She nods blankly.
“The thing is…,” Dibs starts. “There could be some live ones left in there. And then what? What if they pull you in for experimentation on your eyeballs or other circular-type, ah, body parts…” He clears his throat and raises his eyebrows at me.
“It’s a chance I have to take,” I tell him. “Someone needs help.”
“You think that someone is in there?” Gracie asks. I turn back to the jagged hole, the fumes inside the ship making my eyes water. I wipe at them with my shoulder and readjust my bandanna high on my nose and my tinfoil hat secure against my skull.
“Yes,” I tell her.
“Then you have to go,” she says. “The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid.”
I nod.
“You afraid, Mylo?” Dibs asks me.
I don’t have to think long to answer that one.
“Yes,” I say.
“That must mean you have a mess of true courage up in you already, then.” He smiles.
I wrap my fingers around the edge of the opening and peer inside the disk again, and I think, Maybe, just maybe he’s right.
July 7, 1947—12:35 p.m.
Four years ago, when Obie was nine and I was only seven, Momma and Daddy took us to the Chaves County Fair. There were games to play and, if you were good enough to win, prizes, too. Daddy gave each of us five cents to choose whichever games we wanted to play. When Obie saw a brown bear hanging by a wire at the top of the baseball pitching booth, he spent all his pennies trying to pitch a ball through the small hole in the bull’s-eye painted on a piece of wood.
The man at the counter was dirty, with one tooth missing in the front, a scraggly beard, and a cigarette barely hanging on between his lips. He would laugh each time Obie missed the hole, making the cigarette bob up and down and sprinkle ashes into the air.
“Got another penny, kid?” he would scoff at Obie each time.
When Obie had run out of pennies, he just shook his head.
“Too bad,” the man sneered. “Step on up!” he shouted out to passersby. “Pitch the baseball through the hole and win a prize! Get three balls for a penny! Three balls for a penny! Step on up!”
Obie stared at the bear he had hoped to win.
I reached my hand way down into my pocket, grabbed my very last penny, and slid it over the counter toward the man. He handed me three baseballs.
I made it on my second throw.
And that afternoon as we were driving home in our rusty Ford pickup, my big brother had Shortstop in his arms.
* * *
The sharp jagged edges of the opening in the disk cut into the skin on my palms.
“We’ll hold on to your feet out here,” Dibs says. “That way you’ll stay connected to this world no matter what.”
I turn to face him. “Don’t let go,” I say.
“Never.” He stands tall. “I promise you I won’t. Not even if they harvest your brains and you turn into a Martian zombie.”
I nod and turn back to the hole.
“Even if they suck every single one of your guts out,” he goes on. “And your brains, too. I won’t let go.”
I nod again.
“Even if—”
“Okay,” I tell him. “I trust you.”
I yank my boots off and lay them in the dirt. I check my Martian mind-control-prevention skullcap one more time, then wrap my fingers back around the sharp metal edges. I put my chin to my chest and feel the top of Shortstop’s fur on my lips and then pull myself up into the tight chamber of the disk while Dibs and Gracie hold tight to my ankles.
It’s dark and hazy inside the chamber, but up ahead I can see daylight streaming through the fumes, as if there are windows somewhere, even though we didn’t see any on the outside. The smell is even stronger inside, and my eyes blur from the sting.
“Mylo!” Dibs calls up to me. “Tell us what you see.”
I crawl slowly through the chamber, my sweaty hands slipping as I make my way deeper inside the first level of the disk. “I don’t see anything yet!” I shout down at them. “But there’s some kind of light up ahead. I have to go in farther.”
I wipe sweat from my face.
My eyes ache and my lungs burn. Electricity pulls my guts to the very edges of my insides, demanding to come out. I choke and cough on the poisoned air filling my mouth and throat as I inch my way closer to the top of the chamber.
“There’s light at the end,” I tell them. “I’m going to keep on.”
“Wait,” Dibs calls back. “If you go much farther, we won’t be able to hold on.”
“Just a couple more inches,” I call down to him.
“Gracie,” I hear Dibs say below. “Whatever you do, don’t let go.”
“I won’t,” she says.
I slowly make my way to the light, the tips of my fingers finding an edge and pulling myself even closer to the next level until I reach high enough to peek into the main area of the craft.
Light from the sun streams through the walls from every direction, and smoke and stink and fumes hang thick in the air.
With no metal fan to blow the hot haze in circles, it’s even steamier inside than Momma’s kitchen when she’s baking her famous pecan pie on the hottest day in August. She won first prize at the Chaves County Fair two years running.
I wonder if Martians eat pecan pie.
“That’s it, Mylo! You can’t go any farther!” Dibs calls up to me. “We won’t be able to hold on. Can you see anything yet?”
“The walls are windows!” I call down to them.
“What does that mean?” Dibs wants to know.
“You can see through the walls like they’re glass. Top to bottom. I can see all the way back to the yucca tree where Diego and Spuds are waiting. I see Pitch and True Belle. Diego is still blowing chunks!”
“What else?”
“Gizmos!” I call back, choking and wiping more sweat with the back of my hand. “Like a bunch of small television screens, like they have at the Montgomery Ward’s. Only without any speakers or volume knobs on ’em. There are a lot of bitty lights of every color on a console or desk of some kind. Some of the screens are black, and some have squiggly lines…and I can hear…static. Like what was coming out of Mordecai Lord’s place that day. And I think…I think there might be some kind of radio transmission, too. Except it’s not English. And they aren’t regular words, either…just weird…noises. And small chairs, too. Like for little kids.”
My head is pounding, and my eyes see dark spots hanging in the air. I squeeze my eyelids tight and then open them again. “Man alive, it’s like that monsoon hit them on the outside and the inside,” I tell them. “Everything’s broken up all into pieces. Just like those same pieces with the purple symbols in Mac Brazel’s field. Everything is busted up something awful.”
“But do you see…them?” Dibs asks.
The sweat from my forehead drips into my eyes.
Help.
I suck air and choke on the fumes tickling and scratching their way down my throat, wiping a knuckle over one eye and then the other.
“I have to go in deeper,” I tell them. “You can let me go. They’re calling me again.”
“No!” Dibs says. “I’m not doing it. I promised you I wouldn’t.”
“It’s okay.”
“It’s a trap, Mylo,” Dibs tells me. “Don’t do it!”
I pull myself up farther into the main area, feeling their fingers around my ankles, yanking me back.
“What’s he doing?” I hear Gracie ask. “I can’t hold on much more.”
“Mylo,” Dibs calls. “We’re pulling you out.”
“No, don’t!” I shout. “Not yet!”
“Is anyone here?” I call, squinting through the thick air.
I squeeze my eyes closed again, and this time when I open them, I see even more black spots and my head feels like it’s spinning. Sweat keeps dripping, and my palms are stinging where jagged metal edges and pieces ripped through my skin.
“I can see another area toward the back of the ship,” I call down. “You have to let go. It’s okay.”
I heave myself up higher, and they pull me back down.
“Mylo,” Dibs calls from below me, inside the very bottom of the chamber now, too. “We are going to pull you out. You’re too far in for us to hold on.”
“Just a little bit farther—”
I freeze.
Something moves.
I hold my breath and stare through the haze.
“It can’t be,” I whisper.
Fingers.
Then a hand.
But not just any hand.
A skinny, bony, four-fingered hand.
Long fingers with pointy black fingernails and a tiny suction cup on each fingertip. The skin on its hand is like a cobra, slick and scaly.
And it’s not green, either.
“I see one!” I shout.
“Gracie, on three!” Dibs yells. “We’re pulling him out right now!”
Hands tighten around my ankles.
My palms slip against the metal chamber walls as my body is jerked downward.
“Wait!” I scream, feeling around for something to grab on to.
“Pull harder, Gracie,” Dibs is saying. “Harder!”
“I am!” I can hear her shout.
I slip again.
“Wait!” I shout at them. “Stop pulling me!”
The four-fingered hand lifts from the floor of the ship. Reaching for me.
Me.
Mylo Affinito.
“He’s alive!” I tell them, feeling another jagged edge slide under my palm as I grab on tight to hold steady.
The flying disk feels like a merry-go-round going way too fast now, spinning out of control as my head whirls and the dark spots fill in more spaces.
My stomach feels sick.
Dibs and Gracie pull harder.
I slip again.
“Wait!” I scream as my fingers cling to the final corner before I’m yanked back down the chamber.
I watch two gigantic, black, almond-shaped eyes peeking out from underneath a broken-up console. They stare, blinking just like the green light on that very first night of the crash.
Once, twice, three times.
Watching me.
While I watch them.
“I’m the one,” I whisper to the desperate black eyes. “The one you’ve been talking to. I’m here to help you. I promise you I will. It’s going to be okay.”
“Pull harder, Gracie!” Dibs hollers. “They’re not taking him up to their mother ship. Not if I have anything to say about it.”
My fingers ache against the force.
My lungs beg for air.
My body feels like a limp, wet rag.
“I won’t leave you,” I tell the blinking black eyes. “I promise you I won’t.”
My fingers slip off the edge and I slide down the chamber, hitting the sides as I go. The last thing I remember are those black eyes.
And then…nothing.
July 7, 1947—1:55 p.m.
Someone is holding my head.
And I’m hearing voices.
But this time it isn’t Martians showing me messages behind my eyelids.
It feels like my heart has taken up residence inside my skull and it’s beating a fast and pounding bongo rhythm against my brain.
At least I know the Martians didn’t harvest my brain. But maybe it would hurt less if they had.
* * *
Spuds: What if he’s dead?
Diego: He’s not dead, you dope.
Spuds: He ain’t moving any.
Diego: He’s still breathing, isn’t he?…Look.
Dibs: Maybe they’ve infiltrated his brain, and his body is just a shell like on The Whistler.
Spuds: Is that a real thing?
Dibs: Sure it is.
Spuds: How can you tell if his brain is infiltrated or not?
Dibs: The eyes turn black as coal with no pupils.
Spuds: How are we supposed to know if his eyes are black as coal? They’re closed.
Diego: Gracie, pull up his eyelid and check it.
Gracie: I’m not doing that to him!
Spuds: Do you think he really saw Martians in there?
Dibs: I think we should get him out of here. It isn’t safe. And I don’t know about you all, but I don’t want to cross paths with any green and shifty Martians. They’ll kill you soon as look at you. They’ll spread their Death Dust and we’ll be history. Just like that.
Spuds: Oh, hey, Dibs, what should you do if you see a green Martian?
Gracie: How can you tell jokes at a time like this?
Spuds: Come on! It’s a funny one. What should you do if you see a green Martian?
Silence.
Spuds: Wait until it’s ripe! Get it? Wait until it’s ripe? Like bananas are green and then turn yellow when they’re ripe. Get it? Wait until it’s ripe.
Spuds laughs at his own joke.
“They’re not green,” I say then.
Silence.
I know it’s my mouth that says the words, but it still feels like I’m in the in-between and not quite back inside my body yet.
Diego: Did he say something?
Spuds: Mylo, did you say something?
Diego: Gracie, give him a poke and see if he’ll open his eyes.
Gracie: I’m not poking him, either.
Dibs: Mylo? Mylo, can you hear me?
I feel a soft hand on my cheek. I know it’s Gracie. It’s got to be. Dibs would give me a dirty foot in the face before he’d ever give me soft touches on my cheek. And his hands are just as leathery as his feet are.
It takes every bit of strength in me to pry open my eyelids, and when I do, the sun is so bright I squint up at the shadowy faces leaned over me in a circle under the tall yucca. Gracie’s shadow is the closest because she’s holding my head in her lap, looking down at me, her foil hat still on the top of her head.
Pulling myself upright, I grasp at the gravel and rock, trying to steady the Earth as it spins around me. I squeeze my eyes shut and then I open them again.
“You okay, Mylo?” Dibs drops his knobby knees in the dirt next to me.
“What’d you say, Affinito?” Diego asks.
I cough at the dry dust coating my throat. “I said they’re not green.”
Gracie’s mouth falls open and Spuds takes one giant step backward.
“Are you talking about the Martians?” Dibs asks.
“Yes,” I say. I touch the back of my head where I can feel my heartbeat pounding and see blood on my fingertips.
“You lost your skullcap,” Dibs says.
“You saw ’em?” Spuds asks.
“Yes,” I say again. “And they’re not green…they’re gray.”
I put my hand inside my bib pocket…it’s empty.
I drop to my knees. “Oh, God,” I whisper into my bloody palms.
“Don’t worry.” Spuds puts a hand on my shoulder. “There ain’t nothing there a couple of Band-Aids won’t fix.”
“You don’t understand,” I say. “He’s gone.”
“Who is?” Dibs asks.
“What’s he saying now?” Diego demands, pacing the outside of the circle.
“Shortstop,” I whisper.
“Gone? You mean he’s in there?” Dibs points in the direction of the disk.
I nod. “He must have fallen out.” I get to my feet and dust the dirt from my knees. “I have to g
o back.”
* * *
Everyone is shouting.
Diego is saying something about going back home.
Spuds is talking about being too young to die.
Dibs is hollering something about Martian mind control.
And Gracie is telling them all to hush up.
“What’s wrong with you all?” she demands, her hands on her hips. “Can you just let Mylo talk?”
“Let me handle this.” Dibs puts his hands up, pushes his way past the others to face me. “Myyyylooo,” he says real slow and loud with emphasis on each syllable. “Has…your…brain…been…compromised?”
“You’re such an idiot, Butts. And take that stupid foil hat off your head.” Diego grabs Dibs’s Yankees cap and his tinfoil skullcap and flings them both to the ground. “You look like a moron!”
“Smart enough to keep my brain from being sucked out of my ears,” Dibs tells him, picking the cap and foil out of the dirt. “The only reason they haven’t tried to take yours is that they don’t care to study humans as dumb as a stump.”
“You better shut up, Butts!” Diego shouts at him.
Dibs holds up two skinny dukes. “Make me,” he says, scowling.
“You’re all morons,” Gracie informs the boys. “Just shut up for a minute and let Mylo talk.” She sits down next to me and pulls her tablet and a pencil out of her cloth purse. “Now, start from the beginning and tell us everything. Don’t leave anything out,” she says as she moves her pencil in graceful loops across the page.
“Did you really see ’em, Mylo?” Dibs asks. “Did you see real live Martian bodies?”
I wonder what else is in that tablet of hers and if she ever writes anything in there about me. If I had a tablet, I would write about the small mole right above her left eyebrow, which I’ve never noticed before. And that the skin on her hands feels as soft as the petals on Momma’s bougainvilleas, which hang on the trellis that covers the front part of the house.
“No,” I tell them. “I didn’t see bodies.”
The Truth About Martians Page 10
