It Came from the Sky Page 4

  “Hello,” I said cautiously.

  He leapt to his feet, grinned, and extended his hand. “You must be Gideon. Adam Frykowski.”

  As we shook—him too eagerly, I might add—I searched my brain until his name connected.

  “You work for the Lansburg Daily Press,” I said.

  Frykowski’s face lit up. Just another of us poor human souls looking for recognition, for someone to acknowledge that they exist.

  “I do!”

  “You edit the obituaries,” I continued. (The previous year I’d been fleetingly obsessed with population and spent hours comparing births versus deaths in Lansburg.)

  Frykowski’s smile sagged. “Well, that’s my main assignment, but I get others. Sometimes.”

  “Sit down, Gideon,” Ishmael said from the table, businesslike. “Mr. Frykowski wants to discuss last night.”

  I sat, but raised my eyebrows. “I don’t recall anyone dying in the explosion.”

  Frykowski joined us at the table, a fervent light in his eyes. “But there was an explosion?”

  “Where are our parents?” I asked Ishmael.

  “Mom’s still working, and Dad took Maggie shopping for new cleats.”

  “Should we wait for them?”

  “It’s fine, Gideon,” Ishmael assured me. “He only has a few questions.”

  Clearly, Ishmael would talk to whomever he wanted no matter how I tried to contain the story. Better to be present during it so I’d at least know what tales he was telling.

  “Make it quick,” I said.

  And the song and dance began again. Ishmael became animated. He told the greatly exaggerated story of how we were innocently minding our own business when something came from the sky and exploded in our field.

  “And at first you suspected it was a meteor?” Frykowski asked.

  “Meteoroid,” I offered.

  But what did he mean by at first?

  “Did you actually see the meteoroid?”

  Ishmael hesitated, probably trying to sort through the various versions of the story he’d told all day. “No,” he finally admitted.

  “You saw nothing until after the impact.”

  Ishmael nodded.

  “Yet you’re sure it was a meteor?”

  Meteoroid. But I kept my mouth shut.

  “Well,” Ishmael said, “we kinda assumed.”

  “You assumed, but you don’t have any evidence that a meteor hit the ground, is that correct?” Frykowski pressed.

  I took a long look at him, a tight, anxious feeling spreading through my chest. Had I underestimated Frykowski? Was our story about to be blown open by an obituary editor, of all people?

  Ishmael licked his lips. He was getting nervous too, which increased my own unease. “Well, no. We don’t actually have any evidence.”

  “Meteors often leave fragments,” Frykowski said.

  “But not every time,” Ishmael replied.

  “Still, it’s quite rare for there to be an explosion with no remaining evidence.”

  “It happened this one time in Tunsga…Tuska… Somewhere in Russia.”

  I needed to step in and help my brother. I needed to regain control of the situation. But I remained frozen, watching the interrogation play out with fascinated horror.

  “The Tunguska event happened in 1908,” Frykowski said. “Certainly, scientists investigating it today would have different insights.”

  “But there was this other time in Belize—”

  “Brazil.”

  “Right, Brazil.” Beads of sweat formed at Ishmael’s hairline. “Gideon really knows more about it than I do.”

  “Listen,” Frykowski said. His expression turned grave, as if he was finally getting down to business. “I don’t think there was a meteor.”

  Speak, I commanded myself. But it seemed I’d forgotten how. What would happen when Frykowski exposed us as frauds? Would Ishmael and I be arrested? Would we get harsher sentences because, in addition to causing the explosion, we lied about it?

  Ishmael swallowed hard. “So, like…what do you think?”

  “My cousin attends your high school,” Frykowski replied. “She overheard something interesting today.”

  I frowned at this new development. Who was his cousin? Had she been eavesdropping when I told Cass about the seismograph?

  I glanced at Ishmael. He stared back with an innocent expression. A far too innocent expression. Oh no.

  “What, exactly, was overheard?” I asked, finally finding my voice.

  Frykowski leaned forward, his gaze intense. He looked back and forth between me and my brother. “I’d like you to be honest with me. Last night, did you have a close encounter with extraterrestrials?”

  I nearly choked. I studied Frykowski’s face for the hint of a smile, but his expression was dead serious.

  This couldn’t be happening.

  My brother couldn’t possibly have blamed the explosion on aliens.

  I looked at Ishmael.

  He smiled sheepishly.

  He’d absolutely blamed the explosion on aliens.

  To buy myself a moment of time before I full-on panicked, I said, “Since when does the Daily Press cover extraterrestrials?”

  “Oh,” Frykowski said, seeming surprised. “This isn’t for the Daily Press.”

  “What is this then?”

  “I run my own online news resource.”

  “You mean a blog?” I replied.

  “You could call it that.”

  “Well, I hate to break it to you, but—”

  “But we don’t really want the whole alien thing to be public,” Ishmael interrupted.

  No.

  No, no, no.

  “So you do think the explosion was extraterrestrial in nature?” Frykowski asked.

  At the same time that I was shaking my head, Ishmael said, “Mr. Frykowski, I’m certain of it.”

  Text Conversation

  Participants: Gideon Hofstadt, Cassidy Robinson

  GH: Do you know anything about a blog run by a local reporter named Adam Frykowski?

  CR: Omg

  CR: YES

  CR: Its called The Light Binger

  CR: Light *Bringer

  GH: Sounds religious.

  CR: Not religious

  CR: It means like bringing information to light

  CR: Conspiracies and stuff

  GH: Does it have any merit?

  CR: Meaning???

  CR: If you’re asking if the stories are real, uh, NO

  CR: But it’s totally entertaining

  CR: Bigfoot sightings and stuff

  GH: And aliens, I presume.

  CR: So many aliens

  GH: Fantastic.

  CR: Why the sudden interest

  CR: ???

  GH: Well, Cass, funny story…

  Blog Post

  The following blog post was reprinted with permission of lightbringernews.com.

  THEY’RE HERE: EXTRATERRESTRIAL CONTACT MADE IN LANSBURG

  By Adam Frykowski

  Posted September 9–7:16 a.m.

  LANSBURG, PA—The explosion rang out on Thursday evening, carrying across the overgrown fields of the Hofstadt property.

  Lansburg buzzed with talk of a meteor fallen to Earth, but less than twenty-four hours later, the truth was revealed: the explosion was the result of a beam of light shot from an unidentified flying object.

  The only witnesses to the close encounter were Ishmael and Gideon Hofstadt, ages seventeen and sixteen. The teenagers were in a nearby converted shed when the explosion occurred.

  “We ran outside when we heard a strange sound, sort of like a humming,” says Ishmael Hofstadt. “Just a few yards away there was this bright light hovering in the sk
y. And a laser, like, shot straight down into our field. Then the light flew away.”

  This is not the first sighting of mystery lights in the skies above Lansburg. There have been at least twelve reports of UFOs from the year 2000 to the present, with three of them occurring this year alone.

  Are these incidents connected? And if so, why did the aliens choose now to make physical contact, and why in such an explosive manner?

  The Light Bringer continues to investigate.

  Click here to subscribe to our newsletter!

  Event: Aliens Arrive

  Date: Sept. 9 (Sat.)

  Deviating from our usual morning norms, my brother was bright-eyed and alert as he steered our Jeep into town, while I couldn’t stop yawning. Unlike Ishmael, who took joy from his job at Adrenaline X-treme (Adrenaline X-treme: the extreme sports store where Ishmael regularly got bonuses for upselling customers, despite never having played an extreme sport in his life.), I wasn’t looking forward to my shift at the ice cream parlor. I never did. On top of that, I was still furious.

  “How come you’re so out of it?” Ishmael asked over the noise of the radio.

  “I was up late reading Adam Frykowski’s blog,” I grumbled.

  “Anything good?”

  “Well, Ishmael, the Garden of Eden has been located, a twenty-eight-pound baby was born in New Philadelphia, and the Mothman is terrorizing West Virginians again.”

  “Cool,” he said with a grin.

  Cool. He thought the blog was cool. I wanted to avoid rehashing the argument we’d had the previous night, after Frykowski left, but Ishmael wasn’t making it easy.

  “Actually, since we were featured on the website this morning, I think the situation is decidedly uncool. Our family is going to become the mockery of this entire town.”

  “Not gonna happen,” Ishmael said confidently, waving a hand at me.

  “Ten and two,” I reminded him.

  “Maybe don’t give driving advice until you can actually drive,” Ishmael replied. “And seriously, no one reads that blog. Except you, apparently.”

  At least one other person had already read it. Cass texted the link only moments after it went live. She must have been eagerly refreshing the website.

  “I just don’t understand why you did this,” I said.

  “I told you, like, fifty times last night. I only said the alien thing to a couple people at school. I didn’t think anyone else would find out.”

  I dug my fingernails into the armrest, attempting to harness my fury. “Yes. But when someone else did find out, you could have put a stop to it instead of—”

  “Gideon, if you get caught in a lie, you don’t just cave. That only makes things worse.”

  “I’m fairly certain the exact opposite is true.”

  Ishmael glanced at me and I resisted the urge to tell him to keep his eyes on the road. “Seriously, no one reads that blog. This isn’t a big deal. Besides, it could have been aliens.”

  Suddenly, I was much less tired. I turned to my brother. “No, it could not have been aliens. It couldn’t have been aliens because that would be illogical and impossible, but also because we know for a fact that we caused the explosion.”

  “Besides that part, I mean.”

  I rubbed at my forehead. A headache was already forming behind my eyes.

  At least Ishmael was right about one thing: Frykowski’s blog didn’t appear to get much traffic. Most of his posts had fewer than three comments, and the only consistent user was someone called CIAyylmao2001, who mainly wanted to know why Frykowski wasn’t covering the 9/11 conspiracy.

  Maybe my alarm was needless. No one would see the alien article. And if someone did stumble on it, their judgment would be of Frykowski, not us. No one in Lansburg would assume the normally steady Hofstadt family thought their farm was under alien attack.

  Soon, everything—the explosion, the meteor, the aliens—would blow over. There’d be a new scandal, and no one would remember the crater in our field or its mysterious origins.

  Or so I thought.

  Interlude

  Lansburg, Pennsylvania

  At first glance, Lansburg wouldn’t appear much different from other rural American towns. Thirty miles south of Pittsburgh, it was founded by German settlers in 1823.

  Though it began as a humble farming community, tourism kept Lansburg alive from the second half of the twentieth century to the present. No, it wasn’t Disney World, but downtown Lansburg boasted a charming, old-world village—though I questioned the authenticity of Ye Olde Fudge Shoppe and the Pizza Haus.

  Admittedly, Main Street was attractive, with its German architecture, cobblestone streets, and faux gaslights. Or perhaps I should say that once it was charming. Before the lava lamp was installed.

  Yes, you read correctly. Lava lamp. But you likely already know about this. After all, the sixty-three-foot lava lamp prominently rising from downtown’s central square was Lansburg’s real claim to fame.

  The lamp was the brainchild of Benjamin Irving, an eccentric inventor who retired to Lansburg in 1957. In the late ’60s, when psychedelic decor was at peak popularity, Irving decided to build the world’s largest lava lamp. Just to see if he could. Just so he could tell the world, Yes, I did this odd, impossible-seeming thing. Incredibly, the town of Lansburg agreed to have the monstrosity installed in the very center of town, surrounded by quaint shops with thatched roofs.

  Taller than most of the surrounding buildings, the lamp, filled with pink “lava,” even had an observation deck wrapping around it so viewers could get up close and personal with the rapidly heating and cooling gobs of paraffin. Or at least, they could in theory.

  Unfortunately for Irving, the liquid in his lava lamp was based on the original formula. Along with paraffin and mineral oil, the lamp was filled with carbon tetrachloride. And in 1970, the United States banned carbon tetrachloride due to its toxicity.

  In compliance with the new law, Irving’s lamp was turned off, but that didn’t deter him. Lava-lamp makers had already come up with a new formula to achieve the same result, and though the recipe was kept secret, Irving knew that given enough time, he’d be able to figure it out.

  Sadly, he died before that happened.

  The lava lamp remained standing but hadn’t been in operation for almost fifty years. That didn’t stop some of Lansburg from celebrating Irving as a local hero.

  And it didn’t stop tourists, who apparently didn’t mind that the lamp wasn’t lit and actively swirling with lava. Just seeing the giant structure seemed to be enough. Busloads came from Pittsburgh on weekends—mostly groups from retirement homes—and they happily took pictures in front of the dormant lamp before buying their great-grandchildren five-dollar T-shirts at Ye Olde Souvenir Shoppe.

  Every few years someone petitioned to have the lava lamp removed, citing it as an eyesore to our picturesque town. But enough other people loved it for the tourism revenue. For better or worse, it seemed that Benjamin Irving’s lava lamp would be a permanent fixture downtown.

  I should have considered that for the people of Lansburg, people already accustomed to the bizarre, the idea of aliens might not have been such a stretch.

  Event: Aliens Arrive (Cont.)

  Super Scoop was located directly across the street from the lava lamp, where a tour group was already gathered. Like most Saturdays in the fall, downtown would get busy, but it would be a few hours before people flocked to the ice cream parlor.

  Owen (Owen Campbell, age seventeen. Handsome, friendly, intelligent. Well respected for being a top athlete, a star of the theater department, and student body vice president.) was already behind the counter when I entered the store, wearing the old-fashioned white paper cap that looked absurd on everyone but him.

  “What is happening at your house?” he asked when he saw me, looking both amused and baffled.
<
br />   “What do you mean?” I ignored how my heart rate sped up in his presence and made my way through the 1950s-style ice cream parlor—yet another Lansburg anachronism—to the staff room so I could clock in.

  “I’m just a little confused,” Owen said lightly, “because a few days ago everything was normal and now you’ve got explosions on your property and apparently aliens are the cause.”

  I stopped.

  How had he heard about aliens? Did Ishmael blab to more people than he claimed, or had Owen read Frykowski’s blog? Either way, it wasn’t good.

  “Well, yes…I can see how that would be confusing.”

  “And when I text you, I get one-word responses.”

  “Right,” I mumbled absently, my mind still on aliens. “Wait, what?”

  Owen shrugged, his previous good humor dimmed. He began needlessly wiping down the counter. “I kinda feel like you’re ignoring me.”

  “I’ve just been busy. And I’m eighty-six percent sure—”

  Owen groaned. “Please no arbitrary percentages right now.”

  “They’re not arbit—”

  “Gideon.”

  “Okay,” I said. I looked longingly at the door of the staff room, wishing I could disappear through it. “I haven’t been ignoring you. I promise.”

  I truly hadn’t been. I just wasn’t good at texting or calling and could easily go days without social interaction. I’d tried explaining to Owen that my introversion (Introversion: a term popularized by psychologist Carl Jung, referring to people who are drained by social encounters and prefer solitary pursuits.) had nothing to do with him, but he never seemed to believe me.

  As if on cue, he said, “I wish I knew where I stood with you.”

  I glanced around the ice cream parlor, as if we might have suddenly gained an audience. Seeing no one, I took a step closer to Owen. “Please don’t make this a relationship thing.”

  Anger flashed in his brown eyes. He threw down his dishcloth and turned to me. “Is that what this is about? There are explosions on your property, but you can’t keep me in the loop because then I might think this is a relationship?”