It was a dark, chilly night where the sky seemed empty when Todd Mardade climbed the barren, steep rocky slope to the high, jagged peak. It was pure black but showed up clear even in the night. He climbed fast up the slick stones, moving faster and faster until he reached the top. He looked out over the vast landscape of mountains looking like dark waves under passing, flickering blue moonlight. He saw a massive neon green glowing mountain he’d never seen before, but then after watching a long time he began to realize it was four massive walls of mist. He kept staring intensely as aliens appeared within the mist, building a half-circular tower. Three sleek dark blue triangular alien ships flew low over the mountains around the mist. Intense lights shone down from the ships as they circled the secret building. Now, his 12-year-old son Josiah searches for the mountain. He’s trying to uncover what the aliens are hiding…
Josiah’s favorite thing to do is to sing. He makes up his own songs, yet never writes them down. Some of the ones he really likes, he just remembers, for the most part. He has an amazing ability to come up with a song on the spot. One time he was supposed to help in the kitchen at school helping the cooks prepare the school lunches. He started singing loud, so loud, that all of his classmates in the other room could hear him. As they made their way into the room where the other cooks had gathered in the far corner, some covering their ears, they could hear him singing about all kinds of random ingredients, in a really fast song that sounded like a battle song. He sung about various explosions, shootings, and launching…well then they saw it for themselves. He was throwing sugar and salt into the air. He mixed in a bowl and half of it ended up outside the bowl. In fact, most of what he was supposed to make landed on the table, the floor, the ceiling, the door, and inside the refrigerator! To this day, no one knows how the dough ended up there when it was closed the whole time. To this day, no one knows what Josiah was even trying to make, and to this day, he’s never been invited back in the kitchen…
Josiah loves climbing mountains. He isn’t so much interested in which mountains he climbs, but how he climbs. He likes to take the most direct route, but he also likes to take the hardest route. He never talks about what mountains he’s climbed, but the kids find out because they hear his singing from distant peaks. He moves the way he sings, fast, full-speed ahead until he crashes. They hear his singing through the shadows, flying high. Then all the sudden it just stops, in mid-sentence, even mid-word. But after awhile, it starts up again. He likes to go up the steepest parts, mainly because he wants to take the fastest route. But what’s really mysterious, are the lights that appear in odd places on the peak. No one knows how he puts them there, how he gets there, but somehow these neon gold lights appear. They continue to shine and they even shine in the darkest nights…
Josiah hates chores. He hates doing anything boring or routine. That’s why if you give him something to do like wash clothes or dishes, what should take him 15 minutes will take him about 5 hours. Mostly it’s because he plays with the clothes or dishes. He makes up songs, has the various dishes fight while he gives the play by play even if no one is around. But the real reason it takes him much longer is because he usually has to clean up a mess he makes from the “fights” that take place among whatever objects he’s dealing with. What doesn’t help is the fact that Josiah has no concept of time at all. If you tell him to meet you at 4:00, don’t expect him to show up at 4:00, because something will distract him or take him way longer than it should. Plus, he just gets really confused at specific times. No one knows why. But he doesn’t seem to be confused about the times when the aliens are bringing in new students to the mysterious new complex they built hidden in the mountains…
In the late cold nights of Cashes Dade, when the blue moonlight burns bright, Josiah sneaks out into the mountains. He believes the aliens are sneaking students into the hidden complex deep in the mountains. He hears strong pounding music and bizarre lights flashing inside. But they seem to be hiding the students, and what they’re doing. What are the aliens planning? What are they doing to these students? We’ll find out more about this in the next post called:
MYSTERY OF GHOST PEAK: PART THREE
But Josiah isn’t just exploring deep into the mountains, climbing and reaching distant, high jagged peaks to discover the secrets the aliens are hiding. He sings because he believes music is the best way to reach him. He explores deep into the mountains because he hopes he can find the ghost of his dad…
