by Gary Urey
CHAPTER 16
INTO THE SHADOW
I reached for the walkie-talkie. “Vivian! They’re here!” I yelled.
Before I could say another word, the aliens lunged at me.They shoved a hose up each nostril. Instantly, I began to snore, a loud, grinding snivel that made the walls of my bedroom shake and the coffee can full of pennies on my dresser crash to the carpet.
The aliens’ dark eyes beamed with fluorescent green light.They were communicating with each other, but I had no idea what they were saying. One of the aliens waved a lightning-bolt-shaped wand over my head. Suddenly, the room started spinning; my brains rattled against the sides of my skull. I felt like they were sucking my insides out through my nose!
“Do…do…do something…” I managed to utter to my friends. But they just stood there (except for Mumps, who was still crashed out in his sleeping bag, completely oblivious to what was going on) with their mouths hanging open, fear etched on their faces.
My bedroom door swung open. I looked up and saw Vivian. She dove at the aliens and managed to tackle one to the ground.
“Yuck!” Vivian cried out. “They’re all slimy and slippery!”
Jimmy leaped into action. He grabbed the other alien and shoved him to the ground.
“And they smell too!” Jimmy shouted.
The alien Vivian was holding slithered from her grasp and came at me again. He gripped both hoses and shoved them deeper into my nostrils. I writhed in pain, begging my friends to help me. This time TJ lunged at the spaceman, ripping the hose from the alien’s bony hands and pinning the snore thief to the ground.
“Duct tape them!” I yelled to Vivian. “Before they get away!”
Vivian went to work, wrapping each Apnean in layers of silver duct tape. While she secured the bad guys, TJ flicked on the lights and gently pulled the hoses out of my nose.
Mumps rolled over in his sleeping bag. “Did the aliens come?” he asked, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.
“Take a look,” I told him.
Mumps sat up, took a long gander at the duct-taped aliens, and then conked out cold.
The aliens’ eyes lit up like a Fourth of July fireworks show. They were communicating with each other, so Vivian shut them up by blindfolding them with a strip of duct tape.
“That should keep you Apneans quiet for a bit,” she said.
“What should we do with them?” TJ asked.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Don’t know.”
“Let’s haul them back to the Nostril,” Vivian suggested. “We don’t want Schnoz’s mom waltzing inside his room only to find two space aliens wrapped in duct tape.”
“Great idea,” I said. “We’ll carry the slimy buggers out of the house before my parents wake up.”
“Ahem…” Jimmy grunted, and then pointed to the floor.
I looked down and saw for the first time how the Apneans stored my snores. They used some kind of large metal box that looked like a battery. Connected to the battery were the two hoses.The power of my snores went through the hoses and into the battery.
“What do we do with that stuff?” TJ asked.
“Bring it back to Robo-Nose,” Vivian said, slipping on one of the alien costumes.
Jimmy and TJ looked at each other with the same uneasy expressions on their faces.
“Do you mean that we should still try to infiltrate Robo-Nose?” Jimmy asked.
“Of course,” Vivian said. “That was the plan. Now get on your alien outfits.”
Jimmy and TJ reluctantly pulled out their costumes and started to change. That’s when the light in the room dimmed like a storm cloud passing over the sun.
“It’s the shadow,” Vivian gasped. “Get on your costumes before it disappears!”
The shadow was actually beautiful, almost hypnotic in a strange way. The shady gloom wasn’t distorted, but clear and crisp like a shadow puppet against a white screen. I lifted my nose, wondering if the thing had any smell, when some invisible force grabbed hold of my nostrils.
“Help!” I cried out. “Something’s pulling me by the nose into the shadow!”
Vivian jumped onto the bed and grabbed my leg. She tugged with all her might, but her effort was useless.The vacuum was too powerful.
“Someone throw me an alien costume for Schnoz to wear!” Vivian shouted. “Hurry! Before it’s too late!”
Jimmy ripped off his costume and tossed it to Vivian. The suction doubled in force, inhaling Vivian and me along with the hoses and battery into the dark depths of the shadow.
CHAPTER 17
THE OLFACTORY BULB
The intense pressure of the shadow propelled Vivian and me through a long tunnel.The journey felt like being inside a giant neon glow stick. A fluorescent green hue—the same shade as the Apneans’ eyes when they communicated with each other—illuminated the passageway as we traveled into another dimension.
I looked up and saw that we were heading straight for an even brighter light. Vivian and I clutched each other’s hands as we burst through a thin snot bubble and landed feetfirst in a small room.
“Where are we?” I wondered.
Vivian shrugged. “I have no idea.”
The wheezing sound of Robo-Nose’s snore-propulsion system hummed in my ears. A wall behind me began to shimmer like a precious jewel. I saw the outlines of three Apneans forming in the cascade of colors.
Vivian pulled on her alien mask and tossed me my costume. “Put this on before they materialize!”
The alien outfit Jimmy had stitched together fit me nice and snug, but the mask was another story.The thing wouldn’t fit over my nose!
“Help me!” I hollered to Vivian. “They’re almost visible!”
Vivian yanked at the mask, trying with all her might to slip the disguise over my beak. “This is like a grown man trying to put on a four-yearold’s sock,” she grunted. “On the count of three, we’ll give one giant tug. One…two…three…!”
The mask slipped over my nose just as the Apneans appeared in the room. Without even acknowledging us, they picked up the snore hoses and battery storage and then scurried away.
“What should we do now?” Vivian asked.
“We need to stay under the radar and try to find the ship’s weakness,” I said. “Remember, these creatures are out to destroy Earth.”
Vivian handed me another jar of cayenne pepper. “Just in case,” she said, and then we walked through the shimmering door and into Robo-Nose.
We walked down a long corridor. The walls were metallic colored, and every few yards were weird glistening doors.The Apneans barged in and out of them without giving us a second glance.
“I think our costumes are working,” I said.
“Let’s go in one of the doors and check things out,” Vivian suggested.
“Um…are you sure?” I hesitated. “What if we walk through a door and it’s an Apnean ladies’ restroom?”
Vivian brushed me off. “These aliens are highly advanced beings. They probably don’t even have genders or go to the bathroom.”
I took a deep breath and we stepped through a door. The experience was like taking a shower with rainbow water. Brilliant colors washed over us as we materialized on the other side. We saw two Apnean heads behind a privacy wall. Their eyes were flaming with fluorescent green light, obviously in deep conversation with each other. The Apnean closest to us reached up and pressed a button. A loud whoosh like a toilet flushing filled the room. My nose caught a whiff of a stinky, familiar scent.
“What’s that bad smell?” Vivian whispered to me.
“Apnean poop,” I said. “This really is an alien bathroom.”
Before the other Apnean could flush his space age potty, Vivian and I rushed back into the hall.
“There goes your theory that Apneans don’t have bodily functions,” I said.
She ignored my comment and kept walking. After exploring for a bit, we discovered that Robo-Nose was broken up into three levels: the lower Nose Hair, the middle
Mucous, and the upper Olfactory Bulb.
“The Olfactory Bulb is where we want to be,” I said. “That’s the nerve center of this operation.”
“How do you know?” Vivian asked.
“Trust me. I know my nose, and this whole spaceship is a giant replica of my pie sniffer. The Olfactory Bulb’s job is to transmit smells from the nose to the brain.That’s why dogs and I have such superior senses of smell. Our Olfactory Bulbs are quadruple the size of a normal human.”
“Let’s go,” Vivian said, and we headed for the upper level.
Robo-Nose’s Olfactory Bulb was brimming with activity. Apneans hustled back and forth, their eyes afire with green light. A viewing deck with a giant glass screen peered into endless space.
“Do you see that blue dot in the distance?” Vivian asked.
“Yes,” I said back. “Do you think it’s Earth?”
“Absolutely. Look behind you.”
I turned around and saw a screen with a map of the planet Earth. Three important-looking Apneans were pointing at the screen, zeroing in on North America. They zoomed in closer until only the state of New Hampshire popped up on the screen. After another quick magnification and the town of Denmark and the surrounding woods appeared in plain view.
“That’s where they’re headed,” Vivian said. “Our little town.”
“I hope Dr. Wackjöb is watching Robo-Nose’s descent to Earth on the Cosmoscope,” I said.
A flurry of activity broke out behind us. Vivian and I turned and saw a bunch of anxious-looking Apneans surround another large screen. We watched with dread as my bedroom popped up on the display. A movie played out before our eyes, showing the Not-Right Brothers fighting the snore-sucking aliens, and Vivian and me disappearing into the shadow.
The Apneans had recorded the whole scene.
CHAPTER 18
RUNNING FOR OUR LIVES
A loud, flashing alert signal blasted from the intercom system.
Vivian grabbed my hand. “They know we’re on the ship,” she said, panic gripping her vocal chords. “Let’s get out of here and figure out what to do next.”
We nonchalantly walked out the Olfactory Bulb so as not to draw any unwanted attention and disappeared down the hall.
“What are we supposed to do now?” Vivian asked when we got to the Nose Hair level.
I brushed away the bristly, booger-crusted hairs that were dangling from the nasal lining ceiling. “I have no idea,” I said. “But we’re not leaving until we can figure out this flying snot machine’s weakness.”
Vivian paced back and forth, thinking. “Weakness…weakness,” she muttered out loud. “If this ship is an exact design of your nose then it must have the same weaknesses as you.”
“We went over this a few days ago. My nose doesn’t have any weaknesses.”
“Remember that day you got hit in the snoot by a dodgeball in PE class?”
“Of course I do. My honker bled so bad that the nurse alerted every bloodmobile in the state. I single-handedly supplied every hospital in New England with a year supply of type O positive blood.”
“What if we figured out a way to cause Robo-Nose to have a massive nosebleed?”
“Not very likely unless you can find a dodgeball the size of the moon.”
Vivian pulled up her mask and looked me in the eye. “We have to think of something fast,” she said. “One of two things is going to happen very shortly. Either the Apneans are going to find us and kill us, or they’re going to land on Earth and destroy the planet.”
The options didn’t sound good to me.
“There’s one nice thing from this experience,” I said.
“Like what?” Vivian grunted.
My nostrils flared and my scent receptors tingled with pleasure. “All the new alien smells for my scent dictionary,” I took a long, deep sniff. “The Apneans’ stinky odor, their tangy poop, and the perfume of the strange shimmering doors. I love all these new smells!”
Vivian’s eyes grew as big as softballs. “That’s your weakness!” she shouted. “Smells!”
I raised my eyebrows, not understanding what she was trying to say. Then it slowly dawned on me. Smells were my weakness and my strength all wrapped into one!
“You are a genius!” I told her. “Robo-Nose and I have the same weakness—smells!”
“Exactly. What’s the smelliest thing you have ever smelled?” she asked.
“The Gates of Smell,” I answered.
“Okay, then what’s the next nastiest thing you have ever whiffed? There’s no way we’re ripping up the gym floor and exposing that nasty pit.”
I thought for a second. Dog poop smeared on the bottom of a sneaker, crusty unwashed underwear, burning human hair, rotting roadkill, my dad’s farts, Principal Cyrano’s body odor, foot fungus…
“Rotting shark meat, without a doubt,” I decided.
Vivian’s face crinkled in disgust. “Hákarl! The rotting shark meat soaked in its own urine.”
“Somehow we have to lure Robo-Nose with the smell of hákarl and…”
Before I could finish my sentence, I looked up and saw several Apneans rushing toward us.Their big alien eyes lit up like fireflies.
“They see us!” Vivian squealed.
“How do they know it’s us?” I asked.
“Your mask is ripped!”
I reached up and felt the fleshy cartilage of my schnozola. She was right. The fabric in the mask had torn open and my nose was popping out like a clown from a jack-in-the-box. An Apnean raised a lightning-bolt-shaped wand and aimed it directly at us. We both ducked as a spray of light shot from the end and exploded above our heads.
“They’re shooting!” Vivian cried. “Run!”
I took a quick sniff of pepper and sneezed a round of cayenne-fueled snot right at them. The boogery phlegm smacked into an invisible shield and then ricocheted harmlessly away.
“The cayenne pepper isn’t working,” I groaned.
Vivian and I rushed down several hallways, the Apneans in hot pursuit.
“Let’s find the portal back to your bedroom,” Vivian said, huffing for breath.
We burst through a bunch of shimmering doors, searching for the way back home.The more rooms we ran into, the more Apneans joined the chase. A blast from one of their lightning wands clipped my left nostril and sent me spiraling to the floor.
“Owww!” I cried. “They shot my sniffer!”
Vivian held my nose in her hands. “It’s just a scratch,” she said. “There isn’t any blood. Let’s go!”
We were running for our lives, the Apneans closing in fast. I could smell their stinky skin and poopy behinds. My nostril throbbed with pain. Just as I was about to fall over from exhaustion, we burst through a shimmering door and saw the portal back home.
“This is it!” Vivian hollered.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
“It looks the same. Anyway, we have no choice. The Apneans are…”
Four armed aliens charged into the room.They aimed their lightning wands directly at us. Before they could fire, Vivian and I dived through the snot bubble and into the glow-in-the-dark tunnel.
CHAPTER 19
SWEET DREAMS
We were falling, tumbling end-over-end through a vast void of nothingness. Below us was a bright light. I closed my eyes, praying the light was coming from the nightstand in my bedroom.
Vivian and I burst through the snot bubble and landed on top of my bed. We bounced off the mattress directly on top of Mumps, who was still fast asleep in his sleeping bag.
“Get off me,” Mumps grumbled.
“Where were you guys?” Jimmy asked. “One minute you’re here and the next minute you’re gone.”
“Schnoz, your nose is all red,” TJ said.
I looked in the mirror and saw a huge red scrape on my left nostril.The wound was sensitive to touch and felt like the brush burn I had gotten on my leg once from sliding down a playground pole in shorts.
“The Apne
ans shot at me,” I said.
“Tell us everything,” Jimmy demanded.
For the next twenty minutes, Vivian and I explained our journey into the mucous depths of Robo-Nose. From the shimmering doors, the Apnean bathroom, to the nerve center inside the Olfactory Bulb, and my theory about Robo-Nose’s weakness—smells.
“How could all that happen when you were only gone for one minute?” Jimmy asked.
“We were gone for hours,” Vivian said.
“No you weren’t. You guys disappeared into the shadow on the ceiling for a few seconds and then came back.”
“That’s impossible,” I muttered.
Jimmy pointed to the clock on my nightstand. “It’s four twenty in the morning. I looked at the clock right after you guys disappeared into the shadow.The time was four nineteen.”
“Space-time continuum,” TJ said. “Einstein came up with it. His theory says the universe has three dimensions—up and down, left and right, forward and back. There’s also a fourth time dimension, and that’s called the space-time continuum. It basically means that space time is different from Earth time.”
A rustling sound came from the corner of my bedroom. I looked over and saw the two duct-taped Apneans. I had completely forgotten about them!
“What are we going to do about—” I started to say when the shadow appeared once again on my ceiling.
“They’re coming for us!” Vivian screeched.
We all watched as the shadow hovered above the Apneans. A loud sucking sound filled my room, and in flash of bright light, the aliens rose in the air and disappeared into the shadow.
“That takes care of that problem,” Mumps said, sliding out of his sleeping bag.
“What should we do now?” Jimmy asked.
Before I could answer, a knock came at my door.
“Andy!” My mom said, raising her voice. “It’s late and time for you boys to settle down. Understand?”
“Sorry,” I said. “We’ll go back to bed.”
Mom’s slippers padded down the hallway.After her bedroom door shut, I whispered, “When Vivian and I were in Robo-Nose’s control room, we saw a giant map of Denmark. That means they’re landing right here in New Hampshire to start the first phase of their global invasion.”