An award winning creepy 'UFO' short story by writer Delphine Richards.
It was Tony who named the house on the corner ‘Area 52’. He’d heard his father talking about Area 51 to his golf buddies. The house on the corner was Number 1452 so it became the ideal way to describe what we boys called ‘The Weird Family’.
Back then, with no internet, we had to create our own diversions. We weren’t quite old enough for girls (apart from sneaking glances at the women’s underwear pages in his Mom’s mail order catalogue).
The Hudsons at Number 1452 were an enigma. Mr Hudson had a telescope that he used on clear nights. It was set up just inside a bedroom window at the back of the house. We were told that he liked to look at the planets but Tony said that was a cover and he was really looking at ladies undressing in their bedrooms!
We thought Mrs Hudson couldn’t speak at all. She would rush indoors if she saw us on our bikes on the sidewalk.
At some point, someone must have mentioned to our parents that we were hanging around Number 1452 a lot because my Mom took me to one side and told me not to be a nuisance as the Hudsons were grieving. I didn’t know what that meant so Mom explained that they had lost their little boy before they moved to the area. I knew what ‘lost’ meant – he died – but Mom said he just vanished and they never found out what happened to him. I asked why that stopped her being able to speak but she said Mrs Hudson could speak but that she couldn’t bear to talk to boys who were about the same age as their son when he disappeared. That conversation ended with her usual lecture about not going anywhere with adults I didn’t know – I could almost recite it along with her (although that would have earned me a ‘time out’ in my room).
Mom repeated that lecture many times later that summer when Tony went missing. That was the summer I stopped talking too – for a long time. I didn’t know what happened to Tony but I knew I shouldn’t have run off and left him. I had been more scared than I had ever been; and more than I ever would be – up until now.
We had been sneaking around Number 1452. Tony said we would be able to see Mr Hudson’s telescope pointing at some lady’s bedroom window – probably Betty Boop’s window, he said. (That wasn’t her real name but all the kids called her that!). The night had almost reached full black when a yellow light shone on us. We freaked! Thought Mr Hudson had busted us! In seconds I felt sick and my teeth ached real bad. Tony made a gagging noise. That was when I ran and grabbed my bike.
I never saw Tony again.
The cops asked me lots of questions but all I could do was shake or nod my head. My parents took me to a shrink but that did nothing except give me nightmares filled with that debilitating yellow light.
Eventually I started to speak again but I lied and said that Tony and I split up to go home. Some instinct told me it would have been foolish to have said anything else.
And now, forty years later, I know why.
Last night, I got drunk with the guys. Told them a crazy story about a yellow light.
Now, it’s 2.30am. I’m sitting in my chair in the dark. I can see that yellow light creeping up the wall. My fillings are vibrating and I feel sick to my stomach.
I broke some secrecy code that I had not even known existed.
And they have come for me at last.
Read more stories by Delphine Richards
Blessed are the cracked
This interconnected collection of five novellas and two short stories from the casebook of retired local policeman Tegwyn Prydderch, is set in the fictional West Wales farming community of Llanefa. Delphine Richards’s dark tone dealing with traumatic issues of life and crime paints a shockingly different picture of life in rural West Wales.
The truth about eggs
The Truth about Eggs by Delphine Richards is a novel featuring ‘The Welsh Detective’ DCI Tegwyn Prydderch in his latest outing investigating the mystery and horror surrounding characters and events in the small Welsh village of Llanefa.
