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 sky. 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.”