The Temple in the Sky - Fernando Herrera Jr (children's ebooks online .TXT) 📗

no choice but ask the maid for some money. First: to pay for the cab; and second: to rent a hotel room where she could spend the rest of the afternoon alone and in peace. She asked the maid to inform the family that she was fine but she needed to be alone for a while and that she would not take more than a day. The next day, when Daisy did arrive home, she found a letter on her bed that had been labeled: To Daisy. She read its contents:
I was a fool to believe you could love someone like me. I have gone in search for my soul. I know what it all means now... my grandpa’s stuff. Do not bother searching for me. You will never find me where i’m headed. I hope you have a wonderful life. I really do. I shall return someday. I will always love you, Daisy. Au revoir.

X a good friend

She began to weep into her arms on the edge of her bed...


5
The Grotesque Silhouettes and Their Foreign Hoard Coffers

Moments later, caught in a frantic episode of hyperventilation, Apaec realized that Micay was still waiting for him in the cave. As he began to stand, he was blinded by a flash of light coming from the sky. A loud, reverberating “hum” permeated the atmosphere. It was so loud that the bouncing sound waves caused small rocks to rhythmically bounce on the desert landscape. He looked up immediately as it flashed again and again, rapidly and repeatedly for many minutes, faster and faster, until, it eventually became distinct. The light was so lucent; it lit up the entire sky. It seemed as though the night had abruptly come to an end; and he thought the God of the Sun must have been near. It hurt his eyes so much; he covered them with his hands; yet, even then, the light still gleamed through his palms, so he buried his face into his lap. Many minutes went by and the light did eventually fade, and when it did, he stood up and began to make his way back up to the cave. Running as fast as he could, he wedged himself through the crevices of the high cliffs searching for the easiest way up, but he still wasn’t able to see clearly for many more minutes. Consequently, he stumbled on rocks and boulders, falling many times and injuring his limbs. Then, just before arriving at a clear passage, two dark silhouettes appeared in the distance. They seemed to belong to a couple of excessively tall and lanky men. He halted completely before them but slipped and fell on his bottom. It was too dark to make out their faces but he realized they could not be human; they were too tall and unnaturally slender. Haunted by the scene, he quickly retreated running away from them, only turning back once; and from the corner of his eye, he realized they had not followed him; but he wasn’t going to let that stop him…
Apaec ran with all of his might and eventually made it into an open passage where he found something he could not understand. He witnessed the inconceivable: what he could only describe as a large jumble of perfectly measured, geometric shapes made from a shiny matter (like that of a polished metal). Immediately, he knew, they too were not of his world, so he stood in awe staring at the figures that were as tall as trees. Slowly, he walked over to the first one: a huge rectangle that stood up vertically. On the walls of it, he noticed markings: simple shapes consisting of squares, triangles, circles, rectangles, zigzag markings, etc., that were intertwined to form a meticulous pattern. He touched the wall and ran his fingers on the smooth surface. They squeaked as they left a smudge. It was cold and it was the smoothest surface he had ever felt. Then he ran his index finger, feeling the rifts of the shapes, and as he did, he heard a dimmed, bell-like sound coming from inside of the structure. “Deeeeng,” it hummed vibrantly for a few seconds through the wall. The square outline opened outwards, jutting-out slowly until it made a stop. The “deeeeng” was heard again and a vague blue light shone form the inside. It allowed him to see his own reflection on the wall, as if though he were looking at the surface of water. He saw his own face like he never had before: clear with a vague hue of blue from the light. He stood for a moment glaring into the reflection, allowing himself to admire his young, handsome face. He was amused by it and his curiosity overwhelmed his caution; therefore, he decided to take a peek inside.
The last imaginative thing his ingenious mind would ever conjure was exactly what he discovered inside: hundreds of shelves of the same matter previously remarked, set equally apart throughout the structure. On them were baskets, baskets heaping with fruits and plants bunched up against the corners. Nothing had ever puzzled him as much before. The only explanation his naive mind could conclude was that they were gifts for the gods from the Cahuachi, and that the structures were the means to transport them up to the heavens. He was wonderfully excited by the idea and he thought that the rest of the structures could contain animals or even people. Curiously wandering about the area, he began to hear indistinct chattering sounds coming from what seemed to be a short distance: perhaps voices that were not common to him: not normal; instead, squirmy and extremely high pitched amidst ripples of twittering and twitching, like that of the insects of the jungle. They grew louder and louder as he realized they were getting closer. “The gods!” he gasped frightened. He was not sure of what they would make of his nosy tampering with their craft, so he decided to hide. He looked around only to realize there was no way out. It was a dead end. The only possible exit was the same way he had entered, but that was exactly where the sounds were coming from, and that was exactly where the mysterious silhouettes had been. There were no rocks or trees big enough to hide him, so he did the only thing he could do: crept inside the structure through the narrow opening. The opening closed and trapped him inside. Naturally, he assumed he would be able to open the door again just by pushing it out. It was completely dark--the blue light had extinguished once the door had shut. He listened carefully for the voices but they had silenced. Only a tiny buzzing sound could be heard. Goose bumps surfaced all over his russet flesh because of the very low temperature. The are inside was large enough for him to comfortably walk around but too dark for him to be aware of his surroundings. But he decided to walk anyway, only to strike his forehead with a steel beam from the shelves which he could not see. He tripped and fell to the floor hitting the back of his head. This time, it was much harder than the last and he fell unconscious.

6
The Ship Transport

Hours later, he awoke to the same darkness that had inhibited his senses before. He had not a way of knowing how long he had been unconscious for; thereof, he stood up disoriented, only to hit his head once again on a solid beam set directly above him. He shrieked in pain while holding his head. The scream echoed, reverberating through the walls and space of the structure. He remained idle for a moment, eventually stretching his arms in an attempt to feel his surroundings (as a blind-man would with his cane). He stood up, this time with more caution, and began to walk until he felt a cold wall, onto which he pressed hard with his hands. It didn’t budge. He tried hitting it, kicking it, and even launching himself against it, shoulder first, yet again, it remained idle; ergo, he became horror-stricken by the chilling intuition of his isolation. The familiar adrenaline began to bubble over his humor, and the rush decomposed his former, eager curiosity; thereof, he felt daunted by his vanishing convalescence. A loud, trembling “hum” vibrated once again through the walls. The room violently quaked and he felt the massive weight of pressure take him down to the ground. It was sudden and he felt paralyzed as he lay supinely flat on a metallic woven-floor, completely immobile with his arms stretched to the sides, enduring the massive force for twenty minutes, until, in due course, the pressure began to diminish. The sensation then became something else: that of the complete opposite: he felt lighter as his ears popped, whilst his body arose to the ceiling heights. It can’t be—it’s absolutely impossible! he thought. He was incredulous at the notion of “floatation” in midair; not withstanding, the idea that it could all be a dream never crossed his turbulent state of mind. It was too intense to be a dream. He tried grabbing on the baskets of fruit on the high shelves, attempting to stop himself from rising all the way to the top and was able to clutch the edge of one large basket which was heavy enough to stop him. He was close to the wall. He could feel it with his left hand as he took hold of a beam above him, gripping it with both hands, thrusting his body as hard as he could and kicking the wall. He repeated this procedure many times, ultimately denting the wall. A cracking sound echoed thoroughly throughout the structure. He kicked it a few more times, draining his strength, until, finally, he broke through. The difference of pressure from one room to the other created a vacuum effect which flung his body out of the smaller room and into a much larger one. The suction was so intense, it rapidly flung out many fruits and baskets with him, flying out accordingly, until the pressure was equalized in both spaces. He ascended at a fast pace amidst the medley of exotic fruits. Airborne, he began flipping and turning chaotically in all directions and eventually crashing onto the ceiling of the larger craft: a vast room filled with the same shapes he had found outside on the desert ground. Evidently, they had been transported. The new room was also dark, but rays of dim, diffused, lipid light flickered from the walls and the ceiling of the structure. The walls appeared of metallic alloys, copper and silver in color, with different netted patterns. In that bizarre structure, the laws of nature seemed to have been broken, for instead of walking on the ground as nature on land intends, one could walk on the ceiling—upside down—if opting to do so; but the boy opted to crawl on the ceiling instead, making his way to the nearest wall. Once there, the intense vibrating began again, but this time it was much more turbulent. It seemed to be happening all over again but this time it was inverted, becoming heavier as he descended all the way down to the floor of the craft, slowly at first, but accelerating faster the farther he dropped, until he hit the ground—hard.
It took him a few minutes to recover, but once the pain soothed, he did stand and then walked to the wall in search of an opening; but there wasn’t one; still, he searched the wall back and forth without success; but did, however, find a square outline similar to the door he had opened before. So he took out his index finger and proceeded to run it on the top rift: “Deeeeeng,”