“It was the head, you see,” Hedda explains. “That sourpuss of a brain connected to that yappity flappity mouth. Yes indeed, it was Sin’s head that was spoiling our marriage.
“But things are much better now since the separation, thank you.”
THE BOY WHO CRIED ALIEN
Jeremy Martin was ten years old when he learned extraterrestrials had replaced his parents.
His family lived in West Olchester, an unremarkable northeastern town composed of cookie-cutter post-World War II tract homes (Jeremy’s father was a veteran) and a Main Street worthy of a Norman Rockwell painting, lined with small mom & pop stores showcasing weatherworn signs and bright American flags and Christmas lights in their windows year-round.
Jeremy’s father worked as the sole proprietor of a leathersmith shop (named “Leathersmith Shop”) specializing in hats, vests, and gloves. His mother was a homemaker who baked a scrumptious Dutch apple pie, a favorite at church socials. Jeremy was their only child, as much child as they could afford on Mr. Martin’s modest income. But it was enough for Jeremy, who seldom wanted for anything, save for the fulfillment of his fanciful dreams.
Throughout the 1950s—a wondrous and terrifying period for stoking a kid’s imagination—Jeremy and his friends frequented the single-screen movie theater on Main Street, often sneaking inside through a rear door that didn’t shut properly unless the ushers remembered to slam it.
From the front row they watched scores of Westerns and Thrillers and Adventures, but were most captivated by Science Fiction’s aliens, spaceships, and strange planets, most of these hostile to Earth’s human denizens. The boys also enjoyed fantastic-themed TV programs like Superman and Space Patrol. They read comic books galore, marveling at the latest exploits of superheroes battling supervillains from this world and beyond.
These were simpler times, when a child could plainly distinguish between good and evil.
Until Jeremy discovered one can hide behind the other.
*****
The day his life changed forever, Jeremy had caught his fourth matinee of Invaders from Mars, about a boy who uncovers a plot by space aliens to take over the minds of all grown-up Earthlings. Afterward, Jeremy bought the newest issue of Superman (“in startling 3-D”) at the five & dime and went home. He dashed upstairs—his mother yelling behind him, like always, “No running up the stairs! You’ll trip and break your teeth!”—and into his room, throwing himself onto his bed and diving into the comic. He read until suppertime.
Dinners at the Martin household were regimented affairs. His mother would call him down, often while he was in the middle of doing something else he’d rather be doing than eating with his parents.
“In a minute!” Jeremy would answer.
“Now!” his mother insisted. “Don’t make your father come fetch you!”
Jeremy never let that happen anymore, not since his dad started giving him the buckle end of his belt.
The atmosphere of every family meal was cold, formal without reprieve. It was a time to reinforce the values instilled by Jeremy’s parents, both God-fearing, freedom-revering Americans, with Mr. Martin especially embracing the role of not only patriarch but of patriot.
“How was school today, son?” he’d ask after they recited grace.
“Fine, sir.”
“How is your food, son?”
“Good, sir.”
“What is the last vestige of hope for a free world?”
“The U.S. of A., sir.”
“Amen.”
Television was forbidden after dinner. That time was spent gathered in the den, where Jeremy’s father read aloud from the daily paper articles about active threats to the United States, or any news across the globe which might pose a menace to it in the future—communism, fascism, rebellion, disease, technology. The Martins needed to be informed, prepared.
Mr. Martin had built an underground fallout shelter in their yard. Mrs. Martin had taught Jeremy to cook for himself and tend to his own wounds. Nothing would have made his parents prouder than for their son to serve his country, to protect it, better yet (Jeremy suspected) to die for it.
It had been a convincing ruse.
That fateful night, unbeknownst to his parents, Jeremy stayed up well past his bedtime to view a meteor shower from his window through his Unitron refractor telescope, a Christmas gift from his Aunt Dorothy whom he hated. He loved gazing into the night skyscapes. He dreamt he would someday travel to the stars, seeing things no man has ever seen before, exposing the mysteries of the universe. He fancied himself a future space detective.
By midnight, Jeremy’s drowsiness surpassed his interest in the cosmos. Before getting into bed, he stepped out to relieve himself. (He’d already brushed his teeth and washed his face earlier at his mother’s behest.) He had to pass his parents’ bedroom on his way to the bathroom down the hall. Ordinarily he found their door shut. That night, however, it was slightly ajar, and Jeremy could hear vaguely human moans inside.
His curiosity uncontainable, Jeremy peeked through the door crack into the darkness. As his eyes adjusted to what meager light was produced by his father’s alarm clock and the streetlamp bleeding through the curtains, he could discern lying on his parents’ bed two reptilian-humanoid creatures covered in scales and polyps, their saurian mouths drooling, their spindly limbs entwined.
Jeremy froze, stifling a gasp.
The larger of the monstrous pair rose into a kneeling position. It flipped its smaller confederate onto its hands and knees facing the headboard then scooted up behind it. A stiff tendril a few inches in length extended out of the larger creature’s abdomen and inserted into the base of the smaller creature’s spine. For several moments they varied the depth of the protuberance by rocking their pelvises back and forth. Both made groaning, grunting noises during the process.
Jeremy raced back to his room, leapt into his bed, and cowered beneath his blankets without even noticing he had peed his pajamas. He remained there until he was sure they hadn’t spotted him, weren’t coming for him.
He realized at once what they were: aliens.
He caught them in what might have been some act of organic information exchange. More significant, he caught them out of disguise. For reasons unknown, they had taken the place of his parents. These creatures treated Jeremy as if he were their own child, with never a false note played, for how long he hadn’t a clue. Weeks? Months? Years? It boggled his mind.
The boy had stumbled upon what was undeniably part of some fiendish plot against the Earth. Now he had to figure out what to do about it.
*****
What Jeremy did about it was wait.
Up to that point, the aliens had been clever, maintaining their human appearance whenever he was around. Now that he knew their secret, he could orchestrate ways to watch them unawares.
It became Jeremy’s sworn duty to find out why they were there and what they had done with his real mother and father. This was a rescue mission—not just for his parents but perhaps for the entire world. A lot of responsibility for a young boy to bear, yet who else could do it?
Jeremy took to spying on the aliens whenever they thought he wasn’t home, or was asleep, or otherwise preoccupied in his room. Once, through the copper keyhole of the bathroom door, he beheld the smaller creature brushing its jagged fangs in the mirror, its jaws slathered in foam. On another occasion, he glimpsed the larger one late at night standing in front of the refrigerator, gorging on the carcass of the leftover roasted chicken the family had for supper. Particularly curious was when Jeremy witnessed this same being in the garage under the hood of the station wagon, tinkering with its engine just like his father would. He speculated the alien was rigging the vehicle with some sophisticated technology to make it fly, should the impostors require a hasty escape if their plans for conquest were thwarted.
Jeremy perpetuated his role as their son, pretending to be well behaved, ignorant. He shared meals with them as usual, helped his “mother” cl
ear the table as usual, and listened to his “father” presage potential perils impacting America as usual. Jeremy continued to let them throw parties on his birthday for him and his fewer and fewer friends. (He had told none of them about his situation, worried this knowledge would put them in danger too.) He even continued going on vacations with the impostors to the lake every summer, though his constant vigilance prevented him from having much fun.
Jeremy, while not trusting them, was not very concerned they would hurt him, as they hadn’t done so already. He’d been careful not to give them reason to.
He was concerned that he hadn’t gotten any closer to the truth of what their agenda here might be. The aliens had assumed his parents’ identities uncannily well, revealing nothing useful to his investigation.
Eventually Jeremy was able to recognize subtle cracks in their characters. Mother never seemed comfortable in her adopted body, always fixing her hair or adjusting her skirt. Father developed a habit of peering out the living room blinds, as if checking for something amiss on or around their property. And sometimes they would take the car out for an hour or two to run errands together, yet they often returned without any items—groceries, for instance—that would account for where they had gone on their trip.
“Where’d you go?” Jeremy would ask.
“Sightseeing,” father always joked (because there were no sights to see in West Olchester). And mother typically said they had been at the church or the bank.
Jeremy made attempts to follow them on his bicycle, only to lose them after they rounded the first corner at the end of his block. He had observed both their church and their bank. Mother and father were never at either place. He wondered if they were instead rendezvousing with their home world superiors somewhere, maybe in the secluded hills south of town.
Jeremy had called the police and the local Army recruitment office, but they didn’t believe him, telling him that if he didn’t quit fooling around he would be in a lot of trouble.
He tried photographing the aliens in their true form with his dad’s Kodak Brownie camera, a task difficult to accomplish on the sly, resulting in a half-dozen dark, blurry shots substantiating nothing.
Undeterred, Jeremy kept waiting and watching, ever prepared to complete his mission to save his parents and his planet, whenever and however the opportunity presented itself.
*****
There came the time when waiting and watching was not enough, when decisive action needed to be taken before it was too late.
Jeremy had just turned fifteen. His “parents” threw his birthday dinner at the Silver Spoon Diner. It was only the three of them. Jeremy had invited none of his friends, who by then were not so much friends as they were classroom acquaintances. They didn’t even sit at the same lunch table anymore. Mother and father gave him a model kit of the Juno 1, the rocket that had launched America’s first satellite the year before. Jeremy thought they were patronizing him.
“What are your goals this year, Jeremy?” mother asked him.
“I’m gonna save the world,” he answered.
His parents traded wary glances with one another. Jeremy thought he had given himself away.
“How do you intend to do that, son?” asked father.
Jeremy shrugged. “I’m not sure yet.”
Father chuckled at him. “Well, you let us know when you suss it out. We’ll be happy to help.”
Jeremy nodded and resumed eating his ice cream sundae. Playing dumb seemed to have worked to allay their suspicions.
Upon arriving home, Jeremy bounded up the stairs to his room. He stowed the rocket model box, unopened, in his closet. For the next hour he studied the waxing gibbous moon through his telescope, mapping its craters in pencil on a sheet of loose leaf paper.
When he had grown bored with this, he surveyed his neighbors’ houses, peering into the windows of illuminated rooms, comparing the lives of others to his own. He envied most of them, the loving families, the laughing children. Sometimes he effortlessly pictured himself among them. Other times it was like watching a TV show being broadcast from a thousand miles away.
The Sterns lived behind the Martins, the rears of their virtually identical houses facing each other. Arthur and Edith Stern attended the same Methodist church as Jeremy’s parents. The young, always smiling couple had visited their home on a few occasions, whenever Jeremy’s mom hosted one of her potluck Bible study brunches. They seemed like decent folk as far as Jeremy could tell. Mr. Stern once pulled a magic coin—a shiny nickel—from Jeremy’s ear. Mrs. Stern told him more than once he was such a handsome boy. The Sterns didn’t have any kids, which Jeremy felt was a shame. He imagined they would be good parents.
Jeremy could see the Sterns through their bedroom window, on their bed. Except it wasn’t the Sterns. It was their substitutes, shed of their human facades, engaged in their strange and grotesque mode of information transfer, a variant of the technique practiced by his replacement parents. One creature was mounted upon the other. The top undulated its lower abdomen against that of its bottom counterpart, which wrapped its tentacles tightly around the other’s torso, probably to maintain their connection. Their scaly, gator-green skin glistened.
Jeremy knew immediately what this meant. The alien presence was not an indicator of an impending full-scale attack, not a mere reconnoiter operation to gauge human vulnerabilities. Rather, it was a colonization already in progress. West Olchester, or at least the West Olchester Methodist Church, had obviously been compromised. And who knew how many more towns, cities, or countries had also been stealthily, systematically infiltrated? It did not bode well for Mankind.
Jeremy needed to do something. But what could he do? Nobody took him serious. (And who could he actually trust now anyway?) He was just a lone, lanky teenaged boy versus a cunning, hostile race of technologically advanced imperialists from another world.
He felt dazed and helpless and scared.
No matter how he felt, Jeremy knew he may well be Earth’s only hope.
But again, what could one person do?
What have heroes throughout history done in the face of oppression and degradation?, he pondered.
They rebelled.
Like all the brave people—farmers, students, artists (and, in the comics, Superman)—who resisted the tyrannies of the Nazis. Like Sitting Bull, who used his prescient visions of victory to embolden a confederacy of Indian tribes to defeat Custer’s cavalry at Little Big Horn. And like Jesus Christ, who single-handedly expelled the moneylenders from the temple.
Yes, Jeremy would fight back. He would spark the Earthling Rebellion.
And it would start under his roof.
*****
Jeremy waited in his room until 2 a.m., when no creatures were stirring in the house. He collected the things he wanted to keep—some clothes, a stack of comic books, his telescope (minus the tripod)—and packed them in the Army rucksack his father had brought back from the war. Jeremy then got the can of kerosene from the basement and the matchbox from the kitchen drawer. He snatched the framed photograph off the wall in the foyer, the one of Jeremy standing in front of the house with his mom and dad before their supplantation.
This was for them, wherever they were now. And for the U. S. of A., the last vestige of hope for a better world. And for all the heroes before him who had made the ultimate sacrifice. Amen.
Jeremy stood in the front doorway, struck a match, and dropped it onto the doused hardwood floor, touching off a wave of fire that swept up the stairs and quickly engulfed the landing leading to his parents’ bedroom door.
With the rucksack slung over his shoulder, Jeremy sprinted across the street and hid behind a maple tree. Monitoring his house from there, he could see swarms of orange flames whirling and flailing behind the downstairs windows. Within moments the blaze had blown out the glass and scorched the hedges. The American flag hanging beside their stoop was reduced to cinders in seconds.
Against the moonlight, Jeremy spotted dense,
dark billows of smoke pouring from the chimney. He could smell it too. He expected the upstairs rooms to soon be assailed, the invaders from space incinerated in their sleep. The first battle won.
The dormer window to his parents’ bedroom shattered outward. Father was breaking it with the base of a brass lamp. When the frame was cleared of shards, he clambered out and assisted mother onto the roof, then onto the ivy-clung trellis on the side of the house. The creatures had the presence of mind to change back into their human guises and don their Earthling nightwear. They climbed down the flimsy wood latticework. Jeremy prayed they would fall and snap their necks, but they made it to terra firma safely.
He had not accounted for the possibility they could escape. He scolded himself for the oversight.
Mother wobbled on her bare feet, coughing harshly, her eyes rheumy. A gash on her right heel bled. Father led her away from the conflagration and laid her down on the lawn near the driveway.
Alarmed neighbors streamed from their homes and approached. Mr. Bowers, who owned the hardware store on Main, brought over a first aid kit and tended to mother’s wounded foot.
“Jeremy!” father wailed. He frantically scanned the growing crowd. “My son… Has anybody seen my boy?”
“He’s right here!” somebody answered.
People parted to let Jeremy through.
“Thank God,” father sighed. He gazed down at his wheezing comrade. “Sweetheart, Jeremy’s alright.” Swelling sirens pierced the night. Somewhere a dog barked. “Everything’s going to be alri—”
Jeremy clubbed father’s skull with his telescope three times before someone behind him seized his arms. He heard his last hit make a satisfying wet crunch.
“Stop it, kid!” shouted the man who held him. “Are you crazy?”
Everyone Is a Moon Page 3
