Dan and Jack

The sun was gleaming through the window, shining brightly in Dan’s eyes. He looked at his beeping alarm clock, and sluggishly sat up to looked in the mirror. He saw a rugged face looking back, with messy sand-colored hair. Remembering that it was the second to last day of school, he leaped out of bed. He heard the old school bus rattling down the street, and pulled on his blue sweatshirt and jeans and stumbled down the stairs. He grabbed the bagel that his mother had toasted for him and ran outside with his books to meet the bus. 

On the sidewalk, he could see the bus just leaving from his stop; he ran over to the garage and grabbed his skateboard. Dan ran out to the street and jumped on, and started pushing savagely to get the board moving. He could just see the bus just turning the corner. Going faster than he ever had, down hill, on his all-terrain skateboard he was catching up to the bus. He finally almost touched it as it was driving off again, so with a lunge he grabbed on to the back. He could see his friends in the bus looking astonished as he hung on. “Whoa!” he exclaimed as the crazy bus driver speed on. 

One of the older boys stuck his head out the window and said, “Don’t fall Spencer!” Dan looked up just in time to see a low hanging; small branch brush the boy’s head. Dan started cracking up and turned off to the next bus stop where he was picked up finally. 

Dan made it to school on the bus. Everything seemed like it was going to be normal. Most of the day went by in its usual routine. In the last class Dan had to make a bathroom stop and ran into his friend. “Yo, Dan com’ere and check out this thing I found. 

Dan looked behind the toilet at the small hole Jack was pointing out. Light was coming out of the hole. Around the hole scratched into the concrete, they read, “Push.” Jack pressed along the wall. The cement blocks of the wall collapsed, leaving a heavy screen of dust.

The two speechless boys walked forward wide eyed, and saw a pair of footprints on the dusty floor. The room was more like a hallway and smelled musty, like old mothballs or grandma’s house. As they went forward slowly, they saw nothing but a safe on the ground. Right next to it was a key. Even though the key seemed a little too obvious, they put it in the safe’s lock and turned it. To their surprise, the lock turned and the door sprung open. Dan reached inside and found a clear bag that looked like it was full of mercury. 

Just then the dismissal bell rang, and the boys decided it would be best if they came back the next morning. They took the bus back to Dan’s house and they spent time building add-ons to their skateboards. They planned on adding some kind of self-propulsion on it, like rockets or some kind of boosters. That’s what had drawn these two together. Neither one enjoyed textbooks, classes with teachers droning on about the War for Independence and scribbling equations on the board. Dan and Jack liked things that happened. They liked to make things happen. 

Dan was taking a class on welding, and Jack had been taking a class on electricians and how-to’s”. With their combined skills they made a motor/rocket that propelled the skateboard. They had finished just as Jack’s mom came to pick him up. 

When Dan went to bed that night he had a hard time sleeping. His head was filled with mixed thoughts about the previous afternoon. “What had they discovered? Was it important? Should they tell anyone? Could it be dangerous? Or was the safe just some other boring piece of junk that got left behind when the school addition was built?” 

He woke up early the next morning and took his skateboard out. The skate board had a tube, like the ones that doctors use to take blood pressure, it had a little gauge on it that told them mph and a knob on the side for them to push up to accelerate. Dan practiced all morning and left for school on his skateboard. The two met and hid the skateboards in the schools boiler room where no one ever was. . The school day went fine, the same end of the year routine. But during the classes Dan kept thinking about the end of the day and his chance to explore the hole in the wall with Jack. Dan had brought his baseball bat as a weapon just to be on the safe side, and the clear bag just because he still had it. 

At the end of the last period the two boys went into the bathroom, Dan opened the stall doors and went in with Jack following. Today they found their way blocked by yellow caution tape, so they just hopped over it. They went in past where they had seen the footprints. They saw new footprints, next to the old ones. They kept walking, as it grew dark, pitch black, Jack took out his little flashlight and lighted the way for them. As they went on they found a safe with the key in it, so Dan grabbed the key and turned it, opening the safe. He pulled out what appeared to be a map, it was a map of the whole school, but it had the people on it, they recognized some of the names that were on it as some of their friends in what looked like the cafeteria. There was a name on it, a janitor’s name they had remembered that had disappeared in the middle of last year. 

Wondering what the map meant and ready for adventure, the boys tried to follow the drawing. As they went through dark and winding passageways, they could read the janitor’s name—it should be just a little ways ahead of them. They came upon the place where the janitor’s name was when suddenly they jumped, terrified. There was a body, slumped in a corner, dead, with a quarter of the skull visible under bugs, which had obviously been at the job for quite a while. A sharp noise behind them made them turn around instantly, there were three tall figures that looked like a sort of ghost or something in that family, they had robes on, and hoods on their heads, they were gliding toward Dan and Jack, their noses just visible, they’re skin was black and leathery, they had repulsive out-stretched hands gliding steadily closer. 

Dan swung the bat and hit it in the face, its nose crunched in and its head popped off. Dan hit the other one the exact same way and got the same result, the third was right next to Jack, since Jack had a huge heavy flashlight he hit it in the side of the head leaving an indent in the hood, then he learned from Dan and hit it in the face as hard as he could, but it started sucking the flashlight in, Dan came over and beat it until it until its head burst. There was an opening in the wall where the figures came out, so Dan and Jack went through, lighting the way, they saw another body up ahead that looked like it had no bones in it.  

Jack and Dan came to the conclusion that the tall figures sucked the bones out of people, by making a small hole and with a long tube type thing, like elephant trunks only a lot smaller. As they walked on they saw their janitor getting darker on the map. They walked for a long time, not knowing where they were going, and ran into a dead end. The names on the map were just ahead of them, but there was no door, window, or opening for them to go through. Jack had a sudden idea, he put his flash light out ran it along the wall. The light hit everywhere on the wall except for a space just big enough to walk through. Dan saw where Jack was going and put his hand up to the wall, his hand went through the wall, so they knew there was a secret entrance to the room. He felt the end of a dry, leathery nose, with a contorted look on his face and jerked his hand back. “There’s one of those hooded things behind this!” Dan brought his bat back and wound up, he swung it down hard on its head hooded figure. It mad an eerie sound, a piercing high-pitched, cracked voiced that echoed off the walls. Dan brought his bat out and they walked on through the door.

The two boys turned and began walking through the narrow, dirt hallway, which eventually opened up into a large spherical room. The room was filled with electronic things, computers, monitors, buttons, and gages. There was a man there, working the machines, Dan and Jack sneaked up on the man and clubbed him with the bat. He fell over on the controls and hit the Emergency button. They heard a siren sound, like an ambulance, and found themselves surrounded by police. They were hand cuffed and brought to jail, where they stayed. 

They tried to explain all that they had been through. The boys faced a judge that found them guilty of murder. The boys were astounded, because they thought the man was a killer. Their sentence was only 15 years though, so when they got out they each did what they liked best, Dan became an autoworker and since Jack loved cows so much he bought a ranch in Texas.