Brain Stealers

by Rodman Philbrick

  Frasier’s head jerked up as he shot me a startled look. “How—?” But the sudden movement made him slip on the steep pebbly surface. He stumbled and let go of the crate. His end hit the ground with a crunch.

  The corner of the crate was splintered. Frasier’s knee was wrenched and he couldn’t run.

  The adults closed in, their blank faces showing no change of expression. Our own parents and friends, and they were going to hand us back to the aliens.

  And at this point, the aliens were really mad.

  My dad stepped out of the crowd. His eyes glowed as the alien slither whiplashed furiously inside them.

  I shivered so hard a hefty gob of slime dripped onto my hand. My plans were unraveling before my eyes.

  Suddenly I felt in my bones that the whole town was doomed.

  31

  “Earthling-Nicholas,” said my dad in his dead, robotic voice. “You-will-leave-what-does-not-belong-to-you-and-join-the-other-children-at-once.”

  “Yeah, right,” whispered Frasier sarcastically. “Tell him our terms, Nick.”

  “No!” Jessie started to grab my arm then thought better of it, making a face as she rubbed her fingers against her T-shirt. “We can’t let the alien go until we figure out how to make them leave our planet.”

  Frasier nodded. “Tell them we’ll deliver the alien as soon as their engines are revved up and our parents and friends are free.”

  I nodded. “Sorry, Dad,” I called out. “But we’re keeping this alien captive until all you guys are free and our friends too and the alien spaceship is ready to leave Earth.”

  But Dad didn’t seem to hear a word.

  “Earthling, you-must-join-the-other-children,” he said.

  Mom stepped up beside him. “No-harm-will-come-to-you-if-you-do-as-we-say,” she announced flatly.

  And then they both started toward us, arms stretched out in front of them like Frankenstein, the thing in their eyes slithering madly back and forth.

  Frasier’s parents stepped out of the mob and fell in behind Mom and Dad.

  Then the other adults threw aside their shovels and picks. They fell into formation too. Their eyes glowed but they weren’t seeing us. Not the real us. All they saw were objects that were in their way.

  They marched toward us, faces slack, arms reaching out, their hands twitching like eager claws.

  “They’re going to grab us!” cried Jessie. “They don’t care about the little alien!”

  I jumped behind the crate. “Stop!” I ordered, pointing at the quivering alien on my chest. “Stop now or I’ll make a wood sandwich out of this little slimeball!”

  They kept coming.

  “Stop!” I shouted hoarsely. If they dragged us down into that cavern, none of us would ever be free or human again. My heart pounded as the alien pulsed wildly against my chest.

  They kept coming. I stood tall, my belly inches from the edge of the crate. “I warned you,” I yelled. “In five seconds I’m going to mash this alien! One …”

  It was like they didn’t hear me. “Two … three …”

  Suddenly Frasier’s parents plunged out of formation and pounced on Frasier, each one grabbing an arm. “Noooooo,” he screamed. “Nick, do it, wood the alien, hurry!”

  I felt paralyzed with horror. Gritting my teeth, I leaned closer to the wooden crate. The alien flattened itself against me, shuddering.

  And then it began to squeal. “Weeeeeee-weeeeee!”

  The ground under my feet began to shudder like an earthquake. Suddenly there was a blast—

  KA——BOOOM!

  I whirled as a huge, fat tentacle punched right through the hillside.

  REEEE-REEEEEEE-REEEEEEE!

  32

  The huge alien’s shrieks seemed to shatter the air. The noise drilled into my brain until I felt blind and deaf. I knew I was screaming but I couldn’t hear a thing except—

  REEEEE-REEEEEEE-REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

  A black blob the size of a mountain began to roll and bubble through the hole punched in the hillside. Furious tentacles slashed the air so fast they were a blur.

  I grabbed Jessie and jumped to the other side of the crate, putting it between us and the boiling alien. But now the crate seemed awfully puny.

  Then suddenly the big alien stopped. Its tentacles flopped to the ground. It continued to pulse, giving off a dark angry light but its body stayed half in, half out of the hill.

  I took a breath, feeling the smaller blob quiver against me.

  “Nick, look at Mom and Dad!” said Jessie. “What’s happened to them? What’s happened to all of them?”

  I was afraid to take my eyes off the smoldering alien but I threw a quick glance behind me. My heart lurched. I felt like I was looking at an army of statues. Everyone seemed turned to stone.

  “Wow, that was close,” said Frasier, rubbing his arms as he joined us. “One minute my parents were dragging me off and the next second they just let go. Like that alien pressed their ‘off’ switch.”

  Jessie nodded. “I think it was because of that one,” she said, indicating our hostage. “The humans didn’t care about it. They had their orders—to get us with the other kids—and they didn’t see anything else.”

  “It’s like the aliens don’t really communicate with the adults,” I said wonderingly. “They can make them do things but they can’t understand anything.”

  “Yeah,” said Frasier eagerly. “Like a dog does tricks but he doesn’t have the vaguest why you want him to.”

  We fell silent, looking at our parents. They stood, slack-jawed and completely still, except for the constant slithering of their eyes. It made me angry to think of them being treated like dogs or windup toys.

  I scowled at the big alien slumped half out of the hill. We’d show them!

  Then I noticed something about the huge alien didn’t look right. Its tentacles were limp and its pulsing was rapid but dim. “Hey, guys, look,” I said. “Does that thing look sick to you?”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” Jessie commented.

  “Yeah!” exclaimed Frasier. “The tips of its tentacles are shriveling.” He stared at it for a minute. “You know what?” he said wonderingly. “I think the aliens are allergic to our sun! Look at those tentacles. They look burnt. That’s why all the tunnels! They can’t take the sun!”

  “Great,” said Jessie sarcastically. “So all we have to do is take off the top of Harley Hill and let the sun pour in and the aliens will fall all over themselves getting off our planet. Terrific plan.”

  Just then I felt my own personal alien come unstuck from my shoulder. A pang of alarm went through me when I looked down at it. It was pale and milky-looking. It had stopped making its squealing noises.

  Before I could think what to do, it slipped off my shirt and began to slide to the ground. I actually had to catch it in my bare hands.

  My stomach rose into my throat as glop engulfed my fingers, hands, wrists, arms. Struggling not to puke from disgust, I swallowed hard and gulped for breath.

  Resisting the urge to snatch my hands free of the gummy ooze took all my willpower. I hardly had breath left to speak.

  “Frasier, quick!” I panted. “Give me your backpack.”

  “My backpack!” He looked at the creature with dismay. “My backpack?”

  “Yes!” I insisted. “I’ll put the alien on top of it and we’ll slide it into the crate to keep it out of the sun.”

  Reluctantly, Frasier eased out of his backpack, making faces and moaning as he emptied it.

  “Hurry!” I demanded in a strangled voice. My fingers felt so icky I couldn’t stand it.

  Jessie snatched the backpack from Frasier and dropped it on the ground. As I bent down the creature made a faint noise and feebly tried to crawl up my arm.

  But it was too weak. I rolled it onto the backpack where it lay like a puddle of slime-covered dough. Grimacing, Jessie helped me slide the whole thing into the crate.

  The alien in the hillside flopped i
ts tentacles when it saw what we were doing but it stayed where it was.

  “How are we going to lift the crate?” Jessie asked, looking nervously at the mountainous alien. “The back end is broken.”

  “No sweat,” said Frasier, holding up a roll of duct tape. “It was in my backpack. Duct tape is very useful. You never know when it’s going to come in handy.”

  Once he got the crate taped up we tried lifting it. That got the big alien all worked up again but it still didn’t come after us.

  “Now let’s get out of here,” I said nervously. “We’ll find someplace safer and decide what to do next.”

  “But what about that?” asked Jessie, gesturing over her shoulder at the bubbling alien.

  “Who cares?” scoffed Frasier. “It can’t chase us. We can do what we want.”

  Famous last words.

  As we started off with the crate the big alien began to shriek again.

  REEEE-REEEEEEEEE-REEEEEEEEE!

  And then another piece of the hillside exploded outwards.

  KA-BOOOOM!

  I threw up my arm to ward off the sudden rain of flying dirt and sharp rock shards.

  “Ow!” yelled Frasier. “Let’s get out of here!”

  Awkwardly we began to run with the crate. The alien’s shrieks reached such a pitch I felt my head would explode. The terrible sound seemed to paralyze my muscles. Vibrations ran up and down my backbone like shivers of pain.

  I glanced back and froze in horror.

  The alien was once again boiling out of the hillside. It was even bigger than we’d thought before.

  It swelled and bubbled, a massive tidal wave of dark ooze bearing relentlessly down on us.

  “Run!” screamed Jessie, snatching up her end of the crate and dragging me and Frasier after her.

  But we couldn’t possibly escape it. It kept coming, an endless angry stream of goo rolling after us like boiling tar.

  Frasier stumbled on the uneven ground. As I pushed him to his feet, I threw a glance backward.

  “AAAIII—!”

  But what I saw was so horrible it snatched the scream right out of my throat.

  33

  REEEEE-EEEEEEEE-EEEEEEEE!

  The alien had thrown out a tentacle and it was whipping after us. But it was a tentacle unlike any I’d seen before.

  The tentacle was thick and covered with a thick layer of green slime. But that wasn’t the worst.

  The worst was the gaping mouths that popped out all over it. They looked like fleshy suction cups and they gummed the air hungrily as the tentacle homed in on us.

  It was like the mouths already imagined how it would feel when they fastened their rubbery lips on us. And they could hardly wait.

  “Leave the crate,” yelled Jessie. “It’s the crate they want, Nick! Leave it and run!”

  But I couldn’t leave the crate. “No!” I shouted over the piercing noise of the alien’s shrieking. “It’s all we have. We can’t save anybody without it.”

  “We can’t save anybody if we’re not around either,” Frasier shouted in my ear as he pried my hand off the crate. “Come on, Nick. They can’t open it anyway. Wood, remember?”

  I felt the whoosh of air as Frasier dragged me out from under the desperate grasp of the tentacle. He had forgotten all about his wrenched knee.

  But we’d only sprinted a few panicky steps when we heard a thud behind us. And the alien’s shrieks grew even more high-pitched.

  Risking a glance back, I skidded to a halt, staring in amazement.

  The horrible gruesome tentacle now lay flat and limp on the ground, inches from the crate. Its hideous mouths were puckered and still.

  “Oh, wow,” moaned Jessie. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

  At the other end of the tentacle, the mountainous alien was writhing. Where the sun hit it, its bubbly goo was starting to blacken, blister, and pop. Dark liquid spurted from it.

  Slowly, the alien cringed back into the hillside, pulling the useless tentacle behind it and shrieking horribly.

  REEEEEEEEEE-REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

  “Help me with the crate,” I said when the huge alien had squeezed most of itself into the hill.

  We moved cautiously but the alien did nothing. It even stopped shrieking.

  Jessie scowled at it. She pushed her tangled hair behind her ears with a defiant gesture. “Putting the blob in the crate was a good idea, Nick,” she said. “As long as it’s inside the wooden crate, its friends can’t save it, even if they are fifty times bigger than us and can sprout tentacles whenever they want. We’re the only ones who can save their friend. Now they need us.”

  She smiled at the blob in the hillside. It wasn’t a pleasant smile.

  Frasier nodded with satisfaction. “I knew it,” he said. “There’s nothing it can do.”

  I winced, hearing those words. The last time Frasier sounded so confident we nearly got drowned in a tidal wave of alien blubber.

  I bent down and looked through the slat at our captive and was relieved to see it was pulsing more brightly again. We picked up the crate and started off.

  The big alien twitched and several boulders tumbled down out of the hill. My heart leaped but that was it for the alien. It really did seem defeated this time.

  “Where are we going?” asked Jessie.

  “We need to find our way back to that cavern where they’re keeping the other kids,” I said.

  “I don’t want to go in any more alien tunnels,” said Frasier. “Not any sooner than we have to anyway. Let’s go back to your house. We can take the old mining tunnel that leads out from your basement. We already know that leads back to the alien spaceship. And I plotted a course with my compass. I can get us to the kids, no sweat.”

  That old mining tunnel was old and rickety and ready to cave in. But it seemed like home compared to the alien tunnels.

  It was a good plan.

  As we turned down the hill, thunder rolled ominously. We looked at each other, startled. The sky was sunny and blue, not a cloud in sight.

  Thunder sounded again, louder. We looked up, over Harley Hill. And our hearts sank right into despair.

  Over the top of the hill a glowing cloud was forming. Its dark underside boiled angrily, expanding every second.

  Lightning flashed and crackled inside it. Bolts struck one another like huge swords clanging together before a fight.

  The aliens weren’t done with us yet.

  34

  The cloud gathered force, expanding so rapidly its menacing shadow overtook us and raced ahead down the hill.

  In minutes the sun was blotted out over our heads although we could still see it shining brightly to the east where the town would be. The hillside turned dark and the temperature plunged.

  Although we’d been sweating a second ago, we were now shivering and not just with fear. It was freezing. My fingers felt numb where they clutched the crate.

  We quickened our pace but we knew it was useless. We were as powerless as ants under the widening alien cloud.

  “This m-must be how the aliens g-get around their problem with the s-sun,” Jessie said through chattering teeth.

  But when we looked to see if the big alien was after us again, it hadn’t moved. Did that mean it was too hurt and it was going to leave our fate to other, fresher aliens?

  I shuddered, feeling queasy with panic. My eyes darted everywhere looking for lurking alien hulks and whip-fast tentacles.

  Overhead the seething cloud foamed and churned, casting its eerie glow over us. Lightning flashed angrily, arcing from one side of the cloud to the other and back again.

  “I think we should leave the crate,” said Frasier, his eyes wide with terror. “If we leave the crate maybe they’ll let us go.”

  Scared as I was, determination clamped around my heart like a vise.

  “No.” I bit down hard to try and keep my teeth from chattering. “They’ve taken over our parents and seized a whole school full of kids. All we’ve done is take
one small blob and they act like it’s the end of the world. I’m not leaving the crate.”

  “It doesn’t matter anyway, Frasier,” said Jessie, hunching her shoulders as she jumped at shadows, imagining tentacles. “They can’t open the crate themselves, remember? They need at least one of us. They’re not going to let us off this hill.”

  As if to prove her wrong about needing us and right about not letting us off the hill, the cloud above suddenly opened up.

  CRRR-AAAACK!

  A jagged bolt of lightning struck the earth inches in front of my toes. My hand ripped off the crate and I was lifted ten feet into the sky.

  For an instant I seemed to float head over heels, surrounded by strange sparkles. I was deafened from the blast of thunder and my mind was blanked out by the flash.

  Then I slammed back to earth flat on my back. All around me, gold-sparkled rocks rained onto the ground, making starlike patterns in the weird alien glow.

  When one thumped me on the chest, I came to my senses.

  “Nick! Get up, we’ve got to get out of here!” Jessie was shouting as Frasier tugged on my arm.

  Her hair was whipping around her face in the sudden wind. Lightning flashes from inside the cloud lit up the fear on her face.

  I jumped to my feet, anger pumping through my heart as fiercely as fear. “Grab the crate,” I said.

  “What, are you crazy?” Frasier shouted over the crash of thunder, his eyes wild.

  “Haul it up!” I demanded. “We’ll hold it over our heads. They won’t dare blast their precious blob!”

  Quickly the three of us hauled the crate high enough to crawl under. The storm built to a frenzy. We could barely keep our grip on the edge of the crate.

  “What now?” yelled Jessie.

  “Head downhill,” I yelled back.

  A bolt of lightning struck at Frasier’s feet. They went out from under him and the crate fell on his chest. His bat went flying and instantly a bolt of lightning struck it. The bat was in flames before it hit the ground.

  Hurriedly, we helped Frasier up, keeping as much of ourselves as we could under the crate.