The Eyeball and the Bubble

By Sanjar Ali Khan

...the cave was lit through an opening in the roof and the sand underfoot was soft. Tired, she lay down and was soon asleep.
If the tiny squirrel had not nibbled at her toes, she would have been late. She woke with a start, still with time to dress for the party.
Instead of being grateful, she felt a strange animosity towards the creature. With a flourish of her leg she drove out all signs of life; quickly she realized that killing the animal had given her an unusual sadistic pleasure. With a last hateful glance at the disfigured body, she departed.
She failed to notice that one of the squirrel’s eyeballs had dislodged from the body and fallen aside.
So the story begins ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: CUSTOM BOOK PUBLICATIONS
• Release date: May 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9780463987308

Book preview

ABOUT THIS BOOK...

…the cave was lit through an opening in the roof and the sand underfoot was soft. Tired, she lay down and was soon asleep.

If the tiny squirrel had not nibbled at her toes, she would have been late. She woke with a start, still with time to dress for the party.

Instead of being grateful, she felt a strange animosity towards the creature. With a flourish of her leg she drove out all signs of life; quickly she realized that killing the animal had given her an unusual sadistic pleasure. With a last hateful glance at the disfigured body, she departed.

She failed to notice that one of the squirrel’s eyeballs had dislodged from the body and fallen aside.

So the story begins …

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Sanjar Ali Khan was born in 1931 in Hyderabad , India, has enjoyed a lengthy career in the field of science and technology.

Currently, Director of Hyderabad Science Society, of which he was one of the founders, he authored ‘Report on Sensors’ and was Editor of the quarterly Newsletter ‘Sensing Devices’.His books ‘Dialogues on the Nature of Time’ , ‘Don’t Blame God, It Could Be Murphy’s Law’, ‘Projects in Electronics for Engineering Students’ and ‘Mini and Major projects in Instrumentation’ have been published by Delhi based publisher Pustak Mahal, while another book ‘Opto-Electronic Models and Teaching Aids’ has been published in Germany during February 2012.

He has developed as series of teaching aids for young children. These incorporate interactive, dynamic LED displays. Ten titles in physical sciences and biology have been developed.

C

opyright © 2017 Sanjar Ali Khan

A

sia’s Print & Digital Publisher

THE EYEBALL

AND THE BUBBLES

by

SANJAR ALI KHAN

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 How it began

Chapter 2 Five years later

Chapter 3 The Sheriff and the Mayor

Chapter 4 The Nurturing of Oogle

Chapter 5 Help from an unexpected quarter

Chapter 6 On that fateful day

Chapter 7 Two days later

Chapter 8 High technology

Chapter 9 Operation ‘Bubbles’

CHAPTER 1

HOW IT BEGAN

Julia had just turned eighteen and it was her birthday. Friends from school and neighbors’ children of her age were expected to join her for a late evening party.

However, she was in a viscous mood. She had just had a tiff with her mother Katy, on what to wear for the party – a series of long arguments that upset both of them. When the mother would not relent, Julia left the house in a huff and walked out.

Adjoining the house was a thicket. A path led from the house into the forest and ended up near a small lake, set among rocks which surrounded most of the water. A small cave was situated where the path ended and this was where Julia headed. She looked at her watch and reckoned that it would be another three hours before her friends started rolling in for the party, so she decided to take a nap and get in the right mood for the big event.

Julia’s father, Donald Rostagi, was a business executive, who doted on his daughter. He was gone for two days to attend a meeting with other colleagues but was expected to return in time for dinner, and participate in the cake cutting ceremony. Julia was expecting a generous gift for the occasion, when she would be of legal age.

In her several arguments with her mother, her father almost always sided with his daughter, much to the chagrin of her mother. In private conversations, Katy tried to convince Don that his attitude would spoil Julia, but to no avail.

The cave that Julia entered was well lit by light from an opening in the roof. Soft sand on the bed made lying on it quite comfortable. Tired out from the heated arguments, Julia lay down and was soon asleep.

If the tiny squirrel had not nibbled at Julia’s toes, she would have slept past party time. When she woke with a start, she noted that there was just sufficient time left for her to get ready for the main event. Instead of being grateful to the squirrel for waking her up, she felt a strange animosity towards the creature. With a flourish of her leg she drove off all signs of life from it, taking sadistic pleasure in doing so, until the small animal was totally dismembered. In the process, one of the eyeballs of the squirrel got dislodged from the body and fell aside. With a last hateful glance at the disfigured body, she went back to her house.

Friends came, the party started and ended. Her father had brought her a silver colored sports coupe, as a special gift for a special occasion. All had left excepting Nellie, her closest friend, so she decided to take her out for a ride in her newly acquired coupe. As she put her hand in her shirt pocket to locate the ignition key, she was startled to find a slimy object instead. Leaving her friend in the car, she ran into the house and went straight into the kitchen where she examined the strange object under strong light. She almost threw up when she realized that what she was holding in her palm was an eyeball of the dead squirrel. Flustered and angry she deliberated on the next step. She did not even wait to wonder how the eyeball of the squirrel got into her party dress in the first place.

Acting fast, she threw the object into a pan, poured some water over it and heated the water over the gas stove, watching the pot intently until the last remains had apparently been swallowed up by the virulent mass in the pot. Then a strange thing happened. Although there were no signs left of the eyeball, each new bubble that arose from the bottom of the water mass was an exact replica of the eyeball she had so cruelly stewed.

Each bubble would come up, assume the shape of the eyeball, stare at Julia with hateful reproach and disappear, only to be replaced by other similar bubbles.

Frightened out of her wits, she ran to her car and drove away, totally shattered. Nellie, was at a loss to explain the strange behavior of her friend. It took three hours before Julia could speak, and then only to mutter some incomprehensible words.

Tired and exhausted, they returned home. Nellie spent the night with her friend, still unable to fathom what had really occurred for Julia to behave as she did. As for Julia, for several days she had horrible dreams of the events in the kitchen following her birthday party. Three months later she moved away from her parents house and settled in a northern state where, through her father’s contacts, she got a secretarial assignment in a large corporate organization.

*****

CHAPTER 2

FIVE YEARS LATER

Julia, now twenty-three, was visiting her parents after five years. The town she had known had changed considerably. New housing colonies had come up and the forest near her house had all but vanished. In its place supermarkets had sprung up. The lake itself had shrunk to half its original size and where the cave stood a motel was built. But there was no change in her parent’s house – everything was just the same as when she had left.

Special Agent Dale Robins – thirty-five – was in his office going through reports of missing persons. Four persons had disappeared with startling regularity, on the same day each year. The first reported incident took place four years ago. A woman cleaning up her kitchen had vanished without trace, and no amount of investigation yielded any results. It was as if the woman just hadn’t existed.

The following year a young boy vanished. He was last seen preparing coffee before going out to meet up with his friends. According to all the information gathered by the Sheriff’s department, the boy never left the house. His friends who were waiting for him to turn up went to his house. The boy’s widowed mother told them that he must have left quietly as he was not in the house. There were several people outside at that time. Each one of them was sure that the boy never came out. The one thing that perplexed the police was that the coffee pot was still on the stove. Why had the boy not prepared his coffee? Why did he put out the burner? Where was he anyway? Several weeks later there was still no answer to any of these questions.

A year later another person disappeared. This time it was an elderly lady. She had just told off a salesman who was pestering her to buy a new detergent for her clothes washer. When the disgruntled salesman had left, the lady went into the kitchen to prepare coffee for her paying guest. According to the statement of the guest, he saw the lady close the main door after the salesman and told him that coffee would be ready in a few minutes. The guest admitted that he had dozed off and must have slept for about thirty minutes. When he woke, he went for his coffee. The pot was on the stove but there was no sign of the woman. After an intensive search for almost an hour, in which the neighbors joined, the police were informed.

As in the previous two cases, there were no clues to this mystery. Following this incident, a special investigating team was brought in, but again with no results. They failed to connect the different disappearances and after several days of deliberation, the team departed.

The fourth incident was quite different from the previous three. The timing was perfect, exactly a year from the previous one. This incident involved a plumber, who was called in to repair a kitchen drain. Before getting on with his work, he started to boil some water to prepare tea – his favorite beverage. At that time he was alone in the house, the owners being expected to return at any moment.

A passer-by later reported that he heard some kind of a ghoulish sound from the house. Scared, he ran as quickly as he could. The plumber was later found lying on the kitchen floor. He was a hefty person, weighing close to 180 kg and two meters in height. What remained of him was a terrible sight to behold. His body appeared as if it was drawn through a narrow tunnel. His arms were dismembered and his body – or what remained of it – was elongated to nearly three meters. Another strange feature of the remains was that both eyeballs had disappeared leaving hollow spaces instead.

The owners decided to seal the house and moved into another neighborhood, as the police investigators were tearing the place apart looking for clues to this horrific murder. When no progress was made in the investigations even after eight months, Dale Robins, Special Agent at the State Police Headquarters, was called in. Selected because of his special ability to solve cases of disappearances where no common factors were evident, he preferred to work alone and use existing records and reports to pursue his objective. As such he was not a communicative person.

After two months of intensive research the only conclusions he had reached were that all these events took place on the same day each year, starting four years previously. Secondly, they all took place in the early evening hours. Robins was particularly intrigued by the last event. This was different from the others as there were bodily remains to confirm the tragedy. Poring over the postmortem reports and the photographs of the last remains of the plumber he was certain that the earlier three cases of disappearances were closely linked. They differed only in that there remains were not found. What he could not understand at all was the physical shape of the plumber’s body. There was some idea lurking in his mind, gnawing it; but he could not quite spell it out.

He then decided to visit the coffee shop near his office and relax for a while. Seated at the table in front of him were two elderly ladies, eating sandwiches and drinking coffee. They were talking softly so Robins could not hear what they were saying to each other but in his professional life, he had been in situations where he had to hear low conversations, so he had acquired a special device which was clipped on to his shirt sleeve. When pointed in any direction this device would pick up faint sounds and amplify them sufficiently for him to hear them clearly. Just for the fun of it he switched on the device and pointed it at the two ladies engaged in serious conversation

‘I hear your daughter Nellie, is coming to visit you after some four years.’

‘Yes, and I’m very excited to meet her. I must admit however that her main reason for the visit is to meet up with her friend Julia, who is also here for her twenty-third birthday. You see, Julia left this town shortly after her eighteenth birthday. Her father had given her a new sports car as a gift and she and Nellie went off for a drive immediately after the guests had left the party. According to Nellie, it was not a pleasant drive.’

‘Why. I thought they were close friends?’

‘They still are. But Nellie noticed that before starting the car, Julia looked puzzled and rushed into the house. She came back after a few minutes totally flustered, and drove away madly. She said they drove most of the night in silence. Something seems to have terrified Julia when she went into the house, but she would not tell Nellie what had happened. Shortly after, Julia left town. To this day, Nellie does not know what Julia saw that terrified her so much.’

‘Well, that was almost five years ago. Her birthday is the day after tomorrow. I hear that it is going to be a small affair, with only Julia’s parents and Nellie. I hope that this time nothing frightening happens to upset her again?’

‘I hope so. They haven’t solved the case of the plumber’s murder yet, have they?’

‘No. Although it would be exactly a year in two days since the ghastly event happened.’

‘How could you remember that date?’

‘Because, my dear, it happened on Julia’s birthday.’

Robins switched off his hearing device and hurried back to his office. He now realized what was at the back of his mind. In two days, the next tragedy will occur! Maybe, in some weird way and unknown to