“Ah, you’ve started,” Quentin said, entering. He rubbed his hands together happily. “Is she conscious?”
He was wearing a bright-red T-shirt. With a start, Mandy realized it was the first color she had seen in the ship. Her heart lurched. Quentin seemed so horribly real.
The aliens chittered.
“Yes, she’s old.” Quentin grinned at the aliens. “Didn’t I tell you? No?”
When the aliens raised their heads, Mandy saw their eyes no longer had that empty look. A shiver of fright ran through her.
The eyes glittered from multiple facets. It was impossible to see into them, impossible even to look right at them. Blinding reflections of light refracted in all directions. They were not made for the human way of seeing.
Quentin seemed unaffected. “Well, I wanted her and that’s that. She was very good to me when I was little. In ways other humans would never understand. You might say she presided over my education. Besides”—Quentin shrugged, turning to the computer monitors—“she’s dying of cancer.”
He touched a button and the monitors lit up. One screen showed a human brain. The others were still blank.
Quentin pressed a button. Light pulsed in the pictured brain. Mrs. Grundy jerked and thrashed. “Oops,” Quentin laughed. “Wrong button.”
He pressed another and the old lady’s parched lips relaxed into a crooked smile. Drool ran from the corner of her mouth. “Much better.”
Leaving the monitors, Quentin walked over to the gurney. The dyzychs made way for him.
“If this works out, I’d like to do the recruits next. You’ll need to hurry. I sense that time is short. In fact, I’ll give the order now. No need to wait.” Quentin licked his lips. “Full treatment for the female, I think.”
Mandy jumped with alarm.
“No,” Quentin said sharply. “Not that one. Not Mandy. The new one. I have special plans for Mandy.” His tongue wiggled suggestively.
With a shudder, Mandy realized what the sinewy alien arms had reminded her of. They were like Quentin’s tongue.
“She’s mine and you are not to mess with her,” Quentin ordered. His tone was hard but also gruff with desire. “My plans require her to be in a fully human context.”
Mandy was frozen with horror.
“Come on, Mandy,” Luke urged, clearly disturbed. “Let’s get out of here. We can’t help. And we need to explore the ship, to see if we can figure out where it is.”
“I need this to be over,” Mandy said weakly. None of her hallucinations, however horrible, had lasted as long as this one.
Quentin turned toward the door, his eyes blazing with evil joy. It radiated from him in waves that washed over Mandy’s astral form, leaving her gasping for air. She felt unclean.
Quentin’s tongue whipped back and forth. Before Mandy could move, it had slashed through her.
She felt a stabbing pain, like an icicle through her heart.
“I have to wake up,” she cried.
But it wasn’t over yet.
Chapter Twenty-five
Luke hated feeling so helpless.
He couldn’t even touch Mandy to comfort her. Or punch out that rat-eating creep Quentin.
Mandy leaned against the wall in the passageway, trembling uncontrollably.
“When we get out of here, we’ll go after him,” Luke told her. He imagined his flesh-and-blood fists smashing into that smug face. “We’ll stop him, Mandy.”
But even as he spoke, he remembered how Quentin had immobilized him. More than once.
Mandy had told him about the head-severing incident. She had been trying to convince him of Quentin’s psychic power to project hallucinations.
Instead Luke remembered how his neck had mysteriously hurt. And he was convinced that Quentin could have killed him on the spot, if he’d wanted to. And Luke wouldn’t even have known it.
“I’m all right,” Mandy said finally. “I suppose, if I can’t wake up, we might as well explore. Anywhere where Quentin isn’t.”
Luke was glad to get away from the sound of alien needles puncturing the old librarian’s body. Even in the passageway, the soft fleshy sound had seemed louder than the buzzy gabble of the dyzychs.
Luke and Mandy moved deeper into the ship. The hall continued to curve. Luke realized it would form a perfect circle eventually. The ship really was a flying saucer. Somehow the movies and books had gotten that part right.
Luke pressed the inner wall, looking for doors. With a falling plunge he would never get used to, he found one.
It was a large chamber, unlit and empty. Coffin-size tubes of some clear substance were stacked in rows, floor to ceiling.
“Sleeping places?” Luke conjectured. “But so many. Could there be this many dyzychs on this ship?”
“Everything’s so gloomy,” Mandy said. “I feel like all this gray is pressing on me.”
“I suppose they don’t see color,” Luke said, flitting around one of the chambers. A hose ran from each capsule to an inside wall. “Extra oxygen when they’re sleeping, I’ll bet.”
Mandy nodded mechanically. That worried Luke. She wasn’t going to take any of this seriously if she kept thinking it was all in her head. And he needed her to take it very seriously.
Luke had a feeling something very bad was going to happen if they didn’t stop it. If only he knew what “it” was.
At the sound of dyzychs passing by in the hallway, Luke and Mandy went out.
The aliens were moving quickly and waving their elastic arms. Their forms shimmered in and out of visibility.
“Something’s up,” Mandy said apprehensively.
A hatch door opened on the outside of the ring. The aliens went through it.
“Another examination-operation chamber.” Luke sounded disappointed.
The room was large, partitioned into ten curtained cubicles. Wires and tubes snaked down into each cubicle from machines positioned overhead.
The wall beside the entrance was filled with monitors, gauges, and dials. Dyzychs moved between them, pressing buttons and adjusting dials intently.
“This place seems to be nothing but a flying laboratory,” Mandy said. “Assuming it does fly.”
She frowned thoughtfully. Then shook her head impatiently. “I’m not going to start analyzing my dreams while I’m still having them.”
Luke didn’t see any dyzych movement behind the thin silvery-white curtains. “I guess we’ll have to look,” he said reluctantly.
They heard a liquidy sucking noise from behind the curtain. Luke wanted to turn and flee. His breath was shallow. Then there was a loud crack, like a dry stick snapped in half.
He and Mandy both jumped. Without speaking, they moved as if drawn, through the curtain.
“Oh my god,” Mandy moaned.
Luke felt his throat close.
On the gurney before them lay one of the skinheads. The top of his skull was missing. The gray folds of his brain glistened and quivered in the cool air.
Metal probes attached to thin electrical wires protruded from the exposed tissue.
Mandy gestured faintly at a table beside the gurney. A shiver climbed up the back of Luke’s neck. The missing skull-half sat rocking in a white metal bowl.
On the flap of skin at the front, Luke read H-A-T-E.
“Whatever I wished on him, it wasn’t this,” Luke muttered.
Below the eyebrows, the skinhead’s face was intact. The eyes were mercifully closed. His expression was blank.
The sucking noise began again, making Luke and Mandy jump. Luke had been so horribly fascinated by the naked brain, he hadn’t noticed the two large tubes—hoses really—protruding from each shoulder.
The skinhead’s left arm jerked spasmodically. Something lumpy slipped up the tube from inside the body.
“Luke, look,” Mandy cried in a strangled voice.
At the head of the gurney was a small screen. It monitored the work of the tubes.
SNAP!
The right arm j
erked and bent at an impossible angle.
“They’re breaking his bones and vacuuming them out,” Luke said, feeling a kind of awe at something so beyond his worst imaginings.
“Luke, we have to go and see what they’re doing to our bodies,” Mandy said urgently. “Now.”
Luke shook his head, biting his lip. “Not yet,” he told her. His mind felt thick. As if it finally was going into terminal overload.
“There are ten cubicles here.” He forced the words out, groping for each one. “I have to check and see if my brother is in one of them.”
If there had been blood in Mandy’s face it would have drained. Her blue eyes darkened to the color of the deepest ocean depths. “I’ll go with you,” she said.
Together they moved through the curtain into the next cubicle, then the next and the next. In each of the next eight they found a skinhead boy, skull removed, arm bones fractured and suctioned away.
None of the boys was Jeff.
The last cubicle was different. Luke thought he was prepared for every horror. He wasn’t.
There was a girl on the gurney.
Luke heard Mandy’s sharp intake of breath. “I know her.”
Luke’s heart was fluttering weakly in his chest. He couldn’t seem to get a breath.
“How can you tell?” he asked, gulping air. “She has no face.”
As with the others, the top of the girl’s head had been removed. In her case, the skin of her face had also been peeled away. It lay folded under her skull in a bowl.
There were empty holes where her eyes had been. A jellylike substance glistened in the recesses. Luke didn’t see the girl’s eyes in the bowl or anywhere.
Mandy pointed with a shaking finger. “The tattoo on her hand,” she said. “She was with Quentin at that meeting.”
The tattoo spelled LOVE. With no bones in her hand, the letters were crooked and collapsed. Her arms, too, were entirely boneless. The skin lay loose over flaccid, twitching muscles.
Suddenly it seemed vitally urgent to Luke that he and Mandy reconnect with their own bodies.
Luke heard Quentin’s voice while they were speeding back along the corridor.
“You don’t have to understand my reasons,” Quentin was saying heatedly. “Just do it.”
Do what? Luke put on a burst of speed.
As he and Mandy approached the open hatchway, he could see their bodies lying comatose, just as they had left them. Quentin was standing in the midst of a trio of buzzing and chittering dyzychs.
Then a second human voice spoke. “I think they’re concerned about all those bones.” The tone was detached, the voice deep and silky.
Luke’s and Mandy’s eyes met in surprise. Cassandra.
This astral stuff had been her suggestion. Would she be able to see them? Luke decided he was beyond caring. He shot through the open hatch without hesitating.
Cassandra was seated on a high stool in front of the computer equipment. Her eyes were on the monitors. She was wearing a dyzych garment. Its shimmery, revealing folds fell in a flattering drape around her.
“They’ve never operated in a body with rigid bones,” she said languidly. “They’re worried they might break some. Bend them the wrong way.”
“So what?” Quentin shrugged. “I don’t care about the bones. If they break”—his eyes shone briefly at the prospect—“you can fix them. Or remove them.”
“It’s not the subjects themselves they are worried about,” Cassandra informed him, reaching to adjust a dial. Her arm did not bend at an angle. It curved. Luke felt a little sick.
The heart on the monitor in front of her pulsed harder. Luke somehow knew it was his own heart.
“The dyzychs are afraid of pain,” said Cassandra. “They don’t want to experience any, even secondhand.”
Quentin exploded. “I’ve done plenty for you. Now you can do this for me. I want them fully human and fully aware.” He paused. When he spoke again, his voice was flat.
“There isn’t much time. The Others will be here soon. I can sense it. Thanks to me, the plan is going forward smoothly. We will have all the soldiers you need. But these two are mine. Now, do it.”
The dyzychs separated. Two went to Mandy and Luke. They each selected one of the tubular silver tools. They removed the long needles and refitted the tool with shorter, blunter ones.
The two aliens moved in unison, as if performing a macabre dance. With their lethal-looking instruments ready, they turned together and looked at their third companion. Their eyes, cold as diamonds, glittered with reflected light.
The third dyzych had joined Cassandra at the computer bank. It now pressed a key and two more monitors lit up.
Each screen showed the inside of a human head. Luke’s chest constricted. There was no doubt about whose skulls those were.
The alien’s supple fingers danced over the keyboard. A midsection of Mandy’s brain lit up. Then the same thing happened to Luke’s brain.
The creature’s bulbous head nodded once and the other two bent over their comatose prisoners. They fitted the instruments to Luke’s and Mandy’s temples.
A jolt of icy terror raced through Luke. Before he could react, a high-pitched whine vibrated the air with a loud drilling sound.
Mandy shrieked and dove for her body.
The stench of burning bone filled the room.
Chapter Twenty-six
Mandy’s eyes snapped open. She was hyperventilating, her heart pounding like a jack-hammer.
It was pitch-black, but she knew she was in her own room, in her own bed.
Bolting upright, she checked out her alarm clock. Three A.M. Longer this time. She snapped on the light. The chair was still hooked under the doorknob.
A thought passed through her mind—what difference did it make if the chair was in place? She had gone out the window. Or had she?
Mandy switched off the light. She didn’t want her mom or dad seeing it and coming in, all concerned. She didn’t want to see anyone until she had her head on straight again.
A dream. A horrible nightmare. She’d never had such a vivid nightmare before. It seemed she could still remember every awful second of the whole five hours.
Sweat trickled into her eyes and stung. She wiped it away and took a deep breath. These electrical surges were taking too great a toll. Any more of this and she’d have to fear for her sanity.
There were stories, lots of them, about people who had been normal happy children and then lost their minds completely as teenagers. They had to be locked away, screaming about demons and creatures coming to get them.
A cold feeling lodged in Mandy’s chest as she imagined a lifetime of Quentin hallucinations, getting progressively more threatening and perverse. She’d rather die.
But she didn’t have to. An idea burst in her head like a fireworks finale. All she had to do was leave Greenfield until the power surges were over. She should have thought of that before.
Suddenly energized, she reached for the phone. She could go to her aunt and uncle in Fairmont. They lived in the mountains—she’d be safe there. Luke could go with her. Her aunt and uncle wouldn’t mind.
She punched in Luke’s number. She had no doubt he would be awake. He answered on the first ring.
“Luke, we have to get out of here, out of town,” Mandy said in a rush. “This time I didn’t just black out, I had the most horrific nightmare. My brain is telling me it’s had enough. I have some cool relatives in Fairmont. We can go there until they find out what’s causing the power surges.”
Silence.
“Luke?”
“Mandy, we can’t leave. Something terrible is going to happen. We might be the only ones who can stop it.”
“Oh, Luke.” Mandy sighed. “One night away from this, one good night’s sleep and you’ll know how crazy this sounds.”
“I know all about your ‘nightmare,’ Mandy. I know because I was there. In the ship. With the dyzychs.” In a relentless voice, Luke described her nightmare
. At length. In detail.
Mandy felt as if her insides were slowly turning to stone. A terrible lethargy crept over her. Her ear felt frozen to the phone.
She fought back. Her mind scrambled for the right words. Words to end this. “We’re sharing hallucinations, Luke,” she insisted, her argument forming as she spoke. “Quentin is doing it. He’s found a way to focus on us, terrorize us simultaneously.”
“Okay, fine,” Luke spat. “If you can explain to me how he drilled our skulls simultaneously in our dreams.”
Mandy’s temple began to throb. Her hand flew up. She felt a small scab. And a little ridge, as if the plug of bone hadn’t been set quite flush with her skull.
Inside her head, a voice began to laugh.
The phone dropped from her hand.
Chapter Twenty-seven
Luke hung up. His insides were in turmoil. He’d give Mandy a while to get used to the idea, then call her back.
A plan was forming in his mind, but he needed her help.
His attention was caught by a sound on the stairs. Footsteps. Jeff. Making no particular effort to be quiet. But Mom and Dad would be relieved that at least he was home.
Luke waited until he heard his brother’s bedroom door open. Then he followed him. “Hi, Jeff. Can I come in?”
Jeff was seated on his bed, taking off his heavy, black Doc Marten boots. He shrugged.
Luke pushed himself off the door frame. He grabbed Jeff’s desk chair and straddled it backwards. Although it had been six months, Luke still got a jolt when he looked at his little brother’s bald head.
Jeff had been kind of a chubby kid with rosy cheeks. A baby face. He’d grown out of the flab and the face, but maybe he figured this new look would make sure that angelic boy was banished forever.
“Did I wake you from your beauty sleep?” Jeff sneered. The lightning-bolt tattoo zagged like the real thing. One boot hit the floor.
“I was awake,” Luke said, keeping his voice neutral. It was so easy for Jeff to get him going. “What have you been up to tonight?”
Jeff jerked his head up suspiciously. “What’s it to you?”
“Just curious. You been out with Quentin?”
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