by Tony Abbott
Cosmic Boy Versus Mezmo Head!
The Weird Zone, Book 7
Tony Abbott
To Dolores, for her never-ending faith
Contents
1. Sounds of Weirdness!
2. Class Brain
3. Toys in the Attic
4. Mind Games
5. The Power of Power!
6. Cosmic Boy!
7. Almost Aliens
8. Showdown!
9. Take That! And That!
10. Klatoo the Destroyer
11. Just Normal Weird
Preview: Revenge of the Tiki Men!
About the Author
1
Sounds of Weirdness!
Zwhrrrr—rrrrr!
Jeff Ryan walked slowly backward out his front door. The big white satellite dish on his roof was spinning like crazy.
“Something’s going on,” Jeff mumbled to himself. He shifted a brightly colored box that he was holding in his arms.
Errrkk! An army truck screeched to a stop in his driveway and a bunch of men in army uniforms jumped out. They carried a small wooden crate to the house.
“Something big is going on!” Jeff whispered.
Jeff’s mother, who was also dressed in an army uniform, and his father, who puffed on a pipe, met the soldiers in the doorway.
Jeff heard only a few words of what they were saying. “… Last night … fell from the sky … top secret … global invasion … like a cabbage.”
“Cabbage?” Jeff repeated to himself. “The army delivers vegetables now?”
A moment later, the soldiers climbed back into the truck and sped off. Jeff’s parents carried the small crate inside.
“Bye-bye, sweetheart!” Mrs. Ryan called from the doorway. She blew Jeff a kiss.
For years, his parents had told him that the top-secret, high-security, fenced-in area north of Grover’s Mill where his mother worked was really a shoe store.
But Jeff knew it wasn’t. It was an army base. His friends said the army captured alien junk and did things with it there. Jeff wasn’t sure if that was strange, or just normal everyday parent stuff.
Except that normal everyday stuff didn’t seem to happen in Grover’s Mill. That’s why his friends called their town The Weird Zone.
“The center of intergalactic weirdness,” Jeff mumbled, stepping to the sidewalk. “The Zone. A place where all the grown-ups are Zoners.”
Bong! The giant donut-shaped clock on top of the Double Dunk Donut Den chimed the hour.
Sssss! The oversized pancake pan on Usher’s House of Pancakes hissed out a cloud of smoke.
Jeff smiled. Those two restaurants had been bonging and hissing the hours for as long as he could remember.
Bweeeep! A high-pitched sound screeched through the air.
Jeff frowned. “That’s a new one.” He turned to see a man crouching in the bushes across the street. The man seemed to be holding a large leafy green thing in front of his face as a disguise. And he wore green shoes.
The instant he saw Jeff, the man slipped back between the bushes and disappeared.
“Well, okay. That’s a little strange.” Jeff shifted the box and walked to the center of Grover’s Mill. He stopped in front of the X-Rays Us Medical Clinic to wait for his best friend, Sean Vickers.
They walked to school together almost every day.
And today was special. The W. Reid Elementary School annual play tryouts were that morning. Jeff’s teacher, Mrs. Carbonese, was directing an outer-space version of The Wizard of Oz. Jeff and his friends were going to try out.
The box Jeff was bringing had part of the Wizard’s costume in it.
Jeff crouched and opened the box. It was his favorite toy a few years ago—a Cosmic Boy Space Helmet. It was based on the old TV show about a boy with incredible powers. Jeff was way beyond toys and shows like that now.
He pulled out the gray plastic bowl-shaped helmet with knobs on it. It had a row of tiny lights across the front and two antennas sticking up behind the ears.
“Pretty old, but still cool.” Jeff put the helmet on his head. It was tight. The helmet was made for a much smaller head. He turned to look at himself in the window of X-Rays Us.
Blink! Bzzz! Whrrr! The lights across the forehead blinked off and on, a little buzzer on top buzzed, and the antennas began to whirl slowly.
“Whoa!” Jeff exclaimed. “It still works!”
“So, Cosmic Boy, we meet again!” came a deep and gravelly voice.
Jeff whirled in fear. Then he laughed. “Sean!”
Sean Vickers trotted up to him. “Excellent helmet!” He tapped Jeff’s plastic head a couple of times. “I wonder who will get to play the Wiz—”
Zzzzzzt! A sudden buzzing sound came from inside the X-Rays Us Medical Clinic.
“The big machine!” said Sean. “They’re using it!”
The two friends looked through the window at a huge complicated machine with tubes and lights and wires and shiny metal parts. Bending over the controls was a man in a white lab coat.
“That X-ray machine has awesome power,” Sean whispered to Jeff. “It blasts nuclear energy right through people’s heads!”
“Are you sure?” Jeff wrinkled his nose. “X-ray machines don’t really work like that, do they?”
Sean shrugged. “That’s what I’ve heard.”
Jeff nodded. “It reminds me of the sounds coming from my dad’s office when he works at home.”
Sean turned to Jeff and frowned. “Have you ever actually seen that office, Jeff?”
“It’s in the attic. He doesn’t want me in there.”
“A secret room in your house that makes noises?” said Sean. “Pretty zoney, Jeff. Come on, let’s go. We just have one short class, then tryouts!”
It was then that Jeff noticed the sign in the X-Rays Us window. It said, CLOSED FOR VACATION. SEE-THROUGH YOU LATER!
“Wait a second,” Jeff said, grabbing Sean’s arm and pointing to the sign. “If the clinic is supposed to be closed, then who’s that guy using the machine?”
Sean’s eyes widened as the man in the white coat continued to press buttons on the machine. The man still had his back to the boys.
“Ah, a mystery!” Sean whispered. He put his finger to his lips and tiptoed into the clinic. Jeff was right behind him.
Suddenly—zzzzzt!—the X-ray machine buzzed loudly, exploding with large sparks.
The room flashed with bright light.
“Whoa!” Sean shouted. “He’s gonna zap us!” Sean turned to run just as the man in the white coat jumped away from the exploding sparks.
Bweeeep! came a screeching sound.
Jeff tried to move, but Sean slammed him hard and the man tumbled back into both of them.
WHAM—WHAM—WHAM!
The three people crashed into one another with the force of planets colliding!
“Whoooomph!” groaned Sean as he drove Jeff out through the door to the sidewalk.
In the instant before he dropped, Jeff turned to see the man holding a large green vegetable in front of his face.
“Weird! Cabbage!” Jeff cried out, as he—umph!—slammed to the ground, his plastic Cosmic Boy helmet crunching down hard.
“My head!” he groaned.
Then things went dark in that head.
2
Class Brain
Thump-thump-thump!
When Jeff opened his eyes, he was facedown on the sidewalk outside the X-Rays Us Medical Clinic.
His head throbbed. His ears throbbed. His eyes throbbed. Thump-thump-thump!
“Uhhhh!” Jeff groaned as he slid out from under Sean’s legs and got up. “Oh, man, my head hurts. My ears hurt. My eyes hurt!”
Sean d
usted himself off and got up, too. The two friends were alone on the sidewalk.
“Wait,” said Jeff, glancing around. “Where’s the guy?” He looked up and down and all around Main Street. “The guy in the white coat. I think I saw him outside my house this morning. And he had some kind of big vegetable …”
“Never mind him,” said Sean, shaking his head. “We’re lucky we didn’t get zapped to death with nuclear-powered X-rays. Now, come on. Put your helmet back in the box and let’s go.”
“I guess.” Jeff continued to look up and down the street. “It was a cabbage, I think. Big leaves.”
Jeff slipped off the chin strap of his Cosmic Boy Space Helmet and pulled.
“Ouch!” A sharp pain went through his head.
The helmet wouldn’t budge. Jeff tugged again. It hurt more and still wouldn’t move. “Sean, it’s stuck on my head. Do something!”
Sean chewed his lip. “Well, I could sing the Cosmic Boy theme song and you could fly around. I don’t remember all of it, though.”
“Cut it out!” Jeff yelled, pulling again. “This is serious!”
But Sean sang what he knew.
No evil ploy,
No scheme or trick,
Can stop the Boy
Known as Cosmic!
Space Ahoy! Cosmic Boy!
“I can’t remember the rest,” said Sean.
“Thanks a lot.” Jeff gave his friend a nasty look. The gray plastic helmet felt strange on his head. But it was really on tight now. “I can’t go to school like this.”
Sean started toward school. “It looks okay. Sort of. Straighten your antennas, though. They’re bent.”
Jeff slumped along behind Sean. “Maybe I’ll be lucky, and no one will say anything.”
“Hey, everybody, look at Jeff!” shouted Mike Mazur when Jeff and Sean walked into the main hall of W. Reid Elementary School. “He’s got a toy space helmet on his head!”
Running up the hall behind Mike were Liz Duffey and Sean’s sister, Holly.
Liz raised her eyebrows when she saw Jeff. “You must be the new kid. Welcome to Earth!”
Jeff smiled a fake smile under his helmet. “Sean jammed it on my head and now I can’t take it off without taking off my ears, too. And now my head is itchy.”
“Do you get cable on that thing?” asked Mike.
“Not funny,” said Jeff.
Mike examined the gray plastic blinking helmet closely. “You know, it’s amazing when you think about it. The brain is this big mushy thing sitting right there behind your forehead.”
Sean nodded. “It’s a lot neater that way. If your brain were on the outside, stuff would get stuck to it all the time.”
“Especially in all those wrinkles,” said Mike.
“It would probably hurt to iron them, though,” Jeff said.
“But at least they’d look neat,” said Sean.
“STOP IT!” cried Liz, slapping her hands over her ears. “You guys are shorting out my brain!”
Brrrrng! The morning bell rang.
“Thank you!” said Liz, heading off down the hall.
Jeff followed his friends to his classroom. Zzzz! went his helmet. His forehead blinked. His antennas twirled. He got some strange looks, even from the kindergartners.
“Maybe you could wear a turban or something,” said Mike. “Maybe a chef’s hat.”
“They don’t make hats that big,” said Sean, heading for his classroom. “See you at tryouts, Cosmic Boy!” He and Mike went into their classroom across the hall.
Jeff shook his head and turned to Holly and Liz. “This isn’t going to work. Everybody’s going to ask me dumb questions.”
“That’s because you look super smart, Jeff,” said Holly as they swung into their room. “By the way, do you know what’s for lunch today?”
“No!” Jeff slumped into his seat in front of Holly and next to Liz. The other kids in the class giggled at him. His lights flickered. His head itched.
“Play tryouts are next period, Jeff,” a boy said.
Jeff tried to smile. “I’m starting early.”
Mrs. Carbonese, their white-haired teacher, looked up from her desk. “We’re not landing planes here, Jeff. Please stop blinking.”
“Yes, Mrs. Carbonese.” Jeff tried to turn off the lights just as the PA system crackled to life.
“Ahem!” boomed the voice of Principal Bell. “As you know, this morning we are holding tryouts for The Wizard of Oz, delightfully updated for our modern times. Mrs. Carbonese will direct and my accordion and I will provide the music!”
Mrs. Carbonese smiled shyly at the class.
“Dancing astronauts, musical aliens,” the principal went on. “There are parts for everyone!”
Liz shook her head and whispered to Jeff and Holly. “I’d like to see the Zoners get up on that stage. Now that would be interesting.”
“And scary,” whispered Holly. “Can you imagine Mrs. C. as a singing space woman?”
“Or Principal Bell doing his accordion thing. Talk about a musical alien!” said Liz.
Bweeeep! A sound came from somewhere.
“Jeff,” said Mrs. Carbonese, looking up, “you’re beeping.”
Jeff frowned and adjusted his controls. “That wasn’t me, was it?” That sound reminded him of the strange man that morning. He was sure the man in the bushes and the man with the X-ray machine were the same. And then there was the cabbage. What was that all about?
Jeff sighed. No, this wasn’t going to be a normal everyday kind of day. It was going to be the other kind of day—weird.
Then, as Mrs. Carbonese went to the blackboard, Jeff saw something in the hallway just beyond the door.
A flash of white? A white coat?
“Name the American president during the Civil War,” Mrs. Carbonese said, scraping a nib of chalk across the blackboard.
Bzzzzt! Jeff’s helmet buzzed accidentally as he tried to see out into the hall.
“Your head just made a noise, Jeff,” Mrs. Carbonese said. “Does that mean you know the answer?”
“It’s the guy in the long white coat!” Jeff blurted out.
Mrs. Carbonese frowned. “No, actually, the president usually wore a long black coat. There is a famous memorial to this great man. Where is it?”
“At the X-ray place!” Jeff said, squinting into the hall to see more.
“No, no,” said the teacher. “One final clue. What famous thing did he wear on his head?”
“A cabbage!” Jeff cried, rising from his seat.
“It is clear you haven’t been studying,” Mrs. Carbonese mumbled.
Bweeeep!
That sound! It came from the hall.
“It’s him! He’s there!” shouted Jeff, stumbling between the desks and out of the classroom.
“Jeff Ryan, take your seat!” Mrs. Carbonese said.
But he couldn’t. The man in the white coat was standing in the shadows near the end of the hall. He seemed to have that leafy cabbage with him again.
“Who are you?” Jeff asked as he approached the shadows.
Then the man stepped into the light.
“No!” A jolt of horror struck Jeff as he realized something. “But … you’re not holding a cabbage! It’s your … head! You’ve got a cabbage … for a head!”
3
Toys in the Attic
“You!” the man with the cabbage head began. “You have something of mine, and—”
Brnnnng! The bell rang and the hall filled instantly with students.
“Tryouts!” shouted Sean, dashing from his classroom and nearly knocking Jeff down again. “To the auditorium!”
Jeff jumped back quickly and turned around. The man with the large green cabbage for a head had disappeared.
Jeff’s own head ached and throbbed. The Cosmic Boy helmet was pinching his ears. “I don’t get it. What’s going on here? Who is that guy? What is that guy?”
Liz came out of the classroom with Holly. She gave Jeff a look. “Jeff,
you really should have known the answers to those questions Mrs. C. was asking.”
“Questions? But didn’t you see that guy? He was … different …” Jeff stammered, then he stopped. Wait. Maybe he didn’t see what he thought he saw. Or hear what he thought he heard.
“Plus you have that brain helmet, Jeff,” said Holly. “It’s supposed to make you look smarter. Anyway, come on. Tryouts.”
Jeff followed his friends into the auditorium. On the floor in front of the stage was a long table filled with costumes and makeup. Standing in the middle of the stage was a large painted box with a curtain in front of it.
“Cool!” said Sean, walking over with Mike. “Behind that curtain is where the great and powerful Oz will sit. That’s the part I want.”
“But Jeff’s already got the helmet,” said Mike. “He’s halfway there.”
Jeff shook his helmeted head. Halfway crazy, maybe. He turned to his friends. “I think there’s an alien—”
Woooooooo! Mrs. Carbonese blew hard into a silver whistle she always wore around her neck. “Silence, please!”
Zzzzt! Bzzz! Whrrr! Nnnn! went Jeff’s helmet.
Mrs. Carbonese jerked around. “Jeff Ryan, is that your noisy head again? I’m afraid you’ll have to wait in that box behind the curtain until I call for you.”
Jeff slumped his shoulders and walked up the stage steps to the box with the curtain in front.
But when Jeff pulled aside the curtain, there he was! The man! The alien! With the cabbage-shaped head, all green and leafy!
His legs were crossed. At the ends of his legs were, not green shoes, but green feet!
“Ahhhhh!” cried Jeff, stumbling backward.
“Oh, what now?” said Mrs. Carbonese. “Jeff, these interruptions are hurting your chances of getting the part you want.”
“You have it!” the creature suddenly whispered to Jeff. His voice was raspy and deep. In the middle of his head were two enormous yellow eyes with red veins running through them.
“You have it!” the alien man repeated.
“The part of the Wizard?” asked Jeff.
“No, the Mezmo Head!” the alien said.
“The part of the Mezmo Head?” said Jeff.
The curtain moved and Sean and Mike came over to where Jeff was standing. “Hey, Jeff, what’s going on—whoa! Great costume! What part are you?” Sean said to the creature in the chair.