Abduction

by Rodman Philbrick

  These were the creatures from his near-drowning vision in the quarry pool.

  His mind reeled. What was happening to him? Was any of this real?

  The group shifted. Suddenly he could see the object of their intense attention.

  Mandy.

  She lay motionless on the gurney, clothed only in a long T-shirt that reached to midthigh. Wires sprouted from her head. Only her eyes moved, darting from side to side, twitching in panic.

  Piercingly blue, Mandy’s eyes were the sole points of color visible. They were a startling brilliance in the weirdly colorless scene of silver and white.

  Luke knew she couldn’t see him. He tried to call her name but found he couldn’t make a sound.

  Several of the creatures held long, silver instruments. Like the one Quentin had been toying with at the quarry park, with a slender handle ending in a polished ten-inch needle point.

  Luke’s helplessness infuriated him. He wanted to scream, to lash out in all directions with his fists. But all he could do was watch.

  There was another stir among the creatures. They moved to make room for a newcomer. Luke tried to follow the direction of their gaze but could not.

  And then Quentin stepped into his line of vision.

  The new movie-star-handsome version of Quentin stepped up to the side of the gurney. Pressing himself against it, Quentin leaned over Mandy.

  Her eyes widened in a vast blue sea of terror and revulsion. Her chest began to rise and fall rapidly.

  Even in his disembodied state, Luke could feel the waves of joyful evil emanating from Quentin. Luke knew with absolute certainty that this was the part Quentin wanted him to see.

  Quentin licked his forefinger with an impossibly long tongue. He reached out and touched Mandy’s toe, then trailed his finger along her foot, tracing further to the outline of her calf. He lifted the hem of her T-shirt.

  Hot and cold waves broke over Luke. He felt he was drowning in an ocean of pain.

  A harsh whispery sound rose from the humanoids. One of them raised a supple, boneless looking arm. He seemed to be gesturing to Quentin to stop.

  But the motion was hesitant. As if the creature was reluctant to offend someone dangerous.

  Quentin shrugged. Letting Mandy’s T-shirt fall back into place, he withdrew his hand.

  Splaying out his hand, Quentin licked his fingers one by one, staring into Mandy’s face as he did.

  Then Quentin turned to one of the humanoids. He took the silver wand from its hands.

  Carefully he poised the sharp point of the instrument over the swell of Mandy’s chest. He spoke. The words were perfectly audible to Luke.

  “Remember Mandy,” he said. “If I can’t have you …” Quentin paused. He grinned and touched the tip of his horrible tongue to his nose. “If I can’t have you, nobody can.”

  In a flash, Quentin plunged the long silvery needle deep into Mandy’s chest, piercing her heart.

  Luke howled.

  Darkness rushed in and swallowed him whole.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The scream hurt her ears. The piercing noise ripped through her head from one side to the other.

  Mandy needed to make it stop. She twisted, trying to find its source in the dense fog that shrouded her. Was it a child? An animal?

  The awful noise came again and Mandy’s hand flailed out, knocking against her bedside table. She came fully awake. Her phone was ringing.

  She grabbed it up. Her heart was pounding. “Hello?”

  “Mandy? Is that you?”

  “Luke?” Mandy frowned. She could see cool bluish light through her window. Absently she rubbed her chest. It ached. “Of course it’s me. Who else? This is my number, isn’t it?”

  She felt disoriented. Her body was bathed in sweat, as if she’d just run a race. Her eyes felt gritty.

  She heard a sharp exhale of relief through the phone. “Mandy, are you all right?”

  “All right?” Mandy squinted at her alarm clock. “It’s six o’clock in the morning. I’ve only had two hours sleep.” Actually she felt like she hadn’t had any. “Of course I’m not all right.”

  “Thank God. I mean, I’m sorry I woke you. It must have been a dream.” Luke’s voice was shaky. “A horrible dream. I’ll talk to you later.”

  An image flitted through Mandy’s mind. It was gone before she could catch it, but it left her shuddering with revulsion. She clutched the phone. Suddenly she couldn’t bear to be left alone. “Luke, wait.”

  “Yes? I’m still here.”

  Mandy’s jaw locked. Icy sweat trickled down her spine. “What dream?” she wanted to ask. But her lips wouldn’t work.

  “Mandy?” There was a sharp note of worry in Luke’s voice.

  Mandy forced her jaw apart. But suddenly she didn’t want to know anything about his dream. “Luke, you know that UFO meeting, the notice we saw in the cafe?”

  “Sure.” His voice was guarded.

  Mandy realized he had intended to go without telling her. “I’d like to go.”

  “But I thought—”

  “No, I don’t think we were abducted by aliens,” Mandy said quickly, “but I think some people might show up who have had experiences similar to ours. If there’s a group of us, maybe we could go to the power-plant people.”

  “Okay.” Luke’s tone was carefully neutral.

  It needled Mandy. “Come on, Luke. You don’t really think we were lifted into the sky. You can’t. There was nothing on that tape. We must have hallucinated the whole thing.”

  “It’s okay, Mandy,” said Luke. “I think it’s a good idea to go to that meeting.”

  But Mandy felt a need to convince him. “We obviously had a joint hallucination caused by our brains’ inability to deal with the sensory overload caused by the electrical surge,” she said.

  “A levitation hallucination,” commented Luke drily.

  Mandy thought of what had happened when her phone had rung. It was a perfect example.

  “It happens all the time in dreams and we think nothing of it. Like when your alarm clock goes off and you don’t want to get up. So your dream turns it into something else. Fantastic things sometimes.”

  “Sure,” said Luke. “The only difference is we were awake. And we both had exactly the same hallucination. Excuse me, dream.”

  “Either that or we were abducted by aliens from outer space,” Mandy snapped sarcastically.

  “There’s one thing I don’t get,” Luke said.

  “Only one thing?”

  Luke ignored her attitude. “If you’re certain this has to do with the power plant and the power surges, why didn’t you ask your dad about it? Why didn’t you tell him the truth last night?”

  Mandy winced. It had been difficult, scrambling for a story to satisfy her parents.

  “I was trying to calm them,” she said archly. “Telling them we blanked out for several hours and then saw ourselves levitating into the sky on a blank tape didn’t seem like a good idea at four o’clock in the morning.”

  Instead she had spun out a tale about strange lights that had so intrigued them they lost track of time.

  In the end, since Luke and Mandy were obviously sober and unhurt, her parents had grudgingly accepted it. They even commiserated with Mandy over her incompetence with the video camera.

  “Go back to sleep,” Luke said now. “I’ll come by for you this afternoon, three o’clock.”

  But Mandy was not used to sleeping in the daytime. She kept waking up, clammy with sweat, her heart thumping erratically. Each time, she felt hollowed out by some nameless dread.

  The disturbing dreams fled with consciousness. But she could feel them lurking at the edges of her mind, waiting for sleep to drag her under again.

  She tried to get up. But again and again, exhaustion overwhelmed her before she could summon the strength.

  Finally one of the dreams propelled her upright. She sat, gasping and shaking with fear. She couldn’t remember a thing. Somehow that
made the fear worse.

  She threw her feet over the side of the bed. When the trembling had subsided enough to let her stand, she grabbed her robe and headed for the shower.

  Mandy stood under the water for a long time, letting it beat over her. But long after the traces of sweat were washed away, she still felt dirty.

  The water had begun to lose its heat when she felt something on the back of her neck. It slithered across the top of her spine like a worm. At first she thought it was nothing, just the sudden cooling of the water.

  Then it seemed to burrow under her skin. There wasn’t pain exactly. Slick and slimy, it wriggled between the cells of her skin.

  Mandy screamed and slapped at herself. But she couldn’t reach it. She felt the thing dive more vigorously into her flesh. Like it was seeking a way into her bloodstream. Once there, it would multiply, feeding on her blood.

  Driven by panic, Mandy scratched and tore at the back of her neck.

  Then nothing. The itchy, burrowing, slithering feeling was gone.

  Mandy grabbed the back of her neck with both hands. The skin felt smooth. She pressed her fingers along the area over and around her spine but felt no bumps or yielding, snakelike ribbons.

  She shuddered so hard that drops of water went flying from her body. There was no way she could have imagined such a thing.

  Then a horrible thought occurred to her. Mandy scrambled out of the tub, almost slipping as she lunged to the mirror. Grabbing a towel, she cleared away the condensation. But by the time she positioned her hand mirror to see the back of her neck, both mirrors had fogged again.

  Pulling on her thick terry robe, Mandy stumbled to her bedroom. She positioned herself in front of the full-length mirror and held up the hand mirror. There were red welts on the back of her neck! She stared in horror.

  Mandy dashed back to the bathroom. She ejected the razor from her shaver. Hand trembling, she pulled her hair aside and held the twin-blade cartridge over her spine, ready to cut the thing out of her. But the mirror was still too blurry.

  Back in her bedroom, Mandy finally came to her senses.

  The red welts looked like scratch marks where she had dug at herself with her nails. There weren’t any holes or tiny puncture marks that she could see. There was no sign that anything had ever been on her neck.

  And if there had been a parasite it was long gone. It would be swimming merrily in her bloodstream. By now it might have released a hundred young maggots, swarming to every tiny vein and capillary in her body.

  Her head swung to the clock. Two-thirty. Luke would be here in half an hour. She couldn’t wait that long. Mandy snatched up the phone. If she got his answering machine, she’d scream.

  But Luke answered.

  “Luke, come over right now,” she said and hung up. Then she sat on the side of the bed, hugging her knees and rocking.

  By the time Luke came, Mandy was dressed and sitting outside, waiting on her front steps. He was slightly out of breath from having run all the way.

  Mandy rose. “Take a look at the back of my neck,” she demanded before he could ask any questions. She lifted her hair and bent her head. “What do you see?”

  Luke lifted a few strands she had missed. The brush of his fingers on her neck sent a sensation down her spine. The sheer normalcy of the feeling had a calming effect.

  Suddenly the whole worm thing seemed so nuts she wanted to giggle.

  “I don’t see a thing,” said Luke, mystified. “It looks a little red maybe, like you scratched it.”

  Mandy handed him the magnifying glass she had brought down. It might seem crazy now, but just a few minutes ago it had seemed essential. So what was the harm? “Take a close look with this.”

  “What am I looking for?”

  “Just look.”

  Luke took the magnifying glass. He was silent while he examined her neck carefully.

  “Everything looks fine, Mandy,” he said finally. “Although maybe you scratched it too hard. The skin seems a bit raw. But not broken. What’s going on?”

  She sighed deeply. Sinking back down on the steps, she pulled Luke beside her. “You’re not going to believe this,” she said.

  But of course he did. When she finished, Luke took up the magnifying glass again. This time he gently pulled aside her hair himself.

  Mandy closed her eyes and gave herself up to the warm, stirring feelings his touch roused. It seemed so long since she had felt anything pleasant.

  “No puncture marks, not even tiny ones,” Luke concluded, returning her magnifying glass.

  “Of course not,” Mandy said lazily, letting her arm brush his. A tiny current seemed to jump between them. “More electrical misfirings. It was probably worse since I had just woken up. I’ve heard patients who have electroshock therapy sometimes feel things crawling under their skin for months, even years after.”

  “Great,” said Luke, getting to his feet. “It’s nice to know what we have to look forward to. Come on, it’s past three.”

  The UFO meeting was taking place in a dilapidated old convenience store that had been closed and boarded up for years. It was located on Old High Street and squatted under the high-tension power lines like a beaten dog.

  The buzz of the wires set them both on edge. Mandy hesitated, unwilling to pass.

  Luke took her hand. He seemed hesitant, but as soon as she squeezed back, his fingers laced comfortingly with hers. It didn’t make her feel less afraid, but she pretended it did.

  They edged past the junction quickly.

  Strangely, Mandy’s nervousness did not pass as they started down the far side of the rise toward the old store. It only increased as they got closer. Her pulse began to rise.

  “Oh, no,” Luke muttered disgustedly, “Jeff and his scummy friends are here.”

  Mandy struggled to rise out of the anxious funk that was engulfing her. She saw a milling crowd of sinister-looking skinheads hanging out in a corner of the packed-dirt parking lot. “Jeff is the one with the scary lightning tattoo?”

  “My parents totally freaked when they saw that,” Luke said, shaking his head. “But Jeff is out of control. He absolutely refused to say where he got it. It’s kind of weird how they have no control over him. He just doesn’t care.”

  The skinheads turned to watch them as they reached the parking lot. None of them smiled. They emanated menace.

  Despite the brilliance of the sunshine, Mandy shivered. Suddenly a cold wind rushed into her. It settled inside her bones. She clutched Luke’s hand like a lifeline.

  All at once, the group of skinheads parted in two. Instantly Mandy recognized the source of the strange cold. Quentin was sitting on the hood of a silvery sports car.

  His body had changed. He was different. His skin glowed with health. His hair sparkled in the sun. His body was supple and muscular. His smile riveted her. He was beautiful, in a terrifying way. He grinned, holding her gaze as he stroked the arm of a skinhead girl standing beside him.

  The girl’s bald skull was nicely shaped, but her face was sullen. She wore heavy black eye makeup and black lipstick. Her mouth looked like a wound in her pale face. LOVE was crudely tattooed on her hand.

  Mandy shuddered violently.

  Quentin’s grin vanished. He fixed his marvelous, soulless eyes on her hand, clasped to Luke’s.

  Suddenly, Mandy’s hand burned as if it had been plunged into dry ice. Her finger bones felt so brittle she thought they might crumble to dust. Her hand was ripped from Luke’s grasp. Her fingers flamed.

  Quentin raised his eyes to hers. “Remember this, Mandy?” His tongue slipped from between his lips. It slithered toward her, an impossible length.

  Mandy felt an icy prickle on the back of her neck. There was a sharp piercing pain, then a cold, hurried, slippery sensation under her skin.

  She shrieked wildly and clawed the back of her neck.

  Quentin’s laughter rang out, and the wormy feeling left her. Mandy gasped, reduced to a shivery shell.

&nbs
p; “Such a fine time we’re having together, Mandy girl,” Quentin said. “I don’t know when I’ve had so much fun. But there’s other tricks this tongue can perform. Would you like to see?”

  Mandy’s heart clattered against her ribs like a small, crazed beast.

  Quentin strolled closer, taking his time. His eyes roved over her body.

  Mandy felt spiders, dozens of them, running up her legs.

  Before she could react, Quentin’s tongue lashed out, purple and obscene. She jerked away, but it flashed past her ear and slashed to her left. Toward Luke.

  There was a quiet snick sound, like a sharp knife through cold butter.

  Luke’s head tipped forward. In apparent slow motion it fell from his shoulders. There was no blood. Not immediately.

  Luke’s head bounced on the hard-packed earth. It rolled. Bits of dirt stuck to the truncated neck.

  The head rolled up against Mandy’s sandal.

  She felt Luke’s crisp, curly hair against her toes.

  His face stared up at her.

  Luke’s sightless eyes were dumbfounded.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Mandy let out a low moan. Her eyes rolled back in her head.

  Quentin and his whole creepy entourage were laughing. Unconscious, Mandy began to crumple to the ground.

  Luke caught her just before she hit.

  His neck hurt. He felt like he’d missed something important. Another one of those weird blackouts. Luckily this one seemed to have lasted only a moment.

  Maybe no one had noticed.

  “Better get her inside.”

  Luke jumped. He hadn’t noticed how close Quentin was standing. Had he done something to Mandy?

  “Might be sunstroke,” Quentin whispered. There was an odd glint in his eye.

  But Luke was too concerned about Mandy to wonder what it was.

  “Tongue-stroke,” Jeff chimed in as if he was making the wittiest remark in the world.

  Luke hefted Mandy, lifting her in his arms like a child. He staggered a little, then found his rhythm and started for the building.

  Halfway there, Mandy stirred. Luke’s spirits rose. “Mandy?” he asked hopefully. “Can you hear me?”