Justin was not a golfing person. Sure, he enjoyed the occasional putt-putt game amongst his friend group, but that was mainly to enjoy the food and company. He had tried aqua golf once but had come home with a sore hand and a heavy sunburn and had decided that that sport – or generally any sport – was not for him.
The type of person Justin was, however, was a truth seeker on the hunt for clues. It was by sheer luck that he had even come across his first clue that something strange was going down at the golf club. With his social circle consisting of online friends of his four-year-long TTRPG campaign group, it was sheer luck that he had been at the park last Friday to hear a group of elderly men talking. They had been discussing the weird landscaping that their golf club had recently begun. What struck Justin’s attention initially was the spiral patterns that had been ‘mowed’ into the grass, but what really made his heart race was their jokes about the most elderly member at the club raving on about ‘strange shapes in the night sky’.
It was this very sentence that made him drop what he was doing and find the nearest hardware store within walking distance from Cheltenham Golf Range. With his trusty backpack in tow (he took it everywhere he went), he gathered up nails, timber, a hammer, silver spray paint and a variety of small electrical supplies that he thought might be useful. At the checkout, he thought to maybe buy a snack on the way there but stopped himself and remained professional. He was on a mission, after all.
In fact, Justin had been on a mission for most of his life after that fateful night on his eleventh birthday. Nobody had believed him when he explained the strange alien beings that had watched him from his bedroom. A child’s imagination, his mother had explained, and he had been on a quest to seek out the truth ever since. He had learnt long ago that if you wanted something done, you had to do it yourself.
Exiting the store, he made sure to straighten out his clothes after heaving on his backpack full of building supplies (Cheltenham was a wealthy suburb and he didn’t want to seem out of place) and then he was on his way to the range. His act of blending in might not have been as well thought out as he had imagined, though. With every step, his backpack jingled with the bulky items inside it.
The plan would begin under the cover of darkness when the range closed. If he was careful, he would build the trap in time for midnight. As a safety precaution though, he’d made sure to buy plenty of backups for each part – with his propensity for clumsiness, he was very happy that everything in the store had been affordable. With the sun waving him goodbye from the horizon behind him, he quickened his footsteps. It was time.