Brain Stealers

by Rodman Philbrick

  I kicked and choked. I was a boy, not a blob!

  Suddenly a sound came into my head. Xxslypzx. The clinging goo receded from my face and I took in huge gulps of spicy-smelling air. I was a boy, not a xxslypzx.

  I found myself floating on top of the ooze. It was as soft and pleasant as a feather pillow. I tried out the sound in my head, xxslypzx. Where are you, xxslypzx?

  Deep inside, somewhere beyond the boundaries of me, I heard another sound. “Weeeee-weeeeee.” I saw a picture of the pool and an aching, longing, yearning feeling came over me. But this time I could tell it wasn’t my feeling. It was the alien.

  Experiencing its confusion and sadness, I felt awful for kidnapping it. “Soon,” I projected soothingly. “Soon.” Then I showed it a picture of all our school friends trapped like cattle in the alien cavern and our parents moving like puppets. “We have to free them,” I told it.

  Uncertain feelings stirred within me. It didn’t really understand. It just wanted to get back into that pool.

  Suddenly I felt a tug on my foot, than another, more urgent. The tug was coming from outside. Frasier or Jessie was trying to warn me of something. But I couldn’t break off communication now. We’d hardly started.

  Quickly, I formed a picture in my mind of the alien spaceship taking off from Earth in a huge blast of smoke. A wave of joy from the alien burst through me.

  “How do we help?” I asked. “What does your ship use for fuel?” Carefully, I pictured the exhaust end of the ship, the rich smoke streaming out of it.

  Without warning a jagged bolt of lightning sliced through my brain. CRACK! It struck the ground sending up a huge shower of sparkly rocks.

  A picture of the ship formed. Tentacled aliens funneled the rocks inside. The ship blasted off.

  The rocks!?

  But before I could let it know I understood, and explain how everyone would have to be freed before we would help, something jerked me. I felt the connection rip. The alien congealed in sudden terror and huddled in a corner of my mind.

  There was another hard pull. As the alien began to disappear, I quickly sent it a soothing vision of slipping into the pool.

  Then I was blinking on the stone ledge and Frasier and Jessie were trying to shove me behind the crate. They were both bug-eyed with fear.

  There was a strange furious hissing noise all around us.

  Frasier had a slat from the crate in his hand and was beating the air behind him while Jessie shook me.

  “Nick, are you awake?” Jessie demanded urgently. “We’re surrounded. They’re never going to let us out. They got really mad as soon as you put your head in the crate. They’re in a frenzy!”

  As she spoke, I realized the pool chamber was thick with tentacles, like a can full of bait worms.

  Some came up out of the surface of the pool but most of them were crowding through the small opening in the wall. They hissed angrily, spitting out gobs of slime.

  Outside the chamber I heard heavy sloshing sounds, like tons and tons of blubber pushing and shoving through a crowd. Tentacles slapped the walls outside, making a wet smacking noise that started a quivering action in my stomach.

  The ledge was thick with fat writhing tentacles. The only clear space was right around the wooden crate.

  “I think the whole shipful of them is pressing in on this chamber,” said Frasier, his eyes darting. “I feel like the walls are giving way. This is the maddest they’ve ever been. I don’t see how we’re going to get out of this one.”

  Jessie cried out and pounced on my head.

  WHAP!

  40

  A tentacle as thick as a fire hose whipped against the wall where my head had been.

  “We’ve got to keep our heads down,” Jessie said in what I thought was the understatement of the day.

  Tentacles whizzed furiously over our heads and slapped down on the ledge, inches from the crate.

  Inside the crate the little blob made its scared, squealing baby noises.

  I couldn’t stand listening to it. Now that I knew how the poor xxslypzx felt, my stomach rolled at every bleat. It was just a baby. It wasn’t its fault that all the adult aliens were horrible creeps and invaders.

  Before Jessie and Frasier could stop me, I tipped the crate up and let the little alien slide into the pool.

  Xxslypzx was free, back with his own kind.

  The sudden stillness in the chamber felt like a shock wave. Every tentacle froze in place. Every noise stopped. The only sound was the soft lapping of the pool.

  “What have you done?” breathed Jessie.

  “Now we really have lost our last hope,” moaned Frasier.

  “I know what they use for fuel,” I said. “But I don’t know how we’re going to tell them we know. You pulled me away just as the alien was showing me the fuel.”

  “Well? What is it?” asked Frasier.

  “Those sparkly rocks the lightning was kicking up,” I answered. “But they’ll never let us out of here to get them some.”

  “Mica?!” shouted Frasier, causing several tentacles to twitch in our direction again. “They use mica?” Forgetting the aliens in his excitement, Frasier dropped the wooden slat and slid sideways to fumble in his pockets.

  Jessie and I lunged for him but the alien was quicker. Hissing, the tentacle grabbed his arm and yanked Frasier backward. A bright gold, sparkling pebble flew out of his hand. It rolled across the stone ledge and dropped with a gentle plop into the pool.

  The tentacle let go instantly. All other tentacles in the chamber snapped to attention. Their quivering tips turned like periscopes to face us.

  “I picked some up,” said Frasier, grinning. “For my rock collection. Of course, mica is no big deal but when it’s blasted out of the ground by alien lightning then I figure I should keep some.” He opened his fist, showing two more chunks.

  “SSSSSSSsssssss!”

  The tentacles hissed in unison. Several darted forward over Frasier’s head. He closed his fist over the rocks and they retreated. Cautiously he stepped out from behind the crate, holding the rocks up. The tentacles receded away from him.

  “I think we can leave,” said Frasier. “I think they get the idea.”

  “Let’s take the crate anyway,” said Jessie. “We can always crawl into it if it turns out you’re wrong.”

  “I don’t know how you think we’re going to get past that,” I said, gesturing at the room’s only entrance.

  The small opening was squashed full of tentacles. Frasier stepped confidently forward, waving his rocks. He wasn’t even holding an end of the crate. He made shooing motions.

  For a second the tentacles stuck in the entrance as all of them tried to get out at once. Then the way was clear.

  We exchanged glances of wonder, then quickly squeezed through. Outside the chamber, things were different. My heart lurched against my ribs.

  Huge lumpy blobs squatted outside the chamber, waving their tentacles with lazy menace. We couldn’t see their eyes but we knew they were staring at us distrustfully.

  Frasier took one of his precious mica rocks and bowled it down the floor ahead of us. Tentacles snapped toward it but none picked it up. They just batted it along ahead of us.

  I began to feel like we were going to get out of this. We entered the big airplane hangar room and my heart began to pound again.

  The walls were lined with blobs. It looked like the whole huge chamber was made of pulsing, boiling, unpredictable blubber. Blobs hung from the struts by tentacles, dripping goo onto blobs below.

  I jumped as a tentacle slashed out at my feet and another lashed over my head. But both retreated without touching us.

  We walked through, toward the tunnel. And there my heart sank. There was no more tunnel. Just a tube packed full of goo.

  But as we stared at it in dismay, the black blobs began to ooze back into the cracks in the tunnel walls. This continued until there was a narrow space free. It was large enough to walk through single file, if we kept our
arms clasped against our sides.

  We waited but the aliens were done moving. “Let’s go,” said Jessie impatiently. “If I don’t get some air soon I’m going to scream.”

  “Easy for you to say,” Frasier argued. “You’re the skinniest. I’ll never make it through there without touching one.”

  Then, with a noise of disgust, Frasier started into the tunnel. I kept my breathing shallow. The crate helped. The aliens recoiled from it, hissing. But still, I had to swallow my stomach every few minutes.

  The tunnel went on forever. I began to feel like it would never end.

  And then, at last, daylight.

  We didn’t waste any time. We scurried around gathering mica as fast as we could, mostly from around the lightning strikes where it was already blasted out of the ground.

  When we had the crate full, we hauled it back to the cave opening. Tentacles yearned toward it. Dozens of them wound over each other with excitement.

  But, of course, they couldn’t get at the crate. “We’ll empty it when you free our friends and parents,” I announced. We acted it out, pantomiming like crazy but of course we couldn’t tell whether they got it or not.

  The blobs acted more agitated, throwing out huge bubbles which burst in clouds of steam. Tentacles erupted from their bodies only to be sucked back in again.

  Then we felt a deep rumble under our feet. The ground began to shake. Cold slithered up my backbone. It felt like an earthquake. A big one.

  Then we heard an explosion, like a volcano erupting deep underground. The awful sound reverberated in my heart like a steel drum.

  “What’s that?” cried Frasier.

  Suddenly we heard crying and screaming. Our friends!

  41

  Without thinking we ripped off pieces of the crate and raced back into the tunnel.

  Frasier waved his wooden slat like a sword as we ran through the tunnel. On either side, blobs cringed away.

  Where the blobs touched each other they boiled furiously, sending up geysers of goo. They were making a strange angry noise, like pots of boiling glue foaming over on a hot stove.

  “Heeelp! Heeeelp us!”

  I felt furious. Here we had freed our only captive, gathered fuel for these creeps, and they were still attacking! “At least they’ll never get that crate open without us,” I said through clenched teeth.

  “What makes you say that?” asked Jessie, hair flying out behind her. “All they have to do is get our parents to empty the crate. Simple. They don’t need us anymore.”

  As if to show how true that was, a tentacle whipped out and snapped itself around Frasier’s waist, sweeping him off his feet. Frasier shouted and pulled back his hand to smack the thing with his wooden weapon.

  But another tentacle snapped out of the opposite side of the tunnel and seized his wrist. We saw the wrist bend into an impossible angle.

  Frasier screamed and dropped the slat.

  The tentacles whipped him away, passing him down the line of aliens like a party toy.

  As Jessie and I began to lash out angrily at all the blobs around us, more tentacles swooped down and coiled around us. I heard Jessie cry out just as a second tentacle forced me to drop my wood.

  Then it tossed me to the next blob which hissed loudly as it grabbed me by the legs and swung me on.

  “HELP! GET US OUT OF HERE!”

  I could hear our school friends’ voices, loud and clear now. The aliens were going to dump us in with them. Did they plan to take us back to their planet?

  Or just leave us trapped inside the hill forever?

  The air shuddered. I flew head over heels. As the next alien caught me, it shook as if the ground had shifted under its feet.

  BOOOOM!

  42

  The blast was deafening.

  The sound of kids’ voices got very loud. They were screaming and laughing and crying.

  Then suddenly I was sprawled on the smooth surface of the tunnel floor. There were no tentacles around. But Frasier and Jessie were there.

  We wobbled to our feet, feeling dazed.

  The smell of molten rock drifted to us a second before the rock wall in front of us parted with a sizzling CRACK! and melted in two separate streams.

  On the other side of the wall was the cavern with the kids in it! We dashed through the opening.

  “HELP! GET US OUT!” they yelled.

  Part of the cavern wall had caved in. Kids were climbing up, scrambling over the fallen rocks.

  But as we ran forward to help, the ground shifted under our feet again.

  BOOOOOM!

  Another section of the cavern wall caved in, half melting, half exploding. Somehow it didn’t hit any kids.

  Then the ground began shaking harder and harder. We hauled our friends up out of the cavern as fast as we could. A tremendous rumbling noise built somewhere under our feet.

  It felt like all of Harley Hill was about to go up like a volcano.

  “It sounds like an engine starting,” Frasier shouted. “A really huge engine!”

  We hurried the last of the little kids out of the cavern. “Hurry!” we yelled. “Follow us!”

  We led the way back into the tunnel. The blobs were gone. All of them. There was nothing but smooth, shiny rock. Not even a smear of ooze anywhere.

  When we reached the cave, Mom and Dad, and Frasier’s parents, too, were milling around in a daze. The crate had been upended and emptied—no surprise.

  “There you are,” cried Mom, sounding overjoyed. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you kids!”

  She ran forward and grabbed both me and Jessie in a hug, Dad right behind her. Frasier’s parents were all over him, too, scolding and relieved.

  They were really themselves again!

  Outside we heard shouts of greeting and joy as parents and kids found each other.

  “What were you doing out here this time of night?” asked Dad. He frowned like he was trying to think of something that might be important.

  “You’d never believe us,” Jessie said, grinning at me.

  “Try me,” said Mom.

  “Well, first this alien spaceship crashed into the hills. Then these slimy tentacles—”

  “You’re right,” said Dad. “We don’t believe you.”

  But just then the cave floor began to buckle under us. We ran outside but the whole hill was shaking like it was coming apart.

  The top of Harley Hill began to glow red-hot. It glowed hotter and hotter until in a huge puff of steam the rock evaporated, leaving a crater!

  As we stared, the sleek silvery form of the giant alien mothership lifted out of the crater—so huge it blocked the stars from the sky. It hovered in a blaze of light, blinding us, until finally it zoomed off into the dark sky, going higher and higher, leaving earth behind as it headed into outer space.

  We watched until even the faint trail of light it made had disappeared. The whole crowd was stunned into silence.

  But finally Dad stirred. “I have a suggestion,” he said. “Let’s go home and pretend none of this ever happened.”

  In twos and threes people began to turn away and drift back to town, their children clutched close beside them.

  Jessie leaned over toward me and Frasier. “Do you think they’ll ever come back?” she whispered.

  “I hope so,” Frasier said wistfully, his eyes still in the sky.

  I stared at him and shook my head. “Frasier, you know what? You are an alien!”

  About the Authors

  Rodman Philbrick grew up on the coast of New Hampshire and has been writing since the age of sixteen. For a number of years he published mystery and suspense fiction for adults. Brothers & Sinners won the Shamus Award in 1994, and two of his other detective novels were nominees. In 1993 his debut young adult novel, Freak the Mighty, won numerous honors, and in 1998 was made into the feature film The Mighty, starring Sharon Stone and James Gandolfini. Freak the Mighty has become a standard reading selection in thousands of classrooms worl
dwide, and there are more than three million copies in print. In 2010 Philbrick won a Newbery Honor for The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg.

  Lynn Harnett, who was married to Rodman Philbrick, passed away in 2012. She was a talented journalist, editor, and book reviewer, and she had a real knack for concocting scary stories that make the reader want to laugh, shriek with fear, and then turn the page to find out what happens next.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1997 by Rodman Philbrick and Lynn Harnett

  Cover design by Connie Gabbert

  ISBN: 978-1-4976-8543-7

  This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

  345 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  www.openroadmedia.com

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