Things, Page 2

  A big wind had sprung up out of nowhere. It was knocking a tree branch against my window, slapping tiles on the roof. But the night had been quiet and calm. Where had this wind come from?

  The house began to creak. The wind gusted even harder and the house moaned in protest.

  EEEEEEEEEEEEEKKKK!

  Boards groaned as if a great weight were pressing down on the house. I heard the timbers of the roof twist. It felt like the house was being blown apart.

  Then I had the worst vision of all. Out of the wind flew a huge octopus blob. In my mind I saw it settling over the house, grabbing on with its tentacles. Gobs of purple stuff dripped off it as tentacles burrowed through windows and doors, seeking me.

  Above my bed the ceiling creaked loudly and I nearly cried out. I pulled the covers over my head and huddled there in the dark. It was what I used to do as a little kid when I got myself worked up about closet monsters. It had worked then, better than a night-light.

  But suddenly the nightmares of my imagination turned real!

  I felt a tentacle land on the blanket over my head. It grabbed the edge and yanked the safe cover right off me.

  I yelled out! “AAAIIIIEEE!”

  A blazing light shined into my eyes. I was blinded!

  6

  I thrashed in panic and suddenly the light fell away.

  “Nick! Stop it! Nick, it’s me. Jessica!”

  “Jess?” I sat up, blinking. I knew in a minute, when my heart stopped banging my ribs, I’d probably feel foolish.

  Jessie retrieved her flashlight from where I’d knocked it to the floor. Her face was white. “Have you looked out the window?” she asked in a tight voice.

  “Window?” I turned my head. The moonlight looked brighter. Too bright.

  “It’s happening again,” said Jessie grimly. “Like the first night. The night of the storm.”

  I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. Jessie was right. Glowing clouds were boiling in the sky over the three rocky peaks of Harley Hills. This was how it had all started.

  “At least the clouds aren’t moving this way,” I said. The first time, the strange clouds had stopped right over our house and unleashed a torrent of glowing pink rain. Everything the rain had touched had been lit up. Like all the trees and leaves and grass and even our old swing set had been brushed with liquid fire.

  At the time we had thought it was beautiful.

  But the next morning our parents were—different. And there had been that slithering, alien thing behind their eyes. Nothing had been the same since.

  “No rain this time either,” said Jessie.

  Suddenly the whole sky seemed to split open. A jagged bolt of lightning struck the top of Harley Hill—the biggest of the three hills. At the same instant a clap of thunder shook the house. It was so deafening we couldn’t hear ourselves scream.

  We jumped away from the window and huddled together. “Nick, I think it struck the same spot,” whispered Jessie. After that first storm we’d found that lightning had burned a trail all the way down Harley Hill. And last night the alien cave opened at the exact spot the lightning had struck.

  “What if it’s another spaceship landing to help the ones we buried?” asked Jessica, echoing my own horrified thoughts.

  I could feel her arm trembling against me. “Maybe the ones we saw are leaving,” I suggested weakly, not even believing it myself.

  Instead, I imagined a new swarm of the things, all bent on revenge and capable of taking over human brains.

  “Nick, listen!”

  I lifted my head but didn’t hear anything. The menacing, rainless storm was quieting down, although the clouds still cast that awful yellowish-pink light over the hills. “What?”

  “The snoring! It stopped,” said Jessie.

  My heart lurched between fear and hope. “Maybe the aliens really have gone,” I said. Or else they’d regained their strength and—

  Jessie gasped. She clutched my arm. We heard heavy marching footsteps in the hall. Coming this way.

  THUMP, thump, THUMP, thump, THUMP, thump.

  We backed up against the wall and stared at my bedroom door. My blood froze in my veins.

  THUMP, thump, THUMP, thump.

  7

  CREEAK! THUMP, thump, THUMP, thump.

  “They’re going downstairs,” I said, recognizing the creaky sound of the board on the top step.

  We both slumped against the wall. We were trembling head to foot. It was horrible to be so afraid of our own parents. But the slithering alien thing in their eyes and the strange robotic way they talked made us afraid they would give us to the aliens.

  They weren’t our parents. Not anymore.

  We crept to my bedroom door and carefully eased it open a crack. We heard them moving around downstairs but no voices.

  “It is Mom and Dad, isn’t it?” asked Jessie, sounding worried.

  CREEEAK. A door opened, slammed shut.

  “They’re going down in the basement,” I said, my heart sinking.

  Our parents had spent a lot of time in the basement since the aliens arrived. Dad was so busy down there he didn’t have time to go to work anymore. And Mom, who used to nag us about nutrition, no longer made meals. The basement took up all their time.

  We’d heard sounds of digging and heavy things being moved. But we hadn’t been allowed down there. They’d even bought a shiny new padlock to keep us out when they weren’t there. And a bolt for the inside of the door.

  “I have to know what’s going on,” I said, opening my bedroom door wider and tiptoeing out into the hall.

  “I’m coming too,” said Jessie.

  Mom and Dad hadn’t turned on any lights. The house was as dark as a grave. I swallowed the urge to run back and hide my head under the covers.

  “Digging.” We could hear the scrape of shovels, the bite of the shovels into dirt. But no human noises. No voices, no grunts of effort. It was like machines were doing the work.

  “I know they’re digging. But what are they digging?” Jessie reached a shaky hand toward the doorknob.

  I caught my breath, dread pooling in my stomach. “Maybe they’re digging our graves.”

  “Don’t say that!” Jessie grabbed the doorknob and twisted. Locked.

  “Listen!” I shushed her. Put my ear to the door.

  The digging sounds had stopped. All sound had stopped. It was quiet as a tomb down there. Icy cold trickled down my spine. I backed away from the door.

  “Even if Mom and Dad have been taken over by aliens,” Jessie whispered, “they wouldn’t hurt us, would they? Would they?”

  Suddenly the basement door flew open.

  8

  Light flooded the kitchen. I flung up an arm to shield my eyes. Jessie cried out.

  Two huge black shapes were emerging out of the light.

  “Greetings, offspring.”

  It was Dad. With the light behind him I couldn’t see his face. Except for his eyes. They were glowing. With that same yellow-pink light that came from the clouds over Harley Hill.

  He stepped into the kitchen and I saw Mom. Her eyes were glowing, too. “Come-with-us,” she said in a mechanical voice.

  Dad reached out his hands toward me. Flakes of dirt drifted down. His hands were black with dirt. I felt rooted to the floor. His fingers curved into claws and I couldn’t move.

  Suddenly I was yanked nearly off my feet.

  “Run, Nick,” yelled Jessie, dragging me by the arm. “Run!”

  We fled from the kitchen, our feet barely touching the floor. Behind us we heard a bellow of anger, then heavy running footsteps.

  “They’re after us,” I yelled. Something hit my ankles and I went flying. As I sprawled on the floor I realized I’d tripped over a footstool.

  “Ahh.” A deep grunt of satisfaction. Fingers closed over my pajama collar. I felt dirt dribble down my back.

  “No!” screamed Jessie. She tugged my arm.

  The fingers took hold, icy cold against my ne
ck. I got my feet under me, fear pounding in my veins, and twisted away. Jessie pulled and both of us went vaulting over the dining room table.

  We scrambled to our feet and, half running, half crawling, stumbled into the living room and huddled behind the couch. “We’ll make a run for the door,” I whispered. “We’ve got to get out of this house.”

  We heard Dad move into the living room and hesitate, uncertain where we’d gone.

  “The-door!” Mom called out. “Block-the-door. Don’t-let-the-offspring-escape!”

  My insides knotted. We were trapped. By our own parents!

  Jessie made a tiny whimpering noise. She began to crawl along the back of the couch. “Come on,” she whispered.

  Staying close to the floor, we crept behind another chair and then made a dash for the den.

  “The window,” urged Jessie.

  It was open but screened. I yanked at the screen. It stuck and I felt the seconds ticking faster as I struggled with it. At last it came free with a loud tearing noise.

  I heard a yell from Dad and pelting footsteps. I hoisted Jessie onto the windowsill and she dove out, headfirst, crashing into the bushes below.

  I jumped up into the open window, my heart beating so hard I felt it would explode, and launched myself out into the night.

  Only I didn’t make it.

  “Gotcha!”

  A hand clamped down on my foot like a vise.

  9

  I grabbed onto the windowsill with both hands but Dad was stronger. Inch by inch I was pulled back into the house.

  “Hold on, Nick,” yelled Jessie. She grabbed my shoulders and pulled at me with all her might.

  Then I did something I never thought I would do. I kicked my own father.

  “Oooomph!” he grunted, and his grip loosened.

  I kicked again. He’s not himself, I told myself. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. It’s not really Dad.

  My foot connected with his chest. His fingers slipped and I yanked my foot free and tumbled over the sill into the broken bushes, knocking Jessie to the ground.

  She was up in an instant, pulling me to my feet. “Run!” she shouted.

  We kept to the shadows of the bushes, running in a crouch. We’d gotten as far as the garage when we heard the front door open. Afraid of being seen, we dove into the tall weeds behind the garage.

  “Children,” called Mom in a fake sweet voice that made my skin crawl. “Come-in-the-house-now. It’s-time-you-went-to-your-sleeping-chambers. Nick! Jessie!”

  Dad came out behind her and began to search the bushes around the house. We crouched down as low as we could get and tried not to move so much as an eyelid.

  “Nick!” he called with the same fake friendliness. “Jessie! Emerge-from-your-hiding-place-immediately!”

  Jessie and I pressed against the garage, hardly daring to breathe. Luckily Mom and Dad didn’t look for very long. They must have thought we’d run farther away. After a little while they had a conference on the front stoop and went inside.

  When the door closed, Jessie leaned close to my ear. “We’ve got to get out of here,” she whispered.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think we should move,” I told her. “I think they’re watching from inside. Just waiting for us to show ourselves so they can grab us. We have to outwait them.”

  Jessie sighed and settled against the garage wall. “You might be right,” she said, trying to slap a mosquito without making any noise. “I guess we can’t take a chance.”

  After a while Jessie’s breathing evened out in sleep, but my worries kept me awake. I kept hearing our parents’ robotic voices in my mind. It gave me the shudders.

  How could we help them? How could we save our town? We needed to defeat the powerful tentacled aliens, but how? We were just kids. They were creatures who could turn people into zombies to do their bidding.

  But I must have drifted into sleep finally because my heart nearly jumped out of my chest when a mechanical screaming split the night apart.

  WWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWEEEEEEEEE.

  Jessie jumped up yelling, clapping her hands over her ears. The noise stabbed into the center of my brain. It ran down my back like a bolt of lightning and sent shivers through my arms and legs.

  Then a huge blinding light came out of the sky to penetrate the weeds where we were hiding. Aliens!? Gasping, we bolted for the street.

  More lights—a swirl of flashing blue and red. I was blinded and dizzy and deafened. I could hardly feel Jessie’s hand. I tried to see beyond the dizzying glare into the darkness but the whirling lights filled the night.

  We ran blindly, hoping we were headed for the street.

  Then—WHAM—I ran smack into something huge. It felt cold and hard, like metal. I fell to the street and banged my head on the curb.

  The last thing I remembered was the whirling lights dazzling my eyes. A loud burst of static. And a voice from another world, calling me.

  10

  Something coiled around my waist. I squeezed my eyes shut tight, too petrified to look. Something gripped my legs. I began to rise into the air.

  “AAAAAHHH!” In a burst of panic I thrashed wildly. The lights spun behind my closed eyelids.

  “Hey, hey, hold it,” said a strange man’s voice.

  I opened my eyes. It was only a man holding me up, his arms cradling my back and legs. A stranger, but normal looking. His expression was concerned. I couldn’t see any slithering motion in his ordinary blue eyes.

  “Well, I guess you’re all right, after all,” he said, setting me down. The whirling lights glinted off his police badge. “You ran full tilt into my patrol car,” he said. “Nearly knocked yourself out. I’m Officer Trueblood and I’ve been looking for you two. Your parents are plenty worried.”

  I rubbed my head, still shaking from the scare. I felt a lift of hope that the man seemed normal. Maybe the aliens had left the police alone.

  Jessie was standing on the sidewalk, the police lights flashing like zebra stripes over her worried face.

  “We can’t go back in there,” said Jessie, looking wild-eyed. “Our parents are acting weird. They’ve, um, they—” She stopped, chewing her lip. I could tell she knew how nuts it would sound to start babbling about aliens.

  I looked over my shoulder at our house, wondering why Mom and Dad hadn’t come running out. Maybe they’d gone back to the basement.

  “I know it sounds crazy,” I said to Officer Trueblood. “But we’re really scared. Can’t you take us to the police station or something and tomorrow we can work this out?”

  The policeman looked sympathetic. He had a nice face, broad and friendly. “Well, we’ll have to talk to your parents first,” he said.

  My shoulders slumped.

  “But don’t worry,” Officer Trueblood continued. “I’ll be with you and I’ll make sure nothing funny is going on. It’s my job to make sure you’re safe.”

  Jessie made a sudden move like she was going to run but Officer Trueblood was quicker. The next minute he was holding us each by the shoulder and marching us up the front walk to our house.

  The door opened as we climbed the front steps. Mom and Dad stood back from the door, waiting for us with frozen smiles. I saw a slithering motion deep in their eyes as they looked at the officer.

  He must see it, too, I thought. He won’t leave us here in their clutches.

  The policeman pushed us inside and stood blocking the door. “Troublesome-offspring-returned,” he said in a flat zombielike voice.

  My heart tripped. He had tricked us! He was one of them! Jessie threw a desperate look over her shoulder but Mom’s arm snaked out and caught her.

  Dad’s eyes began to glow again with that awful yellowish-pink light. “You-have-disobeyed. You-must-be-punished,” he said, talking like a robot. Officer True-blood nodded, folding his big arms over his chest.

  “Please, Dad,” I cried, hoping my voice could reach him. “Don’t send us to the basement. We’re your children. Don�
��t give us to the aliens.”

  I remembered what Frasier had said about being aware of his alien voice and watching himself. Maybe Mom and Dad were inside there, too, horrified by what was happening to them. Maybe I could reach their real selves and make them break out of the alien grip.

  But Dad just frowned, not even looking at me. For a few seconds he didn’t say anything and I started to hope. Then he spoke. “You-two-will-go-to-your-cubicles,” he said in his flat, robotic voice.

  “What?” asked Jessie, twisting her head to look up at Mom.

  “Your-bedrooms,” Mom said impatiently. “Go-to-your-rooms.”

  For an instant her eyes glowed brightly, almost hungrily. I shuddered, wondering what their plan was.

  Jessie and I hurried toward the stairs, glad to get away from them. As we started up, I glanced back at the adults. Mom and Dad and Officer Trueblood were just standing there looking at each other. Trading glances, like they were talking without speaking.

  Their eyes began to glow and the slithering thing was much more noticeable, as if it was crawling to the surface.

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I bit my lip to keep from crying out. It was best if they didn’t notice me.

  Officer Trueblood suddenly nodded once, then turned on his heel and went out, closing the door firmly behind him.

  Together, Mom and Dad slowly swiveled their heads toward the stairs and us. We nearly fell over our feet in our sudden hurry to get to the top. They walked to the bottom of the stairs and just stood there, looking up at us.

  My skin prickled where their gaze touched. They had plans for us. I felt it.

  11

  Mom and Dad were still standing there when we reached the top of the stairs. I risked a backwards glance. They were motionless and silent, their heads raised at identical angles.

  “What do we do now?” Jessie whispered.

  “We’ll have to go to our rooms,” I whispered back. “Just don’t go to sleep, whatever you do.”

  “No danger of that.” Jessie shivered. “Nick, tomorrow we’ll have to get away from here. Run away. Until we can figure out how to save Mom and Dad.”