The year was 1989 and I was graduating from high school after four long years. I played sports for the most part, but I had friends who were into all kinds of things. One of my closest friends was Bobby. He was a nice guy, but used to get picked on a bit. It was the same old story. The jocks and popular kids needed people like Bobby to make themselves appear stronger and feel better about themselves. Bobby was a bit of a wallflower though. He didn't talk to many people and spent a ton of time in the science lab. That was good for me because he often helped me with my chemistry and physics homework. Once you got to know him, he was actually a lot of fun to be around. He could really tell some stories. He had a vivid imagination, but I wouldn't say he was an "electric" personality. He used to support me at my baseball games and I would help him with whatever he needed, even if it was just to be a sounding board to vent.
As I said, most of the kids were not very nice to him. They would mock him because of his height and weight since he wasn't in the greatest shape. It was horrible and I did everything I could to stand up to them and defend him. I remember one night he was in the stands with my parents watching my baseball game. He got along well with my parents and they treated him like a son. The game was going well, and we were in the bottom of the 4th inning. All of a sudden a strong wind came up. Dust was blowing all over the field. This sunny summer day turned cold and dark within a matter of minutes without warning! Remember, these were the days before cell phones and instant information at your fingertips. Suddenly, the thunder started and then the lightning. The wind and rain made visibility very difficult. We heard an announcement from the field warning everyone sitting on the metal stands to quickly relocate to their cars until the storm passed. I ran for the dugout and Bobby and my parents ran for the car. I watched them disappear into the thick sheets of rain, but just as they reached past my line of sight a bolt of lightning cracked down from the sky. As I watched the bolt arc down from the sky, I soon realized it hit the ground. I had a perfect view of it from the dugout. Caught up in the moment, I didn't realize that that bolt of lightning actually hit Bobby! I "bolted" over to him, terrified what I'd find. As I arrived I saw my parents huddled around him, but I could see a bluish glow inside his skin and burn marks arcing down from his arms. He was shaking a bit, but was surprisingly lucid! He should have been dead! He slowly stood up and the burn marks and glow were gone. I ran over and hugged him. "Are you ok Bobby?!" I screamed. He quietly answered, "I'm not sure... I feel really hot". It was as if his body absorbed the energy from the lightning.
I was so relieved that he "seemed" ok. That strike should have killed him! Weeks and months went by and we continued out friendship as usual. He would spend endless hours in the science lab and I would play whatever sport it was for that time of the year. To sharpen my skills I started to incorporate weight training into my routine a couple of times a week. One night Bobby stopped over in the middle of my routine. I worked out in my parents basement. I was doing a bench press and clearly had too much weight on the bar. I tried to do that last repetition, but the bar was buried on my chest. I was in trouble. I screamed for Bobby who was upstairs. He dashed down the stairs and ran over to me. What happened next I simply could not explain. He lifted that barbell from my chest with no effort whatsoever. There was 225 pounds on that bar! I looked at him and said "How did you do that?". He said, "It must have been adrenaline from knowing you were in trouble!". Then, the air felt tense. All the hair on my arms and neck stood up. It felt like I was charged. Just the same way when you scuff your feet on carpet to create static. Then the the light bulb in the basement popped...and then another upstairs....
I wasn't quite sure what to think after that night. Bobby seemed to be spending more and more time in the science lab. I went in there one day to see how he was doing and he was experimenting with electricity and reading books by Einstein and and Nikola Tesla. I didn't think much of it at first. After all, he was totally into science. The next day in the school hallway a couple of bullies started to taunt him and he politely (as was his usual way) asked them to stop. Of course they didn't. He tried to walk away but they had him cornered. I was trying to make my way over to help him from the opposite end of the hall. I couldn't see over all the other kids crowded in front of me. I heard a scream and as I pushed my way through to Bobby, I saw both bullies on the ground in riving pain. One guy had what looked to be a compound fracture in his arm and the other with what looked like burn marks on his arms. I looked for Bobby, but he disappeared into the crowd. Now I was really starting to get freaked out.
Later that night I reached out to Bobby to see if he was ok from the incident earlier. He came over and we hung out like we normally would, but he wouldn't eat or drink anything. Then, abruptly he got up and told me he needed to go. I asked him if everything was alright and in a loud and agitated voice, he exclaimed, "I'm fine Mike! I just need to go!". As he stormed out of the house, I waited until he was far enough away and I tailed him. Something was up and I was going to get to the bottom of it. I had seen enough strange things I couldn't explain over the last few months and now I wanted answers. He wandered up and down empty streets stumbling occasionally. He avoided the street lamps, preferring to walk in the dark. The air was thick and filled with tension. Where was he going? Eventually, he ended up at an electric power grid way out in the middle of a corn field adjacent to our town. What I saw next was unbelievable. I couldn't believe my eyes! He hopped the fence in one leap and proceeded to put his hands on the large electric coils. That most definitely should have turned him into a pile of char! He stepped down, electricity arcing from his fingertips. Seeming more chipper now, he left a couple minutes later like nothing had ever happened. The next day I went to give him a high five expecting to find some kind of burn marks on his hands. To my shock there was nothing! What the heck!? I was so confused. I did start to notice some personality changes with him though. He seemed more distant, less friendly and only wanted to go out durning the evening.
About the same time, terribly inexplicable things started to happen in our town. People went missing and large spots of burnt ash were appearing in random areas. As the police tried to investigate the situation, not much made sense to them. The only consistency was that all of the people seemed to disappear at night. No leads and no suspects were released, but I had a feeling I knew Bobby had something to do with this. I didn't want to assume anything though, so I tried to do some investigating of my own. One random night during the week I staked out at Bobbys house to see if he would leave. He did indeed and I followed him once again. This night though he wandered down different streets. It didn't seem like much was out of the ordinary until I heard Bobby talking to someone. It was a man, visibly confused. Bobby was raising his voice to get something across to the man slowly approaching him. "Please stay back and don't touch me. I don't want to hurt you.". Turns out the guy was a drunk and walked straight into Bobby. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. The guy literally went up in smoke and all that was left was smoldering ash! Terrified of what I just witnessed I sprinted home. I laid awake all night with the image of that smoldering man burnt into my mind. How did that happen? Why did that happen? How is any of this possible?!
The next day I confronted Bobby at his house. He immediately became visibly uncomfortable when I told him what I had seen the night before. I told him we needed to go to the police, or a doctor or a church.. Something to help us explain what was happening! I knew whoever I told would never believe it, but I couldn't let this go on. He reluctantly agreed and we made our way to the police station. We walked in and told the officer at the front desk that we had some information on the missing person cases around town. They took Bobby in first for questioning, but seemingly in a different mood now, he was a steel trap and said nothing. They brought me in next and since I was the only witness, what I told them sounded totally crazy. Somehow they let us both go and I dropped Bobby off at home. The incidents continued and the police finally came back to me. Bobby and I were obviously not speaking at this point, but I know what I saw. They started to track his movements and noted that he would almost always go out at night. They told me to keep an eye on him, basically spy on him for the next couple of days and report back what I saw.
Bobby and I avoided each other during school, but he was still unaware that I was following him out and about almost every night. On some of these evenings he would encounter people and others he would wander alone. One night he wandered down a different street than usual and the same thing I witness that first night happened again. This time though was different. Where before he showed remorse for his "affliction", now he seemed to get a sense of "power" from it. He was almost luring people to him. As I watched this unsuspecting person get closer to Bobby, I saw a police car on another street down. I left my cover and sprinted for the cop car. Banging frantically on the window of the vehicle, the cop was startled by my ruckus. Once he exited the car I pleaded, "Please come help! I think there is someone in danger!". He told me to hop in the car and I directed him to where Bobby and the person had been. Bobby was still standing there looking over a pile of fresh ash. I tried to watch from the back seat of the cop car, but couldn't see very much. The cop and Bobby spoke for a while, but I did see the cop had him at gunpoint. After some time, another cop car pulled up beside us and shortly thereafter I saw the two cops put Bobby into the back of the second cop car. We arrived at the police station again around 11:30 at night. Looking around for Bobby at the station, I saw the officers bringing him in for questioning. Something about him was different. His personality had seriously changed from the way I remembered him. They held him in the local jail as they gathered more information. A large storm rolled in that night with loud thunder and intense lightning. Just then, the power went out. The red glow of the emergency lights was so eerie. A notification came over the loudspeaker... "Emergency, Emergency, Detainee has escaped the premises. All officers secure the perimeter!". Bobby had escaped. I snuck around the guards and saw through one of the doors that the bars on the jail cell were melted like plastic that had been heated with a flame. I never saw Bobby again. No one did. He had just... disappeared with the storm.
For years the authorities looked for him to no avail. 5'5" about 210 pounds wearing glasses. After about a year with no leads the case priority diminished and was filed away. I never found out what happened to Bobby.... The case went cold.
One night years later I was attending an out of town wedding for a friend from high school. It was a beautiful outdoor evening wedding and everyone seemed to be having fun. There was drink, pictures being taken, and a lot of reminiscing about days gone by. Some of my class mates looked the same, just a bit older and some had changed quite a bit. All of a sudden I saw a guy go up to the DJ and request a song. He looked pretty muscular and he had all of his hair, which couldn't be said for a lot of us guys. I didn't recognize him at all, but he sure seemed pretty sharp. He headed to the dance floor as the music started playing. A bunch of other people headed out as well. It was a classic wedding song from 1990 called "Electric" Boogie. Man that guy could move. Almost as if the song had been written just for him. I wasn't much of a dancer so I stayed on the sidelines, but there's a point in the song where everyone yells "It's Electric!". The guy did a 180 spin, looked straight at me, dropped his sunglasses and said "hey Mike.... IT'S ELECTRIC. My jaw dropped. It was Bobby!!! He looked and acted nothing like the Bobby I knew. He had this odd "glow" about him. I ran towards him but as quickly as I ran, he disappeared zapped off into the summer night. I immediately went to the authorities, but they said other than the cold case, there had been no sightings of Bobby for over 10 years. That image still haunts me. What happened to my old friend. Is he good, is he bad? If there is one thing I know for sure, he really doesn't want to be found. I guess he would rather stay off the grid...
Comments