The Night the Heads Came

by William Sleator

  EARLY BIRD BOOKS

  FRESH EBOOK DEALS, DELIVERED DAILY

  BE THE FIRST TO KNOW—

  NEW DEALS HATCH EVERY DAY!

  The Night the Heads Came

  William Sleator

  For my niece and nephew,

  Julie and Spencer Wald,

  who have not been

  abducted—yet

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I still think you’re crazy,” I tell Tim.

  “Can you go any faster, Leo?” he says, looking at his watch. He’s nervous about getting to Bridgetown by midnight, when the bus to New York stops there.

  It’s very dark outside the car. There are no lights, no houses or factories, no other cars on this isolated stretch of two-lane road.

  “What if your parents saw you getting into my car?” I ask him, not for the first time. “You’re not the one who’s going to be around tomorrow when they figure out you took that money and didn’t come back. You’re not the one who’s going to have to figure out what to say, like to the cops. You’re not the one who’s going to—”

  “Just tell them you don’t know anything,” he says dismissively, shoving more potato chips into his mouth. Then he groans. “What am I going to do if the people in New York hate the rest of my drawings?”

  I sigh, gripping the wheel in frustration, my eyes on the two headlight beams on the narrow road. Tim knows I have major difficulty lying to anybody about anything. But he’s not worried about the problems he’s leaving behind for me to deal with; all he’s thinking about is his artwork. He has an appointment with a publisher, who expressed interest in the science fiction drawings Tim sent—nothing is more important to Tim than his drawings. I’m helping him get to New York because I understand why he wants to make this bid for independence from his parents; they’ve always been controlling, and recently they’ve gotten even worse than usual. I just wish he could wait another year, until we’re out of high school, so there wouldn’t be such a big mess about it.

  I also kind of resent him for asking me to do this, since he knew I wouldn’t be able to say no, being his best friend. So here I am, driving him to Bridgetown, getting implicated.

  “Could you step on it a little?” he says, using his irritating, whiny voice. “It’s eleven thirty-five. I’ve got to catch that bus!”

  “I am stepping on it,” I say. “But there’s something funny about the accelerator. Like it’s sluggish. It’s weird. Dad just got the car tuned last week.”

  “I hope you’re not running out of gas. You know there’s nothing between here and Bridgetown.”

  “I filled it on the way over to your house, fatso.”

  “Oh, so now you’re picking on me for being fat!”

  “Oh, I am not! But do you really think I’d forget to—”

  “Hey! Over there on the right. You see those lights?”

  I look away from the road. I’ve never seen a circle of lights in the sky like that, a peculiar kind of amber color. I know there are no buildings around here, and those lights are too low to be an airplane. Anyway, airplanes don’t just hang there. “You think it’s a helicopter, maybe?”

  “What would a helicopter be doing around here? Unless they’ve already got the cops after us.” Tim turns abruptly back to me. “Hey, what’s the matter? Why are you slowing down now?”

  “I’m not slowing down. The car’s acting crazy. Like it’s—”

  And then the lights go out and the engine dies and the whir of the air conditioner shuts off. I can’t see a thing. I slam on the brakes, afraid the car’s going to go off the road in the sudden blackness. The tires squeal; the car swerves; there’s the crunch of gravel. Finally the car stops. At least we still seem to be on the road.

  “What are you doing?” Tim shouts at me.

  “I’m trying to start this thing. It just died, for no reason,” I shout back at him, panicking, frantically turning the key in the ignition, pumping the accelerator. Nothing happens.

  “Great!” Tim says. “Just wonderful. Your battery dies out here in the middle of nowhere. My career is over.” He groans again, and I hear the sound of his fists pounding on the seat—it’s too dark for me to even see Tim. “Why didn’t you go the other way? At least then I could have hitched,” he accuses me.

  “Oh, shut up! You know we had to go this way so no one would see us,” I argue, still uselessly trying to start the car. It’s completely silent out here. The only sound is the click of the key in the ignition.

  Until we hear the scratching on the windows.

  My whole body jerks. I let go of the key. “What was that? A bird or something?” I whisper.

  “I can’t see any more than you can,” Tim whispers back, and I wonder if I sound as scared as he does.

  The scratching continues, on my side as well as Tim’s. Soft but sharp, like stones being gently scraped against the glass.

  “Quick, lock your door! And the back one too,” I say, still whispering. We have to do it manually, of course. I squirm around in the seat to press the lock on the door behind me.

  But I can’t find it. Because the door behind me is already open. I feel the warm air blowing in. And then a delicate touch on the back of my neck, rough and moist and cold, like an animal’s tongue. A dead animal, from the smell of it.

  I scream; I can’t help it. Tim screams too. And when we stop screaming we hear the high-pitched, soft chittering sounds coming from the backseat. And something laps my neck again.

  I’m not thinking, and Tim isn’t either, because at the same instant we both bolt from the car, Tim clutching his portfolio. But then, for some reason, we can’t run. There are dark shapes all around us, graceful, undulating, like they’re moving underwater. Not human shapes. They’re touching me damply, pulling at my clothes. I scream again; I’ve never been so terrified in my life. And yet I just can’t run away; it’s like some kind of force is stopping me. All I can do is let them guide me—their voices whistling breathily—toward the amber lights, on the ground now, very close to the car.

  Up a ramp, into a very dimly lit place. The rotten smell is stronger here. The shapes gently push me down; I’m sitting on something spongelike and slimy. What feels like a rubber cable instantly wraps itself around my waist and stays there. I pull at it; I try to squirm away, shouting again, but the cable is locked in place around me. Tim is shouting too.

  And then I can’t shout; I’m gulping, because the place we’re in shoots suddenly into the air, like a silent supersonic elevator. My stomach drops away. I can’t see outside, but I don’t need to see to feel how incredibly swiftly we’re zooming up, up, and up. I’m gasping now, panting, sweating. The creatures don’t seem to mind the sensation; they’re making those swimming movements around us. There’s not enough light in here to see what they look like; they’re still just dark shapes. I don’t want to see what they look like; all I want is to be out of here.

  And then, with a sudden jolt, we stop. The cable slides away from my waist. Directly ahead of me a light appears, growing, a round door opening like the aperture around the lens on a camera.

  And now I can see the creatures. I flinch away from them and squeeze my eyes shut. They don’t pay any attention. They’re prodding me again, up off the seat, moving me forward, making me walk. And I can’t resist it; I have to go where they’re taking me; I have to walk—meaning I have to open my eyes.

  The creatures are tall, taller than Tim and me, with two long, pale arms that seem boneless, like tentacles. I can tell they are very thin, even though they are wearing loose, sleeveless robes that hang from their long necks to the floor. The truly horrible thing about them is their heads, simply because they are so tiny in relation to their height, about the size o
f tennis balls. The heads are smooth and gray and almost featureless, with one lidless eye in the front and another in the back, and underneath the eyes a mouth like a line without lips that seems to go all the way around the head. In fact, looking at their heads and the way they move, it becomes apparent that these creatures don’t have a front or a back; they are the same on both sides, gliding backward or forward without having to turn around.

  They lead us through the round opening, out of the small ship that brought us here, down a corridor, into a very large space lit by an all-pervasive amber glow. I can’t tell exactly how big the room is because it’s full of foliage—foliage that gently rustles and sways, though there is no breeze. Beneath the strange plants the place is disorganized and untidy, with various objects—clothes and metal tools and open containers—lying sloppily around all over the place. Everything looks filthy.

  Welcome. No need to be afraid or to scream. Please make yourselves comfortable.

  It’s like a voice coming from inside my head, and I slap my hands over my ears. At the same time, I know exactly where the voice is really coming from. It’s coming from the other creatures, waiting for us in the center of the domed, jungly room.

  They are shorter than the ones that brought us here and a whole lot uglier, because they are not even remotely humanoid. They basically consist of big, squashy heads, about three feet in diameter. Where the ears would be there are instead appendages like hands with three fat, blunt fingers. I don’t even know if they have feet because the soft flesh of the heads lies in folds on the floor. They move by kind of oozing along, like slugs.

  They don’t have hair; they have things like droopy antennae. They have a row of protruding eyes, like frogs’ eyes, that go all the way around; I can’t tell how many. And below the eyes hang what must be mouths: wrinkled, permanently open orifices, with ropes of yellowish saliva dangling from top to bottom. The hands on the sides of the head are just long enough to reach into the mouths, and as they watch us they are constantly bending over, plucking wormlike things out of cylindrical containers full of liquid and sliding the wriggling creatures into their mouths.

  Tim and I aren’t paying a whole lot of attention to their polite welcome and the information that we don’t need to be afraid. Just looking at them makes me feel like throwing up; I’m making a gagging noise of total horror and fear.

  And then we both start screaming again when two of the tall ones take our arms and slide long needles into them. I can see the blood flowing out through a tube into a kind of plastic bag.

  As soon as they have taken the blood, they remove the first needles and jab us with others. Now they are putting something in, instead of taking blood out. A sudden warmth flows through me and a feeling of calm. I know that somewhere inside I’m still as terrified as ever. But now I can relax; I can look around and see what’s going on; I can think.

  And, for the first time since this whole thing started, I can talk to Tim, who is standing next to me, still holding his portfolio. “Unbelievable,” I say in an undertone. “Abducted by aliens—like those nuts are always blabbing about in the tabloids.”

  Tim has been injected too, but it doesn’t seem to be working as well on him, maybe because he’s so much heavier than me. His eyes are wide with fear; he is breathing loudly, barely under control. “But this is real!” he says, his voice high-pitched. “What are they doing to us? Are they going to let us out of here?”

  We are glad you are feeling better now, the heads tell us. Please sit down and make yourselves comfortable.

  It’s an instruction, not an invitation, because the tall ones are already leading us to an object like a dirty recliner couch. I try not to think about what the stains on it might be. As soon as we sit down, cables secure us there; the part under our feet rises up, and the part under our heads falls back so that we are half sitting and half lying. We are trapped.

  But because of the injection, I’m still not going nuts with fear and glad of it. “Did you hear what he said?” I ask the heads. “Why did you bring us here? What are you going to do with us? And are you going to let us go? We’d kind of like to go back.”

  We don’t think we are going to hurt you. We don’t think we are going to keep you here. We just want to perform a few tests. Because of The Others, you see.

  “Gimme back my drawings!” Tim shrieks. The tall ones have taken his portfolio and brought it to the heads, who look through the drawings, paying no attention to Tim’s screams.

  Clearly, the heads are the ones in control, the tall ones their servants or slaves or robots—or their bodies. Because it is the tall ones who do things to us while the heads watch, slurping down their living snacks.

  The tall ones clamp something around our heads, which buzzes and vibrates. The tall ones take grimy metal cylinders and slide them over our bodies while the heads look at patterns flashing across the domed ceiling. The tall ones make us spit into rubbery containers, which seal automatically, and give the containers to the heads. The tall ones use more needles to extract more blood, which they put into different containers and also give to the heads. The heads seem rather careless and sloppy, spilling our bodily fluids, the tall ones really doing all the work. I have no idea how long this is taking, and yet I’m not curious about the time and don’t bother to look at my watch.

  Fine. Very good. You will be taken back now, the heads say, meaning me. And you we will keep, they add, meaning Tim.

  This news is too much for Tim to take, despite the drug. “You’re keeping me here and letting him go?” Tim screams, struggling violently. “You can’t do that! You have to let me go too! My career! Please, please let me go! I can’t stand it if you keep me here! I’ll kill myself first! I’ll—”

  The tall ones give him another shot, and he passes out.

  “But you can’t keep him here. You have to let him go too,” I beg them. “What do you think will happen if he just disappears? You don’t think people will be curious about it? I’ll tell them everything, and then they’ll … they’ll …” And then I can’t think of what to say, because I know what people will think about me if I tell them any of this.

  We must keep him, because of The Others. And somehow, I detect a note of fear in the voice at the mention of “The Others.” We will come back to the same place and find you there in exactly two days.

  “And the cops and the army will be waiting there for you!” I shout at them. The drug seems to be wearing off me too, at the thought of what they might possibly do to Tim. “You can’t do this! I’ll tell everybody! It’s not fair! It’s illegal!”

  You will remember nothing. You will remember nothing at all.

  Another needle pierces my arm.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I open my eyes, then squeeze them shut against the glare of sunlight. I’m in an uncomfortable position, my limbs stiff, my skin filmed with sweat. I’m also very hungry. I slowly open my eyes again.

  I’m sitting in the car, at the driver’s seat, in bright daylight, on the empty stretch of road where I was driving Tim to catch the bus.

  “Hey, what happ—” I start to say, turning to Tim.

  Tim isn’t there.

  I sit up straighter, rubbing sweat off my forehead. The last thing I knew, I was driving Tim down this road in the darkness at 11:35 P.M. I look at my watch. It’s 7:30 in the morning. And Tim isn’t here.

  Now I’m wide awake … A million worries flash through my mind. Why am I here? Why didn’t we get to Bridgetown? How am I going to explain to my parents where I was with the car all night? What am I going to tell Tim’s parents? Worst of all, what happened to Tim?

  And why do I have no memory of the last eight hours?

  I dash out of the car and run around, shouting Tim’s name. I look for him on both sides of the road. There is no response and no sight of him. In about fifteen minutes I realize this is useless and slump back into the car.

  The key is right there in the ignition. I start the car and drive slowly, not knowing
what to do, still looking to see if Tim is anywhere around here. I’m completely confused; nothing like this has ever happened to me before. Was Tim kidnapped or something? What’s happening to him right this minute? Is he still alive?

  I pull over to the side of the road and check my wallet. The twenty-five dollars I had is still there, so I wasn’t robbed. And if anybody had robbed Tim, wouldn’t they have robbed me too and probably also stolen the car?

  One thing I do know, suddenly, is that the sooner I get home, the sooner they’ll be able to start seriously looking for Tim—if they aren’t looking for us already. I make a U-turn and head quickly back.

  I dread this confrontation with my parents, but there’s no avoiding it. They’ll be furious that I had the car out all night and didn’t call them. And how are they going to take the crazy story that Tim disappeared and I don’t remember anything about it?

  As I drive I keep having the unreasonable hope that Tim somehow got back home. It’s hard to believe he would just leave me there in the car, though. And it’s even harder to believe that Tim, who is not exactly physically energetic, would have walked all the way home.

  “Why didn’t you call us?” Mom asks me. “We were so worried! How could you do this?”

  “Just tell us where you really were all night, Leo,” Dad says, his voice ominously quiet.

  “I’m trying to tell you. I just kind of blacked out. I was driving with Tim on Route Thirty-eight to Bridgetown. That’s the last thing I remember. He wanted to get away without his parents knowing. You know what they’re like.”

  “We know them a lot better now,” Dad coldly informs me. “We’ve been spending a lot of time on the phone with them for the last eight hours. They kept us up all night.” Mom and Dad aren’t eating breakfast, just drinking coffee, looking haggard.

  “So they know he was with me?”

  “That was the first thing they suspected. They made sure by calling everybody else they could think of,” Dad tells me. “It got pretty obvious after a while that you were together, since you’re best friends, and you had the car and had disappeared too. Is Tim trying to make them believe this same dumb story now about blacking out, losing his memory?”