Escape from the Drooling Octopod!

by Robert West

  Beamer looked knowingly at his buddies. It might not fit into the scientist’s manual of cause and effect, but some things are beyond science. Yep, science was a wonderful thing. After all, God had given humans all of creation for making things to improve our lives. But this time, the tree and the tree ship had worked with a science beyond the five senses.

  Dr. Franck was crying again, but these were happy tears as he hugged his still-sleeping daughter.

  19

  Beginnings and Endings

  Like all holidays, this one had to end. And, as was usual for kids, it ended with the start of school. As they were about to walk by Alana’s Pink Palace, Beamer wondered what would happen to her. Alana may no longer be aging at the speed of light, but she still looked like the Wicked Witch of the West.

  “Do you suppose Alana will ever be able to leave this house?” Scilla said as they passed the gate.

  “They can do some pretty amazing things with plastic surgery these days,” Ghoulie said, “once her aging stabilizes and her face stops morphing.”

  “Maybe so,” Beamer said with a worried look. Being “different” at all can be a hard road for any kid.

  The Star-Fighters were all “different.” Beamer used to think that was a bad thing until last summer. Thanks to Old Lady Parker, the tree, and the tree ship, they’d learned that being different was often a good thing. You see, God created each person with their own special set of gifts.

  Alana was definitely different, but Beamer didn’t think that being ugly was one of her gifts. Maybe she had some gifts that would make up for her being ugly. A lot of cures for disease and inventions had been discovered by people who had diseases or problems themselves.

  They were surprised to see that Alana’s walk-in gate was wide open. Ms. Warrington stood about halfway up the walk, waving for them to come in. Puzzled by her strange expression, they followed her around the walkway and through the row of Italian cypress trees.

  Alana was standing in the center of a large flower garden shaped like a wagon wheel, her back to them. Alana’s nanny smiled at them and said, “I was hoping you’d let Alana walk to school with you. Maybe you could introduce her to some of the children. She doesn’t know anyone, of course.”

  That was when Alana turned to face them. They all flinched and sucked in their breath. She looked even worse than before. Her nose was longer and more twisted, and her chin jutted out about as far as her nose.

  Beamer had expected anything but this. Oh, man, this isn’t gonna be easy. He watched as the poor girl reached up to cradle her face in her hands. But instead of crying, he heard laughter. Then she took off her face! Beamer blinked and opened his eyes wide. What he saw now was not a pretty face but at least a pleasant face. She still had wrinkles, although they were clearly fading.

  Alana and Ms. Warrington were all laughing like their sides were going to split. Very funny.

  Suddenly Beamer, Scilla, and Ghoulie broke into laughter too, and they all split their sides together.

  “Well,” whispered Scilla as she leaned over to speak in Beamer’s ear, “at least we already know ‘pretty’ goes a lot deeper in her than it does in most girls.”

  Yeah, that was true. Part of Beamer even missed the old Alana. He didn’t want to get all mushy or anything, but some of her wrinkled expressions had a way about them. Beauty was definitely a gift, but most people who had it seemed to think they deserved some kind of award for having it. What did they think a gift was all about?

  Beamer saw Scilla brace herself as Alana ran up to give her a big hug. This was going to be interesting. Scilla was strictly on the outs with girls who wore frilly dresses. Maybe it would be all right if Scilla could talk her into wearing something besides pink once in a while.

  Ms. Warrington signaled Beamer and Ghoulie. They followed her a few feet away from where Alana and Scilla were laughing and giggling. “You know, I have a lot to thank you kids for,” she said, putting her hands on their shoulders. “As you can see, Alana’s rapid aging has stopped and its effects seem to be fading. It’s a miracle!” Then her expression became more serious and she lowered her voice almost to a whisper. “Her father, however, has been arrested for practicing medicine without a license. Actually, he turned himself in.

  “Alana is pretty sad about it,” the woman said. “He’ll probably have to spend some time in jail, but he’s already changed quite a bit and I think he’ll come back a better man and a better father. In the meantime, I’ll be taking care of Alana. I’ve always thought of her as my child anyway.”

  Alana practically danced along the sidewalk. She was so happy to be going to school with the other kids. Man, did she have a lot to learn. Nobody over ten ever liked going to school, especially after having been on vacation.

  Beamer looked up into the trees when they reached the corner of Parkview Court. Somewhere back along the passage in those trees was the house with the disappearing forest of animals, fairies, and at least one bug-ugly gargoyle. Someday soon the Star-Fighters were going to have to search for that house. After all, you don’t run into weird places like that every day . . . except maybe on Murphy Street.

  The ancient creature saw them a few minutes later, laughing as they walked along the path through the heart of the forest. They were pretty far away, and she could only glimpse them through the jigsaw puzzle of tree branches. She wished she could get closer to them, but she didn’t dare. They’d be terrified. She hated that they had to be frightened of her. But that is the way it had always been between humans and spiders. Of course, most of her cousins didn’t care. They didn’t even think about it. They couldn’t. They were programmed to eat and sleep and mate and survive until they had children and died.

  Things were different for her. She could think. It happened long ago — on a night when fire had come from the sky. Since then she had watched her cousins live and die — whole lifetimes flashing by in just two seasons — while she lived on and on.

  She trembled in her web as she remembered those first seasons. Nothing happened like it was supposed to. She’d made a web and gathered food, but when it came time to mate, she couldn’t. Although her kind were among the larger in their species — sometimes as big as the palm of a human hand, she had grown to be three times as big as any would-be mate. So she didn’t have children . . . and she didn’t die.

  But there were other ways to die. She didn’t think she’d make it through that first winter. She had to leave her web and the tree when the first frost came. Luckily she found a place beneath the earth — a small depression in a cave wall where she just fit. She worried about food, but found that she was big enough to eat small rats, mice, and bats. Yech! Talk about ugly!

  Years passed and she grew larger. She moved her web to the top of the tree when a boy and his father built the structure in the tree. Later she discovered that when human children played in the structure, the web would glow. The good thing was that the glow attracted more creatures to her web. The bad thing was that she couldn’t stay on the web while it was glowing. When the human dwelling was built beneath the tree, she moved into it, instead of the caves, during the winter. The web she built there glowed too.

  No one came into that attic for several years. When some-one finally did, the place erupted in pandemonium. People rushed in and out screaming. Luckily they left the attic long enough for her to slip back outside. She thought they would destroy the web in the attic, but it turned out they couldn’t. She didn’t know why. After that, an elderly scientist moved in and set up a laboratory next to the web. He lived there a few years, performing some experiments on the web. She didn’t know what he did to it, but he died years later and the attic stayed vacant for many more years after that.

  In the meantime, all her experiences taught her that she had to stay away from humans. That wasn’t easy since she was so big. She thought about the caves. Spiders did live there, of course, but she wasn’t that kind of spider. She was a tree spider, and that’s where she planned to stay — wa
y high up where humans never came. At least that is what she had thought, not realizing how adventurous human children could be.

  Food was another problem. She was now, in fact, too big for one web to supply her needs, especially since she could no longer expect to find the rodents that had been her diet in the caves. So she built more webs in other trees. Eventually, she had a whole network of webs that would catch not only flies and insects like most webs, but birds and squirrels and other tree-climbing animals. As she moved from one web to another, she gradually carved those little tunnels through the tree branches. Strangely enough, the webs she built away from that first tree never glowed.

  What is it those human children called her? Ah, yes —Molgotha. She’d heard them say it when they were trapped in the web. She didn’t like the name. It was scary — not at all fitting for someone as beautiful as she. Her body was a gorgeous bright yellow, and she had dazzling yellow bands on her stockings. If the children could only see her as she really was, they wouldn’t think of her as being a monstrous beast.

  This web, deep in the forest, was her home now. She’d built it in an old sycamore tree. Its huge gnarly trunk was set amid a grove of wildflowers in one of the few places sunlight ever broke through the dense forest canopy. This was, in fact, the largest tree in the park, though nobody knew it. People never came this deep into the dark forest.

  This time of morning, sunlight sliced through the forest shadows at a high angle, stirring up birds and butterflies to flutter around the tree and amid the flowers. It was her favorite time of day, for the shafts of light were so bright that she felt as if she were living in the middle of a great sunburst! Sometimes those beams of light looked strong enough for her to walk up them all the way to heaven. Yeah, she knew about heaven. She didn’t know how. She just did.

  Character Bios

  Priscilla Bruzelski:

  Age: 12 / 6th grade, Hair/Eyes: dishwater-blonde/green, Height: 4’9”

  “Scilla” refuses to be called by her full name because it’s too prissy for this tomboy. She is smaller than your average twelve-year-old, but she makes up for her small stature with a fiercely independent, feisty personality. She lives with her grandmother whom she was sent to live with when her single mother remarried. She has a half-brother named Dashiell who lives with her mother and her mother’s new husband. Her grandmother takes her to church every Sunday out of tradition. Scilla loves climbing trees, football, basketball, and anything that’s not girly. She doesn’t get along with the popular girls at school, but she doesn’t mind. She has strong opinions and will fight for what she believes is right.

  Benson McIntyre:

  Age: 13 / 7th grade, Hair/Eyes: short, wavy, sandy brown hair/blue, Height: 5’

  “Beamer,” named from the famous “Beam me up Scotty” line in Star Trek, has an interest in all things science fiction. He hates his given name, so don’t call him Benson. You might get a response in wry, sarcastic humor from this energetic teenager. He recently moved with his family from Southern California to Middle America. He has a younger brother named Michael and an older sister named Erin. His father, referred to as “Mr. Mac,” is a theater director, and his mother is a pediatrician called “Dr. Mac.” He loves playing on the computer, likes keeping up with the times, and considers himself on the cutting edge. Coming from a strong Christian family, he analyzes all problems with deep spiritual thought. His love for science extends to his speech, as he often speaks in sci-fi space metaphors.

  Garfunkel Ives:

  Age: 12 / 7th grade, Hair/Eyes: black/brown, Height: 4’10”

  “Ghoulie” got his name from the wide-eyed look he makes when he is excited. He’s an intelligent boy who skipped a grade. He’s small for his age and is the typical nerd who loves gadgets and computers, which makes him fodder for bullies. The constant bullying makes him jaded and sarcastic, and he would love to get revenge on the bullies. His father is a successful CFO of a large corporation and his mother is a highly-respected lawyer. His parents have little time for a spiritual life — or him — and have left his upbringing to the nanny. His parents have also left him with an extensive computer and gadget collection which he loves to use to quench his thirst for scientific knowledge.

  1

  Alien

  Beamer was an alien. He wasn’t a ten-legged slime bag with fourteen eyes, unless, of course, you believed his big sister. Still, Beamer was an alien — no question about it. He didn’t belong here. He couldn’t even breathe here.

  His mom said it was just the humidity. Sure! Methane was more like it! When they found his shriveled, oxygen-deprived body, they’d be sorry.

  Now he’d been sent to some place called a cellar — clearly an alien environment. Nobody in California had a cellar.

  Beyond the small pool of murky light at the foot of the steps, a heavy gloom spread out across the room like a fog bank. He stepped down from the last creaking step. “Hey!” he yelped, recoiling back up the step. “What is this stuff?”

  He kneeled down to test the floor with his fingers. Weird, man . . . spongy, like maybe it wasn’t a floor at all but something alive, like a tongue for something with a digestive system!

  Dust was what it really was — several years’ buildup. Beamer stepped down again hesitantly, sending a puff of it into the air. The wind outside picked up, rattling the high, grime-coated windows. The structure above him creaked and groaned like a cranky old woman.

  Then something scritched and scratched. He turned . . . and froze!

  It was huge, with tentacles attached to a disgustingly bloated body. Not a second too soon, Beamer dived to the floor to avoid a twisted tentacle reaching over his head.

  Now, point-blank in front of him, was a large bin of shiny, black rocks — no doubt the shrunken, dehydrated remains of creatures the beast had already devoured.

  Beamer scooted back frantically on all fours. At the same moment, a high whining sound came from behind. He lurched to his feet and whirled around, bumping into a cart, which sped rapidly away. Suddenly he was pelted in the face by a strangely filmy object. A moment later he was wrestling with an entire barrage of filmy, flimsy, smelly things.

  Aiiii! Germ warfare! his mind screamed.

  There was a screech. “Yiiiii!” Beamer yelped, as a small creature flashed by. It leapt to a table and fled through a break in a window.

  Beamer shot up the steps like a missile and blew through a door into a short hallway. He slammed the door behind him and leaned against the opposite wall, breathing heavily.

  “Mother!” A shrill voice from upstairs brought him spinning around in panic. “Did you know they’ve got a vacuum laundry chute up here?” The voice continued. “Shoots clothes down to the basement like spit wads!”

  Beamer’s mother stood in the entryway wearing tattered, cut-off overalls and a tool belt. “Well, at least something works around here. Beamer!” she exclaimed in amazement, “What are you wearing on your ear?”

  “Huh?” Beamer removed a pair of girl’s underwear from his left ear — Vacuum laundry chute? Whoever heard of a vacuum laundry chute? — and threw them down disgustedly.

  “Hey, Mom!” the shrill voice called again. “I can’t find my pink Nikes.” It was Beamer’s big sister, Erin. At fourteen going on fifteen, she was God’s self-proclaimed gift to the ninth grade. Of course, that was back in Katunga Beach. Middleton was a whole new ball game.

  That’s what this alien world was called — Middleton — a middle-sized city in a middle-sized state, smack dab in the middle of Middle America — a thousand miles from the nearest beach!

  Only a week ago, Beamer was hanging out in a cool, high-rolling suburb of L.A. on the cutting edge of the early teen set. Now he was carting boxes around a broken-down house in a prehistoric neighborhood on an ancient street probably named for somebody’s dog. Murphy Street. It certainly wasn’t Shadow Beach Lane.

  Beamer scrunched up his nose. The house even smelled old — as in fossilized. The discovery of an electrica
l outlet had been a great relief. He wasn’t sure Xbox came in a windup version.

  He banged through the screen door onto the front porch and picked up another carton. His mother was standing there, holding a scraggly plant in a pig-shaped pot.

  The lady realtor who had given it to her was bustling toward her car, her mouth on auto-speak. “If you run into anything unusual,” she called, “don’t panic. I’m sure it’s not dangerous. The previous residents were . . . uh . . . different — scientists or rock singers or something — but harmless. Anyway, just call if you have a question.”

  “I will,” Beamer’s mother responded absently, still looking in bewilderment at the ugly pot.

  Beamer looked at the ramshackle porch swing and the peeling paint around the windows. Rock singers in this dive? Who did she think she was kidding? Then again, that same lady had managed to sell this overgrown pile of bricks to his otherwise genetically superior parents.

  Beamer MacIntyre shifted the box in his arms, pried open the screen door with his pinkie, and spun through into the house. The antique door immediately fell off its hinges. Mrs. MacIntyre, or Dr. Mac, as her kiddie patients called her, groaned and pulled a screwdriver from her tool belt.

  Beamer trudged slowly up the staircase with his load. “Move, you dunderhead,” his sister growled as she pounded down past him like an avalanche. “Mother, isn’t this place air-conditioned? I’m about to die!”

  “It’s the humidity, honey,” her mother answered. “You’ll get used to it.”

  “Mo-o-o-o-ommm!” Erin wailed, charging into the crate-littered living room. “D’you mean there’s no air-conditioning?!”

  “No, I mean you’ll get used to the humidity,” Dr. Mac replied. “Air-conditioning is being installed — one for upstairs and one for downstairs. Your father is out arranging things now. Last I heard the downstairs one will be working tomorrow.”