Invitation

by Frank Peretti

  “It’s poppycock,” the professor said, sipping his coffee. “And those people are kooks. There’s absolutely nothing scientific about their so-called investigations—it’s all hocus-pocus performed for television cameras or YouTube videos.”

  “I don’t know.” Brenda shook her head. “I’ve always had respect for people with mysterious gifts. A witch once worked a root on my aunt—sent Auntie to the hospital until some church women came and prayed over her.”

  I made a face. “A root?”

  “A spell.” Brenda gave me a one-sided smile. “My world has mysteries, too. Some that science can’t begin to explain.”

  “Actually,” I said, leaning against the counter, “an alien craft is a logical explanation. It could emit heat or sound or some substance that poisoned that particular variety of fish. The birds could have run into the craft, suffering blunt trauma and dying from the impact.”

  “Maybe it didn’t have to be big.” Brenda frowned. “Maybe they were small but there were a lot of ’em, so that’s why so many birds died.” Her frown deepened. “That makes sense, though the thought of outer space creatures scares me spitless.”

  “Then why didn’t anyone else see this improbable fleet of space ships?” the professor asked.

  “A cloaking device.” Brenda smiled and lifted a brow at Daniel. “Anyone who watches Star Trek knows about cloaking devices.”

  “Why didn’t anyone hear this fleet?”

  “It could have made sounds above or below the range of human hearing,” I pointed out. “After all, dogs can hear things inaudible to the human ear—”

  I froze as my thoughts crashed into a wall. Abby heard it. The birds, the fish . . . the dog heard everything. Ever since I’d arrived, Abby had been sitting by the sliding glass door, listening, watching, whining. But she ran off to chase some invisible something after the birds and fish died. So whatever had done the damage . . . was still around.

  Without saying another word, I set my mug on the table and walked to the wide glass doors. Gray clouds hung low over the sea, heavy with rain, and mists skirted the surface of the sand. Clouds were the perfect camouflage for anything . . . or anyone . . . that might be patrolling the earth.

  Or spying on us.

  In Port Avalon, the professor had made enemies who escaped. A man and a woman, he said, who had taken Daniel out of the hospital and worked with A.J. Van Epps to test the boy’s supernatural abilities. We had good reason to believe the man and woman were affiliated with the Institute for Psychic Studies, which we’d pretty much trashed before we all found ourselves in Port Avalon. . . .

  I pressed my hand to the glass and peered past my reflection into the gathering darkness. Was Abby still out there? Were other things—aliens or spies—out there? Were they hovering nearby, maybe watching us now?

  I startled when I heard the click of the latch on the door. I looked over and saw Daniel standing next to me, his gaze focused on something beyond the glass. Without speaking, he grabbed the handle, pulled the door open, and stepped into the storm.

  What?

  I turned to look at Brenda, but she and the others were already out of their seats and hurrying toward me. “Daniel,” Brenda called softly, not wanting to frighten him. “Daniel, kid, come on outta the rain.”

  If he heard her, he gave no sign of it. Instead, he walked forward, crossing the deck, stopping only when he reached the railing. For a moment, I was afraid he’d continue down the stairs and make a run for the water as Abby had, but he stood motionless, his hands at his sides, as if he were waiting. For what?

  “Never thought I was signin’ on to be a babysitter,” Brenda grumbled good-naturedly, but she went after the kid, ignoring the rain pelting her head and shoulders. “Danny, come on in before we catch a cold.”

  “He’s not budging,” I remarked to anyone listening. “I don’t know what has mesmerized him, but he’s not going to move.”

  “Let me take them an umbrella.” Tank pulled one from the milk can and opened it, then crossed the deck in three giant hops. Like some kind of overgrown butler, he held the umbrella over Daniel and Brenda.

  “What are you all looking at?” I called through the open door, crossing my arms in a halfhearted effort to ward off the cold breeze. “What is Daniel looking at?”

  “Something,” Tank answered, an edge to his voice. “Something evil. I can feel it.”

  “There’s nothing out there.” Pushing his way through the space between my shoulder and the edge of the door, the professor went outside, too, and peered into the darkness. “There’s nothing here,” he yelled, glancing back at me. “Just sand, sea, and a pack of fools.”

  Then Tank tipped his head back and called out, his voice loud enough for all of us to hear above the wind and rain: “Open our eyes.”

  Before I could draw another breath, the air between my friends and the beach seemed to shimmer, then a glowing shape filled the space. The shape was vaguely spherical, but the edges were soft and translucent. The outline glowed big and round like an odd golden moon, then it began to spin, slowly rotating until I saw an opening—a window?

  I didn’t realize I had walked onto the deck until I felt the splash of rain on my cheeks. A rough fabric brushed my elbow, and I knew the professor had joined me at the railing, all of us drawn forward by the object . . . or our own fascination. I opened my mouth to say something, but I couldn’t speak. My lips were as dry as paper and my tongue as heavy as lead.

  The opening—the window—shifted and shimmered, then a covering peeled back, like skin from an orange. From within the sphere, a form appeared—round, soft body, stick-thin neck, circular face. Long nose topped with a red rubber ball. Clown-like smile exaggerated and painted red beneath black eyes, with no white, no shine, no life at all.

  Long fingers extended from a wrinkled hand and seemed to invite us closer, then one of the fingers waggled back and forth like a scolding schoolteacher’s. The eyes blinked; the head turned. And then I heard a scream—not a human scream, but the sound of an anguished dog in pain.

  Daniel’s agonized howl mingled with my own. With my senses reeling and my gaze still fixed on the horrible caricature in the orb, I reached out for the touch of something—anything—solid, and caught Tank’s arm. Beside me, Daniel stiffened, reached into the darkness, and collapsed.

  The window closed, the orb spun and zipped toward the water, then it vanished.

  CHAPTER

  12

  I closed my eyes as a scream clawed in my throat. That cry—surely that wasn’t Abby. That couldn’t be Abby. Why would anyone want to hurt her? She had never done anything but love me and my grandparents. She was the personification of love and faithfulness, so why would anyone—anything—want to hurt her?

  This time Brenda couldn’t stop herself. She ran forward and drew Daniel into her arms until he came to, then she kept holding him as he flailed, slapped at her head, and kicked her legs. The professor finally pulled Daniel away and helped him stand—alone in a corner, trembling and staring at nothing—until he could regain control of himself.

  Brenda crumpled in a heap on the deck, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders shook with soundless sobs. Tank positioned himself in front of the steps in case Daniel decided to run down to the beach, but after a few minutes the professor succeeded in persuading Daniel to go inside the house. The professor went with him, but I stayed on the deck, my hands gripping the railing, rain dripping from my nose and hair.

  Tank held the umbrella over me, sheltering me from the percussive plops of fat raindrops. “Miss Andi,” Tank said, his voice urgent, “what you saw out there—it can’t hurt you. What we saw, what we heard—”

  “The professor says we should only believe in what we can see and hear and touch,” I answered, my voice shaking. “Well, I saw and heard, and I’ll never forget it. We all saw and heard it—”

  “Andi—” Tank hesitated. “There are more things in this world than you know.”

  A wr
y chuckle slipped from my lips. “This isn’t the time to be paraphrasing Shakespeare.”

  “I’m not paraphrasin’ anything,” Tank replied. “But surely you know—I mean, look at us. Look at this group and think about the odds against us ever comin’ together. We’ve been given special gifts, and I know there’s a powerful reason for those gifts, just like I know there’s a reason we’ve been brought together.”

  I pressed my hand to my head and turned toward the house. “I need to get inside. I need . . . light.”

  I made my way back to the kitchen, where the professor handed me a clean towel. When he saw how my hands were trembling, he wrapped the towel around my shoulders, then went back to keep an eye on Daniel.

  Tank stayed outside with Brenda, urging her to get up, even slipping his arm around her thin shoulders. I don’t know how he did it, but he got her to come back inside, though the woman he escorted through the doorway looked nothing like the confident, sassy woman I’d come to know. Her eye was partly swollen—probably the result of a collision with Daniel’s elbow—and her face was wet with tears and rain. Tank guided her to a chair, then handed her a clean towel as well.

  “Let me turn on that fancy hot drink machine,” he said, hobbling into the kitchen. “I think I can set us all up with coffee or somethin’.”

  A few minutes later, we were all sipping from hot mugs and sitting around the fireplace in the living room. Daniel lay in a huddle on Safta’s bearskin rug, the professor had taken Sabba’s easy chair, and Brenda perched on the edge of the oversized ottoman. I sat on the floor by the fire and watched as Tank finally took a seat next to Brenda. Only after a few minutes had passed did I realize that he had picked up a book on his way to the living room.

  “I think”—my voice trembled—“we need to talk about what just happened. We need to compare notes from our varied perspectives.”

  “Nothing happened.” The professor crossed his arms. “The boy had a breakdown, that’s all.”

  I stared at the professor, but he refused to meet my gaze. Instead, he set his jaw and stared at the flickering fire.

  I understood. His mind was still trying to sort through everything he’d endured in Port Avalon. Asking him to absorb all this, too—it was too much.

  “I saw . . . an orb,” I said, turning to Brenda and Tank. “For lack of a better word, I guess that’s what I’ll call it. It had a window, and I saw this . . . clown-like creature in it. And then I heard Abby scream.”

  Brenda, Tank, and the professor turned their heads sharply, looking at me with incredulity.

  “You heard a dog?” Brenda said. “I heard a child.”

  “Sounded like a lineman to me,” Tank said. “Like the guy I hit last season and broke his leg. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but accidents happen. At least that’s what Coach told me.”

  I looked at the professor and waited. Finally, after several seconds had ticked away on the mantel clock, he shook off his false indifference. “All right, I saw it,” he said, his jaw tight. “I don’t know what it was, but it was exactly like you described, so I have obviously been influenced by the power of suggestion.”

  “And what did you hear?” Brenda asked.

  The professor clamped his lips together.

  “Professor?” I tilted my head to meet his gaze. “We all heard something. What did you hear?”

  A muscle worked in his jaw, then he glared at me. “I heard myself, okay? I heard myself screaming like someone had set me on fire. And while self-immolation is not something I aspire to, the experience was entirely too much like what I felt in the House in Port Avalon. So I do not wish to discuss it further.”

  “It’s as if someone”—Brenda paused as if choosing the right word—“knows us well. They’re messing with our minds.”

  “If someone is messing with our minds,” I said gently, “then who is that someone?”

  Silence stretched between us as we considered the possibilities. We had seen strange forces at work in the past few weeks, and the fact that we kept finding ourselves together had persuaded us—or at least some of us—that someone kept bringing us together. If the uniting force was good, and the destructive force evil . . .

  The professor would insist that life was rarely so black and white.

  Tank broke the heavy silence by picking up his book. “Listen to this, guys: ‘Therefore the land mourns, and everyone living there languishes, wild animals, too, and the birds in the air, even the fish in the sea are removed.’”

  I looked at him, bewildered. “What are you reading?”

  Tank shrugged. “I found this book on your grandfather’s nightstand. I was flipping through it when I saw this bit about the birds and fish.”

  “Let me see that.” I stood and went to Tank, then recognized the book. “You’re reading from Hoshea. This is Sabba’s copy of the Tanakh.”

  “Really.” Cynicism lined the professor’s voice. “Bad enough that we’ve all shared a mass hallucination due to the suggestions of the drunken fool next door, but to follow it all up with religious nonsense—”

  “It’s all here.” Tank lifted the book. “The birds dying, animals, fish—it’s all predicted here. The earth is mourning. The birds and fish and wild animals are dying, but no one wants to recognize the truth. Andi has seen the pattern, and she knows what it means.”

  “Tank.” Brenda glared at him from beneath her dreadlocks. “What we saw out there had nothing to do with God.”

  “You’re right about that.” A small smile lit the big guy’s face. “But what if God has an enemy, and his time is running out? He could be feelin’ the pressure, and be determined to destroy as much as he can in the short time he has left. He’s sent his minions out to destroy and confuse people—”

  “That’s it.” The professor shook his hands as if washing them of everything we had seen and heard. “I’m going to bed. I’ll see you all in the morning, when I expect we’ll all be eager to get back on the jet and head home.” He turned toward me. “Be sure to thank your grandparents, et cetera, et cetera. This hasn’t exactly been a relaxing time, but it has convinced me that I am as susceptible to mass hallucinations as anyone else.”

  One by one, they headed toward their rooms—Brenda and Daniel left after the professor, and soon only Tank and I remained by the fireplace. I missed Abby. The heaviness of grief was like a dead body strapped to my shoulders, weighing me down, draining my energy and my joy.

  I knew Tank sensed my sadness. Anyone who knew me had to realize that if someone took Abby, they’d stolen something vital and precious from me.

  “I . . . miss her,” I said, my voice breaking. “I don’t know if you can understand, but for years, she was the only friend I had. I was a misfit, but never around her.”

  Tank remained silent, letting my words hang in the space between us. And then, just when I thought he hadn’t been paying attention, he reached out, caught my chin, and lifted my face to meet his gaze.

  “God doesn’t lie,” he said simply, his gaze shifting toward the sliding doors as if that gruesome caricature of a clown might return at any moment. “And He’s more powerful than anything out there.”

  “Then why,” I asked, “couldn’t He keep Abby safe?”

  I got up and went to my room, too, leaving Tank alone to guard the fire.

  CHAPTER

  13

  We ate breakfast—or Daniel did, anyway—in a thick silence. None of us wanted to talk about the night before, but every other topic felt silly and stupid in comparison. How could we talk about the weather or travel plans after what we’d seen? How could we talk about anything?

  As shaken as we were, I didn’t feel uncomfortable. For some reason I felt weirdly connected to everyone at the table. Despite our differences and our disagreements, I knew I would rather be miserable with them than indifferent by myself.

  Brenda made coffee, then filled four mugs and passed them out. Like automatons, we poured in cream and sugars, then sipped and stared at the polished
surface of the dining room table.

  I never would have believed that Daniel would be the first to speak.

  “They were real,” he said, making eye contact with me for the first time in—well, ever. “I see them all the time.”

  I blinked at him, then looked at the others, who were also watching Daniel. The boy didn’t seem inclined to say anything else, though, and went back to eating his cereal.

  “The kid is right, but I don’t think they were aliens,” Tank said. He spoke slowly, as if carefully considering each word. “I don’t think that clown thing and his buddies came from another galaxy. They might have come from another dimension, and I’m pretty sure they’ve been on earth and around earth since the birth of this planet. I think they were demons, just like the ones we saw in action at the Institute for Psychic Studies.”

  I couldn’t have been more surprised if Tank had begun to sing opera at the breakfast table. The big guy was usually two steps behind us, yet there he was, offering a theory that sort of made sense. But was it our answer?

  “Demons?” Brenda looked at him with bleary eyes. “You’re telling me I couldn’t sleep last night because I saw a demon?”

  Tank shrugged. “Fallen angels, demons—call ’em whatever you want. But they’re real and they meddle in people’s affairs . . . even though most sophisticated folks don’t want to admit they exist.”

  “And that explains why you believe so devoutly,” the professor said. He twisted in his chair. “So what’s the point, Tank? What are we doing here? If these events are caused by supernatural forces, we mere humans may as well go home.”

  “No, because we have gifts. And we have power.” Tank flashed a grin bright enough to be featured in a toothpaste commercial. “The power’s not in us, but God can give us the power to fight them and the people who work for them. And more important, I think God’s the one who brought us together. We’re supposed to cooperate and warn people. We’re supposed to interpret the signs.”

  “I didn’t get a call from God,” Brenda said, “I got a call from Andi. And God didn’t fly me here, Andi’s grandpa did. As I recall, you were on the same jet.”