Cindy's Close Encounter

The military men then mentioned the disappearance of the kids from the disabled children's home 20 years ago, and said that the only mystery about the case was how it became a mystery in the first place. Apparently, in 1939 there had been outbreaks of three serious contagious diseases at the home -- polio, diphtheria and tuberculosis -- at the same time, requiring quarantine and some unfortunate kids did die. It was then decided that this home no longer met the acceptable modern requirements for crippled, retarded and spastic children, so surviving kids were split up and moved to other homes with normal children, and the staff moved to other facilities too.

So as we left the meeting, I could scarcely believe that our families each had been paid $100,000.00, but inside I knew I had signed my agreement to a lie, and a cover-up. I had sold out, the aliens and their flying saucer were real; there was no other explanation. But never would I ever be able to talk of this, and I wasn't exactly proud of myself. Looking at the others, I could tell they weren't 100 percent happy either.

*

On the Monday when school had broken up for the winter holidays, Steve, Wendy, Jo, Phil, Johnny and I caught a train to New York City. Steve held tight to a buff colored envelope, our reason for this flying visit to the Big Apple, and the contents of which we wanted nobody to see.

For some weeks after the meeting and the payout, all six of us kept our mouths firmly closed about the events of Halloween night. The sinister men and the woman remained in town for the next week or so, making sure we kept everything confidential, and to further harass Ralph, Simon, Roger and Tony into keeping silent about what they witnessed that night.

But when these three strangers left town, the six of us met in an isolated place to discuss what had happened. About how food poisoning was partly to blame for what happened, but how Jo never ate the item in question. How Jo and I were no longer virgins but the only time we had sex was on the aliens' UFO -- which apparently did not exist. How we had temporarily lost abilities, while gaining skills we didn't have out of nowhere.

And most of all, after Thanksgiving we did some research on Miss Thorpe, not able to swallow Principal Porter's story about her moving to California. Standing in the Pine View Cove cemetery, we learned that Miss Thorpe did indeed have a sister, a sister two years younger named Olive.

But in the Thorpe family plot, a gravestone for Olive Thorpe gave her year of birth as 1886 -- and her year of death 1902 at the age of 16. Her headstone listed her parents' names, and her sister Nancy. No other siblings, dead or alive were listed.

Miss Thorpe's parents had both died in the mid-1920s, first her father and then her mother. Both of their gravestones mentioned two daughters -- Nancy and Olive -- the latter deceased. So Miss Thorpe's only sister was long dead, not alive and living in Santa Barbara California.

In New York, it was a dull day with light snowfall, and chilly winds among the skyscrapers, the winter weather impeding the yellow taxi cabs, horns beeping. I looked up at the Empire State, Chrysler and Singer Buildings as we went into an attorney's office, and lodged the sealed buff envelope into a safety deposit box.

Then having completed our whirlwind trip to New York City, we took a bus back to the train station and were on our way back home to Connecticut. I held Steve's hand during the journey, thinking about when the envelope would be removed from its hiding spot and opened.

That day, barring major catastrophe or bad luck for all six of us, would not be for many years to come, for the envelope was marked not to be opened after all of us had died. I kept thinking ahead to the years in multiples of 10 after this year; 1969, 1979, 1989, 1999, 2009, 2019 and 2029 and what life would be like then.

Who would be the first of us to die, and who would be the last? And what would be the reaction when the envelope was unsealed, and the contents -- six statements from all of us detailing the alien abduction we experienced in 1959 by extraterrestrials from the Jupiter moon Europa and the subsequent cover-up and pay-out following the event -- was read by people in that long distant time in the future? The only problem was I would never know.

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