Worlds Away and Worlds Aweird

by James Hartley

  At last the house came in sight. I don’t know why we could see the house okay, I kind of expected it to appear to be a large stand of trees or something, but it was a house. A very big house, but a house. Once we were in sight of the house, we started a very cautious sneak approach.

  I was right out in the front of the approach, heading for the front door. We were all as well equipped as modern military technology could make us, somewhere between a Green Beret force and a SWAT team, but in carefully selected camouflage colors. We were armed to the hilt, and I was still scared. Something in the back of my mind kept asking how was I going to shoot something that could make itself effectively invisible. About like going after The Shadow, with his “mysterious power to cloud men’s minds.”

  But I went in, and so did all the rest. There were at least two agents assigned to every ground floor door and window, and a bunch heading around toward the back. We hadn’t been able to scout the back very well, as it was too close to the wall of the canyon. My backup man and I got up to the front door, and then we waited.

  Finally the signal came, and my partner and I rushed the door. A quick check of the handle showed it was locked, so I shot the lock out and we rushed in.

  We were in a large hallway, with many doors and a big staircase leading up—reminiscent of the big mansions you see in the movies. We were alone in the hallway for about three seconds. Then a figure popped out of a door down at the other end of the hall. He was tall, slender, and blonde, and in his hand he held a long thin stick, which he pointed at us. It must have been a weapon, because just as I realized we were under attack, I blacked out.

  I awoke some time later, lying on the floor of that hallway. I was a little groggy, but there didn’t seem to be any bad aftereffects from whatever he (it?) shot me with. My backup man was just waking up too, apparently he got hit about the same time I did. Either that weapon had a wide field of fire, or the alien was fast enough to get two shots off before either of us could react. I found out later that everyone on the attack team had the same experience: they broke in to an empty room, then an alien appeared with his long thin weapon, then blackout. Everyone had gone down, all just about simultaneously.

  As soon as we woke up, we reported in. Those outside had seen us go down, as we were just inside the doors, but neither the live observers nor the video cameras had been able to see the alien—the angle was bad. Somehow, the aliens had stayed out of camera view at all the break-in points.

  According to the observers, we were out for about five minutes, and they were still trying to decide whether to go in after us when we started to wake up. Within a few minutes, all of the attack team was awake, and the story was the same all over. We were instructed to hold our places while the higher-ups conferred, and then told to proceed, cautiously, to search the house.

  I don’t have to tell you what we found, do I? Of course not. It’s obvious. The aliens were gone. This time it only took them five minutes, but they only had a house to evacuate, rather than a whole town. And we had given them plenty of opportunity to practice their evacuation.

  Where they went, or how they got out, I have no idea. The SAC squadron had their radars remoted back to base and recorded there, and they were carrying video cameras, also remoted and recorded. The records show that no flying saucers took off from around there. Our observers will swear, and the videotapes bear them out, that nobody left on the ground. Somebody suggested a tunnel underground, so they brought in one of those seismic things the oil companies use. You thump the ground, record the echoes, and run the numbers through a computer (a big computer, thank you), and the computer tells you what’s under the ground there. The oil companies use this to find oil and avoid dry holes, but it did a good job of telling us that there were no tunnels. Other less probable suggestions included one of E. E. Smith’s “hyperspatial tubes,” but their escape remains officially unsolved.

  Tearing the town apart hadn’t told us anything, so this time we had orders to investigate the house without damaging anything. It was a lovely place, enormous, with over fifty rooms. The bedrooms had the same sort of anonymous clothing that I had found in Alan Green’s room, and the kitchen was stocked with perfectly ordinary food. All the trash baskets were empty.

  In the course of searching, I found a really nice library, and I asked to be assigned to it. I like libraries, I always have. My senior year in high school, I worked in the town library after school and in the evening. I did assorted menial tasks, but I liked it, just being around all those books. So it didn’t take any sort of hunch for me to want to investigate the library, and my boss went along with it.

  This library was actually in two sections. It was a big room, and one wall was filled with alien books. The rest was Earth books—mostly English, but a smattering of other languages. The alien books have all been photocopied and sent out to linguists we can trust, but so far they haven’t figured out much. We need a Rosetta Stone, and we don’t have one. I concentrated on the Earth-book section.

  It was a very nice collection, covering many subjects, and it seemed very neatly arranged. With the background of working in a library, I was very careful not to get any books out of place. I was beginning to get one of my hunches, so I brought in an expert in Library Science and had him go over the Earth-book side of the library.

  “Very nice,” he told me. He said that the arrangement of the books was nonstandard, neither the Dewey Decimal system that most public libraries use nor the Library of Congress system, but the arrangement was very logical. Except…

  Very logical, with one small exception. When I heard that, my hunch turned on full force. I know who the aliens were, but I’m afraid to report it. I won’t be believed. Or maybe I’m more afraid I will be believed. It’s a ridiculous conclusion to draw from a few misfiled books in a library. On the other hand, what conclusion would you draw from finding that the aliens thought all of Tolkien’s works were really history, rather than fiction?

  My Girlfriend Wanda

  [Teenage romance can become complicated]

  IT WAS THE MONDAY after my third date with Wanda Wibberley that the guys started ragging on me. Even worse, it was Sam, one of my best friends, that started it.

  “Hey Kenny,” he said, “how was your date with Wanda Witcherley? Did you get airsick riding her broomstick to the movies? Did she conjure up some refreshments later? Must have been a Love Potion, you’re the first guy in the school who has gone out with her more than once!”

  “Cool it, Sam,” I replied. “Wanda’s nice. I kind of like her, and I don’t think it’s very nice to call her names. I took her to the movies, we stopped at the Day-ree De-lite for a shake, and I took her home. Nothing unusual happened.”

  Mike Jordan chimed in, “Did you ever hear about the time I dated her? Scary!”

  As much as I liked Wanda, I have to admit I was curious. “What happened?”

  “We were going to the movies at the mall,” said Mike. “I went down Main Street and started to pull out onto the highway when I hit a pothole and the car stalled, wouldn’t start again. I told Wanda ‘We’re too far out into the road, this is dangerous, we’d better get out,’ but she told me to try it one more time. I did, and the car started. But, and this is the funny part, I’d swear I saw dancing lights out of the corner of my eye, over where she was sitting.”

  “That’s it?” I asked. “Dancing lights?”

  “There’s more,” Mike said. “We got to the movies okay, but when we came out the car was dead again, and I had to call my dad to come get us and take us home. The next day I got my cousin, the one who works at the garage, to take me out and see what was wrong. Well, he took one look under the hood, then started looking under the car. ‘Distributor cap came off and the rotor is missing,’ he told me. ‘Should be under the car, the car wouldn’t go two feet the way it is, but I don’t see it.’ We went over to the auto parts place and got a rotor and he put it in, and the car ran fine. But on the way home, I stopped at the Main Street interse
ction and looked around. At the bottom of the pothole I had hit was a distributor rotor that looked just like mine. I think we drove the rest of the way to the movies on magic!”

  “Yeah, right!” I said. “Magic. Of course I believe in magic!”

  Another guy who had dated Wanda chimed in, “I was at the pizzeria one night with Wanda, and a girl at the next table got real sick. She was all pale, fell on the floor gasping, was having real trouble breathing. We were going to call 9-1-1, but then suddenly she recovered, she was fine, like nothing ever happened. When I turned to say something about it to Wanda, there were dancing lights around her, just a few, and then they went out. I didn’t say anything to Wanda about the lights, but later Joe Stepanic told me there had been a lot of lights around her about the time the sick girl recovered.”

  Finally I got disgusted with all the stories and left before I said something I’d regret later. I mean, I liked Wanda, and I already had another date with her for this Friday, and I wasn’t going to break it. Let them tell their stories, what did it matter?

  Friday came, I picked up Wanda, and we went to the movies. It was an okay movie. Wanda was in a good mood, and I figured maybe I’d get a chance for a little parking and kissing on the way home, but first we stopped at the Day-ree De-lite for shakes. I pulled into a space near the door and turned off the ignition.

  Suddenly there was a loud noise, sounded like a gunshot, several shots. A man in a ski mask burst out of the door, a gun in one hand and a paper bag in the other. He ran across the parking lot and down the street. A woman in a Day-ree uniform splattered with blood came out the door, screamed, “Someone call 9-1-1! He shot Jerry!” and ran back in.

  I was momentarily frozen, then I saw a strange light to my right. I looked, and saw Wanda surrounded by dancing lights which grew brighter by the moment. I felt a strange wrenching sensation, sort of like what you get on the wilder rides at a carnival.

  As I watched, the woman in the Day-ree uniform ran backwards out the door, screamed something totally unintelligible, and ran backwards back in. The man in the ski mask appeared running backwards across the parking lot and into the door. There were several strange noises, sort of like gunshots only, well, wrong. I figured out later that’s what a gunshot would sound like if you recorded it and played it backwards.

  The wrenching sensation came again, and then there was a muffled explosion within the store. The lights dancing around Wanda were fading out. The woman in the Day-ree uniform ran out again, but this time she yelled, “Someone call 9-1-1! A robber tried to shoot us but his gun exploded, he’s hurt really bad!” before running back in. Well, I had no way of calling anybody, and sooner or later one of them would remember there was a phone in the store.

  I turned to Wanda and said, “What the heck was that?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked. “A robbery, you heard what the woman said.”

  “Wanda, it happened twice. The first time the clerk was shot, then everything went backwards. The second time the gun blew up and the robber was hurt but the clerk was okay. What happened?”

  Wanda turned white as a sheet. “Kenny, please, let’s get out of here before the police come. Drive somewhere, anywhere, nice and private, and then I’ll explain.”

  I started the car, backed out of the parking place, and drove off. As I headed down the road, I saw flashing red lights a mile back, and I hoped the woman had been too upset to remember my license plate. I took several zig-zags, then turned into a cul-de-sac where there were only vacant lots and houses under construction. I stopped the car, turned off the lights and engine, and looked over at Wanda.

  “Well?”

  “Kenny, you’re imagining things. The robber tried to shoot Jerry, the clerk, but his gun exploded and he was hurt, maybe killed. That’s all that happened.”

  “How’d you know the clerk’s name was Jerry?”

  “What? Oh, the woman said that Jerry had been shot…” Her voice trailed off as she realized what she had said.

  “Right! The first time she said Jerry had been shot, the second time she never mentioned his name. If the first time never happened, how did you know his name?” Wanda started to sob and I put my arm around her, tentatively at first, but then I pulled her to me when she didn’t object, and she leaned her head on my shoulder.

  “Kenny, you aren’t supposed to remember. When my spell reversed time, it should have erased your memories along with everybody else’s. The woman, the clerk, they’ll only remember the second time. I should be the only one to remember. I just don’t understand what went wrong.”

  “Wait a minute! You said ‘spell.’ Does that mean that all those rumors about you being a witch are true? That story about Mike’s distributor rotor?”

  “I did that because I was afraid we’d get hit, stalled halfway out into the highway, and once we started there was really no place to stop until we got to the theater. And I don’t know what other stories you’ve heard, but I guess at least some of them are true. I’m not supposed to admit it, but yes, I’m a witch.”

  She was still crying a little, and had her eyes closed, so she didn’t see the police car turning into our street to check us out, but she must have heard him as he turned around and drove back out without stopping, and she opened her eyes to look.

  “That’s funny, that cop acted like he didn’t even see us here.” She turned to look at me just before the dancing lights faded into nothingness, and her mouth opened in a big “O.”

  “Don’t worry about it, Wanda. I’ll have to introduce you to my parents and the rest of our coven, I’m sure you’ll all get along fine. But I really would like to hear about that time-reversal spell when you feel up to it.”

  Let’s Go to the Movies

  [Sometimes, teenage romance can become quite hazardous!]

  TOMMY HARDLY BELIEVED HIS GOOD LUCK in getting a date with Lisa Anderson. Overhearing her telling her friends in the cafeteria how she had just broken up with Fred Turner, the captain of the football team, Tommy approached her before he lost his nerve.

  “Hey, Lisa,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “How would you like to go to the movies with me Friday night?”

  “Why Tommy, how sweet! Of course, I’d love to. Pick me up about seven, okay?”

  Tommy expected it to be a dream date. Lisa had a beautiful face and a magnificent figure, and she was reputed to allow quite a bit of cuddling of that magnificent figure on a date. But when Friday arrived, the dream turned into a nightmare, a night of horror. Nobody ever mentioned Lisa’s brother, or how overpowering the smell of bubblegum could be. Or Lisa’s taste in movies…

  Tommy was able to borrow the car without trouble and drove over to Lisa’s. He was early, so he parked around the corner and watched the clock until it was two minutes of seven. Then he pulled around the corner, stopped in front of her house, and rang the bell on the dot of seven.

  He was taken aback when the door was opened by what appeared to be a six foot three pit bull terrier with greasy coveralls. Then the apparition spoke, forcing him to conclude that it might be a human after all—however unlikely that seemed. The figure looked Tommy over, then turned and called, “Hey, Sis, yer new creep’s here.”

  There didn’t seem to be any effective reply to this, so Tommy just stood there.

  “Now listen up,” the figure continued. “You gonna date my little sis, you gonna play by the rules. Mom wants her home by midnight. You get her home by midnight, and I don’t mean twelve-oh-one, neither, or I grind you into the sidewalk. Understand, creep?”

  “Oh, of course, no problem, I’ll be sure to have her home on time…” Tommy knew he was babbling, but he wasn’t sure how to stop. Lisa’s appearance saved him.

  “Hi, Tommy. I see you’ve met my brother, everyone calls him ‘Pit Bull.’”

  “I can see why,” Tommy muttered under his breath.

  “What was that?” roared Pit Bull.

  “Er, I said ‘Hi!’ Pleased to meet you, Pit Bull.”
/>   “Yeah, hi, creep. You watch yerself.” Pit Bull turned and walked off down the hall.

  Tommy was sure he could feel the house shake at each footstep.

  “Well, hey, let’s go, Tommy.” Lisa walked past him and started toward the car.

  Tommy had to rush to get to the car first so he could open the door for her. This evening was not starting well. As he went around to the driver’s side and got in, she popped a bubble and the over-sweet aroma of gum filled the car.

  “You’ll like Pit Bull once you get to know him, he’s really a sweet guy. His real name is Wilbur, but he doesn’t like it much. He works on cars, and the last guy that called him Wilbur, Pit Bull dropped a transmission on him. But he just wants to make sure I’m okay and get home on time, is all.” She blew and popped another bubble.

  “Well, I’ll just make sure I call him Pit Bull.” Tommy put the car in gear and pulled out. He took a left, went two blocks, and stopped for the light at Main Street, turning on his right signal.

  “Hey, Tommy, the Orpheum’s to the left.”

  “The Orpheum?”

  “Yeah, of course. Aren’t we going to the Orpheum?”

  Tommy hadn’t had the slightest intention of going to the Orpheum. Its worst drawback was that it was always packed, and there was never any privacy if one wanted to get a little friendly with his date. But he knew better than to mention that.

  “Well, I had sort of thought of going to the drive-in. They’ve got that great new science fiction film, Out of the Galaxy.”

  “Eewww, bor-ring!” Lisa popped another bubble.

  “What’s at the Orpheum? I guess I didn’t notice when I was looking at the movie listings.”

  There was a honk behind Tommy. Startled, he realized the light had turned green. He quickly flipped his signal from right to left and pulled out into the intersection. He had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that he was going to the Orpheum whether he wanted to or not.