Strange Invaders

by Rodman Philbrick

  Or something digging.

  Something that had come in from the weird storm in the sky. Something made from glowing rain. Something that had stolen our parents right out of their bedroom. Something that was digging a grave in the basement.

  I wanted to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t open. I wanted to run, but my feet kept going down the steps.

  THUMP…THUMP…

  I knew there was a flashlight on a shelf near the bottom of the stairs. My dad always kept one there, for emergencies. If I could just get to that flashlight, I’d be safe. That’s what I kept telling myself: Get to the flashlight, get to the flashlight.

  I got to where the flashlight should have been, but it wasn’t there. I was fumbling around, searching for it, when my fingers touched something that shouldn’t have been there.

  Something alive.

  I wanted to scream, but nothing came out of my mouth. And before I could move, the thing I’d touched came out of the dark and grabbed me. Grabbed me so hard I couldn’t move. It was strong, stronger than anything human.

  This time I knew it wasn’t Jess, because she was standing at the top of the stairs and screaming her head off.

  “MOM! DAD! HELP!”

  Suddenly a white light blasted me in the eyes. I couldn’t see a thing, just the hot white light burning into my brain.

  Then, just as quickly as it had come, the beam of light flicked away. A moment later the regular basement light was turned on, and Jessie came running down the stairs, her face filled with a look of wonder.

  “MOM! DAD!” she yelled.

  I twisted around and got a look at the thing that was holding me.

  But it wasn’t a thing, it was my mom. And she was holding the flashlight I’d been looking for. “Hold-still,” she said. “Do-not-move!”

  My sudden relief at finding my mom stopped short. Because it wasn’t my mother’s familiar, friendly voice coming out of her mouth. It was like the voice of a stranger.

  “Mom,” I said. “Are you okay?”

  “I-am-a-normal-human-being,” she said, enunciating each syllable like she was learning a new language. “I-am-normal, perfectly-normal.”

  Slowly she released me and stepped back.

  That’s when Dad stepped out of the shadow. He was holding a shovel and his eyes were as cold and bright as the moon.

  8

  Mom and Dad marched us up the stairs, out of the basement.

  “This-location-is-off-limits,” said Mom in her strange new voice.

  Dad snapped a padlock on the door. “Do-not-violate-this-space,” he said.

  His voice was like Mom’s. It sounded familiar, but somehow different. Stiff and awkward like he was processing a new language.

  “It-is-time-for-your-sleep-interval, is-it-not?” said Dad.

  My sister looked like her eyes were going to bug out. “What’s wrong with you guys?” she demanded. “What were you doing down there in the basement? You didn’t even have the lights on!”

  Mom and Dad looked at each other. Then Dad shrugged his shoulders and said, “Our-activity-is-none-of-your-business. You-are-children, we-are-adults. You-must-obey-us.”

  We didn’t have any choice. Jessie and I trudged along with our parents right behind us.

  If they really were my mom and dad.

  “Go-to-your-cubicles,” said Dad in his strange new voice.

  Jessie nudged me as we walked down the hallway, heading for our bedrooms. “Did you hear that?” she whispered. And gave me one of her scrunched-up-nose looks that meant we both understood without having to explain it in words: Something was terribly wrong.

  When I got back to my bedroom, I shut and locked the door. Not that I really thought a locked door would make me safe, but somehow it made me feel better. Just like it made me feel better to pull the covers over my head, like I used to do when I was a little kid.

  I figured I’d never be able to sleep again, but there’s something about being scared that makes you tired, and before long I nodded off, dreaming about a strange glow in the sky that had turned my parents into aliens.

  “Only a dream,” I mumbled into my pillow. “Please let it be only a dream.”

  I woke up hot and clammy. The sun blazed through the window shades. I lay there for a moment, trying to remember what had happened the night before.

  Something about a storm. The basement. A bad dream.

  I sat up so fast my head got dizzy. There was a gummy, spicy taste in my mouth. Then a picture of the glowing raindrops flashed into my head, and I swung my feet to the floor.

  It was only a dream, I told myself. So get out of bed and prove it.

  “Nick! Are you up!” Jessie’s voice hissed at my door.

  “Come on in.”

  She rattled the door knob. Right, I’d locked it the night before.

  “Hey,” I said when her impish face appeared.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” my sister said.

  It wasn’t just a casual question. We were twins and we often had the same thought at exactly the same moment.

  I nodded. “We imagined it,” I said. “We got spooked by a weird storm, and we imagined that our parents had been taken over by aliens.”

  Jess nodded in eager agreement. “How dumb can you get, huh?”

  And so we went downstairs for breakfast convinced that everything was back to normal.

  We couldn’t have been more wrong.

  9

  I knew something wasn’t right before we got to the bottom of the stairs.

  “I don’t smell any breakfast cooking,” I said.

  Jessie stopped. She turned to me, frowning. “You’re right,” she said. “But Mom always cooks us breakfast. And how come she didn’t wake us up?” She jammed her hands in the pockets of her jeans and turned in a slow circle, sniffing. “Does the air in here seem funny to you? Too thick or something?”

  “Nooo,” I said slowly. “Just too quiet.”

  Jessie started down the hall toward the kitchen. “Mom and Dad must be in the backyard.”

  But they weren’t in the backyard. Jessie stepped into the kitchen and stopped so suddenly I bumped into her. “Hey, guys!” she said. “Good morning!”

  Nobody answered.

  Then I saw them. Mom and Dad were sitting at the kitchen table opposite each other. They sat so straight and stiff they looked like wooden statues. They didn’t even look at us.

  Weird.

  “Hey, Mom, how come you didn’t call us for breakfast?” I asked. My voice sounded loud. But she didn’t hear. She just stared at some spot over Dad’s shoulder.

  Jessie clutched my arm and I could feel she was as freaked as I was. I pushed past her and went over to the table, banging a chair hard on the floor. “Mom, Dad, what’s up?” My voice cracked.

  Mom shuddered. A ripple passed over her face. Her head jerked toward me and her eyes locked onto mine. Her eyes were hard, like glass marbles. Then something slithered in the depths. My heart froze. I let go of the chair and it banged again.

  “Yes?” Mom asked in a strange voice. “What-is-it-that-you-want?”

  I stuttered, choking on my own breath. My mom sounded like a robot. “Breakfast?” I squeaked.

  She frowned. It was like she was trying to remember what the word meant. I felt frozen to the spot. But I wanted to flee—from my own mother!

  “Breakfast,” she repeated finally in the same monotone voice. “You’ll-have-to-help-yourself. I’m-busy.”

  “Busy,” said another voice. Dad! I jumped at the unfamiliar sound of his voice. Turning to look at him, I was horrified to see the same strange slithering motion in his eyes that I’d seen in Mom’s. Then it was gone and his eyes were just flat with no expression at all, like chips of ice.

  Jessie let out a little yelp from behind me. “Mom, Dad,” she cried. “Are you all right? What’s wrong?”

  Neither of them seemed to hear her. They heard the words, all right, but not the distress in her voice. “Everything�
�s-fine,” said Dad in his toneless new voice. He got up from the table, rising slowly and mechanically from his seat.

  “Perfectly-normal,” said Mom, sounding like a computer programmed for cheerful. She got up, too, and I backed away from them both, almost tripping over my own feet.

  “We-have-things-to-do,” said Dad. He walked stiffly across the kitchen, opened the basement door, and disappeared down the stairs.

  Mom followed. But at the basement door, she turned. Her eyes locked onto me. “Do-not-fear-us, little-ones,” she said. “We-are-your-parents-and-we-know-best.”

  10

  “That’s it,” Jessie said. “We’ve got to find out what really happened last night.”

  My sister didn’t have to tell me what she had in mind. I already knew.

  “Harley Hills,” I breathed.

  We got our bikes out of the shed. I think we were both a little scared by the idea of Harley Hills, that spooky place they sometimes call “the badlands.” But what choice did we have? We had to find out what had happened and why our parents were suddenly acting so…changed.

  “You’d never know there was a major storm last night,” observed Jessie as we pedaled down the sidewalk.

  I nodded. Everything was dry. And no sparkles in the grass or drifting down from the trees, either.

  “It’s like the storm never happened,” I said. “Except we know it did, right?”

  “Right,” said Jessie, catching my mood. “Harley Hills, here we come!”

  We headed north out of town. Which didn’t take long. Harleyville wasn’t a very big town and we lived on the outskirts. As we pedaled up the bike path along Route 33, we passed a few houses. But no one was outside even though it was a beautiful, sunny day.

  Pretty soon we left the houses behind and the woods closed in on either side of the road. Usually I liked this ride. The sun filters through the trees, making patterns on the road. And with no houses in sight, you can almost believe you’re in the wilderness. But today I wished there were a few more people around. There was a brooding, lonesome feel to the woods that gave me the creeps.

  A little further on, the forest thinned out and we came to an area of old, abandoned fields strewn with boulders and caved-in fence posts. Beyond them we could see the barren hills looming against the sky.

  Without speaking, we turned off onto the dirt track that led up into the hills. Almost nothing grew here. Just some weeds and scrubby looking bushes.

  Sometimes Jessie and I and some of the other kids would pretend we were riding into the Old West, into a hard land of outlaws and posses. But today the hills just looked creepy and desolate. The few trees were crooked and spindly and lonely-looking. The bare, chalky hills looked like sleeping, humpbacked giants. Boulders rose up like menacing trolls.

  The Harley Hills were the three tallest hills in the middle of the badlands. The center one, Harley Hill itself, was the highest. People said it was named for an old hermit who lived on its summit long before there was a town. The hill spread a long, dark shadow over the rocky ground.

  We both stopped at the edge of that shadow, reluctant to go further. There was something—a jagged, darker spot in the middle of the shadow that didn’t seem right. It looked different but I couldn’t say how.

  “Did it suddenly get a whole lot colder?” asked Jessie, close beside me.

  “No,” I said. “I’m not cold. We’re right in the sun.”

  “Then why am I shivering?” asked Jessie. “And why are you shivering?”

  I didn’t want to tell her. I thought it would sound silly. But there was a lump of dread in the pit of my stomach. I scanned the hill, looking for something, anything. But there was no one there. Nothing moved, not even a rabbit.

  But I couldn’t shake off the strong feeling that someone—or something—was watching us.

  Suddenly Jessie gave a yelp of surprise. Or fear. “Look!” she cried. “That must be where the lightning struck!”

  I looked where she was pointing and suddenly realized that the black patch wasn’t part of the shadow at all. It was a huge slash of scorched earth. I mean, burned!

  “But it’s as big as a football field,” I said slowly.

  “Could lightning do that?” Jessie wondered. “Come on, let’s check it out.”

  “No, Jessie!” I said sharply. “We need to be careful about this.”

  But she was already scrambling over the rocks and rough ground. One part of my twin sister was smart and sensible, always thinking. The other part was like this, stubborn and totally fixated. “Jessie, wait!” I called, but she acted like she didn’t hear me.

  So I went after her, even though I felt in my bones it was a bad idea.

  When I caught up with her, Jessie was kneeling right in the middle of the strange, scorched area. “Look, it goes right up into the hill, like an arrow pointing the way,” she said excitedly. “I think we should follow it, see where it leads.”

  Her eyes were wide and eager—and scared, too, though she would never admit it. It was a look I recognized. It meant she was going to follow the scorched ground, no matter what. Being scared just made her that much more determined.

  There was no point arguing.

  The rocks under our feet felt weird, brittle, like shells on a beach. The ground crunched as we walked. It smelled a little like concrete after a rainstorm, only burnt and very dry. Cool, too. Although the climb was kind of steep, we were both chilly and shivering.

  It felt like the ground was sucking the heat out of us, right through the bottom of our sneakers.

  As we climbed, the scorched ground got narrower and darker as if the heat had been more intense the higher we went. The shape was like an arrow pointing the way. But to where?

  “Weird, huh?” said Jessie, as we reached the top.

  The burn mark ended in a sharp point. At the end was a jagged, blackened area shaped like a starburst.

  “It looks like the lightning struck exactly here,” I said, laying my hand in the center of the star shape, “and then scorched all the way down the hill.”

  “That’s strange,” breathed Jessica.

  “Sure is,” I agreed.

  “No. I don’t mean that.” Her voice was oddly flat. “I mean the town. Harleyville.”

  “What about it?” I pulled my hand from the center of the “star,” realizing it had turned ice-cold.

  “I can’t see it from here,” said Jessie.

  I stood up, rubbing my numb hand. That’s when I noticed that Jessie looked terrified.

  “It’s not there,” she said. “It’s like the whole world has disappeared!”

  11

  Jessie was right. The town, our home, our friends—it was as if everything had suddenly vanished.

  We were up high on Harley Hill, facing south. Harleyville should have been in plain sight. Only it wasn’t there. I couldn’t see a single house or church or gas station or playground or person. Just empty badlands, stretching on forever.

  I blinked, shook my head, rubbed my eyes. Nothing changed. The town had disappeared.

  “Maybe there’s something wrong with our sense of direction,” I said to Jessie in a voice that sounded normal. “Maybe we got turned around somehow.”

  She looked at me doubtfully, but we both ran to the other side of the hilltop, our feet sliding on loose stones and kicking up dust. When we stopped, Jessie let out a little whimper.

  The view was exactly the same from this side. Lumpy, hunched-looking brown hills, dark, impenetrable gullies, long, cold shadows. No town. No buildings. No road or cars or anything.

  “Look, we know the town is there,” I said, trying to sound reasonable. “Towns don’t just disappear. It must be an optical illusion. Something to do with the sun and the shadows.”

  “Are you serious?” said Jessie, squinting at me.

  “The way the hills block the sunlight,” I said desperately.

  “It could be the clouds, too,” said Jessie, nodding. “Sunlight bounces off the hills an
d reflects back and back again like a bunch of mirrors set up looking at each other. So all we see is hills and more hills.”

  “Yeah, that’s it.” My eyes knew what they saw but my brain was doing flip-flops scrambling for an explanation.

  Jessica grabbed my sleeve. “What’s that?” she asked. “Listen.”

  I stiffened at the faint crunching sound of footsteps.

  “Someone’s climbing the hill after us,” Jessie whispered urgently. “I think we should hide.”

  We ducked behind a boulder that was taller than us. Pebbles skittered down the hillside. The footsteps grew louder.

  Crunch, crunch.

  My muscles stiffened in fear. What should we do? Who could it be?

  Nobody ever came up here. Nobody human.

  My heart began to lurch in time with the steadily approaching steps. I looked around, trying to figure an escape route. Jessie looked pretty scared. Her whole body was trembling.

  CRUNCH, CRUNCH.

  The footsteps were much louder now. Coming closer, closer. I could hear breathing. No, it was panting, like an animal. A big animal.

  Jessie’s hand tightened on my arm. I was about to signal her to run when the footsteps stopped. All we could hear was the raspy breathing.

  Then whatever it was started moving again and my heart sank. The steps sounded determined. The thing was heading right for our hiding place.

  We were trapped.

  12

  CRUNCH!

  Charred stones pulverized under a heavy foot and went cascading down the hillside. Jessie’s nails dug into my arm. Our only way out was to run right in front of the thing.

  CRUNCH, CRUNCH!

  It stopped right beside our boulder. As if it could hear our pounding hearts.

  WHOOSH!

  It let out a huge breath of air. In my mind, I imagined a fire-breathing monster, ready to pounce on the two puny humans.

  Then it spoke.

  “Wow! Massive!” it said in a deep, froggy voice.