Strange Invaders

by Rodman Philbrick

  Frasier’s head appeared in the opening, his face beet red with effort. He was concentrating, wriggling through carefully like Jessie said. But his eyes were bugging out with fear. I knew he was having the same thought I’d had—picturing those monster tentacles sneaking along where he couldn’t see them, grabbing his ankle and pulling him back, back into the pool.

  Frasier’s shoulders were through, and I breathed a sigh of relief. That was the hard part. Now Jessie and I could just pull him the rest of the way.

  But suddenly Frasier’s mouth stretched so wide I could almost see down into his stomach. At first no sound came out but his eyes bugged out with terror. He gasped like a fish a couple of times, then said, “It’s got me.”

  Jessie and I each grabbed a shoulder, but we couldn’t hold on. Frasier was yanked back through the opening so fast his Superboy cape flipped over his head. We gripped the end of the cape and pulled, but we could still feel our friend slipping away.

  “Brace your feet against the wall,” I told Jessie, flipping onto my back and pulling on that cape with every bit of strength I had, using my feet as leverage against the metallic wall.

  “It’s working!” cried Jessie.

  It was true. I felt Frasier slide back toward us an inch, then another. A moment later his hand appeared, gripping the edge of the opening. We could hear him grunting with the effort to pull himself free. I grabbed one hand, Jessie grabbed the other, and, still keeping our feet braced, we dragged him back through.

  As his feet appeared I could see a long, glistening tentacle wrapped around his legs. It was stretching thinner and thinner like an overstretched rubber band, and then suddenly—POP! The tentacle broke and snapped back through the opening.

  Frasier collapsed at our feet. “Whew,” he said, his chest heaving. “I thought I was a goner.”

  “Look out!” yelled Jessie.

  I whirled around and saw it.

  A newer, shinier, bigger blob was oozing through the opening. It was nearly as big around as we were. As we watched for an instant, paralyzed with horror, it began to form suckers, like a giant tentacle. It was getting bigger.

  And it was coming to get us.

  37

  The tip of the tentacle paused at the edge of the opening. It waved in the air, seeking us.

  Correction. Seeking Jessie. The instant it sensed her, the tentacle shot forward. I threw myself into the air and tackled Jessie, shoving her back the way we’d come. “Run!” I yelled, and we were running before the word was out of my mouth, our feet scarcely touching the ground.

  The hum in the air rumbled in our chests, trying to slow us down. As we passed under the stalactite “struts” in the cavern, I risked a look back. The blob, now a fully streamlined tentacle, was stretching after us, weaving through the struts like a monster snake.

  It was only a quick glance, but it looked to me like the stalactites were dripping silvery drops onto the tentacle. Like the thing was growing by melting the metallic rock.

  We reached the corkscrew tunnel. The stretching tentacle was only a little ways behind us and seemed to be getting closer every time I dared to glance behind me. I tried not to think how far we’d come into the hill.

  We kept running.

  I could hear Jessie and Frasier panting and knew their lungs were aching just like mine. The muscles in my legs were burning. How far had we come? Every turn looked the same, the walls gleaming and glassy smooth.

  The tentacle was getting thinner as it followed, reaching out, trying to grab us. Now it was no bigger around than my leg. But it was still gaining. I wasn’t sure how much farther we could run. Breath rasped in my throat. My heart banged in my chest.

  We skidded around another curve. Frasier slipped and almost fell. He stumbled on without looking back, his cape streaming straight out behind him.

  The tentacle raced closer, its suckers reaching, reaching. It was so thin I could almost see through it, like a hungry gummy bear. It was only inches behind me, straining for my neck. The little hairs on the back of my neck rose, sensing it.

  I felt it brush me.

  With no breath for screaming, I somehow put on a burst of speed. Suddenly, above the hum that never stopped, there was a Plop! Pop! I glanced around and saw the tentacle, stretched thinner than my little finger, snap backwards and disappear back into the tunnel.

  And there, right ahead of us, was the cave opening and the night sky. We’d made it! We were safe!

  Or were we?

  Frasier groaned. “Look!” he cried with the last of his breath.

  38

  We collapsed on the ground and looked down. Up the charred side of the hill came the long, slow line of adults. They weaved and staggered mindlessly up the scorched path. But there was no doubt about where they were headed. They were coming right toward us, right toward the mouth of the cave.

  They were heading for the light. And the grasp of those hungry tentacles.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Jessie cried, jumping up as if she hadn’t just been running for her life.

  “Yes,” I said wearily. “But what?”

  Frasier snapped his fingers. “I’ve got it,” he announced, pushing up his glasses. “Gravity!”

  “Huh?”

  “Follow me.” Frasier started scrambling up the hill alongside the cave entrance. Jessie and I looked at each other. She was as puzzled as I was. But a lot of Frasier’s ideas were good ones, if they weren’t just plain wacky. So we followed.

  There was a rocky slope above the mouth of the cave. Frasier stood, hands on hips, surveying the area. “This is a good one,” he said, walking over to a boulder that was as tall as we were. He got behind it and put his shoulder to the rock. “Come on, guys! Let’s push it.”

  “Push it where?” asked Jessie, sounding annoyed. “What are you doing?”

  “Avalanche,” said Frasier as if it should be obvious. “I read all about them in a book I had on volcanoes and earthquakes. See those smaller boulders in front of this one?”

  We nodded.

  “All we need to do is work up some momentum, and this big boulder will do the rest of the work for us. Ready?” Frasier regarded us impatiently. “We don’t have all night.”

  Jessie and I crowded up next to him behind the boulder and heaved. Nothing happened. We heaved again with all our strength. The boulder rocked about half an inch. Then stopped. It was just too heavy for us.

  Dejected, we stepped back to rest for a second. Then my eye fell on a scraggly tree. “Yes!” I shouted, running toward the tree. “A lever. We can use a branch as a lever.”

  “Good idea,” beamed Frasier, hurrying to help me rip a branch off the tree. It took three of us to break it and we felt precious seconds speeding past, but finally we got the end of the branch under the boulder. Jessie found a flat stone to lever it against, and we were ready to try again.

  Jessie pushed all her weight down on the branch while Frasier and I pushed the boulder. It groaned, it rocked, rocked again and slowly, slowly, it began to roll.

  We jumped back and the boulder took off, gathering speed, dislodging everything in its path. The ground shook under our feet. We scurried around, pushing smaller boulders after it. Others bounced and began to roll on their own. Small stones went cascading down the slope. Soon it seemed every rock, big and small, on the whole slope was moving downhill toward the edge.

  And then, with a great crash, our rockfall heaved itself over the edge. Rock dust filled the air. We breathed it in, enjoying the dirt-clean smell of it after the clinging spiciness of the cave. And when the noise settled, we ran to the edge and looked over.

  “YES!” We slapped five and danced around laughing.

  The cave entrance was completely blocked. No light penetrated through our rock wall. The glow from the clouds was fading fast. Even the strange clouds were dissolving and blowing away in wisps.

  We had done it! We won!

  “We’ve got to find Mom and Dad,” said Jessie, catching her breat
h. “Somehow we’ve got to get them back home and find a way to wake them.”

  “Right.” We picked our way back down the hill toward the sound of the grown-ups’ crunching footsteps.

  “I’m going to check out our avalanche,” said Frasier. “Make sure it’ll really work.”

  While Frasier went to inspect our rockslide, Jessie and I headed further down the slope. But as we approached the zombie adults, we saw something odd. They weren’t walking in a straight line anymore. They were wandering around in all directions. Some of the people just picked a rock to sit on and looked around them in bewilderment.

  “They’re themselves again,” cried Jessie joyfully. “They woke up!”

  It was true. There was life in their faces once more. “What am I doing here?” we heard one lady say to herself in a normal voice, scratching her head.

  “How did I get here?” asked somebody else. “What are you doing here, Steve?” another man said to his neighbor.

  Mrs. Pringle laid her hand on my arm. I snatched it away and jumped about a foot. She looked at me quizzically. “You children are out awfully late, aren’t you? Where are your parents?”

  “Good question,” I muttered, edging away from her.

  “Nick! Jessie!” It was Mom’s voice!

  “There you are,” said Dad. “We’ve been looking all over for you. We were so worried we had to get up a search party.”

  All around him adults began to nod, seizing on his words as a perfect explanation for what they were doing out at Harley Hills in the middle of the night. “Yes,” they chorused. “You kids had us worried to death.”

  Jessie rolled her eyes so only I could see.

  “I can’t believe it but I think we’re going to get grounded again,” she said.

  I laughed with her. It was so good to see our parents acting normal again. I didn’t care if they made us stay in all summer. “Coming Mom and Dad. We just have to get Frasier.”

  Mom sighed. “Well, hurry up. It’s late.”

  I ran back up to the cave mouth. As I looked up at the pile of rocks, I started to feel uneasy. Sure, the adults were themselves again but it wasn’t really over, was it? We’d blocked the cave, but the glowing creature was still alive under Harley Hill.

  Frasier was sitting on a rock, looking up at our avalanche. I went over to him. “The thing is still in there,” I said. “It won’t really be over until it’s gone, will it?”

  Frasier didn’t answer.

  I wondered how long it would take the tentacled aliens to pick and ooze their way out through the avalanche and come after us again.

  “We’ll have to find some way to get rid of them,” I said. “Any ideas, Fraze?”

  My friend slowly looked up at me. There was a strange look in his eyes behind the thick glasses—a secretive gleam. He got up and started to walk down the hill. There was something different about his walk, too. His legs seemed stiff and he planted his feet heavily with every step.

  “Frasier,” I called after him. “What’s wrong?”

  He turned slowly and smiled at me. “Wrong? Nothing-is-wrong,” he said in a flat robotic voice. “Everything-is-perfectly-normal.”

  I stared, shocked speechless. My best friend had been taken over by the aliens!

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Visitors ebooks

  1

  There are things under the earth that want to eat our brains. Slimy things with tentacles. Things that glow in the dark invading your nightmares. Invading your bedroom. Invading your brain.

  This was what I was thinking as I stood in the night looking up at the dark skies over Harley Hill.

  Our lives had changed forever the night the aliens blasted out of space, landing in the barren Harley Hills just outside of town and burrowing down into the biggest hill. There had been a tremendous thunder-storm that night, with glowing rain and clouds that boiled with light.

  We—me and my twin sister, Jessie—thought it was kind of cool. Until we discovered the aliens had turned our parents into sleepwalking zombies. They kept saying, “Everything-is-perfectly-normal,” in their flat robot voices when everything was horribly weird and scary.

  The worst of it was, we had no one to turn to for help. All the adults in Harleyville had become zombie servants of the alien mothership buried under Harley Hill.

  It was just us—me and Jessie and our best bud Frasier Wellington. Three twelve-year-old kids against alien invaders trying to take over our town and then—the world!

  I shuddered, picturing for an instant all we’d been through—the slithering thing in our parents’ alien eyes, the winding melted rock walls of the alien tunnels beckoning us on to the pool of goo, the slimy tentacles snapping as they chased us—

  A hand grasped my shoulder and I jumped.

  “Nick, are you okay?” asked Jessie. Being twins, sometimes she can almost read my mind.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I said. “Before they come back.”

  Jess didn’t have to ask me who I was talking about. She knew. Them. The things.

  “Come on, Frasier, we’re out of here.”

  Our best friend Frasier was sitting on the rockslide covering the alien cave opening.

  The three of us had made that rockslide happen. It was a huge avalanche burying everything, even the glow of light the aliens had sent out over our town. That rockslide was all that kept the aliens from swallowing up the Harleyville adults who’d been marching right toward it, their minds wiped away.

  Part of me wanted to think we were safe now, that the things under the earth would no longer be mind-melting our parents.

  But in my heart I knew the space creatures couldn’t be stopped by an avalanche. Not for long. The tentacled monsters would burrow out from under the rock-slide. The strange, glowing light from Harley Hills would turn the adults into sleepwalking zombies again.

  The visitors were here, and we couldn’t stop them.

  “Frasier?” Jessie squinted up the hill, looking doubtfully at our friend.

  Usually Frasier talks a mile a minute, telling us his scientific theories, or coming up with some crazy scheme. But he was just sitting. His face was a funny granitelike color and he was as still as stone.

  “Anything wrong?” Jessie asked him.

  “Wrong? Nothing-is-wrong,” he said in a flat robotic voice. “Everything-is-perfectly-normal.”

  He sounded just like our parents after the alien mind-melt!

  “You’re kidding, right?” I said. “This is one of your stupid jokes.”

  Instead of laughing or smiling, he just looked at me. And that’s when I saw the slithering thing behind Frasier’s eyes.

  My best friend had just been taken over by the aliens!

  “Frasier, snap out of it!” Jessie pleaded.

  His head turned in her direction. He stood up and moved his lips into a gross, rubbery-looking smile. He started walking, stiff-legged, toward Jess.

  “Come-with-me,” he said to her. “Nothing-to-worry-you. Everything-is-normal. Perfectly-normal. You-will-be-safe-with-me.”

  Jessie’s dark eyes widened. She shuddered so hard her brown hair swung over her shoulders. “Unfunny, Frasier,” she said. “Hilarious—not!”

  Frasier kept moving toward her, one robotic plodding step at a time, that weird smile pasted on his round face. He didn’t seem to notice that his glasses were totally crooked.

  “Come-with-me,” he chanted. “Urgent.”

  Jessie’s eyes switched to me as she backed away. “Tell me he’s kidding, Nick,” she said nervously. “This is Frasier’s sick idea of a joke, right?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  Frasier started marching faster toward Jessie. She backed up into a cliff wall. Her head swung right and left in a panic but there was no place for her to go. Frasier stretched his arms toward her, fingers twitching.

  “Frasier!” she cried. “Wake up!”

  No reaction. Stomach churning, I picked up a small rock. I w
as too far away to reach him any other way. “Frasier, here!” I called and tossed it at him underhand, like a softball.

  Startled, he whipped around, putting his hands up to protect his face. Jessie ran. Frasier’s foot skidded on the pebbly ground. He wheeled his arms to keep from falling but his foot went out from under him.

  THUD!

  His body hit the ground heavily and Frasier began to roll down the hill, faster and faster every second.

  “AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEE—!”

  Then his head struck a rock and his scream cut off instantly. His body rolled and came to a stop. He lay there limp, arms flung out, still as death.

  2

  Jessie and I ran toward Frasier’s unmoving body. Our feet slipped and skidded over the rough, steep surface. My blood zinged with fear for Frasier and fear that Jessie and I were both going to take a header right down the hill.

  Tentacles would come creeping over all three of us and we wouldn’t even know it.

  Jessie reached Frasier first. She dropped down by his side and reached out to touch him. “Frasier!” she called urgently, her voice near tears.

  My heart leaped into my throat. “NO, Jessie!” I shouted. “Stay back!” What if the alien inside our friend was faking, just waiting for us to come close enough to—

  I skidded to a stop beside Jessie, chest heaving. Frasier’s face was pasty in the moonlight. His mouth was slack and his glasses twisted over one ear. No way was he faking. But at least he was breathing.

  I picked up his head gently and Jessie parted his hair. There was a nasty lump but it wasn’t bleeding. He stirred and groaned. “Owwwww.”

  Frasier opened his eyes and I stiffened, searching his eyes for the slithering thing I’d seen in my parents’ eyes. But it wasn’t there.

  Pushing himself up, Frasier rubbed his head. “Ow,” he said. “I guess these aliens don’t have a very good sense of Earth balance. Maybe the gravity on their planet is different.”

  Jessie let out her breath in relief. “It’s really you, now, isn’t it, Frasier?”