1984 An Alternate Reality Part 5 By Mary Muñoz © October 5, 2008

Several weeks went by before my next sighting of this illusive person. I had all but given up on ever seeing him again. I didn’t even have a plan or an idea on what to do if I did. I quit carrying the camera around with me, because he it appeared that he didn’t want me to get a picture of him. All of which was proven weeks before when I had tried.
Day 3: While I was waiting
My next encounter occurred weeks later while I was sitting in the car waiting for an art class. Since I lived thirty miles from school I would go to one class and then wait for the next. Some of those times I could wait up to a three hours and since I was student I didn’t have too many funds, so I would sit out in the car usually drawing or doing homework. Once in a blue moon I might go to the student’s hall but that only occurred if I had extra cash.
This day I had decided to hang out in the car and draw. I peered up from my drawing and started to stare out into space. What I was thinking about at that moment in time I don’t remember, but I do remember what caught my attention. At some point I noticed a figure about fifty or sixty feet away walking up the sidewalk. At first it didn’t hit me but then I realized it was the stranger. This illusive soul was headed from the Political Science Building to the Art Building, where my next class just happened to be. Uncertain what to do next I flung the door of the car opened and decided to follow on foot. I had to know something substantial about this guy and I was just given the opportunity.
I am now five feet from the bottom steps. He was just past a hands reach. Then it hit me the door was opening, but wait! He wasn’t holding onto it, it was opening all on its own, and he never lifted either arm. He just walked through it and some invisible force was keeping it opened for him. It was unreal! The doors are interesting in that they are huge, made of glass, and steel, so it took a lot of energy to hold them open like they were. “What the hell!” I thought to myself as my pace slowed down. At this point there was a part of me, who just wanted to end the chase and give up, but curiosity again would kill the cat and I had to know who this guy was. With that I picked up my pace again, ran up some steps, opened the door, and jumped into an empty lobby. What made it worse was it was eerily quiet; I was the only one in there. He had just disappeared. I knew things were not right, the lobby was huge, and I wasn’t that far behind. He should have been there.
Then I heard it, the elevator. The doors were closing and it was going somewhere. I ran to see what floor it was on. I watch it pass the second and land on the third. Instantly I bolted to the stairs. There wasn’t enough time to wait for the elevator. It took a few minutes to get to the third floor and I was out of breath when I did. One student, who happened to be in a lab adjacent from the stairs, looked at me as if he was waiting for me to drop right then and there. I get my breath back and begin to walk around the upper floor of the building.
The building was a square within squares. There were classrooms on the outside of it, a hallway that wrapped around it, and then more classrooms in the middle. Some of the rooms were occupied with doors shut while others were occupied with doors opened. The third floor was unique in that the rooms in the center of the building were the art labs for classes like photography. The outside classrooms varied on what their purpose was. Truthfully I had yet to have a class on that floor, so I didn’t really know what was up there.
I was on the east side of the building when I had left the stairs, so I decided it would be best to just walk around the hallway and see if I could locate him in a classroom. Unless he went down another stairwell on the west he should be there. I begin walking toward the north. Several of the rooms were empty, but one on back corner was occupied and the door just happened to be opened. The instructor was talking at that moment to the class. When I came upon it he turned to face the chalk board writing something on it. I slow my pace down observing everyone trying not to stand out, but see if I can find possibly get a glimpse of those attending the class.
Seeing the illusive soul wasn’t hard. He was in the very back corner in plain view of the doorway; almost like he positioned himself there purposely. There was not a single student around him. He was sitting there looking down at the book on his desk. My stomach is turning now. What was I to do? I couldn’t just go in the classroom and ask him whom he was. I might get myself in some serious trouble. Then again I didn’t have the nerves to do that anyway, so it didn’t matter. And why would I if I did? I couldn’t even talk to him on the stairwell and that would have been the perfect opportunity. There was always the possibility to hang out for an hour and see if I could follow him again, but that would be considered stalking…and yeah, I was to a point. So what to do?
I had decided that I would go home after classes and let my dad know what had happened. And I did later that night. The conversation would put into motion the need of a person who had access to the student records. We knew the classroom, the time of the class, and all we needed was the name of the professor and the name of the student. Then that person would access the records so that we could find out who this person was and if he indeed was just another human soul who happened to have an uncanny way of showing up in places at odd times. So my next goal was to locate that person, get them to keep it under wraps, so we could learn who we were dealing with. I will hold off on that till next week’s entry.
Mary.