Bunker 27

Chapter 1

The Perfect Spot

Jasper was on a hunt for a place to smoke, and he thought he'd heard about the perfect spot.

He was 17, and for the first time ever he was about to smoke weed by himself, just for the hell of it. But he needed somewhere secluded to do it. He'd smoked before obviously, the first time being at his best mate, Johnny's party almost 2 years ago. Johnny was clean, hated all drugs, apart from alcohol of course. But a mutual friend of theirs that Jasper had never met before had brought some, and Jasper didn't have the same feelings towards drugs that Johnny did, so he tried it and loved it. It made him laugh more easily, allowed him to talk to girls easier, and just generally made him a better version of himself. Every party since then Jasper had had the chance to smoke, and he welcomed those chances with open arms, but this was different. Doing it recreationally, on his own, it added another layer of anxiety about doing something illegal.

Jasper bought the weed that's currently in his bag almost two weeks ago from the guy he got it off at parties, but had been hesitant to smoke it so far. The weed had been kept in a baggie, in a tupperware, in another bag, inside a backpack under some spare bed sheets under his bed. He was confident it wouldn't be smelt through that by his overly strict parents.

He knew the smell lingered, and so far had been able to hide it. But if he was to do it in his own spare time, he needed to go somewhere as secluded as he could get.

He'd heard rumours there was a house that was supposedly haunted. More of a mansion actually, that no one went to because it was too creepy, and there had been a few cases of disappearances around it over the last 100 years, and he decided that was where he'd go, so he'd walked that way after school had finished. It was December 21st 2023, his final school day of the year, before the Christmas holidays.

He'd finished a couple of hours earlier than his parents would expect - mainly because Jasper had told them a later time purely for this reason.

He turned right onto Parkinson Close, the cul-de-sac that had the "haunted mansion" on it somewhere, and he followed the road round to the left. There was a fork in the road and the last person he'd asked directions for told him to avoid turning right at the fork at all costs. So he turned right.

Up ahead across the road he could see a gap in between two houses, and it must've been his imagination, and the stories he'd heard, but the gap looked darker and gloomier than it should. He worked out pretty quickly that this gap was the driveway to the abandoned, haunted mansion.

Jasper crossed the road quickly, deciding then that he wasn't going to turn back, and crunched his way up the gravel driveway that snaked its way behind the other houses on Parkinson Close.

He was fifty metres beyond the houses before he caught a glimpse of the derelict building, and he slowed his pace, realising he had been power walking and was starting to sweat under his beanie.

He thought he'd gone far enough and started to slow, but just before he shrugged his bag off his right shoulder, he spotted a small building. It must've been a bomb shelter looking at it, it was only a few feet off the ground, it had one window, low to the ground, pointing south, back the way he'd just come, and was built out of grey, dull concrete, it blended in with its surroundings.

The perfect spot, if he could get in.

He walked up to it, and around the back, found a trapdoor with a rusty padlock and chain, on the wall to the right of the trapdoor, in faded white paint was the number "27". After doing a quick look around, up and down the driveway and confirming no one was watching, he ignored the 'no entry' and 'danger' signs, and slammed the heel of his shoe into the padlock. Nothing happened. He tried again. Nothing. Once more, and he felt it budge. He stamped a few more times, and he'd managed to bend one of the chain links enough to get it out, and pull the chain through.

He opened the trapdoor, and walked down the steps, into the bunker below.

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The room he'd walked down into wasn't big at all, only about 3mx3m, and only 2m tall and it was completely empty. Jasper wasn't a tall guy, but he could touch the ceiling quite comfortably. He took a moment to look out the window which was eye height now he'd stepped down into the bunker and saw the clouds rolling by quickly, and it seemed to get dark almost instantly, and then light again. Almost as if when he looked out the window a day had passed. He laughed to himself, can't be tripping before he'd smoked, that wasn't a good sign, so he turned away from the window and sat down with his back against the wall. He pulled his bag out of the backpack, then the tupperware and the small baggie, grabbed a grinder and then his tobacco and papers. He rolled himself a joint, licked the paper to keep it shut, like he'd been shown, got his lighter out, and sparked the end of the weed sprinkled cigarette.

He took a big drag, and let the fumes fill him, calming his anxiety over doing this for the first time. He let the warmth of the smoke pour through him, taking the hit all the way in, before letting out a huge breath of smoke. It was a relaxing sigh that he let out, and even after the first hit, he was hooked, he needed to do this more often. There was something so satisfying about rolling and smoking your own cigarette, and now adding some weed to it as well, just topped it off. That added the cherry to the top of the grass cake.

He didn't rush through it, he took his time, enjoying the puffs he took, big long drafts, inhaling it, letting each hit he took in all the way, warming him up, calming him down, until he took the last drag, and had to throw it. It seemed a shame, but he'd be back here tomorrow, and the next day, he'd found a new favourite spot, and thing to do. It was the first time he'd smoked a whole joint to himself, and he was starting to feel it hit him. Maybe he'd had too much? No, never, you couldn't, it's just too good to have too much.

He started to stand up and he heard a huge BOOM outside, and the ground shook underneath him. He placed his hand on the wall, and dropped the bag with the other, surely he wasn't that high already. The shaking underneath him stopped, but the ringing inside his ears from the noise kept going. He grabbed his bag and looked out of the window.

He didn't recognise what he saw.

Chapter 2

Croaky Voices

The window was lying to him, it had to be, it was showing him an image of dust and a horrible red haze, the day then shifted into night, before back into day again. Too quickly for him to comprehend.

Jasper stood watching the window like it was an alien for a couple of minutes, he watched what he could only describe as the days literally ticking by. This was an insane trip, it must be because he'd smoked a whole joint to himself… Right?

He slung his bag over his shoulder, steadied himself as the weight of it and the speed of which he slung it made him temporarily unstable, and then took the steps up to the trapdoor.

It opened easily, pushing up and behind him as he stepped out into the not quite so fresh air. The red haze had not been the windows doing, nor had the dust, that was real, unless it was the weeds doing, but Jasper was sure his mind couldn't come up with this. He looked up and down what used to be the driveway, the haunted mansion was no longer there, it was just ruins, the cul-de-sac to his south still showed signs of what it used to be. Most of the houses were still standing, cars looked burnt out, or completely unusable.

On unsteady feet, he began to stumble his way down the dusty track, to the road.

Jasper couldn't wrap his head around it, he was in the bunker for an hour, no way was it more than that, and yet, the world around him had changed. The weed he'd got must've been strong stuff. Or maybe it wasn't weed? Maybe he'd been done by the guy he'd thought was a friend.

No, that wouldn't have happened, he knew what weed smells and tastes like, and that was it. He recognised the feeling. And yet, something was wrong. So obviously, something was wrong.

He reached the houses and stumbled on a large rock, he put his hand out to steady himself on the wall of the nearest house, and missed. He fell face first into the brick wall, scratching down the side of his face as he panicked and tried to stand up without further pain.

When he looked at the wall he'd tried to steady himself on, he was looking at a reflection, but it didn't move when he did. No not a reflection, a picture of him, a poster of him, more accurately, a missing poster.

Last seen December 21st 2023, please call 075// /45/12 if you have any information. We just want our son back. Jasper, if you see this, please ring, we just want to know if you're okay.

There were smudges on some of the numbers, but he had the number saved to his phone, it was obviously his parents who had made these posters. He grabbed his phone from his pocket and searched through his contacts for Mum, and hit ring. The phone didn't respond, it was just a dial tone, and then a single note, he tried again, with the same result, then tried his dad a couple of times, all with the same result. The phone lines were down then, classic.

He started to make his way home and then it clicked that he'd just looked at a missing person's poster, an old one, it was falling apart. Of himself. With today's date. He did a standing double take, and ran back to the poster, nowhere on it did it say the date it was written. He looked around the floor, at the bins, desperately looking for a newspaper, or a leaflet, something with the date on, and then he spotted one, half in someone's door on the opposite side of the road. He ran to it, pulled it from the door and scoured the front page. He found the date in the top right and almost fainted.

24th June 2027

Somehow, Jasper had been in that bunker for four and a half years, and the world had changed around him.

He stared at the paper in bewilderment, and then looked up at the house in front of him, to see someone staring back at him through the window in their front door.

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The front door opened, and a surprisingly strong pair of hands dragged Jasper in, he was sent sprawling into their hallway, and the door slammed shut behind him. The bag was ripped off his back by an unseen pair of hands, and then a disappointed sigh when all that was found was a bit of weed.

"How are your clothes so clean?" a voice croaked to his right, Jasper's head was spinning, he was high, properly high for the first time in his life, and that violent movement had sent his head into cartwheels. He was doing his best not to throw up on this stranger's floor. He sat himself up, with his back against the wall, brought his knees up, and rested his forehead on his knees.

He couldn't explain why, but the whole situation seemed so ridiculous to him that he started chuckling to himself, he thought that might be quite rude, so stopped himself, but then the sudden change in sound from laughing to silence, made him laugh, and he was chuckling again.

The voice croaked again, "how are your clothes so clean?" they'd put more emphasis on each word this time, as if it was the most important question to ask.

"They got washed yesterday." Jasper answered, truthfully.

"Not possible, kid." another voice replied, equally as croaky, but slightly higher pitched, maybe a woman? Jasper mused, or perhaps a child. He hadn't brought himself to move his head yet, in case he got the spinnies. He chuckled to himself at the word spinnies as he thought it, and then stopped shortly after when one of the voices spoke again.

"Who are you boy?"

"My name is Jasper." He responded, truthfully again.

He still hadn't raised his head yet but there was a hesitation, and he heard whispering, quiet, but excited.

"What are you whispering about, I can hear you're talking, but I can't hear your words." Jasper asked, politely enough, he thought.

"Are you," the first voice started to ask, and then paused, as if thinking whether they should ask the question or not, after a few seconds of hesitation, they clearly made their mind up, as they carried on, "are you Jasper Wilden?"

At the sound of his surname, Jasper looked up, the only people that knew his surname were family and people from school, so logically, these people must be from one of those two groups.

He didn't recognise who they were, but he would remember them forever. They're faces were gaunt, expressionless and grey. They looked like they hadn't eaten in weeks, and were close to death. They were both adults, and he realised he was correct about his assumption earlier that one was a man, and the other a woman.

They looked as shocked to see him as he felt to look at them, it was almost as if someone has taken a syringe to each of them and sucked out 90% of their life force.

They looked at eachother, and then at Jasper, and back again, and then back once more. Then one of them, the lady, walked away without a word and one minute later returned with a sheet of paper.

"Everyone knows about you," she started, as she handed Jasper the sheet of paper, which he turned over in his hands, to see the same poster he'd seen outside, the missing persons poster on the side of the house. "you're famous around here, one day just before Christmas, you disappeared without a trace, its been over four years, where have you been?"

Jasper's head was spinning, this couldn't all be a hallucination from the weed could it? He was second guessing himself, he was worrying, losing his mind, surely he was losing his mind. But what was worse? Believing he was in this world, or actually being in it?

Jasper had too many questions swimming in his head, he couldn't think of an answer to the question, so just pointed in the direction of where the haunted house used to be, and said something smart like, "There."

Both faces turned to look where he was pointing, recognised the direction, and looked at eachother again, before looking back at Jasper. "You haven't aged a day." the man said, and Jasper turned to look at him, there was concern on his face. These people were parents, Jasper could tell, they've got parental worries, and he trusted he was in a safe enough space. They could've hurt him if they wanted to, but as soon as they realised he had no food - at least he assumed that's what they were after when they grabbed his bag - they started talking to him. For some weird reason, - perhaps the weed - he trusted these people entirely, and so told them everything from leaving school, to now, that two hour period for him, and that four and a half year period for them.

"The world has changed," he wrapped up, "and I don't understand how. What have I missed? And how did I miss it?" the concern heavy in his voice for both questions.

The couple looked at eachother again, before they looked at him, a common theme now, and then the man spoke.

"First of all, my name is Jared, and this is my wife Carol, I'm afraid I can't answer your how, but I can answer your what." and then he proceeded to tell the story of the last four years.

Authors note;

I have written a few more chapters to this story but currently this is what I want to release. I plan on working a lot more on this story and making it into a full length novel. I hope you enjoy!