Escape from the Drooling Octopod! (16 page)

Then something scritched and scratched. He turned . . . and froze!

It was huge, with tentacles attached to a disgustingly bloated body. Not a second too soon, Beamer dived to the floor to avoid a twisted tentacle reaching over his head.

Now, point-blank in front of him, was a large bin of shiny, black rocks — no doubt the shrunken, dehydrated remains of creatures the beast had already devoured.

Beamer scooted back frantically on all fours. At the same moment, a high whining sound came from behind. He lurched to his feet and whirled around, bumping into a cart, which sped rapidly away. Suddenly he was pelted in the face by a strangely filmy object. A moment later he was wrestling with an entire barrage of filmy, flimsy, smelly things.

Aiiii
!
Germ warfare
! his mind screamed.

There was a screech. “
Yiiiii
!” Beamer yelped, as a small creature flashed by. It leapt to a table and fled through a break in a window.

Beamer shot up the steps like a missile and blew through a door into a short hallway. He slammed the door behind him and leaned against the opposite wall, breathing heavily.

“Mother!” A shrill voice from upstairs brought him spinning around in panic. “Did you know they've got a vacuum laundry chute up here?” The voice continued. “Shoots clothes down to the basement like spit wads!”

Beamer's mother stood in the entryway wearing tattered, cut-off overalls and a tool belt. “Well, at least something works around here. Beamer!” she exclaimed in amazement, “What are you wearing on your ear?”

“Huh?” Beamer removed a pair of girl's underwear from his left ear —
Vacuum laundry chute? Whoever heard of a vacuum
laundry chute? —
and threw them down disgustedly.

“Hey, Mom!” the shrill voice called again. “I can't find my pink Nikes.” It was Beamer's big sister, Erin. At fourteen going on fifteen, she was God's self-proclaimed gift to the ninth grade. Of course, that was back in Katunga Beach. Middleton was a whole new ball game.

That's what this alien world was called — Middleton — a middle-sized city in a middle-sized state, smack dab in the middle of Middle America — a thousand miles from the nearest beach!

Only a week ago, Beamer was hanging out in a cool, high-rolling suburb of L.A. on the cutting edge of the early teen set. Now he was carting boxes around a broken-down house in a prehistoric neighborhood on an ancient street probably named for somebody's dog. Murphy Street. It certainly wasn't Shadow Beach Lane.

Beamer scrunched up his nose. The house even smelled old — as in fossilized. The discovery of an electrical outlet had been a great relief. He wasn't sure Xbox came in a windup version.

He banged through the screen door onto the front porch and picked up another carton. His mother was standing there, holding a scraggly plant in a pig-shaped pot.

The lady realtor who had given it to her was bustling toward her car, her mouth on auto-speak. “If you run into anything unusual,” she called, “don't panic. I'm sure it's not dangerous. The previous residents were . . . uh . . . different — scientists or rock singers or something — but harmless. Anyway, just call if you have a question.”

“I will,” Beamer's mother responded absently, still looking in bewilderment at the ugly pot.

Beamer looked at the ramshackle porch swing and the peeling paint around the windows.
Rock singers in this dive? Who did she think she was kidding?
Then again, that same lady had managed to sell this overgrown pile of bricks to his otherwise genetically superior parents.

Beamer MacIntyre shifted the box in his arms, pried open the screen door with his pinkie, and spun through into the house. The antique door immediately fell off its hinges. Mrs. MacIntyre, or Dr. Mac, as her kiddie patients called her, groaned and pulled a screwdriver from her tool belt.

Beamer trudged slowly up the staircase with his load. “Move, you dunderhead,” his sister growled as she pounded down past him like an avalanche. “Mother, isn't this place air-conditioned? I'm about to die!”

“It's the humidity, honey,” her mother answered. “You'll get used to it.”

“Mo-o-o-o-ommm!” Erin wailed, charging into the crate-littered living room. “D'you mean there's no air-conditioning?!”

“No, I mean you'll get used to the humidity,” Dr. Mac replied. “Air-conditioning is being installed — one for upstairs and one for downstairs. Your father is out arranging things now. Last I heard the downstairs one will be working tomorrow.”

“What about the upstairs one?” Erin asked with a shrill note of panic.

“Uhm . . . not for a couple of weeks, I'm afraid.”

“Weeks!!! So I'm supposed to wake up every morning with my hair dripping? That does it; I can't start school — not 'til the air conditioner's working.”

“Calm down, honey,” her mother said. “Your hair always looks just fine. I'm more concerned about whether that oversized octopus of a coal-burning, water-heating furnace in the basement will keep us warm in winter.”

Octopus? Furnace?!
Beamer cast a glance down at the basement door, his cheeks picking up a definite reddish glow.
Oh great! So I had a battle with a furnace! What were those little
black things then? At least nobody saw me . . . I hope.

“Now go finish unpacking. I'm sure your shoes will show up,” Dr. Mac said, turning her daughter around and pointing her back up the steps. “Go on.”

Erin groaned and lumbered up the staircase, then accelerated past Beamer to the top. She triumphantly stuck her tongue out at him and yanked open a door.

Beamer finally reached the second floor. Straight ahead was a wide but short hallway with two doors on the left and one on the right that opened into bedrooms. Immediately to the right of the staircase was a short, narrow hallway that led to the upstairs bathroom and a spare bedroom beyond. He kicked open the door to his room — the second one on the left — and promptly tripped over something in the doorway. “Oomph!” he gasped as he and the box's contents simultaneously thudded to the floor.

Groaning, he propped himself up to see the spilled items strewn, like a comet's tail, across the floor toward the tall, twin front windows. Through a window he noticed clouds gathering above the rooftops.
Back in L.A. we had rain programmed down to
just one season a year. Here I am, two time zones and half a continent
away from home.
“Marooned in Middle America,” he moaned out loud. “I'd rather be on Mars.”

There's a Spaceship in My Tree!: Episode I
Softcover • ISBN 0310714257

Beamer, age 13, who speaks only Californian, is an alien in the world of Middle America, exiled to a bizarre, ancient house on a mysterious street that may or may not exist on any map. With the help of a nerdy African-American kid named Ghoulie, a gangly tomboy named Scilla, and a miraculous, broken-down tree house shaped like a spaceship, he bales the indigenous life forms in his new home, from bullying creatures to the strange inhabitants of dark castles, subterranean caverns, and a spider web the size of a house, to discover how God gives a distinctive purpose to each uniquely designed human being.

Available now at your local bookstore!

A ack of the Spider-Bots: Episode II
Softcover • ISBN 0310714265

Star-Fighters Beamer, Ghoulie, and Scilla follow a strange clanking sound in their cave labyrinth and stumble onto a screaming one-eyed monster that chases them into a huge cavern enclosing a fully animated miniature world. Their search for the person who created that world leads them on a wild adventure to a palatial mansion within a wintry jungle that hides a terrible secret—a secret that they will have to trust God to expose.

Available now at your local bookstore!

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