The Creatures from Beyond Beyond Read online

  What was that?

  “Randi?” Mom muttered.

  Should I answer her? I wondered. Should I not?

  Tyler bit his lower lip. Slowly, softly, he knelt beside the boy and jabbed two fingers at the sticky patch on the boy’s neck!

  The boy froze in position and shrank! I wiped my forehead with my arm. I hadn’t even realized I was sweating.

  “How did you know you could do that?” I asked.

  “I didn’t,” Tyler admitted. “Just luck.” Tyler tapped the boy’s neck like a madman, and then…

  There was nothing but a doll lying on the floor.

  “RANDI!” Mom could sure sound loud when she was talking softly!

  “Mom?” Still shaky, I wobbled over and opened the door.

  “What are you two doing?” she demanded. She walked into the room.

  “Heh-heh.” Tyler gave a half-hearted laugh. He held up the shrunken boy. “Just playing with dolls.”

  Mom looked like steam was going to shoot out of her ears. “How many rules can you break at one time?” she snapped.

  Dad, shaggy and rumpled in his striped pajamas, ambled to the doorway and glanced in. He yawned behind his hand.

  “First, lights out means lights out,” Mom recited. “Second, there’s no playing with other people’s things unless you get permission. And Tyler, you should be in your own room and in bed.”

  “Helen,” Dad said, yawning again. “It’s their first night in a new place. It’s summer. They’re almost twelve. Don’t you think we should relax a little?”

  Mom’s shoulders sagged. “Well…maybe,” she muttered. “Okay. Kids, it’s lights out for real now. You can explore tomorrow. But leave those dolls alone!”

  She grabbed the boy doll and put him back on the shelf. Fortunately, she faced him toward the wall. “C’mon, Tyler, clear out of here.” Mom made shooing motions at him with her hands.

  “But—” Tyler and I said at the same time. His gaze met mine. I knew what he was thinking. We had to talk about what just happened. We had to figure out what went on here!

  “Kids,” Dad said in the voice that meant he was about to get serious. “Save it.”

  I sketched a T in the air with my index finger, and Tyler nodded. It’s one of our things. T means “tomorrow.” We’d talk about it then.

  I still had trouble falling asleep after everyone left.

  Questions kept running through my brain—what just happened? Who was that guy? What was that guy? A robot? A doll? What did he want?

  And the most important question of all—What if he could grow while I was asleep?

  I realized I was wrong about Blairingville. This place was a total horror show. And my first day here was going to keep me awake all night.

  I must have slept, because the next thing I knew, it was morning.

  What a weird dream, I thought, stretching my body out to its full length. I lifted my hands in front of me. A shadowy bruise bracelet circled my right wrist.

  I closed my eyes for a minute and remembered the doll-boy—the way he had grabbed my wrist.

  There was no denying it. What happened last night was real.

  I checked the dolls. The grow-boy was still where Mom had left him, facing the wall among the antique-looking dolls. I could see the black patch on the back of his neck.

  I peered at the backs of the necks of some of the other dolls. I didn’t discover any more of the black patches.

  I wanted to check out the growing doll again, but no way was I going to do it alone. I needed Tyler.

  I got dressed and headed downstairs. The smell of Dad’s special pancakes frying drifted in from the kitchen. Yum!

  When I got to the table everybody else was already there and eating. Mom and Dad were dressed in their jogging outfits.

  Yeow! Every time they wore those things, I felt like I needed sunglasses just to look at them. Pink. Purple. Lime green. Banana yellow. Total death by embarrassment.

  Alex sat in his high chair, talking to himself and smooshing syrupy pancake pieces with his fork.

  I stared at Tyler until he looked back at me. This never takes long. We can usually feel it when one of us is looking at the other, even when we’re facing in totally opposite directions.

  “Did that?” he said. Meaning: Did what I remember really happen last night?

  “It did,” I said.

  “I don’t—” he answered. Meaning: I don’t believe it.

  “Well, do,” I said. I reached for my knife and fork, flashing Tyler my bruised wrist. His eyes widened.

  Dad smirked at us. “Will you two stop with the secret twin language!”

  “Later,” Tyler and I muttered at the same time.

  The two of us cleared the table after breakfast and washed the dishes. Then Mom and Dad left for their morning jog-around-and-let-the-neighbors-make-fun-of-us-in-these-crazy-outfits expedition.

  As soon as the coast was clear, I settled Alex in the living room with a bunch of blocks and Tyler and I went to find out more about the dolls.

  We reached the upstairs hall and were about to go into my room when I heard something.

  Skritch scratch skritch.

  I grabbed Tyler’s arm.

  Skritch.

  Where was that coming from?

  We both peered all around.

  Scratch scratch…

  There! It was coming from the closet. The one with the big off limits sign on the door.

  This was a house where totally sick and possibly dangerous dolls were sitting right out in the open! I thought. What horrible thing could possibly be in a closet that said “off limits”? I wasn’t sure I wanted to find out.

  Yooowww!

  Another noise sounded from behind the door.

  The hair on the back of my neck prickled. My heart speeded.

  ROOOOOOWWWWL!

  I’d never heard a sound so scary in my life!

  No doubt about it. Something terrible—something horrible—something alive was sitting on the other side of that door!

  YaaarrrrOOWWWL!

  “Let’s get out of here!” I told Tyler. I raced down the stairs and into the living room.

  “Grab Alex,” Tyler commanded. I lifted up my little brother and lugged him out the front door.

  Tyler raced right behind me. “Move! Move!” he shouted.

  We ran halfway down the block before we glanced around.

  Not a cloud in the bright blue sky. A sprinkler chattered out streams of water, wetting a lawn. A lawn mower mowed somewhere out of sight, and birds chirped in a big tree. Some kid came whizzing by on a bike.

  Normal life. All around. Nothing scary in sight.

  I glanced back at “our” house. From this distance it looked a lot like all the other houses on the street. Totally normal.

  “What?” Alex tapped my face. “What? What? What?”

  I set my little brother on the ground.

  “Why’d you grab me?” he asked. “Huh, huh, huh?”

  “There’s—” I turned to Tyler for help. “There’s something in the upstairs closet.”

  “Something making horrible noises,” Tyler added.

  “A monster?” Alex’s eyes widened. “A monster?”

  Tyler and I stared at each other. What should we say?

  “I want a monster!” Alex shouted. “I want a monster! I WANT A MONSTER!”

  Alex gave his most ferocious frown. Then he let out a big growl. Cute.

  “Maybe we better go back,” Tyler said after a little while. “Standing around like this is dumb.”

  “Yeah. It’s daylight,” I pointed out. “In horror movies most of the really scary stuff happens at night. After a power outage.”

  We walked back. “Mon-ster, mon-ster, mon-ster,” Alex chanted with every step. I don’t know about Tyler, but I felt embarrassed. Spooked by some dumb noise in a closet. Sheesh.

  We went inside and stood quietly in the front hall, listening.

  Skritch. Scratch. The sound again! Th
en—Muurrrrow!

  Muurrrow? I thought, what kind of scary noise was that?

  We climbed the stairs a step at a time, then stood in front of the closet door.

  “Stand back here,” I told Alex, setting him by the doorway into my room. “If something scary comes out, rush into my room and slam the door.”

  Alex frowned, sticking out his lower lip.

  “Just do it!” I used my best big sister voice.

  Tyler went to his room and came back with a baseball bat. He stood with the bat on his shoulder, ready to swing.

  We nodded at each other, and I grabbed the door handle. I turned it and pulled, ready to jump back.

  But the door was locked.

  Duh, I thought. Of course a door marked off limits would be locked.

  Then again, there was probably a key somewhere around here, unless the family that lived here took it with them.

  I grabbed Alex’s hand, and we headed for the kitchen.

  In most of the summer houses we visited, people kept spare keys in the kitchen. In one house there was even a little cupboard for them, with hooks that had labels below them telling what the keys unlocked.

  In this kitchen Tyler found a drawer full of assorted junk.

  In it was a key ring loaded with keys of different shapes and sizes.

  We climbed the stairs again and headed for the closet door. Tyler found the right key after five tries.

  We unlocked the door, then stepped back. I flung the door open. Tyler stood poised to bonk whatever came out.

  Something small and gray shot out of the closet and streaked down the stairs. It went so fast I could not see what it was.

  At the closed front door, though, it stopped.

  It’s just a cat! I thought. A skinny gray cat!

  It mewed and scratched at the front door.

  I ran downstairs and opened the door. The cat disappeared into the bushes.

  “Did they leave the cat locked in the closet?” Tyler asked. “How could they?”

  “And how come it didn’t start making noise until this morning?” I wondered.

  We peeked into the closet. It was a mess. Stacks of sealed cardboard boxes lined walls to the right and left.

  Some stood against the back wall below a small curtained window.

  I tried the light switch. It worked. I could see that the cat had clawed some of the boxes open. Maybe something inside them smelled good.

  Tyler crossed the closet, being careful not to step on anything, and lifted the curtain. The window had four panes, and one of the top ones had broken.

  “Guess the cat got in this way,” he said.

  “Treasure!” Alex shrieked, running into the closet and pouncing on something on the floor.

  “Hey!” I cried. This closet was off limits. There was even a sign that said so! And we were definitely not supposed to go through other people’s stuff when we stayed in their houses.

  And Mom and Dad would be back any minute now, so…

  I sat down with a thump. Time to go through some boxes!

  Alex held up a little golden ball with softened spikes sticking out all over it. “Treasure!” he said again.

  He was right. Everything in this room was totally cool-looking! Intricate, detailed, strange, and most of it was metallic.

  I picked up a small oval pink thing with blue spots on it. I turned it over to find three little studs poking out. What was it? A piece from some game I’d never heard of? It was nice and heavy and solid. It would make a great pin for my denim jacket.

  Tyler dropped down beside me. He reached for a palm-sized diamond-shaped silver thing with a rounded edge and raised brass studs on it. It looked like it was a remote control for something.

  “Who are the people who live in this house?” Tyler asked. “And where did they get all this cool stuff?”

  “I don’t know, but we’d better put it all away,” I said. Even though I so totally wanted to keep everything.

  “Yeah,” Tyler muttered. He picked up a tiny disk that looked like a Frisbee. It was metallic green with purple stripes on it. “Hey, it’s just like on that doll,” he said. He tipped it to show me.

  Sure enough—there was a little black spot on the rim of the disk. Tyler tapped the black spot with one finger.

  The Frisbee doubled in size.

  Holy cow! I thought.

  I grabbed six of the little metal things on the floor. Each was different from the others. But all of them had black pads on them!

  Tyler grew the Frisbee two more times.

  I glanced at Alex, who rolled the golden spiked ball and laughed as it zigzagged across the floor. “You’d better put that down,” I told Tyler.

  “But it’s perfect for our movie,” Tyler protested. “Special-effects city!”

  He pulled his arm back as if he were going to throw the Frisbee.

  “Stop that! You don’t know what it’s for!” I yelled. “Just shrink it, right now!”

  “But it’s soooo cool.”

  I glared at him. He sighed and tapped the black dot with two fingers, and the Frisbee shrank.

  “Hide that somewhere Alex will never find it,” I muttered to Tyler. He nodded and slipped the disk into his pocket.

  “And we better check out the rest of this stuff later,” I said. “Sometime when A-L-E-X is S-L-E-E-P-I-N-G.”

  Again, my brother nodded. We grabbed as many things off the floor as we could, righted a knocked-over box, and dumped everything into it.

  Alex cried when we took the golden ball from him, but I packed it anyway. We put all the stuff away and had just relocked the closet door when I heard Mom and Dad jogging across the front porch.

  “Whew,” Tyler breathed, dropping the keys in his pocket.

  “Yeah,” I agreed. “That was a close one. If Mom and Dad caught us in there we’d be grounded for eternity!”

  We spent the rest of the day doing family stuff. Mom and Dad took us on a picnic by the Pleasant Valley River, and we checked out a mall on the edge of town that had a fourplex at it. Then we went roller-skating.

  A couple of times I managed to forget about all the weird things in our new house and have fun.

  It wasn’t until Mom and Dad went out for a romantic dinner that Tyler and I finally had a chance to do some more exploring. Well, first we had to feed Alex and get him to bed. We didn’t want him tagging along.

  Thankfully, he’s a good sleeper, so he was out like a light in minutes.

  We went to my room and got the doll down. Then we checked out all the other dolls. Not one of them had a black patch like the boy.

  Tyler flicked a glance at me, then tapped the patch on the back of the boy doll’s neck.

  “Wait! We have to make sure he can’t do anything when he wakes up.” I pointed to my bruised wrist to prove my point.

  “How?” Tyler asked. He tapped the black patch, and the doll grew to Alex’s size.

  “Maybe we could tie him up or something.”

  I looked around the room, searching for ideas. I frowned at the quilt on my bed. “I’ve got it!” I cheered.

  I ran downstairs to the back porch where Dad had stowed some of the stuff we brought with us from California. I grabbed three long, stretchy bungee cords and headed upstairs again.

  “Let’s roll him in the quilt—except for his head. Then we can hook the bungee cords around him,” I said. “That way no matter what size he is, he’ll be tied up tight.”

  Tyler thought about it. “Okay. Sounds like it should work.”

  We wrapped the quilt around him pretty loosely. The bungee cords fit without stretching.

  Tyler glanced at me. I nodded.

  He tapped the patch on the back of the boy doll’s neck.

  The boy doll grew, filling out the quilt. The cords tightened around his arms, waist, and legs.

  The doll blinked three times. “Huh?” he said, swiveling his head to look down at his trapped body.

  Tyler and I studied him. He squirmed around, but i
t looked like he couldn’t get loose.

  Even better, we could still get to the patch on his neck and shrink him if we wanted, and he couldn’t stop us.

  “Hey!” he said, sounding panicked. “You guys woke me up before! Why—who are you?”

  “Our turn to ask the questions,” Tyler said. “Tell us who you are first.”

  “Me?” He gulped. “I, uh, I’m Brad Mills.”

  “Okay,” I said. “What are you?”

  “Huh?” He looked totally confused.

  “What are you?”

  “I’m a, well, a kid,” he said.

  “A couple minutes ago you were a doll,” Tyler pointed out.

  “I was?” Brad blinked three more times. “That’s right. I guess I was.”

  “How do you explain that?” Tyler demanded.

  “How do I explain it?” Brad muttered as if talking to himself. “I don’t know…it’s kind of hard. And the details are a little fuzzy from all the shrinking and unshrinking…” He paused. “But there’s one thing I do remember…aliens did it to me! Aliens! And they could do it to you, too!”

  Aliens turned people into dolls? No way!

  The best horror movies showed aliens doing lots of awful things to people. Those were the movies that gave me my worst nightmares. But turning people into toys? That didn’t make any sense.

  “Wait,” I started. “Why would aliens want to shrink you into a doll?”

  “They have this machine that shrinks you and puts a black touch pad on you,” the doll answered. “Bing! They can shrink and grow you as much as they want.”

  “Okay. We’ll buy the idea of a shrinking machine. But you haven’t answered our question,” Tyler pointed out. “Why would they do it?”

  Brad closed his eyes. When he opened them, he looked sad and scared. “It makes you easier to transport,” he answered.

  “Huh?” Tyler and I asked at the same time.

  “You make kids small, you can stack them pretty deep in a cargo hold. Once you fill your cargo hold with hundreds of kids, then you can go off trading.”

  “Trading?” I whispered. “Trading for what?”

  “Anything you want. Human children are in high demand all over the galaxy. At least, that’s what the aliens told me.”