The Night the Heads Came

by William Sleator

  Kroll also says that Dr. Viridian and Dr. Pierce have vanished without a trace. There are no leads, nothing the cops can do to find them. The reporters consider this an odd coincidence. I’m hoping what it means is that The Others are really gone for good.

  The magazines are clamoring for the rights to reproduce Tim’s pictures on their covers. They are willing to pay a lot of money. Dad calls one of the top lawyers in town. Of course he knows about the drawings and is eager to represent Tim. He will have to draw up contracts, which will take several days at least. I am hoping that by that time Tim will be able to sign them. Since he is a minor, one of Tim’s parents will have to sign them too. I don’t doubt that they will be quite eager to sign, because of the large sums of money involved. I make sure the lawyer will put in the contracts that most of the money will be held in a trust fund for Tim, so that it will go directly to him when he reaches legal age.

  Of all the people who are at our house today, I think the happiest are the representatives from environmental organizations. They keep beaming at me and saying that these drawings—the ones of ruined cities and landscapes, which have a deeply powerful effect on everybody who sees them—are one of the best things that has ever happened for the environmental movement. “If anything can save us, it might be those drawings,” they keep telling me.

  It almost makes me wonder if the heads were telling the truth when they said the earth was completely irrelevant to them.

  One of the environmental guys, named Harrison, who has a ponytail, is particularly pushy. He keeps badgering Kroll about Tim’s father. “That guy Coleman is notorious,” Harrison says. “In the last few months, he’s done more to hurt the environment than anybody else in this state.”

  Kroll just wants to get away from him, but I’m curious. “Exactly what has he done?” I ask Harrison.

  “He’s won cases for the factories that have put us back years, allowing them to dump toxic waste, things like that,” Harrison tells me impatiently, as though I don’t matter because I’m just a teenager. He turns quickly back to Kroll. “So what’s the story on Coleman? What did he have to do with all this? Are you going to be able to stop him now?”

  “I can’t say anything about it at this time,” Kroll says. “I have to go now.” He turns abruptly and walks away.

  “Exactly how much damage did Tim’s father—” I start to ask Harrison. But he pays no attention to me; he hurries after Kroll.

  It’s late by the time everybody leaves, and Mom and Dad and I are exhausted. But I insist on going to the hospital. They argue with me, telling me there’s nothing I can do to help Tim, but I won’t give in, so Mom comes with me.

  There are reporters there and cops to keep them out. The cops recognize us and let us through. Tim is in a private room now. We explain to the nurse on duty that we’re Tim’s friends, and since she knows the cops let us through, she doesn’t ask any more questions. She tells us there has been no change in his condition and motions for us to go into his room.

  Tim lies motionless on the bed, still hooked up to all kinds of gadgets. His mother is sitting on one side of the bed. His father is sitting beside her.

  “Leo. Lenore,” Tim’s father says. “How good of you to come.”

  I can’t believe what I’m hearing. My knees go so weak with surprise I have to steady myself against the wall; there is no available chair to sink into.

  They are pale and disheveled now; they look almost dazed with grief and shock. I’m dying to know why they both seem so different and what happened to Tim’s father at the police station. But first I say, “The nurse said there was no change.”

  Tim’s father sighs. “No change,” he says quietly. He takes his wife’s hand and squeezes it. “I’d do anything to change what happened, to bring the lost time back.”

  “What?” The word explodes out of me.

  “Leo. You’re in a hospital,” Mom says.

  “Sorry,” I say, remembering to keep my voice down. I’m more curious than ever now. “Uh, did you say lost time?” I ask Tim’s father.

  He nods, looking as though he might actually break down and cry. “Months and months. No memory. Both of us. The last thing we remember was the day I was asked to represent the Acme Chemical Company, and that was a good six months ago. The doorbell rang late that night; we thought it was odd, and I went to open it. I don’t remember anything after that until last night, when I was driving by the river, and the police were chasing me. I pulled over right away. I had no idea what they were asking me at the station. Aliens? They put me on a lie detector. They got a doctor from this hospital who gave me some kind of truth drug and interviewed me under hypnosis. Nothing. But worst of all is what happened to Tim. I can’t help feeling it’s my fault somehow.”

  “Don’t do that to yourself, dear,” Tim’s mother says, and they squeeze hands again. Then they both turn and gaze miserably at Tim.

  “You don’t remember anything?” I say.

  “I think maybe we should go, Leo,” Mom says.

  She’s right. We shouldn’t bother them now. I’m not going to get anything out of him that the police couldn’t. And we’ll have to be seeing them again soon anyway.

  Outside in the corridor Mom and I stare at each other, both totally mystified. “What is going on with them?” Mom asks me.

  “I wish I knew. Somehow they must have been under the control of The Others during the time they can’t remember. Tim’s father was working with them. But what was really going on? Why were The Others here? What was the point?”

  We have to push through the reporters, ignoring their questions. They’re still asking us things as we drive away. At home we go right to bed.

  And I’m wondering, is this going to be it? I keep telling myself I might have to be resigned to the possibility of never finding out what was going on with The Others and what the heads were really doing here. At the same time, in my gut I have the pretty certain feeling I’ll go nuts if I don’t find out. In the last few days I’ve gotten accustomed to taking control of things, and I like the way it feels. It’s horribly frustrating that there’s nothing I can do to contact the heads and try to find out what their motives are and what The Others were trying to do. Thinking about it keeps me awake for hours.

  And then I see the amber glow coming from some impossible place above the ceiling of my room.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  This time I don’t panic. This time I’m nervous but excited. I’m sure the heads will be even angrier at me after what I’ve done, but I don’t care. They know they can’t boss me around now, after I cut out their implant and did exactly the opposite of what they told me to do. As I float up out of the roof of the house, I am determined that I will find something out from them this time, no matter what.

  I enter the small craft waiting for me above the roof. Tim is there! I’m so relieved to see him. He’s still unconscious. But if anybody can wake him up, it is probably the heads.

  The foliage on the mother ship is once again denser and taller. It makes me wonder if the heads go away for long periods of time in between the times we see them. As usual, the bodies immediately take our blood and strap us down onto the recliner.

  “I know you’re angry at me, but the most important thing is to wake up Tim,” I tell the heads right away, before they even address me. “Nothing I did was his fault; he’s innocent. The Others did this to him. No one in the hospital could wake him up. You’ve got to help him.”

  They still don’t say anything to me. They must be really furious. One of the bodies undulates toward us with a device I haven’t seen before. It looks sort of like a metal rattle, except that the rattle part is covered with dangerous-looking spikes. And now I do begin to panic. “Please don’t hurt me!” I beg them. “I only did what I thought was right. And look what happened! The Others went away. Tim’s parents are back to normal. And—”

  At that point I see that the body with the dangerous-looking tool is aiming it at Tim, not me. It rolls the
thing over Tim’s head. It doesn’t seem to cut him or hurt him. And a moment later Tim shakes his head. His eyes come into focus. He sees where he is. He sees me. His face is transformed by an expression of total joy; I’ve never seen him look anything like that before.

  “I’m back! And you’re here too, Leo!” he cries. “This is the best thing that ever happened!”

  The bodies, meanwhile, are taking our blood again. Tim seems so used to it that he hardly notices. “Are you going to take me back there? To Sawan, to Chaweewan? Are you?” he is asking them.

  They ignore his question. Instead, they address me. Thank you, Leo. You have proven yourself to be a most resourceful person.

  “Huh?” I say. “You’re not mad at me?”

  Of course not. You did exactly the right things, much more ingeniously than we even expected.

  “Yeah, but I did exactly the opposite of what you told me to do,” I point out to them. “I mean, why didn’t you just tell me what you wanted me to do, instead of telling me the opposite and hoping I’d go against it?”

  We found from our tests of you that you are a very independent person and not one to take orders of any kind without reason—especially if the orders go against your own conscience. We also knew we had to keep secrets from you. If we told you our real plans and intentions, and you were then captured by The Others, they would find out too much. So we gave you orders we knew you would not want to follow, and we gave them in a manner we knew you would find unfair. You behaved as we had predicted—and more so.

  And I thought I was being so forceful and taking control of things—when all the time the heads knew exactly what I was going to do. It’s not only deflating; it’s also a little scary that they could predict me so accurately. I don’t like thinking about it.

  And I’m curious about lots of other things. They are talking about keeping secrets from us—but now they are putting it in the past tense. “Maybe the need for secrets is over,” I say. “Maybe you’ll answer some questions now.”

  Ask, and we will see.

  “What are The Others? What were they doing on the Earth? And are they gone now?”

  The Others are beings that hunger for planets approaching environmental collapse. That is the atmosphere in which they thrive—as was evident in Tim’s drawing. Sometimes they are instrumental in causing the collapse—that is what they did to our home planet. Sometimes they merely show up and bask in it and do what they can to help the process along.

  I’m really getting excited now. Finally, some answers that make sense! Now I understand why The Others always hung out in places with the worst pollution—that’s where they were most comfortable. I also understand why they gave all abductees such dumb, hard-to-believe memories; to protect themselves, they wanted as few people as possible to suspect that any aliens really exist. And now I know why they were controlling Tim’s father to do everything he could to hurt the environment—and turning Tim’s mother into a zombie so she wouldn’t notice what had happened to his father.

  It’s also beginning to dawn on me that maybe the heads really are the good guys, after all.

  In the case of the Earth, the human race needed little help from The Others to speed the destruction of the planet, the heads continue. But of course The Others did what they could to help and to ensnare humans to help them, such as Tim’s parents.

  “My parents?” Tim says.

  “The Others were controlling them,” I tell him. “That’s why they were so weird. Didn’t you notice any change in them, like about six months ago, when your father was asked to represent the Acme Chemical Company?”

  Tim’s eyes widen. “Six months ago? The middle of last winter?” He turns to me. “That’s just about when they started acting so stiff and dressing up all the time and hardly ever sleeping. That’s when they started hating my drawings! The Others were controlling them?”

  I nod.

  “And I was living in the same house with them,” Tim says, sounding frightened. “Do you think, if The Others wanted them to, they could have killed me?”

  I don’t like thinking about it. “It’s over now,” I tell him. “But how do they do it?” I ask the heads. “How do The Others take people over like that?”

  It’s one of their secrets, like their shape changing. We don’t know exactly how they do it, and that makes them very dangerous. What we do know is that they have to pick their slaves very carefully—they can’t do it to very many people at the same time. But once they have picked someone, they can take that person over completely and almost instantly. And yes, Tim’s parents would have killed him if The Others wanted them to.

  “That’s scary,” I say, shivering.

  It is, the heads agree. But The Others have left your planet now. And now that they are gone, the drawings we taught Tim how to make will help to slow down the destruction of your planet, we think.

  “So you did come here to save the Earth, after all!” I burst out.

  Nothing of the kind! they say, as though the idea offends them. Our goal is to get back at The Others for what they did to our planet and our species; to undermine all their plans, to follow them everywhere and stop them from creating the kind of worlds in which they must live. That is our assigned mission—and we do as we are told. We still find the Earth completely irrelevant.

  “Was it you who created the mist that made The Others run away?”

  Panic gas. We distilled it from your own blood and that of others—blood taken from humans in moments of panic is full of the most potent hormones. Turns out these hormones have a devastating effect on The Others. We do not think they will go back to the Earth now, for fear of experiencing such pain there again. We do not have much in the way of emotions ourselves, you see. We find emotions fascinating. So we take samples of emotions whenever we can.

  “And now you’re going to follow The Others somewhere else and stop them from wrecking another planet? Not because you care about the environment, I know,” I add quickly. “Just because you hate The Others.”

  Exactly. We will follow them to Sawan. Of course the Sawanese will be completely incompetent, the idiots. That dull little planet will need all the help we can give them.

  “And you’re taking us too?” Tim bursts out.

  Why should we take you? We have gotten what we needed from you.

  “But you have to!” Tim shouts. “I have to see Chaweewan again. You can’t do this! You take me there, you get me to love her—and then you won’t take me back. It’s not fair! It’s inhuman!”

  Who ever said we were human? If we have a reason to take you there again, we will. That is the end of it.

  “But …” Tim protests. “But you … you … just can’t …”

  “Tim, listen to me,” I tell him. “You don’t know what happened while The Others had you. You’re a world-famous artist now. I got your pictures on TV. You’re going to be on the covers of all the big magazines. You’ll be rich. And you’re better than rich—your pictures are what might save the Earth.”

  “Huh?” Tim says. “Is that really the truth?”

  It is the truth, the heads affirm.

  “Tim, you have contracts to sign. It’s going to be the most exciting time in your life. You don’t want to miss it. And they said they might take you back someday.”

  That is what we said. And now we must go. Thank you both for all your help.

  The cables unwrap. We rise into the air. We float to the smaller ship.

  “I can’t believe they’re doing this,” Tim moans as we descend.

  “Oh, stop it!” I say, irritated with him again. “We’re both going to be heroes. It’s the best thing that ever happened to us. Not to mention, your parents are back to normal again, now that The Others are gone. Just relax and enjoy what’s happening and stop wishing you were somewhere else. Not that you have much choice.”

  “Well … we’ll see,” he says petulantly.

  But I’m too happy to stay irritated with him. Even if he won’t admi
t it, I know that we are about to enter the most exciting time in our lives. And now that we’re safe from The Others and all my questions are answered, I’ll really be able to enjoy every minute of it.

  It’s just beginning to get light when I land back in bed. I’m too excited to try to sleep, and anyway, I’m starving—I can’t remember the last time I had a real meal.

  I hear noises from the kitchen as I go downstairs. That’s odd. Mom and Dad never get up this early, and they both went to bed very late last night.

  Mom is in the kitchen. She is heavily made up; her hair is perfectly groomed; she is wearing a freshly ironed dress and stockings and high heels.

  “Good morning, Leo,” Mom says in a flat, expressionless voice. “What would you like for breakfast today.”

  About the Author

  William Sleator (1945–2011) was an American science fiction author best known for his young adult novels. Raised outside of St. Louis, Missouri, Sleator was the eldest of four children. After graduating from Harvard University with a degree in English, he moved to England for a short time, where he played music for ballet classes and developed the ideas for Blackbriar, his first novel. For many years, he was the rehearsal pianist for the Boston Ballet.

  Sleator is the author of over thirty books, including The Angry Moon, which was awarded the Caldecott Medal and nominated for the National Book Award, as well as the quasi-autobiographical science fiction thrillers: The Night the Heads Came, Others See Us, and Oddballs. In his later years, he split his time between Boston and rural Thailand.

  Author photo © 2002 by Abrams

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