Abduction

by Rodman Philbrick

  Briefly, Jeff looked blank. As though he couldn’t remember who he’d been with, and only this minute realized it.

  Luke’s pulse began to quicken. “Did he try any of that mind stuff on you? Hypnosis or whatever it is?”

  Jeff frowned belligerently. “It’s none of your business what I do.”

  Luke forced a laugh. “No. I guess Quentin figures it’s none of your business either. You don’t even remember where you’ve been tonight, do you?”

  “Sure I do.” Jeff’s eyes refused to meet his. “But I sure don’t have to tell you.” His second boot came off suddenly. Fine grit poured out onto the floor. Grit from the quarry.

  “No. I guess Quentin doesn’t tell you much. I bet he hasn’t even told you about the Others.”

  “I want to get some sleep.”

  “Do you even know who the Others are? How about the dyzychs?”

  Jeff yawned wider and lay back.

  Luke changed his tactics. “Your gang’s been getting smaller lately, have you noticed? Quentin leads some kids off and they never come back. Strange, isn’t it? Don’t you want to know what’s going to happen when it’s your turn? Or do you just follow, like a sheep?”

  Jeff came up off the bed. “You don’t know anything. The Q is onto something big. Some kind of mission. He’s promised to get me out of this stupid town for good. And I know he can do it. You’ll be laughing out of the other side of your face pretty soon, bro.”

  Luke felt excitement building in his gut. He was getting somewhere now. If he could just keep Jeff talking. But if he goaded him any further, Jeff might throw him out.

  “I’m not laughing,” Luke started to say. But the words stuck in his throat.

  Suddenly he felt like his head was splitting in two. Half his brain shut down.

  The other half went crazy.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  The laughter in Mandy’s head welled up from a dark place. Like an unknown cave in the center of her brain.

  At first chillingly faint, the laughter grew louder. It began to shoot up from inside her, exerting tremendous pressure.

  The laughter wasn’t hers. But it was familiar in a sinister way.

  The laughter was Quentin’s.

  It was not a memory. Somehow it was there, inside her.

  The sound throbbed with diabolical joy.

  Mandy’s brain shrank from a horror she couldn’t fully comprehend. It filled her skull until she felt her head would burst.

  “I am here, Mandy sweets.”

  The voice, though oily quiet, ripped through her like a claw hammer.

  “Oh, that was good. It’s almost like terror has a mental taste. I had no idea. My previous experience of the phenomenon pales in comparison.”

  Mandy floundered. Nothing existed but the overwhelming horror of this moment, this instant. There was no escape.

  “None, Mandy. That’s right, I know everything you’re thinking.” Inside her head, Quentin’s voice was almost playful. “You are mine in a way that surpasses your wildest dreams. Or should I say nightmares? Ain’t technology great?”

  Mandy felt like a big, beached fish. Gasping and totally helpless. Even her fragmented thoughts were lost to her.

  “We’re going to make use of our new intimacy, Mandy. We are going to—”

  There was a staticky jolt. Quentin’s presence flickered. Mandy felt his burst of anger. But it didn’t sear her skull.

  More static.

  “What do you mean it was too soon?” he cried furiously, speaking to someone else. “Fix it. I’m losing her.”

  Mandy’s mind rushed together. Her thoughts raced in a panic to fill the dark place—as if they might somehow block Quentin’s invasion. But Mandy knew they wouldn’t.

  She shook her head, trying to help dislodge the dyzych device. It had no effect.

  She felt static mostly, little jolts like deep itches she couldn’t scratch. And spurts of Quentin’s anger, which sparked peaks of panicky terror every time.

  And another presence. The dyzych. It was a deep, cold alien presence that inspired a paralyzing terror.

  It was detached, not like Quentin’s visceral hatred.

  All these things sputtered in her, grabbing and letting go. Her head was full of meaningless white noise. Her own thoughts surfaced desperately in the brief interludes of quiet.

  Hours passed. Or maybe seconds. Mandy didn’t know.

  She felt wrung out.

  But she no longer had any doubts about the alien invasion.

  A sudden surge of current flipped her backwards onto her bed. Her brain felt hot. Like she was burning up from inside.

  And then—nothing. It was all gone: the static, the voices, the presences.

  Mandy jumped up, surprised to find she already knew what she was going to do. Underneath Quentin and the static, her brain had never stopped working. This made her feel almost hopeful.

  She was going to go to the hospital. She was going to get them to X-ray her head and remove the implant.

  Mandy grabbed up the phone. As she punched Luke’s number, she noticed it was daylight. Almost nine o’clock. So many hours gone. So many hours dead.

  Luke didn’t answer. Mandy clenched her fist against her knee. She didn’t know how much time she had. Five seconds, five minutes, an hour.

  “Luke, where are you?” she muttered in anguish. And realized she was talking to his answering machine. She was afraid to leave a message.

  Maybe that was silly. The implant could switch on any second. Then Quentin would have her. Luke wouldn’t know where she had gone.

  She’d stop by his house. Maybe he’d be back by then. If not, she could leave him a note. She could only hope that Luke wasn’t in any danger yet.

  Maybe the dyzych would leave Luke alone until they needed him.

  Mandy stuck paper and pencil in her pocket and then set off at a jog, unaware of her surroundings and the occasional curious glance her disheveled, mismatched appearance attracted.

  The fear pounded along beside her. She monitored her brain, too conscious of her utter helplessness. The voice—the static—could come back at any time.

  She turned onto Luke’s street, feeling the delay pressing on her. Knocking on the front door, she called up to his open window, “Luke!”

  Mandy was digging the paper out of her pocket when she heard something inside.

  Footsteps padded across the floor. The door opened.

  “Oh!” Mandy gasped. She’d forgotten about the younger brother.

  His blank eyes fastened on her.

  The lightning bolt on his face zagged when he smiled.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Upstairs, Luke lay on his back in bed. His arms were rigid at his sides.

  Mandy’s anguished voice on the telephone still echoed in his ears. “Luke, where are you?”

  He had tried to get to the phone. He had strained to pick it up. But all his efforts produced was a jumpy twitch in his fingers.

  Now he heard Mandy’s voice drift up to him, calling his name. He heard his brother go downstairs, heard the door open.

  Luke put all his strength into calling out a warning. But no sound emerged from his paralyzed throat.

  “Do you know where he went?”

  He couldn’t make out Jeff’s answer. He heard Mandy enter the house. Inwardly, he thrashed and fought. Outwardly, he could have been a corpse. Except for the sweat that broke out on his brow.

  “Well, can I leave him a note?”

  “Sure.”

  A minute later the front door closed. Footsteps came unhurriedly up. His bedroom door opened.

  Without looking at Luke, Jeff dropped the folded note on his chest. He turned and went out, shutting the door behind him.

  Luke couldn’t see the note. But a bright point of relief stood out in his sea of despair. Mandy was free.

  He couldn’t think beyond that. He couldn’t think about why or how long she would stay free. His mind was filled with a cold busyness,
like a million ants trampling though his gray matter.

  The dyzychs had pushed Luke aside in his own head. As if his presence was an insignificant nuisance. His terror beneath notice.

  Somehow he knew the dyzychs were exploring. He was being dissected from the inside out. His heart sped, then slowed. A muscle contracted in one leg, then the other. They were learning him. Getting the feel of a human body.

  Getting ready to take over.

  Luke lost track of time. Waves of cold washed over him again and again. His body twitched and spasmed.

  Then the activity stopped. Luke felt heavy—all the strength had been sucked from his limbs.

  Something was happening. Luke convulsed. His arm shot up, then fell back again.

  He could feel the cold alien satisfaction. It had him under control.

  Then it began to spread, seizing Luke’s brain for itself. Slowly, steadily, Luke felt himself being squeezed. He was disappearing into the alien maw. It was steadily pressing him into a tiny corner of his own consciousness.

  Luke pushed and struggled, fighting for space. His own brain was crushing him.

  Suddenly he found himself sitting. The room whirled, tilted, righted itself. His eyes rolled back in his head, straining to see. His sight was diminished to a narrow band.

  But it wasn’t. He could see fine. With a leap of terror that made him slip his tenuous hold, Luke realized his thoughts were mixing in with the alien’s.

  He, Luke, was seeing normally. The alien was not. As the dyzych struggled with Luke’s human eyes, Luke realized that dyzych eyes would take in almost the whole room. It would see dust on the ceiling as clearly as the pattern of his bedspread.

  Luke fought to regain his tiny perch. To lift himself out of the whirlpool of alien thought. He flailed in panic. And was startled to find himself standing.

  His fingers were holding Mandy’s note. There was a new voice in his head.

  “You have no conception of how much I’m enjoying myself, Luke.” Quentin. The purr of evil made the dyzych presence seem benign. “You’re going to do something for me now. You are going to hate it. Really hate it. You’re going to go kicking, screaming, and sobbing, but you will go.

  “You’re going to bring Mandy to me.”

  Luke’s nerveless fingers were unfolding the note. He strained to keep his eyes from reading it. He could feel Quentin’s amusement at his feeble efforts.

  The note said: “Luke, I’m going to see my mother at work. Come as soon as you can.” This last sentence was crossed out. “Come NOW,” Mandy had written instead, underlining it so hard the pencil had torn the paper.

  “And that’s exactly what you are going to do, Luke old pal.” Luke could feel Quentin’s breath of satisfaction blow through him like wind off a sewer. “For now, it’s back to dyzych command central. Be seeing you. Soon.”

  Quentin, with a little savage dig of satisfaction, informed the dyzych where Mandy was.

  “Her mother works at the hospital. If you don’t succeed in getting her out of there, they’ll find the implant,” Quentin explained with malicious relish. “So right now our interests in collecting Mandy are completely equal, and yours are rather more urgent than my own.”

  Immediately Luke felt the alien seize him. He turned toward the bedroom door, lumbering like a zombie.

  The stairs almost ended the mission. Stepping down onto the first one, Luke felt his leg bend backwards. The alien was going to turn his knee joint inside out!

  A burst of pain shot up his leg. Overcompensating, the alien missed the step entirely with Luke’s other foot. Luke felt himself topple.

  Suddenly strength flooded back into his limbs. Luke immediately took control. The alien presence had fled.

  Instinctively, Luke grabbed the banister, stopping his fall.

  His brain worked feverishly. He had to get to his phone and call Mandy at the hospital. He had to warn her. He turned to bolt back to his room.

  Instantly, like the flick of a switch, the dyzych returned.

  Luke lashed out. But the alien already had him turned around. Taking the steps down, one at a time.

  Luke heard Jeff come quietly out of his room. He tried to shout, but the noise only echoed in his head. His hand reached out and opened the front door.

  As Luke went out, he glimpsed Jeff standing at the top of the stairs. Watching.

  Still awkward, jerked along by an inexperienced puppeteer, Luke went down the front walk.

  At the street, he turned toward the hospital.

  Chapter Thirty

  Mandy pushed open the door to the emergency room. There weren’t many people waiting. Mandy went up to the desk feeling, for the first time, like she might make it.

  A little boy with too much energy was dashing around, applying a big horseshoe magnet to everything he saw. While she waited for someone to come, Mandy watched him indulgently.

  Sometimes it seemed like a million years since she’d been a little kid like that. Other times it seemed like the blink of an eye. She still had her own magnet collection on the beaten strip of iron over her bed.

  If she had to wait, she figured she might as well show the little boy some of her magnet tricks.

  Suddenly there was a blare of static in her head. A cold presence flooded her. Dyzych. It grabbed her roughly. Mandy felt herself flung into a corner of her own skull.

  Vaguely, she was aware of the little boy zooming by. He aimed his magnet at her and made shooting noises.

  Another burst of inner static jarred her. The dyzych vanished, cut off. But now it knew where she was.

  “Mandy?”

  Mandy jumped in panic. A nurse was regarding her quizzically. “Are you looking for your mother?”

  Mandy gulped in some air, trying to control her trembling. “Ah, no.” Mandy cleared her throat. She told herself it wouldn’t hurt to look a little wigged out.

  “Actually, I haven’t mentioned anything about this to her,” she said. “I didn’t want to worry her. But I fell a couple days ago and since then I’ve been feeling nauseous and getting terrible headaches. Dizzy, too. It seems worse today and I thought I should get a head X ray.”

  The nurse looked instantly concerned. As she should. Mandy had just described the symptoms of a concussion.

  “Right this way,” the nurse said. “Tell me, did you feel dizzy before you fell? Or not until afterwards?”

  Mandy hesitated. “I’m not sure,” she said. “Maybe. I can’t remember very well.”

  As she’d hoped, the nurse walked a little more briskly, signaling for a doctor as she settled Mandy into an examining cubicle.

  The doctor, a woman about her mother’s age with short, graying hair and friendly eyes, asked a bunch of medical questions. If Mandy wasn’t sure how to answer, she said she couldn’t remember.

  The doctor shined a light in Mandy’s eyes and tested her reflexes. “I don’t see any signs of concussion,” she said. “But we’ll take an X ray to be safe.”

  When the doctor left, Mandy felt a savage triumph. She had beaten them. Quentin couldn’t get her now. She was in the hands of the medical establishment.

  If she started acting bizarre and trying to escape, they’d hold her all the more firmly. Soon they would find that thing in her brain. And soon after that, the world would know.

  There would be FBI or whoever swarming all over the town. The aliens would lose.

  The doctor returned, with Mandy’s anxious mother in tow. Usually Mandy hated being fussed over, but this time she basked in it.

  After the X ray was taken, Mandy sat in the radiology lab waiting room. Her mother had gone back to work.

  What if they didn’t find the implant? She began to worry, but she didn’t have long to wait.

  The doctor who had first examined her entered the waiting room, smiling uncertainly. “You don’t seem to be concussed,” she said. “But we want to have the radiologist examine your films. We may need to take some more.”

  “Is there a problem?” Man
dy asked, almost slumping with relief. They had found the implant. Now they would remove it. She did her best to look worried, since that’s what the doctor would expect.

  “I’m sure there isn’t,” the doctor said in that infuriating way they had. “Please, come this way.”

  Mandy was led to an examining room. A handsome young doctor, blond with an athletic physique, entered. For some reason, Mandy’s nerves began to prickle with anxiety. What was going on?

  The doctor smiled. There was something familiar about his eyes. “I’ve already explained to the others it was nothing, just a glitch in the film,” he said.

  Then he grinned at her, his eyes glittering strangely.

  “A glitch?” Mandy tried to keep the nervousness out of her voice. “Are you sure? Maybe you should take another X ray?” If she had to, she could get her mom to insist.

  The doctor let his eyes rove over her in a very nonmedical way. Mandy jumped off the examining table, alarm bells suddenly jangling in her head.

  “That’s, um, good news.” Even to her own ears, her voice sounded shrill. “I’ll go tell my mother.”

  The doctor stepped closer. “These X rays are actually very interesting.” He stuck the tip of his purplish tongue between his teeth as he examined the film. “Amazing work they do, isn’t it?” A raspy note of irritation crept into his modulated voice. “Not perfect, obviously. But I’m assured a little fine tuning is all that’s required.”

  “They?” echoed Mandy. Chills raced up and down her spine.

  He was standing between her and the closed door. She calculated her chances of getting past him. Not good. She’d have to create a distraction.

  “Oh, I think we both know what I’m talking about,” the handsome doctor said with oily satisfaction. The professional smoothness of his voice cracked.

  Mandy froze in horror. It couldn’t be.

  “Their technology is vastly superior. As are their physical attributes,” he added, as his purple tongue protruded farther and farther. “Such wonders we have in store for you.”

  He slipped his hand inside the white doctor’s coat. He brought out a long silvery instrument.

  He grinned at Mandy and scratched his eyebrow with the pointed tip of his tongue.