Highly Commended Story - A Strange Sound

“A Strange Sound” by Side Iper, Side Iper, Turkey, is the Highly Commended story in the junior category of the first biannual Short Story Contest 2019.

Side Iper is 12 years old who studies at Kültür College, Istanbul. She is a good ballet dancer and also plays the violin. She likes to watch science fictions, fantasies and crime fiction movies. A fan of Star Wars, her favourite character is Princess Leia. For this reason her cat is named Leia.

A Strange Sound

It was a stormy night. Penny was sleeping in her room and wincing every time she heard the thunder. Suddenly, she woke up because of a strange sound. It was a broken window. She was scared. She rolled out of her bed and went to stairway timorously. She went down the stairs and saw her brother’s, Sheldon’s dead body on the floor. She was petrified and started screaming. Her mum and dad came running next to her. When they saw their son’s body, they started to cry. They couldn’t understand what happened and they decided to call the police.

Her dad tried to call the police but his mobile phone didn’t work. He used Penny’s and his wife’s mobile phone too but it was mysteriously not working because there was no signal. They were all scared.

After they got out of the shock, they decided to go to the hotel which was near to their house. Because in the hotel there was a security and phone. When they came to the lobby, they said to the receptionist “We must call the police.” and the receptionist said “All the phones are broken.” It was midnight so they decided to rent a room and they went to their room. While they were sleeping, they heard a gunfire. They were frightened. They thought that someone was following them. In the morning they went to the police station. They explained that their son was killed by a stranger. They came back to their house with the police officers. They searched the house but they couldn’t find Sheldon’s dead body. One of the police officers said “We couldn’t find anything. Are you sure that you saw someone dead here? Maybe he fell down and passed out for a while and then he went away for a reason.” The police officers searched for fingerprints but they ended up with nothing.

Then they called Sheldon on his phone and found his mobile phone under the sofa. It was very strange because their son never went out without his phone before. He was addicted to it. He was surfing the Net and chatting with his friends, especially with his girlfriend on his phone. They called Sheldon’s friends and his girlfriend but nobody knew where he was.

The family decided to hire a detective to investigate what happened to their son. The detective searched all around the house, talked to the neighbors, Sheldon’s friends and Sheldon’s girlfriend. In Sheldon’s room, the detective found a letter but the envelope was closed. They thought about reading the letter but Penny’s mum said “We can’t read this letter because if our son is a bad person I don’t want to learn this information”. Her dad said “Maybe we can learn what happened to our son after we read the letter.” Then, they decided to open the envelope. They heard a strange voice rebounding all around. The letter was from NASA. On the letter said

“Hi Sheldon,

We appreciated your MARS project. How did you come up with this idea? It is marvelous. Do you want to work for NASA? Can we use your project? Think about this and it will be a privilege for you.

Sincerely.”

Suddenly Penny woke up with the sound of thunder. Everything was a nightmare. She was thinking about her brother and parents while she was watching out. Then, she heard a strange sound…