Cindy's Close Encounter

"You think you're really funny, don't you Ralph?" he demanded. "I've got my eye on you and these other imbecilic friends of yours. I've heard about your tall stories about flying saucers, you are dressed as four men who lost their lives in an aviation accident, and I've seen clowning around out on the dance floor, acting the goat. Any more of your stupid antics, and you will find yourself thrown out, a week's detention and meetings with all of your parents. And when it's over with, you four clowns will wish you were never born. Morons!"

The fuming Principal stormed away, and the four boys sniggered. The band started up again, and we all headed back to the dance floor, keen to join in a number of modern group dances. One was the hand-jive dances, but despite being well coordinated, I always seemed to get confused with this one, always a second or so out of step with Wendy and Jo who were really good with these moves.

After a few more songs for couples in which Steven and I danced together, the band played a brand new song and associated dance that had only been released this summer -- the Twist, which we all really enjoyed.

Principal Herbert's night meanwhile was going from bad to worse. All night Claude the janitor had been popping in and out, despite having the night off and being assured that the attendees would clean up afterwards was not buying into it.

Now during a short five minute break for the band, Claude was talking the principal's head off with a list of complaints. This including Ralph and his friends messing around and spilling soft drink on the floor and not bothering to clean it up; young men deliberately peeing on the floor in the boy's bathroom knowing he would have to mop it up and Fran Ruggiero and her boyfriend making out in the back garden of his caretaker cottage during the supper break.

Cranky Claude was now complaining at length that some of the girls' boyfriends -- one dressed as Godzilla, another dressed as an alligator and another two boys dressed as a ghost and a clown had thrown trash on the floor in front of him, laughing and stating that 'it was the negro's job to pick it up.' Then another jock dressed as a bear had leaped out at Claude from behind a curtain, roaring loudly and scaring the janitor and causing to drop the trash he had picked up, nearby students both boys and girls laughing like a pack of hyenas at the success of the practical joke. Somehow, it was even the principal's fault that Claude had been bothered by trick or treaters earlier in the night, knocking on the door or his cottage and asking for candy when he was trying to watch the news on television.

I don't think the Principal had the inner strength to go and confront Ralph, Roger, Simon and Tony, observing them as they loitered under the staircase of the gym's mezzanine floor, looking upwards as the two pretty young teachers dressed as Alice in Wonderland and Little Red Riding Hood ascended to fix a fake spider and a web that had come loose, and hurried back down as the band leader urged everyone to get back on the dance floor, as it was Madison Time. Ralph and company also quickly made for the dance floor, as did everyone else, and the chance of the Principal to catch them for looking up their teachers' skirts was lost.

The Madison had been one of my favorite dances that had grown in popularity across the Eastern Seaboard since its humble beginnings in Baltimore three years, and we all joined in, the dance floor crowded. Only the Principal, Claude and Miss Thorpe were not out there dancing the Madison, as the band directed us through the steps. It was unusual to be dancing the Madison with all of us in Halloween costumes; Jo in her cat costume for example had one of the girls wearing a mouse costume next to her, another girl dressed in a rabbit costume in front of her and one of the basketball players dressed as Bigfoot behind her, but it added to the fun of the night.

After a few more dances, the wonderful evening came to a close and we packed up and cleaned up the gym, despite the cynicism from the janitor that we would, with even Ralph, Tony, Simon and Roger helping out. Then after saying our goodnights to our friends, we headed out to Steve's car and piled in, again with Steve driving, me in the front passenger seat and Wendy, Jo, Johnny and Phil in the back.

I think Mom and Dad liked it best when we went out in a group like this, with six of us in the car it would be harder for us to give into temptation and go to lovers' lane like we might if Steve and I were on our own. Not that we ever had, but still we were teenagers after all.

Outside, large drops of rain were falling from the clouds, and on the horizon, flashes of lightning were visible with the distant roll of thunder, the moon and starlight intermittent. Wind whistled in the tree branches, blowing the falling leaves to the ground. Clearly the forecast thunderstorm wasn't too far away.

"Dear God, please let the heavy rain come before Miss Thorpe is able to ride her tricycle home," laughed Wendy, as we listened to the radio. Now just gone midnight, the radio station was still playing Halloween songs as we drove home, the first one a novelty song from 1958 about a flying purple alien with one horn that only ate people of the same color and which aspired to a show business career. The next was an old Henry Hall song from the early 1930s giving children advice about encounters with the boogeyman, a song that had terrified Billy as a boy to such an extent that he was even afraid of the actual physical record on which the song was recorded, much less actually playing it.

Steve came to a halt at a stop sign, and reached onto the column to change the gear back to first, but instead of proceeding he did not drive forward, just stopped with his mouth wide open.

"Steve, what's wrong?" I asked, before I stopped too, struck dumb as I saw what my boyfriend was looking at too.

Silence fell from the others in the back of the car, as they also caught a view of the impossible sight in front of us. Flying through the dark stormy skies, was a flying saucer. Silver in color, with flashing lights on the side and a turret on the top it was some distance from us, but we could hear the eerie droning noise it made as it flew towards the woods, and where the abandoned remains of the Pine View Cove home for special children still stood.

The UFO continued on its path, and Steve found his voice. "Do you see it too?"

"Yes," we all said in unison, still finding it hard to believe what we were actually seeing.

"Ralph and company weren't lying this time about what they saw," said Jo, watching out the rear window, as the strange aircraft changed course abruptly, and flew towards some nearby hills at increasing speed.

To get home, Steve had to turn left, but to my amazement -- and dismay at first -- he turned the car right, and drove out of town, in the direction that the unidentified flying object had gone.

"Steve, what are you doing?" I asked, alarm rising in my body and clear in my voice.

"That's got to be something normal, a plane of some sort," said Steve. "Don't you want to check it out?"

"No, I think we should go home," I said nervously, adjusting my crown on my head and watching as more raindrops fell, Steve turning on the windscreen wipers to clear the droplets from his sight.

"Cindy, aren't you curious to see what it is?" Steve asked. "I mean, if it's just a normal aircraft then everything is swell and we aren't all going crazy." He looked into the back of the car. "What about the rest of you?"

From the consensus in the back, everyone wanted to follow the strange flying-saucer like object, and I was out-numbered 5 to 1. As Steve drove towards the UFO, still visible in the distance above the tree-tops and hills, my curiosity overcame my apprehension and I wanted to get a closer look at the object too, to satisfy my desire to know what it was, and hopefully find it was just a normal aircraft.

All of us made suggestions of what the object might be, none of them convincing, before the thunder and lightning became more frequent, and the winds picked up. Then to our astonishment, the strange flying saucer suddenly flew upwards at a speed that exceeded the velocity of any plane or helicopter I had ever seen, and Steve pulled in to the side of the road, opened the window and looked out.

"Whatever it was, it's gone," he commented, before putting on his indicator and the car in reverse to turn around back to tow, when all of a sudden the engine just stopped dead.

"Steve, what's happening?" I asked.

"I don't know," said Steve, trying in vain to get the car to start but there was nothing, not even the engine trying to catch. It was completely dead.

"Darn it," said Steve. "It's an old car, the battery must have gone flat or something. Although sometimes in winter it's hard to start, and I have to leave it five or ten minutes or so, and try again. So we'll give that a try. We're miles out of town, so better hope it works."

"And look where we are," said Johnny. He pointed across to a set of gates, very rusty gates that contained a weathered sign read 'PINE VIEW HOME FOR HANDICAPPED AND RETARDED CHILDREN'. The gates were held closed by a chain and a large, rusty padlock.

A fence surrounded the property, long overtaken by vegetation and in a falling down state, but within it, a second, smaller gate was open, hanging from one hinge, and blowing in the wind as the storm approached.

"I used to be so scared of this place when I was a little girl," said Jo.

"We were just talking about it this morning," I recalled.

"And that night the kids vanished there were stories of strange lights in the skies," said Phil.

"You ever wonder what it was like in there?" asked Steve.

"Well, while we're waiting for the car to cool down, why don't we have a quick look around?" suggested Wendy.

I really didn't want to go through the creepy vegetation to an abandoned and presumably now disintegrating and dangerous set of buildings, but nor did I want to be left on my own in the broken down car, so went with my boyfriend and friends through the gate and into the grounds of the abandoned children's home, lightning overhead illuminating the night skies and big raindrops falling.

Apart from the lightning, the only illumination was provided by the flashlight Steve had taken from the trunk of his car to light our way. To anyone watching we must have made a strange sight; a medieval prince, a fairy, a witch, a wizard, a cat and a wolf in the grounds of an abandoned children's home. But more than anything else I hoped that nobody else was watching us.

There was plenty of leaf litter for us to make our way through, leaves falling from the deciduous trees not only this fall but from years past, plus needles and pine cones from the conifers. Garden plants that were shrubs when the orphanage was open were now wildly overgrown, and weeds grew everywhere in the cracks in the pathways.

The orphanage buildings would have to be among the bleakest, most uninviting structures ever constructed, and two decades of decay only made them worse. I jumped as an owl hooted in the trees, and the sounds of wild dogs barking and howling at the impending thunderstorm came from the forest, along with the yowls of feral cats. A rustling sound alerted me to a nearby pine tree, where a squirrel scurried up the trunk and into the branches.

"This place is so depressing," said Wendy, looking at the abandoned structures, some slides, swings, a climbing frame and fort used by the intellectually disabled but fully mobile children who lived here, now falling apart and rusting.

"Imagine how awful it would have been a kid who had to live in this place," I said.

"My parents said that it was a dumping ground for kids with disabilities when they were younger," said Phil, watching a large spider duck for cover as the flashlight illuminated it, while a rat scuttled up a decaying drain pipe. "Kids who were born with physical or mental abnormalities, or who were crippled by accidents or by polio and their families couldn't afford to look after them so they put them in here."

The windows of the children's home had been boarded up in some parts, but others were broken and we looked inside. "Even if everyone here did vanish overnight and they closed the home down, wouldn't they have taken the furniture to be used somewhere else?" Steve mused, indicating beds in a dormitory still in place and still with sheets and blankets, toys such as dolls left sitting on the tops of bedside tables. The dining room was much the same, tables and chairs still in place. There were wheelchairs in corridors for kids who couldn't walk, still sitting there 20 years later, covered in dust and cobwebs.

"Even if they closed the home, couldn't they have used the buildings during the war?" Wendy suggested. "You know, for injured soldiers?"

"You'd think so," said Jo, casting her eyes around the bleak surroundings. "But this place has such an eerie feeling to me, it gives me the creeps."

"You're right there," said Johnny, ducking under the verandah as the rain began to get heavy for about 10 seconds or so, before returning to large droplets again. "It reminds me of that ship that was found abandoned in the middle of the Atlantic back in the 1800s, the Marie Celeste. Or that one the Navy found floating in the Pacific a few years ago."

"Let's get out of here," I suggested hopefully.

"Yes, let's head back, maybe the car will be okay now," said Steve. We turned to leave, trying to walk back the way we came, when we stopped as we were confronted by an eerie sight. On one of the porches was a rocking chair, dilapidated as to be expected after sitting there 20 years, now rocking back and forth on its own in the breeze. Moreover, none of us recalled seeing the rocking chair when we came in here.

"I think we've turned the wrong way," said Steve, going in another direction keen to get away from the eerie rocking chair teetering back and forth in the breeze, the rest of us following, when we stopped short at what lay ahead of us in the corridor.

All the electricity to this property had been turned off 20 years ago, so how to explain that a lamp-post on the pathway was illuminated? The light was dim, flickering, but regardless it was on, while another lamp across the way was in darkness.

But it was what the dim light illuminated that held our attention more. Under the eaves was the strangest thing we had ever seen. It was hanging there, completely motionless. This 'creature', bright red in color, had a triangular-shaped body, the pointy end upwards, and a small circular head from the top of which protruded two long antennae, large black eyes on the end. From the bottom part of the triangle shaped body dangled eight tentacles, giving the creature a length from antennae to the end of the tentacles of about five feet.

Wendy's brown eyes went wide. "What is it?" she whispered.

Steve looked at the strange thing as it seemed to hover there, motionless, and he sighed in relief. "It's somebody's idea of a practical joke. Some kids made a monster out of paper mache, and they hanged it from the roof there to scare people who came in here."

"Succeeded with me," Johnny said, looking at the strange model of the red monster as it remained completely motionless, despite the wind picking up.

"I don't see any string or ropes holding it up," I said, feeling cold fear from my heart. "And why isn't it moving in the wind?"

A lightning strike lit up the skies and the bright red monster, enough for us to see its antennae twitching, and its tentacles move. We all stared, and the red thing began to move towards us, hovering in the air, going slowly at first, then faster.

We were not waiting around to see how fast it would move -- we were out of there as fast as we could. Feeling panic surging through my heart and lungs, I stifled the urge to scream as we turned the corner, and ran straight into two of these strange bright red, tentacle creatures with big black eyes on their antennae, exact replicas of the creature chasing us. With them was a third creature, exactly the same in size and shape as the red ones, but bright green in color.

Turning again in desperation as the drizzle became more consistent, the wind picked up and lighting seared the skies above the pine trees, our escaped was blocked by another red monster, this one with a bright yellow creature accompanying it.

We were trapped in all directions, and soon from above too. All of us heard the droning noise of the strange, unidentified craft, only much louder now as the flying saucer returned with a blaze of lights over the clearing, hovering ten feet above the ground and illuminating us and the red, yellow and green creatures. It was enormous, way bigger than any plane, five levels high not counting the cone-shaped turret and would have filled the entire oval and sports field at school if it landed.

We were transfixed by the lights of the spaceship, none of us able to call for help or even speak, realizing that these strange creatures were aliens, actual aliens from outer space. And they had us cornered.

Too terrified to move, the six of us could only watch as the flying saucer made an ominous hissing sound, and a door slid open. We could see inside the cockpit at the craft, where two of the red aliens and a blue alien were at some controls, with a brown alien and a red alien in the doorway. At the same time a large window at this level of the UFO turned from opaque to clear, and looking down at us were a purple alien, an orange alien and yet another red one.

An ominous, booming voice came from inside the spacecraft, directing the aliens on the ground that surrounded us. "Bring the Homo sapiens aboard the ship, and prepare for departure from this area."

I definitely did not like the sound of this, but had no chance to do anything. I blacked out as the brown and red alien in the doorway fired some sort of ray at us, and woke up what seemed like several seconds later.

A lightning strike illuminated my bedroom as I awoke. "Oh what a terrible dream," I said to myself, thinking about how I had dreamed how the swell Halloween dance had gone off the rails when we saw a UFO, foolishly followed it into the woods to the site of the abandoned disabled children's home, explored this site and were then abducted by these weird brightly colored aliens with their flying saucer.

But it was all okay, I was safe in bed, it was Halloween morning, I would have a great day and fun tonight at the high school Halloween dance with my boyfriend and our friends. However, as I opened my eyes more I saw that it was all real. I was in the UFO, against a semi-circular partition with Wendy, Jo, Steve, Johnny and Phil in a similar position. All of us were still wearing our Halloween costumes, and I tried to move, but I could not. It was like I was stuck to the wall, similar to a ride I went on at the carnival when it came to town during summer. But this was fun, and this was anything but fun.

The others were blinking awake too, and we took in our surroundings. We were somewhere in the UFO, which was filled with futuristic machinery, flashing lights and the like. In front of us was a line of nine aliens, all different colors. There was the yellow, green, blue, brown, purple and orange aliens we had seen earlier, and they had now been joined by three other different colored aliens, one white, one pink and the other black. The black alien was in the center of this group and I got the impression it was in charge, all of them hovering in the air like they had done on the ground.

Behind the colored aliens was a line of red aliens, and other red aliens were going about various tasks in the spacecraft. Two of the red aliens were standing guard near us, and although I could not move my head, one of the red aliens was close enough to me to examine it.