by Nye, Laine
The syringe had ketamine in it. It was an anesthesia that was fast acting. Steve began to feel terribly light headed. Frank was released from the wall. The front door lost the pressure that was on it. Everyone but Timothy Mann and the closet were out of the effects of the gravity. Then Steve fell unconscious to the floor. Even then, with his mind completely out, he did not release Mann from the tumble nor his mom’s secured shelter.
Josh stepped into the path of Mann’s tumble to bring him to a stop. He was ready to catch Mann as soon as he hit the floor and started for the wall. But when Mann hit the floor and was heading for the wall and as Josh caught him, it only resulted in Josh being crushed against the wall by Mann’s body and the pull of the gravity. He slumped to the floor holding his chest and watched helplessly as Mann continued his unintended acrobatics.
They all tried for several more minutes to pull Timothy out of the grip of the modulating gravity to no avail. No matter what stratagem they used or what brute force they employed, all they did was get knocked down. Smashed against the wall. Carried up to the ceiling.
Finally, Jeff gave up on his friend. “Leave him.” Jeff said reluctantly. “Let’s go get mother.”
They went down the hall and tried to pry the door open. They didn’t succeed. Even under the knockout influence of the drug Jeff had purchased illegally, Steve’s subconscious continued to apply forced gravity in the two situations that were ongoing. No one could have nor would have known that Brad had sent extra energy to his son. That was helping to keep these two gravity fields happening. Jeff spoke to Charlene through the door while feeling himself pulled up to the door and pressed against it. “We’ve got your son. He’s out cold. We are taking him with us and if you care about him you will come out of that closet.”
Charlene did not answer. She could tell by the violent sounds she had heard that there were several people in her home that did not belong. If she were to come out…
Then she changed her mind for her son’s sake and crawled to the door underneath the forced gravity that held the door shut. She tried to open it. She could not do it. The g-force pull on the door was too much. She would have been willing to go with her son to try to protect him. She now knew she could not. The men withdrew down the hall after they tried to force the door open and they couldn’t. She was safe. But what of her son?
“We’ve got to get out of here before Brad shows up. This kid has already ruined part of my plan, I won’t let Brad ruin the rest.” Jeff said.
Jeff had seen what he was going to do to finish his revenge. In his mind’s eye while driving out to California. He remembered a time when he was young that his family had gone to a place called Lake Berryessa. In fact, the place had made such a deep impression on his mind at the time that he had nightmares and dreams about it for several years after he had visited there. He wanted to turn his nightmares into Steve’s and Brad’s nightmare. Let them suffer the horror that he had in mind for them. Steve would be the victim. Brad would be forced to watch.
Jeff’s crew waited in the living room while Josh and Frank went outside to get the rug. They brought it into the house and unrolled it. Jeff found Steve’s cell phone in his pocket and removed it. He knew the phone could come in handy. Ducking under the rolling, tumbling bloodied body of Timothy Mann, they grabbed Steve and dragged him over to the rug. They laid him down on one end and rolled him up in the rug. It was a perfect cover to get him out of the house. They picked up the rug and carried it outside. They decided to leave the second rug behind laying on the grass.
Jeff and Frank were carrying the rug across the lawn when it began to float upward.
“Push down on it.” Jeff said. “Don’t let it get away from us.”
As they pushed down, they began to rise off the ground.
“Jeff, I don’t know if I want to mess with this kid anymore.” Josh declared. “This is the strangest, spookiest stuff I’ve ever seen. What if he lifts the whole van off the ground when he is in it?”
Josh grabbed Frank to pull him back to the ground while Dan grabbed Jeff. They slowly came back down from about six inches off the ground.
“Shut up Josh.” Jeff told him. “He’s not going to lift the whole car while he’s out.”
“You don’t know that.” Josh insisted.
“Just shut up and get the van doors open.” Jeff retorted.
“This is just too crazy for me.” Josh muttered nearly to himself.
“Come on little brother. Don’t be a wimp.” Frank told him.
Dan spoke up as they neared the van. “Will you guys stop using our names out here and talking about brothers? You want the whole neighborhood to be able to identify us?”
“Sorry.” Jeff said. “You’re right.”
Then Dan lifted off the ground about three feet. He was panicking. He didn’t know how high he might go or if he would be thrown into a building again like happened before. He twisted and turned and grabbed for the van. Too far away. Grabbed for one of the guys. Couldn’t reach them either. Suddenly he dropped to the pavement hard. He was laying on his back trying to calm down.
“Maybe he has a point.” He said while gesturing to Josh.
“Let’s just get him inside and see what happens then.” Jeff said confidently. “I still think we can pull this off. Besides, I’m paying you guys enough, aren’t I?”
Two of the guys got in the van and helped pull the rug with Steve inside. Everyone else got on board. Jeff started the van and before he put it into drive the back end of their vehicle came off the ground about eighteen inches. Josh looked at Jeff with fear and a ‘I told you so.’ Attitude.
They waited in breathless silence. They were beginning to fear that they would not be able to leave with Steve on board. The van dropped back to the road after about one minute and they took off with a sigh of relief though they were leaving the still bouncing form of Timothy Mann careening off the walls in the house. Everyone was silent about that. Adel drove the car that Mann had rented. Bob Stout and Lance Elliot rode with him.
Brad was driving down the road he lived on and passed a carpet van that was going the opposite way. For a few brief moments, he thought he detected energy coming from the van. The energy levels at his home were still very high though. That was where his focus was. He had to get there to help his son.
He pulled into his driveway noticing that the front door was open. That a rug was lying on the ground. His heart started pounding harder than it already had been. He jumped out of his car and ran for the front door. Stepping into his house, he saw a large man who was tumbling in a circle, bouncing off the four surfaces he was coming-in contact with. Brad tried to stop him, but it didn’t work. He used his own gravity control to stop the process he was seeing. The man slumped to the floor against the wall. Brad checked his pulse. Watched for breathing. The man was dead. He knew.
“Jeff. Charlene.” He yelled loudly.
He heard his wife answer in a muffled distant sounding voice. He ran into the hall.
“Where are you?” he asked.
“In the closet. I can’t get out.”
Brad could feel the gravity force coming from down the hall.
He ran to the closet door and exerted his energy to remove the gravity that was holding the door shut. Then he grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door open.
His wife jumped up off the floor and leaped into his arms. “They took Steve.” She said tersely. “They just left. Let’s go catch them Brad. They have our son.”
“I think I just saw the car they were in. I’m leaving right now. Charlene, you cannot come with me. I will need to concentrate on Steve. I can’t be worrying about you too.” He told her. “Stay out of the living room. There is a battered bloody body in there. We’ll worry about that later. Gotta go Hon. Bye.”
“Just go. Do whatever it takes to get our son back.”
With that, he turned and ran back out to his car. Now that he had stopped the g-force energy in his house, He should be able to concentrate on an
y residual energy coming from his son. He cursed himself for not paying better attention to the carpet van and the feeling of energy release he felt as the van went by. He was just too distressed and distracted to home in on it.
He raced down the road trying to feel his son’s energy output. Trying to figure out which way they would have logically taken to get away. A hundred questions were pouring through his mind about why this was happening. Who were these people? If Steve was emitting the energy, why hadn’t he been able to overpower those who had taken him?
He had to push all questions aside and concentrate on the energy release. He couldn’t feel it any longer. Had his son given up? Brad didn’t realize that when he stopped the man from his tumbling and let his wife out of the closet, the energy connection from Steve back to the house was broken. Therefore, no more energy was coming from Steve.
There. He spotted them when he turned on Greenback Lane. They were about three hundred feet ahead of him. He recognized the van. They hadn’t gone as far from him as he feared. He accelerated to the highest speed he could and began weaving through cars. Once he got just a couple hundred feet behind them, he would lift the van off the road and keep it stationary until he got there.
He couldn’t feel the energy release from the van anymore. He wondered if that meant that Steve had been rendered unconscious. Maybe he was no longer in the van. Maybe he had been transferred into a different car. There was only one way to find out. He was almost close enough to lift the van. He didn’t want to be too far away when he lifted it because he was afraid all the cars in front of him would stop thus creating a traffic jam and he wouldn’t be able to get to the van. Right then, a semi-truck backed out of a narrow parking lot from a narrow lane. The truck was slowly backing out to reposition to go back into the parking lot. He was blocking all the lanes except those coming from the opposite way. There was no way for Brad to swerve into the oncoming traffic. There were too many cars. Cars were honking at the semi-truck driver who was totally unconcerned by the situation he was creating.
The truck had finally moved out of the way and Brad had accelerated as much as he could in the heavy traffic that was generated by the truck stopping everyone. He could still see the van in the distance. He just needed to get a little closer than he would lift the van off the road stopping their forward movement. Than he could catch them. Just a little luck with the traffic and he could get his son back.
Brad was now stopped completely at a traffic light behind a line of cars. He could not see the van anymore because of the view being blocked by another large truck. Then his phone rang. He grabbed it with hope in his heart that it might be good news about his son. It was his son’s phone number. He answered with a relieved hello.
“Brad? Or should I say Seth Collins.” The voice. It wasn’t his son’s.
Brad was shocked. Someone else had called using his son’s phone. What did that mean concerning his son? Who was this that called him by his real name and his alias?
“Who is this?” Brad demanded.
“Oh, come on Bradster. You don’t remember your old buddy from Huntsville?”
Brad’s friends had nicknames for him. One liked to call him Bradley though that wasn’t his real name. Another called him Bradford. But only one ever called him Bradster.
“Jeff?” He asked in a voice that projected confusion, fear and anger.
“Yeah. It’s me Brad. I’ve got my brother Dan with me. I’ve also got your son with me. Man, is this kid powerful or what? He took on nine of us and almost won. Almost”
Brad’s already hyper adrenaline reaction went up a few more notches.
“Let me talk to him.” He demanded in a tremulous voice.
“Can’t. He’s sleeping off a heavy sedation. Did you know that after you killed my dad, you also killed my mother? Did you know that Sherry still walks with a limp? And did you know that Dan never recovered the full use of his left arm after you threw us through the glass? It’s time to pay up Brad. You have caused my family a lot of pain and death. It’s your turn now.”
“Jeff. We were friends. How could you have turned on me like this? All I did with Sherry was take her on a date. I took her up into the air above the park grounds like I had with you and the others. And I messed up. I accidentally let her fall. I would never have hurt her intentionally. And yet, your whole family came to attack me after that night. Even you Jeff. I never would have expected that from you. Please turn around and give me back my son. I’m right behind you.”
“Yeah. We saw you driving through your neighborhood.” Jeff said while checking his rear-view mirrors. He couldn’t see the car Brad had been in so figured it was just a bluff. “You were going like a bat out of hell. You always drive like that Bradster? My sister gives a different account of that night. She told us how you tried to take advantage of her and she wouldn’t comply, and you just dropped her to the ground and threatened to do it again if she wouldn’t cooperate. That’s the kind of a sicko I was hanging with all those years. You think I wouldn’t want to get justice for my sister?”
Brad ignored the justice comment. It was ludicrous. This was not justice.
“Your sister lied to you Jeff. You know more than I do how she was getting into trouble with her friends. Lying and manipulating. I didn’t know what you knew about her until after I was with her. Furthermore Jeff, I never laid a finger on your mother. How could I possibly be responsible for her death? I’m sorry to hear that she died but it sure as heck had nothing to do with me.”
“You didn’t lay a finger on my father either. You just dropped a boulder on him.”
“Oh, come one Jeff. You think I did that on purpose. I was just trying to stop your father and those guys that he was with from shooting us, so I dropped them to the ground. The boulder was an accident.”
“Yeah. Sure. The boulder was an accident. Dropping Sherry twice was an accident and throwing my brother and I through the glass was an accident. Well, we accidentally took your son.”
“Your father was shooting at us. Did you get that part?” Brad yelled through his phone.
“You injured my sister.” Jeff yelled back. “Then you hurt Dan and I.” Of-course he was shooting at you.”
“You idiot Jeff. You attacked me and our friends at the college. Our friends Jeff. Yours and mine. I defended us. What were we supposed to do? Stand real still while you guys shot at us? You guys try to kill people that accidentally hurt one of your family members? I know a guy who took his friend on a snowmobile ride and when they wrecked, his friend’s leg was broken. He ought to be shot by your standards.”
There was a clearing of cars in the oncoming traffic. Brad floored his gas pedal and swerved into the oncoming lanes. He gained almost two-hundred-fifty feet that way. It was a maneuver that he would never have done normally. He hadn’t driven recklessly since the time in Ogden when several people were trying to kill him. He lost his temper that day. Really lost it. Today, he was getting very close to the same level of intense emotion. They had his son. He had been reluctant to lift his car off the road over the cars in front of him because of the spectacle it would create. He didn’t want to draw too much attention. In his distress he hadn’t considered how much of a spectacle he would have to create to stop the van and get his son out.
Jeff had been throwing retorts and insults at Brad since the last time Brad had spoken. Brad wasn’t really listening. He was more concerned with catching the van.
A traffic light turned red stopping the van. It was Brad’s best chance of catching them. They were not at the front of the line of traffic or they would have just taken off through the red light. Still about four hundred feet ahead of Brad. Brad changed his mind about the amount of attention he would be creating, He used his gravity control like he once did in Ogden on Washington Boulevard.
He lifted his car off the highway and with his forward momentum he sailed over the tops of the cars in front of him. When he got near the van he dropped the car back onto the road. There wasn’t
enough space for his car to fit in between the cars in front and behind him. His car slammed down onto the front of the car behind him and slammed into the car in front of him. The collision knocked the car in front forward several feet. Two of his airbags deployed. The one from the steering wheel burned his arms when it made contact with him. Airbags expand so violently that intense friction builds at a hyper-speed causing them to burn skin where they touch.
Now his car would fit. He was very close to the van. He sent out his forced gravity field. The van came off the highway and drifted skyward about fifteen feet up.
Jumping out of his car heedless of the damage he had caused to the two cars that he had just damaged from his rough landing, he ran up to the back of the van. Just as he was beginning to lift himself off the ground to grab the back doors and fling them open; Just when he was going to start throwing people all over the inside and outside of that van, the back doors were flung open from the inside. There stood a guy he had never seen before. Holding the top of the van for balance. Pointing a gun at the top of a head that was showing through the end of a rolled-up carpet. Brad recognized that the head belonged to his son who did indeed appear to be unconscious.
“Back off mister or I put a bullet in his head right in front of you.” The stranger said.
“Is he alive?” Brad asked who was now trembling all over his body. Not from the pent-up energy this time, but from the fear he was feeling.
“He’s fine Brad. But he won’t wake up for several hours.” A voice inside the van said. It was the same voice that had been talking to him on the phone. It was Jeff.
“Let him go Jeff. Right now.” Brad yelled up to the van.
Several cars had already stopped to look at the spectacle. More were coming to take a closer look. Traffic was jamming up on both sides of the highway.
