That Night

That Night

A short story by: Megan Kangas 

                  I woke up screaming from another nightmare, the ones where you have sweat through the sheets and are breathing as if you have just run for miles without stopping. It was my mother again, screaming and crying out for me, her daughter Skylar Gray, as a bright spark touches her as she is tortured. It’s been two years, two years since these sorts of visions have emerged every time I rest my head down to sleep, two years since my mother vanished after going on one of her journalistic missions.    

                I was 13 when my mother vanished out of what seemed like thin air. Two years since she had been kidnapped. When my father was having conversations with the towns sheriff about her disappearance, they said they were looking at this as a kidnap case, my mother so loving and kind had been kidnapped. Three months later the visions started occurring, my mother screaming in pain, men laughing, a gray building that looked prison like, and water cascading from gray, dark, dreary ceiling’s.  

             That is where my visions led me to a building gray as can be and prison like in stature, the building my mother was locked in, it’s been two years, we are finally here, my visions had led me to my mother. My friends and I and my 9^th grade science teacher Mr. Stevenson are stationed outside the wire gate, bated breaths as we waited for the lights to turn off like they do every night around 9:00 pm as seen in my visions. I didn’t want to wait this long to investigate but, my mamma always taught me a good investigative journalist must plan ahead of time for everything to set into place, I just knew my nightmares, flashbacks, whatever you want to call them have become stronger we needed to move in tonight, they were going to kill her if we didn’t make it.  

         My friends Maggie Simpson, Jack Wise, and I decided to lead out these plans, we needed an adult, someone who was strong and who was an avid reader of those comic books about super hero’s and weird science experiments. That was Mr. Stevenson, 25 years old and apparently a huge fan of my mamma's investigations. I won’t go into detail about how we convinced him to help us. Let’s just say we bought him a lot of comics and I promised he would be able to have a long conversation with my mother, once or if we have saved her. 

        Ten minutes later and the lights at the top of the building turned off, that was our cue, it was time to move in, it was time to save my mother. Our teacher took out a laser, which seemed to come out of nowhere, and made a hole for us to crawl under the gate. He told us not to ask where he was able to come across a laser strong enough to cut through metal, we didn’t and kept moving stealthily forward. We then made our way to the back of the building and he did the same thing for the dull gray colored door of the building. As soon as we got in we surveyed our surroundings and decided to split up, Mr. Stevenson and I went to the basement to survey for my mamma, while Maggie and Jack went straight ahead to look for any suspicious activity and to keep watch. 

         At the bottom of the long stairway to hell we surveyed the area, a bunch of strange machines with strange buttons and glowing lights were everywhere we looked. We crawled to the back of the room and stopped in our tracks and my heart felt like it was going to explode into a tiny million pieces because in a glass cylinder filled with water was my mamma hooked up to more than fifty wires. I almost blew my cover by gasping, but it only came out as a little squeak instead. My heart was racing a mile a minute and I had to tell myself to breathe before I passed out, we had found her after two years, we had found my mamma. 

        Suddenly loud noises came form the top of the hellish stairs and Mr. Stevenson and I shrank into the corner as voices started to come our way. 

       “Yes Mr. Goobleman no one has discovered our secret. Yes Mrs. Reinhart came close two years ago, but we will take care of her. We will continue to devastate the city of Chicago and create a city-wide earthquake that will continue spreading through time with this machine right here. And then we will build our own empire once everything and everyone else have been destroyed.” A stout man with a wiry face exclaimed

          I surveyed the room as he was talking and spotted a cell phone about 5 feet away, as soon as the two evil men left we would be able to alert the police from the outside in. The two men talked for some time more as I kept mental notes in my head of all their evil ideas to thwart the city. They finally left, and I started to creep out of my hiding spot, looking at my mamma in awe, and was suddenly grabbed around the waist and a hand wrapped around my mouth. I struggled kicking and punching with all my strength and trying to breathe even though my air way was being blocked. All of a sudden, a loud buzzing noise surrounded me, and I was dropped on my back to see that Mr. Stevenson had lasered right through the evil Hench man’s arm as he passed out, Ew gross I thought, but cool at the same time. 

          I ran to grab the cell phone and called 911. As soon as someone picked up from the local police department, I started to talk as fast as I could about our situation and that they needed to come as soon as they could, or we would all be dead. Thank god, they believed us and said they would come as soon as they could. 

         It took what felt like an hour and the weird men had come back down to our own special hell. They had a weird pointy stick and I just knew that was going to be used on my mamma. I was about to grab Mr. Stevenson’s laser and blast them to smithereens, when a loud banging above startled the men surrounding my mother. What sounded like 20 footsteps came from above us and the men stared at each other because there was no other way out but up, they were trapped, we had won. All the police officers came running down the stairs and started shouting

          “Put your hands up, you are under arrest for kidnap…” I didn't listen to the rest because we had won, and we had my mother to save. 

               One of the police officers took the butt of his gun to the glass holding my floating mother and hit it until it burst, water thrust forward like Noah’s Ark and fried all the machines in its path. I looked no where else but my mamma's face as her eyes opened and she took her first breath in two years, her eyes finding mine, we both smiled as bright as the sun. I ran over taking all the wires off of her cold limp body and I hugged her for the first time in two years breathing her in and crying as much as she was crying in my arms. As soon as I let go we brought her up the stairs from the hell she had been living in and we brought her to the nearest hospital. Finally we had found her, finally she was coming home. 

            Three months later and my family is together again, we are struggling, but we will all get better as we work together, everyone. My mother and father have been attached at the hips since her return and my mother and I have been awarded from the mayor of Chicago for helping save everyone. Jake and I have finally revealed our feelings for each other and have been dating since, Maggie and I are even closer, and Mr. Stevenson got that interview from my mamma that I had promised him. Life was still difficult, and my mamma and I still have nightmares sometimes, but we will get better in time.