Joe thought that was a great idea. He grabbed the knob and started to pull the door shut just as the Arkamendians sent a rush of shadows straight for us.
Joe slammed the door, but the ribbons of darkness curled up from the crack underneath the door and swirled all around us. We sputtered and beat at the air with our hands, breaking up the shadows into puffs of dark smoke that lingered menacingly in the narrow hallway.
I rushed forward, holding the lantern out in front of me, and now even Sue hurried right along behind us.
We turned a corner, and this time I let out a cry of alarm, even though I knew what was coming.
Cottage Cheese Head, cloaked in dark material, looked just like he had that time when he’d accidentally scared me in the middle of the night—a glowing head floating down the hallway.
He looked right at us. “The living must beware…” he croaked, “the Hound of Hell!”
Snarffle raced past him and started chomping on everything in the cellar. Boxes of rusted junk, a stack of moldy magazines, an old tire; all of it ripped apart by his powerful teeth and gulped noisily down his cavernous gullet. It looked like he could eat the entire house. (At least that part of the show was true.)
“The Hound of Hell consumes everything in its path!” (The warbly delivery was a little too over-the-top theatrical for my taste, but whatever.) Snarffle continued to chomp and slurp his way through the piles of junk. He might’ve been smiling—I think he liked his new nickname—but I was hoping the Maxwells wouldn’t notice.
Cottage Cheese Head brought one pale white hand out from underneath his dark robe so that it looked like disembodied fingers pointing in the opposite direction down the hall. “Go! Save yourselves from his hideous appetite. Save yourselves!”
I grabbed Joe’s arm, and Amy latched on to Sue, and we took off. If we stayed there for one more moment I was afraid that they’d see past the gaping mouth and chomping teeth and notice that the Hound of Hell looked like a purple beach ball. (We had tried to put a costume on Snarffle, but he just kept eating it.)
We zigged and zagged around corners, turning down different hallways.
Suddenly I stopped. The corridor dead-ended at a brick wall, and standing there were the slime-drippers. They were down on their knees, wailing and moaning.
When they saw us they lifted up their hands, rivulets of slime dripping down their arms and pooling on the floor.
“Help us! Please!”
“We want to join the world of the living again!”
I spun around and blundered through our little group to get out of the hallway.
“What was happening back there?” I heard Sue say in the dark as the group speed-shuffled along behind me.
“They were covered in ectoplasm!” Joe answered.
“What is that?”
“It’s a substance supposedly created when spirits cross over into the physical world.”
“Supposedly? That looked pretty real to me.”
“Will you two be quiet?” Amy whispered. “I don’t want them to follow us.”
I rushed around a few more corners. To the Maxwells, I hoped that it seemed like mindless, terrified running. But I was actually herding us toward our final scene.
Unfortunately, I found the right hallway by smell. I know it sounds stupid, but I didn’t realize that ketchup would be so stinky when you dump out that many bottles. Hopefully Joe and Sue would be too freaked out to notice.
Ketchup was splattered across the floor in bright streaks. It was smeared along the walls in red handprints. It was pooled in the corners.
“Oh, my word!” Sue cried.
I turned and swung the lantern around and saw the Maxwells standing perfectly still, clutching each other. Now for the final surprise to send them over the edge.…
I leaned against the wall for support and held up the lantern, the light playing across all of those red puddles. “This…this is the reason the house is haunted,” I breathed. “Something terrible happened here many years ago, and ever since then—”
Crash!
A ketchup-stained door flew open in front of us and banged against the wall.
The father from the body-parts-switching alien family stood in the doorway…one fist gripping a handful of hair so that his head dangled below.
He raised his arm stiffly and lifted up the face so the eyes stared right at us. “What have I done?” his disembodied head wailed. “Oh, what have I done?”
A screechy sound right out of a horror movie filled the room (courtesy of Mrs. Crowzen, who was hiding in the closet and doing that thing with the bumps on her chest plate), and flashes of “lightning” (Crowzen again, operating a strobe light) lit up the scene.
The torsos of all of the alien family members were lying around the room…completely covered by a pile of twitching arms and legs. Oh, and completely covered in ketchup too. Lots of red, runny ketchup.
Amy screamed. It was a good one.
But then I noticed that a couple of the kids inside the room were smiling. And a few of the dismembered hands were waving to us. I lunged to slam the door shut before Joe and Sue Maxwell noticed.
This was it: the moment of truth. We had shown them every horrible detail of the “haunted” house, and now this was the part where they were supposed to run away screaming and never come back.
I turned to look at them. They were frozen to the spot, staring at the ketchup-smeared door. But they weren’t running away. I was kind of hoping that they’d be running away by now.
Someone coughed behind the door with the red streaks. It was a very normal, everyday sound. Not a scary sound at all.
Sue tilted her head to the side, listening. There were whispers coming from behind the door now. The aliens were probably wondering when they could put their limbs back on and wash off all that smelly ketchup. Again, not a real scary sound.
I looked a question at Amy, but she just shrugged. What were we supposed to do now? I guess we hadn’t really rehearsed our exit strategy. It’s not like we could just politely show them to the front door as if they’d been visiting for tea.
The entire future of the Intergalactic Bed & Breakfast hung in the balance. If we stayed down here much longer, all sorts of holes would be poked into this increasingly flimsy illusion we had set up. The slime-drippers were going to run by, laughing, or the Arkamendians would make brightly colored rainbows that would swirl around and cheerfully light up the whole cellar, or Snarffle would race down here to start licking up all the ketchup. He’d probably nuzzle up to Sue in the hope that she would scratch the blue dots on his rump. From what I’ve read, Hounds of Hell are not really known for that type of behavior.
I didn’t know what to do. Why do my plans never work out the way I want them to? I was so flustered that I was just as frozen as the Maxwells.
But it didn’t matter. Because just then the worst possible thing happened.
The circle in the middle of the door at the end of the hall began to glow a bright blue, and the last active transporter hummed to life.
The glowing blue circle started to pulse, getting faster and faster in time with a high thrumming sound. A cloud of steam seeped from underneath the door and curled toward the ceiling. There was a faint whoosh sound. The door began to ease open.
We all stood there and stared.
I realized that whatever kind of Tourist walked (or crawled or slithered) out of that transporter, it would ruin any slim chance we still had of pulling this off. When the Maxwells knowingly made their first face-to-face contact with a real space alien, they were going to see right through our plan. We’d never be rid of them, or their UFO-obsessed network of friends. And Grandma would never forgive me. I knew it was really the end for the B&B this time.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The thing that came out of the transporter was a monster, far scarier than anything we could have dreamed up for our fake haunted house.
It had a huge black body and a demon-red face. It came barr
eling out as if it had been shot from a cannon.
The bizarrely shaped body seemed to take up the entire hallway. And it was coming straight for us.
We all turned and ran, and there was no need to act anymore. All of the screams were genuine. (Yes, even mine.)
I lost my sweaty grip on the lantern handle, and we were swallowed by the darkness. The monster was roaring behind us. It might even have been using words, but I was too terrified to make them out.
My foot crashed into something and I tripped, but my body was painfully stopped short before I ever hit the ground. I realized that I was sprawled across the cellar stairs.
The wind had been knocked out of me, but I managed to croak, “Over here. This way.”
The others nearly ran right over my back in their rush to escape. We stampeded up the steps together, and when the four of us banged into the doors with our shoulders, they gave way. We crawled out of the cellar and back into the moonlight.
As soon as our little group was out and on the lawn again, we turned, slammed the cellar doors shut, and sat on top of them.
Joe and Sue Maxwell looked at us, their terrified faces shining with sweat. Joe had lost his toupee somewhere and I didn’t need any secret government machines to read his thought rays: Get us out of here!
Sue opened her mouth to say something, but just then the cellar doors lifted an inch underneath us before slamming back down again. The monster was trying to smash its way out.
“Okay, okay, we believe you!” Joe cried. “Now, how do you make it stop?”
Amy and I didn’t have to pretend to be completely freaked out. “We don’t know!”
Sue grabbed Joe and pulled him off the doors. This time—with only Amy and me holding them down—the doors lifted a good two or three inches when the monster smashed into them from below.
“Where are you going?” Amy cried.
“You can’t just leave us!” Man, I never thought I would say something like that to someone like them.
“Yes we can!” Sue cried. “And we’re never coming back!” She pulled on Joe’s arm until he finally turned away, and they ran off into the night.
The cellar doors crashed upward a few more times, Amy clinging to me in terror, before they finally settled.
We could hear the terrible space beast wheezing below us. Was there a chance it was getting tired?
“What in the Sam Hill is going on up there?” a voice called from the cellar. “Let me out of here right this durn minute!”
Amy looked at me, then down at the doors.
“Dad?”
We stepped off of the doors onto the lawn, and Head of Security Robert Tate made his way out of the cellar. The leathery porcupine-quill things bounced all over as he climbed each step, and the black-feathered headdress framed his huffing and puffing face.
We all just stood there for a few moments, staring at each other.
Tate looked at our shocked faces, then down at his alien outfit, then back up at us again. “Don’t say a word. Not one word.”
Thankfully I was still too jacked up on adrenaline and terror to laugh. I just nodded.
Tate motioned toward the cellar. “Just what were you two doing down there, anyway? Who were those people? Why are there Tourists lurking around down there? And just why in tarnation would you—”
Amy stepped forward and hugged her dad fiercely around his big midsection. He stopped the interrogation and wrapped his arms around her.
“It’s so good to see you again, Daddy,” Amy said, her face pressed up against that sleek, shiny (and very stretched-out) material. “I was worried about you.”
Tate leaned down and kissed the top of her head. “You too, sweetie.”
“How did you make it back?”
Tate exhaled heavily. “Well, it turns out they had an emergency transporter on that dang cruise ship after all. I managed to get in touch with someone from security and explained who I was.” He shook his head and looked up at the sky. “Finally found someone who was properly impressed with the fact that I work for the Intergalactic Police Force,” he muttered.
Amy squeezed him even tighter. “However you did it, I’m glad you’re home.” Eventually she pulled away and looked up at him. “But I think that maybe Don’t say a word should go both ways, okay?” She patted his outlandish costume. “It looks like we’ve both been through a lot. But you’re home safe, and we’re okay, and everything at the b-and-b is fine.” She hugged him again. “So maybe no questions this time. Okay?”
Tate fixed me with a long stare. Too long. His eyes bore right through me. I started to sweat. I hadn’t been this freaked out since…well, since five minutes ago, when he burst through the transporter looking like a monster.
Finally he took a deep breath and his glare softened a little. “Thanks for taking care of the place while I was gone, David.” He looked down at Amy for a moment, then back at me. “And thank you for being there for my daughter. I appreciate it.”
I discovered that I was able to breathe again. “You’re welcome, sir.”
Tate gently put Amy at arm’s length and cleared his throat. “And, uh…speaking of not saying a word, that’s actually not such a shabby idea. And, you know, maybe we should just keep all of this between ourselves when your grandma gets back.” He studied the ground for a moment. “What do you kids think of that?”
I thought that was, by far, the best idea that Tate had ever had. “No reason to ruin her vacation, right?”
“Exactly.” He cleared his throat again and scuffed his foot along the grass. “Besides, she’s probably having so much fun on her off-world adventure that this place will have lost some of its shine for her. We don’t need to trouble her with the fact that I raced off the planet to look for her, or with how I might have been dressed when I got back, or with”—he gestured down the cellar steps—“with whatever you kids have been up to.”
“Don’t worry, Dad,” Amy said, patting him on one shiny black arm. “I’m sure she’ll be glad to be back. She loves it here. And I’m sure she loves working with us, no matter how many amazing life forms she meets from around the universe.”
“Well, I sure hope so,” said Tate. “Because I—”
I never got to hear the end of Tate’s thoughts on the matter, though, because just then a commotion kicked up behind him as all of the Tourists made their way out of the cellar.
“Did it work?” Cottage Cheese Head said.
“Did they leave?” the Pink Blob asked.
I nodded. “Yep, and I think they’re gone for good. Thanks so much for helping us out, everyone.”
The Tourists cheered while the kids swarmed around Amy and me, firing off questions.
“Did our slime freak them out?”
“Did I slam the door at the right time?”
“I heard them scream. That’s good, right? Humans do that when they’re scared?”
We laughed and gave everybody high fives and told them they were great.
Amy reached out and squeezed my hand. One of the little girl aliens stepped closer, peering up at us. “Are you going to mash your speech organs together again now?”
“They certainly are not,” Tate said.
Snarffle raced around our little gathering, sniffing and smiling and licking and slobbering. When the kids tired of asking questions, they surrounded the little purple guy and scratched him all over. They didn’t seem to mind the splotches of ketchup on his face.
Kandeel appeared beside me and took my hand to pull me down to her level. She was looking at the ground. “Sorry I laughed, David. I hope I didn’t ruin your scary house idea.”
“Are you kidding me?” I picked her up and cradled her in one arm, and she turned the same color as my T-shirt. “You were the creepiest part of the whole thing.”
Her whole face lit up. “Really?”
“You bet. Even I was scared.” That cracked her up.
While we were all standing out on the lawn under the full moon, telling war stories
about how we had performed in the cellar, Mrs. Crowzen sidled up to Tate. “Ooooohhh,” she said, looking the big man up and down, “this is the latest fashion design to come out of the Sarlazian Galaxy. However did you get your hands on it?”
“Is that some kind of a joke?” he spluttered.
“Of course not.” She rubbed her claw along the sleek material of Tate’s outfit. “It’s gorgeous.” Is it possible for crunchy exoskeleton crab plates to blush? Because it sort of seemed like it. “Why, I’m seeing you in a whole new light,” she said shyly.
Tate’s cheeks puffed out and turned red again. He looked right at me. “This is one more thing we don’t tell your grandma, understand?” Then he stormed up the back porch steps and into the house.
Amy looked over at me and—with the tension of protecting the B&B finally broken—we both burst out laughing. We went on for a long, long time. Amy laughed so hard her knees went rubbery and she collapsed against me for support. I propped her up and we half-hugged and laughed out all of the stress of the past week. The aliens chuckled along with us, although I’m not really sure they knew why.
After wiping laugh tears out of my eyes and catching my breath, I nodded toward the cellar doors. “Let’s get those closed up. We have a lot of cleaning to do, but we should probably wait until the morning.” Now that the ordeal was over, I desperately needed to sleep.
Something was tugging at my shirt. I looked down, and there was Kanduu trying to get my attention.
“What’s up, big guy?”
He looked at me very seriously. “You’ve taught me one very important thing about Earth.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”
He rubbed at those segmented ridges over his belly. “We’re going to need a lot of corn dogs to clean up all that ketchup.”
When I woke up the next morning, bright sunlight was streaming in through my bedroom window, a somewhat unusual sight in the Pacific Northwest. But even stranger were the smells drifting up from downstairs. Coffee. Baking bread. Hash browns on the griddle.
Aliens in Disguise Page 16
