*End Dramatization.
It was still raining when we came out of school, and I know what you are thinking. How could I know what happened when Dan when I wasn’t there? Well like I notated I’m actually writing this after the fact. I now know how the things moved based on what I have seen. Did Dan’s transformation happen exactly like that? Maybe, maybe not, but it moves the narrative along.
“See this is all wrong?” Gordon said.
“What is wrong? Rain is normal,” I replied.
“I’m telling you it’s aliens. First, mutilated cows and now rain just out of nowhere. They need water to survive,” Gordon said.
“You have finally lost it,” I replied.
Beverly meanwhile, was making her own fun, looking up at the sky with her arms outstretched and mouth open wide, trying to catch rain with her tongue. She is kind of loopy like that but that is part of what makes her great. We all piled into my truck and headed for home. We dropped Beverly off first and then Gordon and I headed for my house. We drove right past spot where Dan had pulled over earlier, neither of us saw the body but we did see a wicked set of skid marks. We would be home at my house for a while when we finally saw the body…. On the news.
We weren’t even in my room for two seconds before Gordon had my television on looking for any kind of news he could find. He decided he was spending the night on the way home and I now knew that I was going to be in for a long night.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He didn’t answer because he finally found what he was looking for. I turned my attention to the television and realized that they were set up on the road we had just been on about an hour ago, they had found a body.
“Weren’t we just there?” I asked.
“Yeah, but we didn’t see the body. That means it was hidden,” Gordon replied as he jumped to his feet. He started to pace around the room while he ran his hands through his hair.
“I told you man, mutilated cows, rain, now a dead body,” Gordon said.
I took a seat on the bed.
“There are no aliens,” I said.
The reporter went on to say that they had no idea whom the person was and that the body had been sent to the morgue for autopsy but they had overheard the M.E. theorize that the cause of death might be acute dehydration.
Later that night, after Gordon’s theories on the alien takeover had faded and he had gone to sleep I went to sit at the desk by my window. I just sat there and watched the storm; I like it when the lightning struck. Every time it did it illuminated everything in a purplish tint. One of the times when the lightning lit everything up I saw my neighbor, Dan, standing in the field out back. He was staring up at the sky; his arms outspread and his mouth wide open like Beverly was earlier. It didn’t look as cute when he did it. Instead it seemed a little creepy. It looked almost like he was standing there soaking all the rain in. I was tired and listening to Gordon’s crazy stories all day was starting to get to me. I left the window and went to sleep.
Tuesday April, 12th
When I woke up Gordon was nowhere to be found. I rolled over and looked at the clock, it was three thirty in the morning. Where could he have gone? I climbed out of bed and got dressed, all in a sleep induced haze. It was still storming and as I walked past my window I glanced outside. What I saw woke me up right away. Dan was still out back but he wasn’t standing anymore. Now, he was lying on the ground and from where I was standing it didn’t look good. I checked the house and there was still no sign of Gordon. I grabbed a flashlight and my jacket and headed outside.
As I stepped down off my porch it became painfully apparent that it was raining harder than I thought. Between being constantly pelted in the face and the fact that my light kept getting reflected back at me by the rain I was almost blind. The only time I could actually see anything was when the lightning would light up the sky. The first thing I did was check on Dan.
His eyes were glazed over and dilated; I shined my flashlight into them and got no response. His mouth was open in a silent scream and his lips were caked with some liquid. I reached down and touched it. It was thick almost like syrup. I yanked my hand back and looked down at him. I checked his pulse and found that he did not have one. The realization of the situation I now found myself in bore down on me as I thought about how I was going to have to go knock on his door in the middle of the night and tell his wife, Becky, that her husband was dead.
“Damn you Gordon, “ I said to myself.
I got up and headed for their backdoor, my legs felt like they were made out of lead and my feet felt like fifty-pound weights. I stopped in front of the door and tried to compose myself. I took a deep breath and watched as my hand made itself in a small fist in preparation to knock on the door. It was like it was someone else’s hand and I was just watching the proceedings. I watched as my traitorous hand started knocking on the door. There was no answer. I waited for what I thought was long enough for someone to get out of bed and make their way downstairs before I knocked again. I waited longer and still no one came.
“What in the hell is going on here?” I asked myself.
I wanted to wait longer and try again but I knew there was no one there. I don’t know how I knew, I just did and I had to find Gordon. As I stepped down off the porch I asked myself one more question.
“What in the hell was that sticky stuff?”
Shortly after I resumed my search I found a set of footprints in the mud and decided to follow them. It was very late and I felt the odds that they were Gordon’s were pretty good. I was right and the footprints led me right to his house. I looked up at Gordon’s bedroom window and saw that the light was on, he was in there. I tried the backdoor but it was locked. Knocking was out of the question; his mother would kill me. Instead I went to the shed and got the ladder, his bedroom window was right above the back porch so I sat up the ladder and climbed.
It was like I wasn’t even there. I tapped on his window over and over again but he didn’t even turn his head, he was deeply immersed in some movie that I had no doubt was about aliens of some sort. I grabbed the bottom of the window and pushed up on it, it slid up and I climbed through.
“Gordon what are you doing?” I asked.
“Studying man, I saw it,” he replied.
“Saw what, why did you leave?” I asked.
“I woke up to get something to drink and I happened to look out your window and I see Mr. Taylor grabbing his wife and shaking her. So I go down there and when I get outside there was something coming out of his mouth and going into hers. He falls down, she gets up and I run away,” Gordon said.
“The thing that came out of his mouth, was it slimy?” I asked.
“Yeah, how did you know?” He replied.
“I found the body while I was looking for you. His mouth was caked with some kind of sticky, viscous fluid like substance,” I replied.
“So do you believe me now?” Gordon asked.
I nodded my head and couldn’t believe what I was saying as I told him that I did.
Beverly would later tell me that at first she didn’t know how or when she had got so thirsty, or why it wouldn’t go away no matter how much she drank, or why it felt like she had a desert inside of her. We had called to tell her that we wouldn’t be going to school today and that Gordon was right about the aliens. She took the news rather well and now as I write this in retrospect I know why.
Gordon and I stayed up the rest of the night watching all of the alien invasion movies he had into the early hours of the morning. We learned some interesting things from Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Puppet Master and others. We also started to formulate what might be going on.
It was nine in the morning and instead of being in school we were chasing aliens. Only hours ago I had been convinced that Gordon was ready for a rubber room and now I was out chasing the thing, or more accurately trying to find it while Gordon tried to find some kind of weakness. We were like a poor version of Buffy and Giles that
was another one of his programs. I started with what I knew from Gordon’s story. It had jumped into Dan’s wife Becky so I went to her work. At ten I was standing outside of Becky’s work watching her through the window. Even from here I could tell that she looked different there was something off. She was doing her everyday tasks but they seemed forced and without emotion. It was like she was a robot. When she was done with what she was doing she went to the water fountain and took a long drink of water. I watched her for another half an hour and she returned to the fountain ten more times. The part of Gordon’s theory about them constantly needing water was starting to look correct.
When I returned to Gordon’s it was shortly after noon. I had stopped off to see Beverly, who wasn’t looking very good at all. She was in bed and there were a lot of empty glasses around her, and she had another one that was filled with water in her hand. I told her what Gordon and I, well mostly Gordon, had figured out so far and that it wasn’t much. Just that it jumped from body to body and needed water to survive. At the mention of water she took another drink.
“I think Beverly has one inside of her,” I said.
Gordon stopped what he was doing and turned around.
“Are you sure?” He asked.
“She is not looking very well and she was just killing the water while I was there,” I replied.
Gordon sat there thinking for a moment.
“What did you find out about Becky?” He asked.
“I watched her at work. You were definitely right about them needing water. She looked really different,” I replied.
“Different how?” He asked.
“She was just vacant, like a robot,” I said.
“It’s just as I thought,” Gordon said.
“What is?” I asked.
“They get inside and take over everything. You still remember who you are and what you have to do. It’s just that you aren’t driving anymore. You know what I mean,” he said.
“Now the question is where in the body would it settle so that it could control everything?” I asked.
“I’ll call Barry and get some more info on the bodies,” Gordon said.
Wednesday, April 13th
Barry is Gordon’s older brother, who also just happens to work at the morgue. We were waiting for him to return our phone call as Gordon was telling me more things that he had found out. He had another theory.
“I’m not one hundred percent sure, but I think they jump when they are in danger,” Gordon said.
“What makes you think that?” I asked.
“Well I’ve been thinking about Becky and Dan, remember how I told you he was shaking her? Well, she fought back and that was when it jumped,” Gordon said.
I just looked at him.
“And you didn’t tell me this before why?” I asked.
“I had to figure it out first, but that isn’t what is important. If it jumps to the nearest person when put in danger, how are we going to kill it?” He asked.
Gordon made a good point but I didn’t really want to think about it.
“We’ll worry about that whenever we actually figure out how to kill it,” I said.
After our session I went to Beverly’s house again, mainly to see how she was doing but also because I wanted to observe her. She didn’t look very good at all. She was still in bed, her lips were cracked and dry. I sat down in the chair by her bed and took her hand.
“How are you feeling today?” I asked.
“Doctor says I’m dehydrated,” she replied.
Her voice was raspy and cracking, she tried to turn over and winced a little while grabbing her back.
“My back is killing me, “ She said.
“I could rub it for you,” I offered.
It was killing me to see her like this, like I said, she had been my friend since forever. She smiled and rolled over. I pulled up her shirt and had to do my best to stifle a scream. There was a huge bulge in the small of her back.
“What’s wrong?” She asked.
“Umm, you have a huge bulge on your back,” I said.
“I know, the Doctor said he doesn’t know what it is,” she replied.
I started rubbing her back, doing my best to avoid the bulge and gently worked my way around it.
“Gordon and I are working on this. Maybe we will find out what it is,” I said.
I turned from her and looked out the bedroom window. Outside the sun was shining and in here my best friend was dying.
It was around three when I made my way back to Gordon’s. I had to stop by my house first to show my parents that I was still alive, (that is a joke). The real reason I stopped at home was to get a shower and eat.
Gordon was pacing back and forth when I came into his bedroom. His table was all cluttered with stuff, he had clearly been busy.
“Where have you been?” He asked.
“I went to see Beverly like I said,” I replied.
I took a closer look at the table and saw that there was salt and other liquids were strewn about.
“You look like you have been busy. You got anything?” I asked.
“I think I have it all figured out. Barry came while you were gone and I had him bring some of the fluid from around Dan’s mouth. He also said both victims died from dehydration. Their internal organs were completely dried out,” he told me.
“So they feed on the body’s water supply until it is gone,” I said.
“Look what else I found out,” Gordon said.
He led me to the table so that I could see exactly what he had there. It was a vial of the fluid, a canister of salt, a bowl of water and a spoon. He took some of the fluid out of the vial and put it on the table. He added some salt to the water and stirred it in.
“I figured if they can’t live in a dry place and need a lot of water then they would definitely not like salt, seeing as how it dries out everything,” Gordon said.
He took a spoonful of salt water and dumped it on the liquid, it started to steam and dried out immediately.
“My guess was, and I was right, that salt would kill it like that,” Gordon said as he snapped his fingers to accentuate his point.
“Now we just have to figure out how to give it to them,” I said.
“Come on, give me a little more credit than that,” Gordon said and produced two syringes.
“Properly researched and mixed homemade saline solution,” he added.
Thursday, April 14th
To make a long story short, I told Gordon about the lump on Beverly’s back and he told me that his brother had found similar empty ones on the backs of the two victims. We concluded that the alien could theoretically control someone from there. Seeing as how your spinal cord is connected to your brain. That is when we came up with the idea on how to kill them.
At ten a.m. I was watching Becky at work again and she was beginning to look worse. I was starting to think that she didn’t have much time left. I was armed with a bottle of salt water and prefilled a syringe. The bottle was failsafe for a worse case scenario. I was waiting for lunchtime when she would go home to eat. I would follow her and that was when I would make my move.
I almost fell asleep and that would have been disastrous, I had to catch this thing and make sure this would work because Beverly’s life hung in the balance. Around noon Becky came out and got into her car. I let her get a head start before I started my truck and pulled out behind her. As I was driving I started thinking and I made one mistake when I formulated this plan. This was a full grown adult I was planning on taking on alone and I didn’t know if the alien inside of her was going to give her some kind of super strength. I was going to have to subdue her long enough to administer the shot.
I watched from my truck as she got out of her car and went into the house. I got out of the truck and hurried across the street. I made my way up onto the porch and listened. When I was sure she was out of the living room I quietly opened the door and went inside. As soon as I was inside I made my way to the hall
way closet and ducked inside. I took out the syringe and was about to take off the cap when the closet door started to open. The closet was small and there really wasn’t any place to hide. I put myself up against the wall just inside the door and watched as she reached in and hung up her jacket. If I could have just stuck her in the arm this would have all been over right then. I slid down the wall and sat on the floor as she shut the door. How was I going to do this? I asked myself. I decided to take the direct approach, Beverly was coherent, maybe she was too.
Yeah that whole maybe she was coherent thing was a huge mistake, and it almost cost me my life. In this case the alien had not just sat up shop in her body; it had completely taken over. She was sitting at the table when I came into the kitchen with the syringe hidden behind my back.
Night Terrors Vol. 1 Page 5