The Weird Files: Lost and Found
Fifteen-year-old Ricky Vale woke up in a cold sweat for the third night in a row. He lay in bed for a long time, listening to his pulse subside. The fingers on his right hand were hot and swollen within the plaster cast, which went up to his elbow. Ricky pulled it free from the tangled sheets and sighed, letting the clammy moisture evaporate.
He rolled over and pushed the ball cap aside to squint at his double bell alarm clock, which read about three in the morning. Ricky exhaled sharply and flopped onto his back, staring at the X-Files poster over his bed, reading the words, “I WANT TO BELIEVE,” over and over until the words didn’t make sense anymore and it sounded like gibberish. For some reason, this made him feel incredibly depressed, and he rolled back over to turn his bedside table lamp on. The room flooded with warm, comforting light. He took the glass of water on his nightstand and gulped from it. It tasted salty, like chlorine, and he grimaced.
The dream he had was already fading, but his body wasn’t going to forget it as easily; sweat ran in an icy line down his ribcage, and his hand shook when replaced the glass on his nightstand. He could still feel the blind terror in his gut, remembering the darkness, the pain exploding in his arm. Ricky rubbed absently at the cast with his left hand and swallowed the thin, metallic taste of bile. He took the ball-cap off his nightstand and stared at the letters “JC” written in permanent marker on the front. It still had the bloodstains on it.
“I want to believe,” he whispered.
He went to the bathroom, feeling sick. Once he got there, however, he felt lost, and stood in front of the toilet as though unsure of how to use it. The hair on the back of his neck prickled, and he looked out the window instinctively. A thin, pale figure in a red flannel jacket was standing beneath the bathroom window, looking up at him. The ball cap was pulled down over his eyes, so he couldn’t see the kid’s face, but he knew. Horror struck him like a sock to the gut. It was impossible. Ricky had his ball cap. He was just holding it.
“Jake?” he choked.
He pulled away from the window, gulping convulsively. Nausea came over him in rolling waves. The room seemed to slowly tilt sideways, and he pressed shaking hands over his eyes. His brain suddenly wasn’t in control of his breath, and it began ratcheting in and out of his chest. His throat felt raw, and he felt a swooping feeling in his stomach that threw him to his knees and made him scramble to get the toilet seat up.
When he dared to look out the window again, Jake was gone. He turned away from the window, unsure of what he had just seen. Either someone was playing a cruel prank, or he had just been part of a real-life episode of the X-Files. Ricky flushed the toilet and went back to his room. The ball cap was still on his pillow. Ricky picked it up and threw it in his sock drawer, folding his arms tightly. He clambered back to bed and stared warily at his closed sock drawer before lying back and drawing the blankets up to his chin. The words “I WANT TO BELIEVE” shone down from his ceiling and burned into his retinas.
“I don’t know if I want to anymore,” he whispered painfully.
Ricky shut his eyes tight and drew the covers over his head, praying for the serenity of slumber. It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning, when the first tendrils of light came leaking in through the curtains like diluted milk, that Ricky could sleep.
Britt Garth 