Chapter 11
Into the Shadow’s Den
Having crept along in the dark for some time, Amelia reflexively raised her hand to shield her eyes from the bright lights. Once her vision acclimated to the surroundings she didn’t believe what she was seeing.
The room was filled with equipment and machinery. Amelia felt like they just stepped onto a set for a science fiction movie. It looked like a hi-tech laboratory. Just not a modern one.
“Did we just step into the Russian lab in Stranger Things?” Veyla whispered to Amelia.
Even though the room was filled with antiquated computing power, the girls were nonetheless entranced by their surround- ings. While looking around, the girls seemed to silently pass the same questions back and forth like a mental basketball. What is this place? Is the Sundance Shadow running science experiments? Why is it built underground?
Surprisingly, Artemis was the only one who kept his wits about him. Sensing that something was off, he jabbed his cold, wet nose into Amelia’s palm. That was enough to bring her back into the reality of their present situation. Namely, that the three of them were standing – plain as day – in the middle of a doorway to a secret laboratory where – as best as they could tell – blood curdling screams had recently been coming from.
Amelia tapped Veyla. “C’mon, over here,” she said, running over to hide behind a bank of carts supporting monitors and other electronics from the stone ages. Peeking from behind the machines and through the wires, they took in the lay of the lab. In the middle of the room were rows of workbenches, topped off with microscopes, chemistry beakers, and rocks of all shapes and sizes. Piles of books were stacked in varying heights on every flat surface. The resulting walls of books reminded Veyla of an ancient stone wall in Cusco11. The perimeter was lined with metal carts on wheels. Some were tall, like the ones they were currently hiding behind. Others were short and wide. These ones reminded Amelia of the cart the janitor used at school. The carts held all sorts of strange electronics. Some had a rats nest of wires flowing from them, while others were bare. There didn’t appear to be any rhyme or reason as to which cart held what.
“This is the laboratory of a mad scientist,” Amelia said.
“Yeah. Just wait for how mad he’s going to be when he finds us here,” Veyla retorted.
From where they were positioned, Amelia could see that the room connected to another area. The carts lining the walls provided them the cover to get from Point A to Point B. Amelia shared the plan with Veyla and Artemis. With all three on the same page as to the objective, they duck-walked along the edge of the room, successfully traversing from cart to cart until reaching the destination on the far side of the space.
From this new vantage point, Amelia saw that the connected room was much more open with a higher ceiling. Looking on a diagonal, and without having to look around the corner, she saw a set of stairs that led up to a metal catwalk. The catwalk followed the perimeter of the ceiling, offering a 360-degree aerial track. Amelia relayed this information back to Veyla who was crouched next to her.
“Great. Probably for the snipers,” was all Veyla said.
In an effort to stay hidden, they found themselves practically on top of each other. “Scoot back a little bit.” Amelia told Veyla. “I’m going to lie down and peek around the corner.”
Amelia had done this thousands of times while out in the woods in order to avoid having an animal she was keen on observing catching wind of her. Once she was in position she slowly stretched her head around the corner. Her eyes naturally darted to the periphery, scanning from outside in. But as her field of vision homed in on the center of the room, her brain either couldn’t – or didn’t want to – compute what her eyes were seeing.
The last thought Amelia had before being whipped back around the corner was “That can’t be.”
***
Veyla, doing her best to keep her breathing under control, stayed focused on Amelia. When Amelia laid down on her belly, Veyla took a knee. This kept her low enough to remain hidden behind the cart while also providing a strong base to pull Amelia back if need be. With a firm grip on the back of Amelia’s waistband, Veyla waited as Amelia scoped out the room. And as she watched, and felt, Amelia’s entire body jerked without warning. It was the kind of recoil you have when you’re sitting behind a glass window and a bird unexpectedly bounces off of it – you jump out of your skin. This cue caused Veyla to reflexively yank with everything she had, pulling Amelia back behind the corner.
Artemis watched all of this unfold with a mild degree of amusement. He couldn’t tell who was more frightened – Veyla or Amelia.
“What the heck,” Amelia said in a harsh whisper after scram- bling to get her legs underneath her and back up against the wall. “What’s wrong?!?”
“No, YOU what the heck,” Veyla whispered back just as harshly. “You did a full body twitch. I thought you’d been spotted. So you’re welcome for saving your life.”
“What are you talking about? There’s no one even there,”
Amelia told her.
“Well then why did you flinch so dramatically?” Veyla shot back.
That question was sharp enough to bring Amelia’s attention back to what she’d seen. Amelia tried to tell Veyla what was around the corner. But now her tongue teamed up with her brain and prevented the words from coming out of her mouth.
She finally found some words willing to work with her. “You gotta see for yourself.”
Veyla’s eyes narrowed. She studied Amelia’s face for a trace of what was around the corner. But Amelia revealed nothing. “Fine. Switch places with me then.” Now finding herself in the lead position, Veyla looked at Amelia, gave a thumbs up, and then stuck her head around the corner. Her eyes widened. She immediately understood Amelia’s communicative challenge.
Suspended in the middle of the room was a saucer-shaped object. The thing was huge. Amelia’s quick math, before being yanked backwards, reckoned it was about as big as four of her dad’s trucks parked side by side. There were various cable support systems that wrapped around the saucer, harnessing the object and keeping it a couple of feet off of the ground. Some of these cables connected to the catwalk lining the perimeter above.
“Holy shiiii....pppp. That’s a frickin UFO!” Veyla said.
“Don’t be crazy,” Amelia told her..
“Crazy?” Veyla shot back. “You think that’s crazy? As a quick reminder, we’re currently standing in a secret underground lab, accessed through a hidden door in the floor of a supposed haunted shack. But you think it’s crazy that that thing is a UFO?”
“Veyla, we’re in Sundance, Wyoming. Not exactly the space capital of the world. And I’d like to think that the security around a UFO would be – oh I don’t know – a little more secure? We walked right in here. No eye scans. No fingerprint checks. No armed security detail. Just two girls and a wolf walking in easy breezy.”
“Exactly! Hide it in plain site! It’s a classic strategy!”
“Oh, yeah. This place is so easy to find – you practically trip over it when walking down Main Street. Hidden in plain sight. What are you talking about?”
As the girls carried out this “is/is not” debate, each side’s presenting argument grew louder and louder. Amelia and Veyla were so caught up in making their case that they were oblivious to the long, dark shadow that appeared across the room. It slid along the wall in silence. But Artemis – who wisely abstained from taking a side on the topic – did not miss the movement. He stood at attention, releasing a low growl. Becoming aware of this made Amelia stop mid-sentence.
“That’s the same growl as before,” she whispered. “What do you see, Artemis?”
Scanning the direction Artemis was focused on revealed what they’d been hoping to avoid. And it was moving directly towards them.
“The Shadow!” Veyla gasped.
They awkwardly scrambled into the room with the maybe it is/maybe it isn’t UFO. But once they were there they quickly realized there wasn’t anywhere to hide. The best they could do was to try and place some obstacles between them and the fast-approaching Shadow. The three stood single-file behind a medical looking device. It had a large screen mounted on top of a pole connected to a base with wheels. There were a couple of knobs under the screen and wires connected to the saucer. From top to bottom, it was maybe five feet high. Amelia grasped the central pole, looking out around the side of the monitor. There they waited for whatever was coming for them to finally make itself known.
They didn’t have to wait long.
***
“What in the Sam Hill are you doing here?”
While the raspy voice sounded like it could have come from a shadow demon who feasts on young kids, Amelia was surprised to see in front of them a tall bespectacled old man. She immediately recognized him as the judge from the photo contest. Whereas earlier in the night, he was smartly dressed, he now looked completely disheveled. His button down shirt hung half untucked, his mop of gray hair looking like that of a grizzly bear coming out of hibernation. She could clearly see – even from across the room – that in the time since the competition ended his eyes had become bloodshot.
“Um, sorry. Did you say “Sam Hill” or “Sam Hell”?” Amelia asked, betraying her nervousness. No answer.
“Right. No big deal, either way. I was just wondering.” Amelia stalled as she looked for an escape route. “To answer your question: we heard screaming. So we thought we should check to make sure everyone was okay.”
“Yeah, we wanted to make sure there were no kids being eaten down here,” Veyla chimed in, poking her head around. This earned her a subtle, but sharp, elbow from Amelia.
Again, the man didn’t answer. He just stared at them.
In the silence in between them, each was trying to fit together a number of puzzle pieces. The trio wondered what this secret place was and why this huge craft was underneath Sundance and who the old man was. Meanwhile, the man carefully studied the two girls and what looked like a dog but not really and wondered how in the hell they accessed a place they clearly shouldn’t have.
The stare down finally came to a conclusion when the man spoke again. “How did you get in here?”
“Clearly we teleported,” Amelia answered.
He didn’t even blink at the response.
Now it was Veyla’s turn to return a jab. Doing her best impression of a ventriloquist she whispered to the back of Amelia’s head, “Now’s not the time to be a smart ass.”
“Just kidding. We didn’t teleport. We came in through the door.” Amelia said, pointing past the man to the door that had so easily swung open for her.
The man stepped to the side, positioning himself in a way that allowed him to keep the three intruders in his peripheral vision while also taking a glance at the door. But he really didn’t need to look. He knew which door she was talking about. It was the only possible entrance they could’ve used. He’d gotten lazy over the years. Stopped taking the necessary precautions. He couldn’t even be bothered to follow through on the simple act of locking the door after himself. Then again, why should he? No one has checked on him in decades.
“Yes. But how did you find this door?”
“Well, you see, we were walking to our bikes after the fire- works,” Amelia began. “And as we went to unlock them I saw a shadow moving along the back of the Historical Society. Veyla here actually saw something similar not too long ago but we didn’t have time to check it out. So when we saw it again tonight, we figured if not now then when, ya know?”
The old man continued to stare at them. “Are you unable to read?”
Amelia and Veyla were both confused by the question.
He continued, “There are signs posted everywhere saying “KEEP OUT,” “NO TRESPASSING,” and “DANGER”?”
“Ah. Fair. My dad does always say that signs are only for people who can read. But, in our defense, we’ve spent our entire lives here in Sundance. And this was the first time we had a chance to confront the Sundance Shadow. We were willing to set aside concerns for our own bodily safety in the pursuit of truth and justice for every Sundance child whose parents threaten to leave them outside whenever they are misbehaving so that the Sundance Shadow can collect them. So yes, in spite of those signs, we pressed on.”
After pausing for effect, Amelia went on. “As it would turn out the shack the Shadow went into was completely empty. But Veyla here doesn’t miss a thing. She found the secret button that opened the secret door. Once we heard the screams we knew we had no choice but to push forward to see how we could help. Next thing you know, we come to that door back there, open it, and here we are.”
While Amelia sprayed this word vomit all over the lab as a delay tactic to devise an escape plan – taking some creative liberties retelling exactly how they wound up in their present situation – the man appeared none the wiser as to the particulars of their journey. It was clear to her that he was also running all kinds of equations in his head, trying to solve for their presence and what his next steps were. Sensing that he was off-balance, Amelia went on the offensive.
“And of course, by “here we are,” it begs the question of where, exactly, are we? What is this place?” she asked, looking around with her palms upturned, the universal body language of inquiry. “And what is this thing?”
She was pointing at the is/isn’t object of debate from earlier. As she asked the question she stepped out from behind the monitor the three of them were lined up behind, moving in the direction of the large saucer in the middle of the room. Getting closer made the hair on her arms stand up. She turned around and looked at Veyla.
“Whoa. This thing is giving off some serious vibes.”
Amelia felt a pulsing sensation wash over and around her. Or maybe it was her heart beating faster? She couldn’t tell. But she continued moving towards the saucer – it was like she was being pulled by an invisible rope.
Meanwhile, Veyla’s eyes were getting a lateral workout in, continuously moving from Amelia to the man. It was clear to her that the closer Amelia got to the thing the more agitated the man was becoming. It was also clear that he didn’t know what to do. His breaking point came once Amelia got herself within an arm’s length of the is/isn’t UFO.
“OKAY! STOP! THAT’S ENOUGH! You must leave. NOW!” His arms flailed around as he shouted.
But Amelia wasn’t hearing him. She was spellbound.
Recognizing this, the man immediately progressed from anger to bargaining. He began to plead. “Please. Go. You can head out the same way you came in. Press that red switch right next to the door and it will open up the door at the top of the stairs. Now you must go. Please.”
Veyla joined in. “Amelia, c’mon. We did our part. The only ones that need saving down here are us.”
Amelia was only half listening. She waved them both off. “Yeah, got it. Red switch next to the door. Our little secret.” The pulsing sensation she felt became stronger the closer she got. This thing was unlike anything she’d ever seen before. Yet it felt strangely familiar. She extended her hand to feel the
smooth surface.
“DON’T TOUCH THE SPACECRAFT!” the man yelled.
Amelia stopped dead in her tracks. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the force with which he shouted or if it was the confirmation that the is/isn’t actually is. But she pulled her hand back and looked at him. Veyla also whipped her head from right to left, locking in on the man, too.
“The what?” Amelia and Veyla asked in unison.
His state of agitation escalated to a new level. “You really shouldn’t be here. I need you to leave. Now! I have phone calls to make and emails to send. All classified. Which means I’ll probably have to tell them about you, too.”
This realization increased the speed at which he was unraveling before them. “Oh god. I need to tell them about you.” He raised his hands to head, massaging his entire face with his palms while beginning to pace around in a circle.
Amelia looked at Veyla who was side-nodding towards the door while making a “let’s go” motion with her thumb. Amelia held up a finger as if to say “one second” and turned back to give the craft one more look over. As she did, something on the surface of the craft caught her attention. Instinctively, she licked her thumb, reached up, and began rubbing the side, trying to get a better look.
On contact, the room exploded.
***
All Amelia saw was a flash of light. But it was more than that. It was like she experienced the light as weird as that sounds.
By the time her senses were able to catch up, she could feel a pulse of energy echoing throughout her body. Watching from off to the side, Veyla saw Amelia’s head snap back, arms flung straight out to the side. She looked like she’d just touched a live wire. Artemis ran to Amelia, whimpering out of concern. He sat in front of her pawing at her shins in a frantic attempt to make sure she was okay.
Amelia slowly regained her wits. Her first thought was that this must be what getting struck by lightning feels like. However, she quickly bailed on that thought as she realized there wasn’t any pain or whiff of burning.
The experience was. . . something ineffable.
She stretched out her hands in front of her, giving them a once- over to make sure all ten fingers were present and accounted for. She looked down at Artemis, and then over to Veyla, and then finally over to the man. But they were looking past her. Amelia turned around to see why that was the case.
Apparently, she wasn’t the only one experiencing a blast of energy.
At her slightest touch, the craft came fully alive. Its metallic exterior started to glow, radiating an internal light in a way that defied physics. It didn’t make sense.
The subtle vibrations the machine had been emitting – appar- ently felt only by Amelia – turned into a purring that everyone in the room was now aware of. Having been kept off of the ground through a suspension system, the craft now began to lift itself higher, levitating in front of them. The cords attached to the bank of old-school electronics Amelia hid behind earlier, grew taut, before ripping off and disconnecting altogether. Everything felt like it was happening in slow motion.
The craft continued to rise to a height above the top of Amelia’s head. She was able to see underneath it. From what she could tell, the belly of the ship was just as smooth and seamless as the rest. The only difference between the top and the bottom was that the belly didn’t glow in the same way the top part of the ship did.
Amelia turned around to look at Veyla. “Are you seeing this, too?”
“You mean the glowing UFO that is currently hovering next to you? Yeah, no, totally normal,” Veyla answered, giving a thumbs up.
Amelia then half-turned to look at the old man. As he stared at the ship, Amelia watched as his appearance underwent another transformation, this time reversing from his current state of bewilderment into a steadfast, steely-eyed demeanor.
With his eyes fixed on the ship, he spoke. “Ladies,” his voice now calm and sonorous, having lost its hysterical, raspy pitch of earlier, “I really must insist that you vacate these premises.”
The way he said this set off alarm bells in Amelia’s head in a way his raving, angry yelling didn’t. But before she could say or do anything, he was in motion. Amelia was surprised by the alacrity with which he moved. His sure, quick burst belied his age, as he strode first towards Veyla. He was on her in what seemed like two steps, gently placing his hand on her back and shepherding her towards Amelia. Having corralled both girls within the frame of his lanky arms – while also managing to avoid tripping over Artemis in the process – he ushered them back through the lab towards the door. He pressed the red button on the wall and opened the door the girls entered through. Heading back in this direction the hallway was now lit enough so they could see where they were going. It didn’t take them long to reach the stairs that led up through the floor of the shack. The man, who’d been lightly prodding the girls along, continued to do so right up the stairs and out the front door. Having deposited the girls here, he made his plea.
“Please – don’t come back here again. And don’t mention this to anyone. This is for your own safety. You must believe me.”
With that, he unceremoniously closed the door. The girls heard the “clunk” of the lock falling into place.
By the time he made it back down into the lab, the spacecraft had returned to the only state he’d ever known it to be in: dark and silent. That is, the only state he’d known before tonight.
So Professor Humboldt dragged in a chair from a side room, sat down, and once again resumed his vigil – same as he’d done for the last forty years.