Tales of Olsen

9

Blood was still rushing to my head when Jordan pulled into the car lot of our apartment building.

“Eloise breathe!” she said wearing a triumphant smile.

Our plan to lure Keith out of his office had worked perfectly but that didn’t mean that I wasn’t terrified. I still hadn’t checked any of the pictures I had taken because I still couldn’t believe that we had pulled it off.

“I’m breathing,” I said aloud

“You did it,” she whispered

“Yeah, I keep thinking he’ll realize what we did and come after us,” I replied

If we had no idea what he was really capable of, then we were playing with fire.

“We’ll be fine,” she said, “and so what, he’s gonna accuse you of taking pictures of his private documents without proof?”

That was true. He would have no grounds to make any complaints against us and so anything he said would be our words against his. This still didn’t do much to make me feel better but at least I knew we’d be fine for now.

“Let’s go to the room and print the pictures so we can get a better look,” Jordan said

We took our time making our way up the stairs just in case Keith or the creepy ghost man popped up as we went by. Luckily, we made it to our apartment without a hitch. I gave Jordan the phone because she was much better at this than I was, and I needed to sit and rest my heart.

“Wow, this is a lot,” she whispered as the printer began making that whirring sound it did when it was printing, “I can’t believe you got all this in such a short space of time.”

I lifted my head to look at her and shrugged.

“I just took pictures of all the documents. I didn’t spend any time reading anything.” I replied

“I can tell,” she said looking down at a piece of paper, “you would have lost it if you saw this.”

“What is it?” I asked rolling off the couch and walking over to her.

She reached out and handed it to me. The paper was dated from three years ago and it had my name on it. I read more and realized that my entire life was here in this paper. My name, parents, where I went to school, even my IQ.

“What’s this?” I asked

“I think they’ve always known who you were and that you’d end up here,” Jordan said

She was looking through a few sheets of paper with a quizzical expression. She inhaled sharply and looked over at me again.

“My name’s here too.” She whispered, “but there’s a document at the time of my birth and then another around the same time yours was done.”

“Why would they have info on you since your birth?” I asked taking the document she was reading from her.

Sure enough, there were two sheets of papers documenting Jordan’s existence.

“This is so creepy,” I whispered looking over the documents and wondering what exactly we were getting ourselves into.

“There are about a hundred others like this,” Jordan said as she tried to restock the printer before it ran out of paper. “I’m the only one who was being tracked from birth.”

“Are these the only document there?” I asked watching her as she tried to organize another pile of papers.

“No,” she said, “you should go through these and organize them. They’re personal profiles, some are in other languages and others I have no idea what to do with them.”

Taking the papers, I began going through them and organizing them based on what was written. I could decipher a few of the ones in different languages and I realized they were profiles of other girls in different countries. As the papers began piling up I noticed that there were about fifty different persons here in the documents. There were other sheets of papers written in languages whose symbols I couldn’t read and so I put those away according to the similarities of their symbols.

“Is that all?” I asked when I was through organizing all the documents she had given me.

“One left,” she replied watching as the printer spat it out.

She handed me the paper and came to sit next to me on the floor. Together we began going through the papers I had stacked on the floor in our living room.

As I looked through the newest sheet I noticed that it was nothing like the others. In fact, it only had a single name and a location, and unlike the others, it was the name of a man. I nudged Jordan.

“What’s this?” I asked showing her the document.

“That’s strange,” she replied, “where’s the picture you took of it?”

I went and got my phone and looked at the original picture.

“This must have been taken recently,” she replied, “you see how white the paper is in comparison to the rest.”

I looked at the other pictures and realized she was telling the truth. This had been printed recently which meant they had their sights set on someone else.

“Let’s find the address,” I said grabbing my laptop which had been sitting on the kitchen counter from the night before.

“It might be local,” Jordan replied, “says the person’s right here in Boston.”

“Really?” I asked taking another good look at the paper.

As she said, the address revealed that the person was right here in Boston.

“Find it.” Jordan urged

Looking over at her, I realized she was excited and somehow, I felt the same sense of urgency. This was a lead, something we could figure out that could possibly help us.

Typing the address into google, I found the location and when I understood where it was, my breath hitched and I looked over at Jordan who was equally surprised.

“That’s a Buddhist temple,” I whispered

“It’s not too far away,” Jordan whispered,

Her eyes lit up and I knew what she was thinking.

“We can’t go,” I said.

After my encounter with Keith, I had realized we were ill-equipped to be carrying on like this. It was dangerous and the deeper we went, the more dangerous it would become.

“Oh come on, we have to.” She insisted, “if we don’t go we’ll never know how or why he keeps tracking these people down.”

“But what if it’s a trap?” I insisted, “what if we go there and it’s exactly where he wants us to be.”

Jordan turned away from me for a moment.

“I need to do this,” she whispered, “my father has always been a mystery to me. If it means that there might be more about him that I had no idea about, I want to know.”

I could hear the yearning in her voice and I knew it must be hurting her. I wanted her to get the closure she had been seeking all these years, but I also didn’t want to lose myself in all this confusion. We were already spending far too much time focused on this and almost none had been spent on studying.

“If we do this then we must pull an all-nighter tomorrow,” I said

She frowned, and I knew it was because she hated to study but I wanted us to keep our scholarships and do what we had always wanted to.

“Fine,” she replied

She jumped to her feet and pulled me up.

“Grab your things I’m driving.” She said

I wasn’t as excited as she was, but I tried to keep my spirits up. Whatever we found there would help but we had no guarantee that it wasn’t a trap.

The drive was an estimated hour away from where we lived, and Jordan decided to cut it to forty-five minutes as she sped along the motorway. We got there with enough time to spare and her speeding did nothing to calm me.

“We’re here,” she whispered as we pulled unto the road leading to the temple. I had fully expected to see the beautiful building that I had seen on the google site but instead, there was nothing but a burnt down old building ahead of us.

“Oh no,” Jordan said as she drove into the parking lot.

It looked as if the building had been torched recently.

“What are the odds this place was recently torched?” I asked under my breath.

Catching a glimpse of something moving in the corner of my eye I saw a groundskeeper coming towards us.

“We should find out what happened here,” Jordan said

I wanted to tell her to turn the car around so that we could go but I didn’t bother. The man came closer and there was a look of sadness in his eyes that I could read clearly.

“What happened here?” Jordan asked

“Burnt down,” he said, “three days ago.”

I looked over at Jordan who shrugged.

“Can we go in?” she asked

“What for?” the man asked suspiciously,

“Ah, for a school project,” Jordan lied, “we need to see if maybe this was a hate crime,”

The man raised his brow, but he didn’t question her.

“Be careful,” he replied, “the ground isn’t sound. Our leader fell through a few days ago. Lucky man he survived.”

Jordan nodded and parked the car.

“I’ll stay here and wait,” I said

She nodded reluctantly but as she opened her door a familiar, yet unwelcomed feeling washed over me.

“Go!”

The command was strong and over-powering.

“Fine,” I said aloud “I’ll go!”

My frustration at not knowing what was happening and the inconvenience of all this was getting to me.

“Eloise,” Jordan said as I walked over to her, “don’t worry about school. It’s gonna be fine.”

She was saying that but we both knew she would lose everything if she slipped and lost her scholarship.

“Don’t worry so much.” She continued

I shrugged, and together we made it up the few steps leading to the hollowed-out shell that remained of the temple.

The scent of smoke still clung to the walls and I wondered if Keith had been the one to set the fire or if he had allowed someone else to do the job.

“Wow,” Jordan whispered as we entered the open space which looked to be the main hall.

“It’s beautiful,” I echoed as I looked around the room.

The ceilings were stained glass and it seemed to tell a story similar to the one in the book Jordan had shown me.

“You shouldn’t have come here.”

The sound of another person’s voice startled me. I spun around and came face to face with a man cloaked in full black. His face was fully hidden, but I knew it was a man by the timber in his voice. I stepped back and bumped in Jordan who had been frozen in place.

“Ah, we were just leaving.” I managed to croak out.

The man stood still, and even at my height, I still had to look up.

“Yeah,” Jordan said tugging my hand.

“Stay!”

The voices in my head erupted in their usual crescendo of noise.

“Who are you?” I asked wondering why I was being led to remain in spite of my fear.

“Eloise,” he said

I breathed in sharply wondering how I would get out of this one. Why was it that everyone seemed to know me before I met them?

“Who are you?” I asked once again

He stepped forward and Jordan and I took a step back.

“I promise I’m not who you think I am,” he said

“What does that even mean?” Jordan asked

Before I could follow up, he removed his cloak and showed us who he was; it was Keith or some version of him.