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Contest |
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Winning Story
The Unwanted Truth
By Deanna Grant
11th Grade Far West High School
I look out of the window as we pass the tall green trees, the branches spread far out, reaching into the sky, as if trying to catch the clouds as they slowly float away. There is a building on the hill that my friends and I call “the hill of haunted memories”. We were never told what or who used to lie up there. When it’s mentioned our parents and all of the other older townspeople tense up, refusing to answer questions, claiming it’s been empty since they were young.
That place has been the same since I can remember, "Grandma never knew who lived there either,” my mother would reply, every time I tried to catch her off guard with a questions about “the hill”. No matter how many times I asked, the answer was always the same, always exact, as if she rehearsed the line for years.
We start to get close to the hill and I lean forward in my seat looking out the window trying to get a good view of the mysterious building that haunts my dreams at night and my thoughts throughout the day. I think I see something move on the roof, but there has not been anything alive there since I can remember, except for the trees in back of the building and the weeds surrounding it.
“Mom I saw something move up there, look!" I shouted pointing to the roof.
“You saw no such thing,” she snaps, turning and looking at the road, signaling that the conversation is finished.
“How come no one talks about what is up there and when I ask you about it, you never answer my questions?”
“No one has lived there since the...” She stops in the middle of her sentence. “Like I have always told you, it’s been the same since I can remember.” She is starting to get upset now so I decide to leave it alone. Right then I decide that I will journey up that hill and check the building for my self.
“Do you hear me Lola?” Asks my mom looking in my direction. “Lola don’t even think about going up there, your little friends can’t save you from what’s up there.”
“I thought you didn’t know what was up there,” I say getting mad at her lies “And what were you going to say before? You said no one has lived there since the, since the what?"
“Lola, I’m not going back and forth with you, this will not be a matter of discussion.”
“Hurry up! You’re slowing us down and you’re going to get us caught.” I whisper loudly to my friend Rena. We are on our way up the hill. There are four of us, Rena, Jonathan, Robert, and me.
“No one is going to catch us. Any way why are you whispering?” Says Jonathan. We are skipping school so we can be sure that none of our parents could possibly see us. It’s hard trying to squeeze through the metal fence surrounding the building.
“Wait, is that a house?” Asks Robert pointing towards the trees behind the building.
“You should have gotten some more sleep because you’re hallucinating.” Jonathan says laughing at his joke, which only he found funny.
“That is a house,” said Rena. Over the sixteen years that I have lived in this town I have never seen this house before. It’s very old and broken down. I feel excitement spread all over me just knowing that we have already discovered something new in just a few minutes.
“You can’t even see anything through this dirty window,” said Robert cupping his hands up to his eyes as he looked through the window. I walk up and open the front door. “Okay this is a scene from almost every scary movie, I have seen,” I say becoming afraid but trying to hide it. “It’s always a group of kids going into a scary old house and of course the door is going to squeak.”
Stepping through the threshold I realize this isn’t a normal house. There aren’t any rooms just one big space with twenty beds in it. “This looks like a boot camp house,” says Rena snooping around everything. Each of the twenty beds has two letters on it, which I assume are initials for something. On top of each pillow is a neatly folded uniform of some kind. In the left corner of the room there is a pile of uniforms.
There is nothing else to look at, so at my suggestion, we leave to go look in the building.
Surprisingly the door to the building is unlocked and Robert opens it with caution. Immediately the dust hits my lungs and I feel a sneeze coming on. Spider webs are everywhere and I start to get freaked out but I hold my cool. It looks like a science laboratory because of all the vials and microscopes. All of these scientific things. It would take me one million years to figure out what each one was for. Up on the wall I see a list of names. Assuming it’s a list of employees, I take a closer look.
“Hey I think I found a list of all the people who worked here, maybe those beds are for them.” I’m starting to feel like a real detective now.
“Hey guys look what I found!” shouts Robert. I don’t know what to expect so I rush over prepared for anything that I see. A door and a staircase that leads to what we guess is the lower floor. The sunlight is pouring through the windows, lighting up our pathway as we walk down. Once we get to the bottom of the stairs there is a door that has a sign on it: “RESTRICTED AREA. PERSONNEL FROM PROJECT CL.” The rest of the sign is covered by rust and dust.
“Hurry, open the door. This is so exciting!” Rena is shaking with anticipation now
I can’t believe what is before my eyes. This is impossible. I think to myself I don’t know how I should react. I feel surges of emotions rush through my body. This must be some sort of prank for Candid Camera or something. Never in my life would I be prepared for something like this. Mother was right, none of my friends could protect me from what lay before me, they are just as vulnerable as I. Before me are twenty tall glass cylinders about four feet wide and eight feet tall. There’s green liquid, almost transparent, but still green, in each cylinder. You can tell that the liquid once reached the top of the cylinders but now there is a ring, a stain left by the liquid. Suspended in that transparent, but still green, liquid, is a body, a teenager’s body.
I look into the cylinder with the body identical to mine and I look directly into the face identical to mine. I study the tubes connected to my, or “its”,” nose and mouth trying to figure out how it works. My mouth is becoming completely dry. I close my eyes and blink hard, hoping, wishing, that when I open them all that lies before me is gone. But it’s not gone. I stare into a big orange sign: “PROJECT CLONE.” This is crazy. It’s impossible. Man can’t even clone sheep properly yet. But there when my eyes open is reality looking me in my face. There is a tag on the cylinder: “Subject #5416498 Lola Childs Age: 15 birth date: 4-09-54. “Okay I need to breathe and seriously think about this before I overreact. It can’t be real. 1954, was fifty years ago. But again there is the proof in my face. Twenty cylinders of proof, all with the bodies of teens from my neighborhood, including Rena, Robert, and Jonathan.
“You think they’ll know we did it?” Jonathan asks as we stand on the street looking up at the hill.
“I doubt it and I doubt that any one will care. They won’t have to worry about lying to their kids about what’s up there anymore,” I say looking at the flames as they reach high into the sky. Watching the thick black smoke fill the air around me, and the trees as they slowly fall to the ground, defeated by the fire that we set ablaze, I feel a sense of relief. Now I know and no one else ever will. I will never look at life the same. Nothing happened. Act like nothing happened, I repeat to my self over again as I walk in my front door.
“Mom, I’m home.”
