not!” Bailey defended herself.
Sydney tried again, but the mug stayed dark.
By the time they returned to the computer, Kate had an idea.
Kate: You know, that thing reminded me of my shake flashlight, so while you were away I went on the internet and looked up how it works.
McKenzie: What’s a shake flashlight?
Kate: Don’t you have them in Montana? It looks like a regular flashlight, but it doesn’t work on batteries. It has a strong magnet inside. When you shake it, the magnet passes up and down through a coil. That causes the capacitor to charge and the flashlight lights!
Alexis: Now you have a perfectly reasonable explanation.
Bailey: But there’s nothing reasonable about a glowing coffee cup.
“Mug,” Sydney corrected her. It bugged her when people misused words.
Bailey: In fact, a lot of unreasonable stuff has gone on since I got here last night.
McKenzie: Like what?
Bailey: I saw strange lights over the water that looked like a UFO. Today I stepped on a bone on the beach and Syd said it might have come from a dead sailor. A lot of them have disappeared around here. Like when a ghost ship washed up on the beach down the coast. The sailors vanished into thin air. Then, today we climbed a lighthouse with an old sea captain but he disappeared. Maybe he was a ghost too.
Elizabeth: Bailey, calm down. There are no ghosts!
Bailey chewed on her lip as her fingers flew across the keyboard.
Bailey: There are too! There’s the Holy Ghost. We learned about Him at camp, and I heard my pastor talk about Him.
Elizabeth: The Holy Ghost is a part of the Trinity of God. Sure, He’s a spirit, and you can’t see Him, but He’s not out to get you. There are no such things as ghosts.
Bailey said no more. Elizabeth was the oldest of the Camp Club Girls, and she seemed to know everything about God. Sometimes, Bailey felt like such a kid when she was around her.
Kate: So what are you going to do with it?
Sydney: I don’t know. Throw it in the trash, I guess.
Kate: Gotta go. Biscuit just made a mess, and I have to clean it.
It was getting late, and the rest of the girls decided to sign off too.
Bailey and Sydney’s guest room in the beach house was on the second floor. It had two twin beds with matching striped bedspreads and big, fluffy pillows. A white wicker nightstand separated the beds, and it held an alarm clock and a table lamp made out of seashells. The room was painted a soft blue, and instead of one wall, two big sliding glass doors led to a private covered deck that overlooked the ocean. Gramps had said that Bailey and Sydney could sleep out there if they wanted to. It would be like camping, only instead of sleeping in a cabin near Discovery Lake, they would sleep under the stars near the beach. The girls got their sleeping bags and went outside.
“Hey, what’s going on down there?” asked Bailey. She leaned over the deck railing to get a better look. Below, children ran around on the beach with plastic buckets and flashlights.
“Ghost crab hunting,” said Sydney as she settled into a hammock on one end of the deck.
“Ghost crabs? You mean that ugly thing that we saw on the beach this morning?”
“They’re not ugly,” Sydney said. “I think they’re kind of cute.”
“They look like monster white spiders,” said Bailey. “Why is everyone trying to catch them?”
Sydney rolled on her side and gazed at the ocean. “Because they’re fun to chase,” she said. “They pop in and out of their holes so fast you never know when you’ll find one. Little kids especially like looking for them.”
She paused and watched the moonlight dance across the waves. “They’re hard to catch, because they blend in with the sand. Sometimes, if you stay real still and wait, it’s like the sand comes alive around your feet. The ghost crabs come up out of their holes all around you, and then they start scurrying sideways and if you move—even one tiny little bit—they bite your toes!” Sydney made a quick grab at Bailey’s foot.
Bailey jumped. “Ooo! Don’t scare me like that,” she said. “I’ve heard enough ghost stories for one day.”
Sydney rolled onto her back and gazed up at the stars. “Like Elizabeth said, Bailey, there’s no such things as ghosts.”
“Then how do you explain the captain disappearing?” asked Bailey.
“I don’t know where the captain went,” Sydney said, “but I don’t think he was a ghost that just floated off the top of the lighthouse.”
Down below, on the beach, children giggled and screamed with delight as they tried to put crabs into plastic buckets.
“Be careful!” a man’s called in the darkness. “They pinch!”
“Hey, look up there. It’s the big dipper,” Sydney said, changing the subject. She pointed out the constellation to Bailey, and the girls settled down to watch the stars, Sydney in the hammock and Bailey on a mattress on the deck. Soon they were sound asleep.
Bailey had a nightmare. She dreamed that she was climbing the stairs in the lighthouse, and they disappeared beneath her. There was no way down and no way out.
She awoke with a start. The full moon was high in the sky, casting a glow on the water. The beach was deserted, and Bailey had no idea what time it was. She stood and looked out at the sea.
The waves washing up on the beach glowed an eerie blue green, and she saw what looked like glowing ghost crabs skittering across the sand. “Sydney!” she whispered. “Wake up!”
Sydney groaned and rubbed her eyes. “What’s the matter?”
“Get up!” Bailey demanded. “The ocean is glowing and so are the crabs.”
“Huh?” asked Sydney. She sat up wearily and looked at the beach. “It’s just bioluminescence.”
“Buy a luma what sense?”
“Bioluminescence,” Sydney repeated. “It’s a phenomenon caused by phosphorous in the water. On moonlit nights, it makes the waves glow.”
“And crabs too?” Bailey wondered.
“I suppose,” said Sydney. “It’s nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep.” Sydney rolled over, and in no time at all, Bailey heard her breathing heavily.
She felt lonely on the deck with Sydney sleeping. At night, the ocean didn’t seem at all like Lake Michigan. The Atlantic was huge, and it held sharks and stingrays, and who knows what else. And scorpions and snakes might be nearby. If they were on the beach, they could find their way up to the deck where the girls slept.
Although it was muggy outside, Bailey climbed into her sleeping bag and zipped it up tight. She sat on the deck with her back against the wall, fighting sleep. She worried that if she slept she might have another nightmare.
Dawn was peeking over the ocean when Bailey lifted her head. She had dozed off sitting up and now her back ached. The moonlight had faded, and the ocean was like a black, gaping
hole. She thought she heard something on the beach. It was a soft whirring sound, kind of like the blade of a helicopter spinning. It stopped. Then she heard nothing but the waves lapping up on the sand.
Bailey climbed out of her sleeping bag and stood by the railing. Something caught her eye. There, not far offshore, was some sort of flying thing. Bailey could barely make out its shape, but it was the size of a car and covered with blinking, multicolored lights. It moved slowly, hovering above the water.
“Sydney! Wake up!” Bailey commanded. She ran to the hammock and shook her friend awake.
“What!” Sydney exclaimed.
“Get up!” said Bailey. “The UFO is out there!”
Sydney sat up and looked toward the ocean. “Bailey, nothing is there. That story I told you about people seeing things at night? It’s just a story. I don’t believe there’s anything to it.”
When Bailey looked toward where the lights had been, she saw they were gone. “Oh Syd,” she gasped. “You have to believe me. Something dreadful is out there.”
“I believe you,” Sydney said halfheartedly. “Now forget it, and go back to sleep.”
“I won’t!” said Bailey. “Look!”
Mysteries on the Beach
“Whoa! What on earth is that?” Sydney exclaimed.
The object was making small, tight circles above the water and darting to and fro. It’s blinking lights alternated from red to multicolored, and it didn’t make a sound that the girls could hear from their balcony.
“It’s not on earth,” Bailey answered, “And it’s not from earth either. It’s a UFO! I told you so. I’ll go get your grandparents.” Bailey started for the sliding glass doors.
“Not yet,” said Sydney. “It’s probably nothing. Let’s go check it out.”
She climbed out of the hammock and put on her sandals.
“Are you crazy?” Bailey shrieked.
