Frozen

An Excerpt

            It was a moment that no one could explain. Science and religion tried and failed and all forms of logic could not explain what happened to a simple set of bleachers and a field of high school students watching a soccer game over twenty years ago. No one was spared that night, no one woke up, and it was a dangerous secret that was being kept from the rest of the world. People of different lines of thought were brought in to see what had happened to all of those young people, but no one was able to come up with one definitive answer. After years of research the set of bleachers and field were enclosed in a dome covering and protecting it from the rest of the world.

            No one was to know or go inside; no one was to speak of what happened on that night all of those years ago. How an entire group of children, how every soul inside, was frozen solid. People had tried standing next to them with heaters; they tried throwing water hot enough to give third degree burns, but nothing worked. The ice remained and the teenagers did not move. However, not all of them were frozen. Some people spoke of how any soccer player, the ones on the field and the ones on the benches, were nothing but skeletons with clothes hanging from the bones. No flesh, no skin, no trace of tissue remained, only the clothes. Those skeletons remained as well, for people were unable to move them. It was as if they too were frozen solid, unable to move. Parents were unable to claim the bodies of their dead children.

            Science could not explain it, faith could not undo it, there was nothing anyone could do about the bodies of those teenagers except leave them where they stood. Parents were forced to accept that their children would not wake up, that they would never grow up; a school was forced to acknowledge that their entire student body was gone in one night; and those who saw it were forced to accept that there were some things in this world that just could not be explained. It was a secret a small town in Montana was forced to keep from everyone, and a night that would haunt their memories for all of time.

            It was there in that town that Beth Ramsey grew up. Like most people in her town she was not supposed to talk about what happened that night or what lay beyond the locked doors of the small dome next to the school. It was just a day like any other day as Beth sat out in the field. Her hair was long and flat, the ends split and in need of a cut. Its brown color looked plain against her sweatshirt. Tilting her head to the side, her brown eyes narrowed as she watched the dome, wanting more than anything to get a chance to go inside.

            “Beth?” Turning around when she heard her name, she saw Aiden Smith walking toward her. He was a small boy, barely over 5'5" with messy black hair and dull blue eyes. His clothes were dirty, torn, and far too big for his skinny frame. As he walked up to her, he paused for a moment, looking at the dome before sitting down on the grass. It was almost the end of the school year and the weather was finally warm enough to go outside, the last of the snow hiding in the shade of the mountains and trees.

            “Hey Aiden,” she said, giving him a small smile before looking back at the dome. “I thought you had to talk to a teacher or something.” He shook his head.

            “No, I decided it wasn’t worth it. Besides, we graduate at the end of the month, what are they going to do? Take the diploma out of my hands because I decided not to pass a gym class? I doubt that, they don’t want to mess up their ratings and draw attention to the town,” Aiden replied, leaning back on his hands and staring at the dome.

            “Yeah, you’re probably right,” Beth said, also leaning back on her hands. Aiden was one of the few boys that talked to her. With such a small town everyone seemed to know everything about everyone so it was hard to have any secrets. It was more or less known that Beth did not have a father and worse that her mother did not know who her father was at all. While this did not bother Beth that much, it seemed to make everyone else in the town have little respect her mother and herself.

            “Did you hear about what the soccer team is planning?” Aiden asked.

            “No, what are they going to do now? We already had the senior prank.” Beth replied, thinking back to the unoriginal attempt at humor by filling the swimming pool with Jell-O. It made her laugh a little at how easily they were caught. Maybe they shouldn’t have put all of the empty packets in the goalie’s garbage can.

            “They’re going to break into the dome,” Aiden said. That got her attention. Sitting up, she looked over at him, raising both of her eyebrows.

            “Are you serious?” she asked. In the twenty years since the incident there had been many attempts to break into the dome. In fact, it had become a type of tradition for someone to make the attempt to get into the dome before graduation; it was like a rite of passage. It also meant that someone would get their diploma while sitting in a jail cell.

            “Yeah, I think they’re planning on doing it this Friday. Whether or not they’ll actually go through with it is an entirely different story.” Aiden tilted his head to the side. “Why are you so surprised? If there’s a class that could do it, it certainly won’t be ours.”

            “I guess you’re right, we do have a bunch of morons that will be trying,” Beth replied. “Aren’t you curious?”

            “Of course I am, it’s the biggest secret in the town. No one in our generation has been in there. The last people who got in were the kids who were in high school when it happened,” Aiden said, sighing. “But it’s not like we’re going to get any closer.”

            “Maybe we could,” she suggested, glancing at him. “I mean, we aren’t the smartest kids in the school, but maybe we could get in there.” It was at that moment that the bell for the end of the lunch period rang. For once, Beth found herself thankful that it had happened when it did because she did not want to listen to Aiden lecture her about her the unhealthy obsession she seemed to have with the dome. Instead, she jumped to her feet, shoved her hands into her sweatshirt pocket and raced back to the school. After all, it was none of Aiden’s business that she wanted more than anything to get into that dome, to see the people that time seemed to have forgotten. The last thing she wanted was to have to explain about all of the dreams she recently had about those people. She wanted to only confirm if the visions she was seeing in her head were real or just a figment of an over active imagination.