Mystery of the Lab

“Careful Jake,” said Mr. Langley as he locked the basement door behind him. “The lab is off limits.”

“Since when?” replied his twelve-year-old son, who was merely walking by from the kitchen to the living room with a slice of pizza in his hand.

“As of tonight.”

“Why? What’s in there?”

“None of your business.”

“But dad…”

“Goodnight!”

Mr. Langley rushed upstairs without saying another word, as if purposely avoiding the conversation.

Father and son could not have been more different. Mr. Langley was a rather small, spectacled man who always wore a cardigan and a bow tie underneath his lab coat. He had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and his passion for science knew no bounds. Jake, on the other hand, was a lanky skater boy gamer who seldom expressed any interest at all in his father’s work. Truth be told, he was on the cusp of failing his science class.

Now that he thought about it, Jake never had a precise idea of what his father did down there, and never even went down to find out. He associated the lab with boredom and yawns, preferring to spend his time by the television in the living room or at the gaming station upstairs.

Now, things were different. The lab was forbidden, and so of course Jake had a newfound interest in finding out what his father was hiding behind the locked door. The weekend went by, and the door remained continuously locked.

“Maybe he’s keeping a body in there,” said his girlfriend Stacey on Monday at school. “What if he’s a murderer?”

“Shush!”

They were sitting in the middle of the cafeteria at lunch time, where anyone and everyone could hear them.

“If he’s a murderer,” said Jake in a whisper, “no need to shout it out loud in front of the whole school.”

“What else could it be? Keeping something locked in the basement, that’s sketchy.”

“Maybe it’s just something really dangerous, and he’s afraid I’ll get hurt.”

“Something radioactive? Or maybe an alien!”

“Your imagination is off the hook today.”

“Isn’t yours?” said Stacey, ecstatic. “Aren’t you dying to find out what it is?”

“I mean, yeah, but he keeps it locked 24/7. I never have a chance to sneak in.”

“Steal the key then.”

“I guess I could. Is it worth it though?”

“You’re less adventurous than I thought. The Jake I know would have broken in a long time ago.”

“It’s just so weird. For yours, he kept the door unlocked, and I always thought he did regular plain old boring science nonsense in there, nothing worth keeping secret.”

“There’s only one way to find out.”

“Alright, I’ll do it. Beware though: if I find a dead body, you’re coming with me to the police station.”

***

It was midnight. The house stood in complete silence. Mr. and Mrs. Langley slept soundly in their bedroom. Jake’s little sister tossed and turned in her bed, hugging her stuffed bear tightly. The only person awake was Jake himself. Time had come for him to execute his plan.

He gently tiptoed out of his bedroom and headed down the hall towards his parents’ room. He had always envied how wide and spacious it was, with not one but two windows, one on each side of their bed. His father’s jeans were hanging from a hook on the wall by the door. Jake reached into the back pocket, and there it was: the famous key that unlocked the lab door. Come to think of it, Jake found it suspicious such an important possession hadn’t been concealed elsewhere, out of his reach.

There was no time to waste thinking about it. He now tiptoed down the stairs and found himself again between the kitchen and the living room, facing the heavy metal door leading to this secretive room he knew nothing about.

For a second, he hesitated. While the contents of the lab were indeed shrouded in secrecy, it was very unlikely to contain something that special. Perhaps his father just wanted to protect him from the potentially toxic chemicals he used to conduct his experiments, that’s all. Was that really worth breaking in?

Something quickly changed in his mind. An eerie sound rose from behind the door, a sound the likes of which he had never heard before. It seemed to express a moan, but one spoken in an otherworldly voice. What if Stacey was right? Maybe it was an alien after all.

Jake had come too far to back out. He had to be sure, he had to uncover what his father was up to. Slowly but surely, he approached the metal door and slid the key inside the lock. The door flung open.

A flight of wooden stairs stretched down into complete darkness. There was no way for him to make a conclusion from upstairs, he had to walk down. One creaky step after the other, he made his way towards the shadows beneath. As he drew closer, the eerie sound grew louder, more terrifying. With every swell, pulses of goosebumps propagated along his skin, giving the hair on his forearms a run for their money.

He had now reached the last step. A string hung from above. He pulled it, and the lights turned on. His mouth went wide open at the sight.

There was no dead body, no alien, no toxic chemicals. The room was filled with contraptions, each more wondrous than the other. The eerie sound came from a radio setup in the right corner with a large antenna. Along the walls were telescopes, microscopes, bright and colourful test tubes, Erlenmeyer flasks, and the list went on and on. In the middle of the room, stations were set up on tables with apparatuses that had to be seen to be believed. There were masses oscillating in viscous fluids, robots, oscilloscopes, large computers…

Jake was mesmerized. He wanted to try them all, to learn from them, to understand how they worked, and so all night he played with the setups, one after the other, jumping from one table to the next.

***

Upstairs, Jake’s father smiled as he watched his son from the monitor of his security camera. The science crash course had worked, all thanks to the power of reverse psychology.