THE HOUSE ON MAPLE STREET
by Thomas Chappell
Jonathan Holmes slowly walked across the sidewalk. It was a dark and rainy night, and no one else was
about. All the better for me, he thought. He liked being alone. It was better if he did his detective work
by himself. He was currently working on a murder case. Three days ago, someone had murdered Harris
Burdick, a very rich and magnanimous person who had once been a famous artist and a brilliant
inventor. Now he was very old and just stayed in his mansion all day. Burdick’s house was the place
that Jon was going this dreary Friday night.
The detective came to the sign showing the street name: MAPLE STREET. Jon turned left to where the
sign indicated and came to his destination, the only house on the street which, until three days ago, had
belonged to Harris Burdick. Jon opened the door and walked in. The place looked like it had been
abandoned for a long time. There was dust everywhere. The house looked like one of the haunted
houses he had gone to before he got his job as a detective. Shrugging off that unnerving feeling, he
proceeded to look for clues to what had happened. As he searched, he reviewed what he had been
informed of about the murder:
Nobody knew who the killer had been. In fact, nobody had any idea who it had been. Burdick’s butler
had come up to his master’s bedroom in the morning to find out that he was dead, obviously shot in the
head with a gun. But the butler had not heard anything in the night. It was a hard case, Jon knew. But
he was the best detective around, and he could crack it.
Hum. That was strange. There was nothing there. No evidence to give a clue to what had happened
the night Harris Burdick had been murdered. It was as if someone had come to the house before him
and erased any trace of the killer. After finding nothing on the bottom floor, Jon went up to search the
second floor. He didn’t find anything there, either. Then he proceeded to the top floor, where Burdick’s
bedroom was. Perhaps he would find something here, at the exact scene of the crime.
Jonathan Holmes slowly opened the door. It creaked open, revealing a room full of dust and cobwebs.
The detective searched everywhere, and finally, underneath the bed, he found something. A bunch of
ripped paper were scattered all across the floor under the bed. They seemed to make some kind of
picture. It seemed whoever had destroyed the evidence on the other two floors had been in a hurry and
had only had time to rip the paper up before escaping. Whatever it was, it would be a valuable clue.
Jon gathered up all the pieces and put them together like a jigsaw puzzle. The pieces of paper put
together made a picture of a house. Under the picture it read:
THE HOUSE ON MAPLE STREET
It was a perfect lift-off.
Jon could not make heads or tails of the strange message. What could it mean? It was quite puzzling.
The detective looked at the house in the picture more closely. Then he realized it. The picture was of
Harris Burdick’s mansion, which he was now in. He once again reviewed the words under the picture: It
was a perfect lift-off. Suddenly, he heard the sound of a huge rocket engine roar. He ran to the window
to see what was going on. The house was lifting off the ground! A sudden surge of movement made
Jonathan get off balance. He hit his head hard on the dresser near Burdick’s bed and went unconscious.
Jonathan woke up suddenly. He was lying on the floor, the pieces of paper scattered around him. For a
minute he did not know where he was. Then he remembered last night’s events, how the house had
started flying. He sat up and looked around. How long had he been unconscious? He ran to the
window to see if it was morning yet and gasped. The house was now in space, and he was looking down
at the earth. Jon was astonished. This is so weird, the dazed detective thought. I must be dreaming.
He flopped down onto the bed and stared up at the ceiling. Suddenly, he felt the house being pulled
away from earth’s orbit. Jon ran to the window and saw that the house was somehow being pulled
towards… nothing. There must be something there, covered by some sort of cloaking device. As the
house was pulled forward, Jon realized he was right. A massive space station suddenly appeared
seemingly out of thin air. It was unlike any satellite the detective had seen before. It was like a large X
with a slightly transparent green sphere in the middle and huge engines on the ends of the X. Inside the
middle sphere Jon could see the shapes of people, moving around. Who were they and what did they
want from him? The house was pulled into a small hangar underneath the middle sphere. There was a
loud clunk as the house landed. Jon was afraid to do anything except sit frozen on the bed. He heard a
creak as the front door swung open, then a man’s voice yelling at him to get downstairs. Terrified, the
detective walked down the stairs to meet the man. He had a long unkempt beard and mustache and
wore a jumpsuit that said NASA on it. He was carrying a gun that looked like it was off of Star Wars.
“Follow me,” he said. “If you try to escape, I’ll shoot you.” Jon nodded and followed the man up some
flights of stairs to the green sphere.
In the floating sphere, there were some more men working at some computers on a floating platform,
all dressed like the first man and carrying similar guns on their belts. The man who had led him up here
pushed a button on the wall and a bridge appeared. They walked across to the platform. One of the
men got up from his computer and turned to the newcomers. “Hello, Jonathan Holmes. I am Captain
Tory II. I see you found the picture. Detectives always stick their noses where they don’t belong.” He
sighed. “Well, I’m sure you were in the house to investigate the murder of Harris Burdick. And I’m sure
you want to know who did it.” Jon nodded. “Well, I did.” Tory admitted. Oh no. Jon thought. If this
man had killed Harris Burdick, he probably would kill him too! He had to escape. But how could he?
“Since you are going to die anyway, I might as well tell you the full story.” Captain Tory said. “It all
started about twenty years ago. NASA built an extremely powerful spaceship, the Vulcan 5, to find out if
there were planets farther out than Pluto. The crew was ten brave astronauts led by me, Captain Tory.
The ship had been designed by the brilliant inventor, Harris Burdick. He was my arch-rival, as I was a
famous inventor as well. I was extremely sore that I did not get to design my own spacecraft. We
blasted off, using our giant engines to shoot past Uranus by the end of the day. But there was one small
flaw in the design of the engines, and they failed as we passed Pluto. I was sure that Burdick had done it
on purpose to finish me off. We lost contact with earth and everyone thought we were dead. But after
floating through space for a while, the ship got sucked into a wormhole which transported us to the
other side of the galaxy.”
“We crashed on an alien planet. There was a very advanced humanoid species that lived there.
Desperate to get off the planet because the food was inedible, we stole some of the aliens’ technology,
built a new spaceship, the Vulcan 6, and returned to the Solar System. Now, with this new alien
technology, no one can oppose us and we can take over the world!”
While Tory was talking, Jonathan had been studying the controls on the main computer. It looked like
the Vulcan 6 had the same engines as the Vulcan 5. He started to make a plan. “Now, sadly, you will
have to die because I do not want you blabbing out to the world that we are here. So say goodbye, Mr.
Holmes!” Tory concluded as he pulled out his alien gun.
Now I have to act, Jon thought. As Tory fired the trigger, he dashed aside. Then he kicked him in the
stomach. The captain fell over, stunned. The other crewmen turned to see what was going on. Jon
jumped into the captain’s seat and pulled one of the levers. It was the right one. The engines flared on.
The Vulcan 6 zoomed into the atmosphere. The crewmen, who had risen from their seats, now were
thrown to the back wall by the sudden force. Jon left the engines at full throttle and pushed the button
to turn off the tractor beam, then rushed down to the hangar and got in the house right as the tractor
beam loosened its hold on it. The ship was now through the atmosphere and was free falling through
the air. As the house became close to the ground, Jon jumped out the window and landed on the
ground. He broke both his legs (the damage would’ve been much worse if he had been in the house
when it landed). He had saved the world.