Visitors (8 page)

“I—
I’m
an alien?” I whispered. I started to laugh. “Is this a joke?”

“No joke, Ben,” Dad said, his eyes still locked on mine.

“Mom, Dad—you don’t understand,” I said. “I just saw a bunch of aliens. And they didn’t look anything like me.”

Dad nodded solemnly. “If you did, I wouldn’t expect them to look like you,” he said. “Because you are the last of your kind. The last survivor of your people.”

“You are The One,” Mom said, her voice trembling.

The One?

That’s what Rikki and the others were talking
about in the darkroom. They said they had to find The One.

My head spun. “I—I don’t understand,” I said weakly. I gazed at my parents. “That means you are aliens, too?”

They shook their heads. “No. We found you, Ben,” Mom answered. She came over and wrapped her arms around me. “Oh, Ben,” she sighed. “Come with Dad and me. We can show you everything now. It’s time you knew the whole story.”

My legs were trembling as they led me upstairs. “Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the attic,” Dad replied. “We can’t hide this from you any longer.”

Dad unlocked the door. We stepped inside the attic.

Then Mom opened the closet door. She reached in. A warm blue glow spread across the room.

The glow brightened as Mom pulled out a square thing about a foot tall and a foot wide.

I stared at it in amazement. It was some kind of screen, like a TV screen. Only it held a holographic image.

It showed three people—a male, a female, and a baby. They looked almost exactly like humans, but something was different about them.

They all had curly coarse brown hair. Their faces looked so much like mine. And then I realized what
was weird about them.

They had
no ears
. And they all wore short tops over stomachs that had
no belly buttons
.

“I’ll never forget the night we found you,” Mom began.

“It was twelve years ago. I saw a weird light in the sky,” Dad told me. “Like a pale blue glow.”

“It was so close, and getting closer,” Mom added. “We walked into the woods, following the light.”

“We came to a clearing. I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Dad said. “I thought I was dreaming.”

“A clearing?” I said. “In the woods behind our house?”

Mom nodded. “There was a huge spaceship. It was shaped like an eight. The ship was so hot it burned a mark on the grass. Sometimes I wonder if the mark is still there.

“We were so terrified at first, we ran away,” Mom said. “But then we were curious. We went back into the woods. But the spaceship was gone.”

“It had left that big mark in the grass,” Dad said. “And lying right in the middle of the mark we saw something small. Something alive.”

“That’s when we found you, lying there in the grass,” Mom said. “You were so cute! And so helpless!”

“Your mother picked you up and that was that,” Dad said. “It was love at first sight. We were crazy
about you. We wanted you to be our son.”

“You mean you found me in the woods?” I asked. “But what made you think I was an alien?”

“This hologram,” Mom explained. She pressed a button on the frame of it. The people inside the picture began to move.

“Please take care of our child,” the woman in the picture begged. “He is the last of our race still alive. If he dies, our people will be extinct.”

“He is The One,” the man said. “The aliens who destroyed our planet will come after him one day. He is The One to defeat them. Our last chance…our one hope.”

The figures stopped moving. I stared at the baby in the picture. “Is that…me?”

Mom nodded. “And those are your real parents.”

“But what happened to me? I don’t have any ears in that picture.”

Mom and Dad exchanged glances. “That’s right,” Mom said. “When we found you, you had a hole on each side of your head.”

I touched my ears. It had never occurred to me there was anything strange about them.

“We had a surgeon work on you secretly,” Dad explained. “He gave you ears to cover the holes in your head. I always thought he did a great job.”

“And what about my outie belly button?” I said, staring at the picture. “Did that grow in later?”

Mom shook her head. “We had the surgeon add that, too. I don’t know why he gave you an outie. I guess it was easier to make than an innie.”

I stared at the picture again. “So this is why you’ve been acting so mysterious and strange,” I said. “That night you went out and you wouldn’t tell us where you went. Where did you go? Why were you so late?”

“We’re sorry if we frightened you,” Dad said. “We just went for a drive. We sat in the car, talking about you. We were trying to decide what to do. We weren’t sure if we should tell you where you came from.”

“It was so hard for us,” Mom added. “We’ve wanted so much for you to be a normal human boy. We knew that as soon as you found out you were an alien, you could never be normal again.”

I laughed. “You were being so weird, I thought you were the aliens,” I said.

I sat back in my chair, letting this new information sink in. It was still so hard to believe. I was an alien!

“What about Will?” I asked. “Is he an alien, too?”

“No,” Mom replied. “He’s our own, human child. He was born soon after we found you.”

It
figured
Will would get to be the human child.

“But we love you just as much as we love Will,” Mom insisted.

I was still in shock. So much was happening at once.

“We hoped you’d never have to know the truth,” Dad told me. “But as you grew older, you became more and more obsessed with aliens. Without realizing it, you were searching for your roots. For your true identity.”

“Does Will know about me?” I asked them.

Dad shook his head. “We’ve never told him anything. If you want him to know, it’s up to you to tell him. We’ll never say a word to him unless you ask us to.”

It wasn’t hard to imagine the kind of teasing I’d get from Will if he knew I was an alien. “Don’t tell him,” I said. “I don’t want him to know.”

Mom returned the hologram screen to the closet. “I suppose it’s best to keep this hidden away,” she said. “But if you ever want to come up and look at it, just let us know.”

They each kissed me. Then we made our way downstairs.

I’m an alien, I thought. An alien!

It explained so much. Like why I felt such a jolt when I stepped inside that figure eight in the woods, and Summer and Jeff felt nothing.

I trudged to my room, feeling weary and dazed. My mind raced with a million weird thoughts.

I’m The One, I realized. I heard my true father say it.

I’m The One chosen from all the rest of my people
to battle the aliens who have come to Earth.

But how? What can I do against so many of them?

I lay on my bed and closed my eyes, thinking hard. Those egg-shaped aliens didn’t seem to recognize me. The one inside me was sending his brain waves to me. He never once suspected that I wasn’t human.

Yes, that’s it. I’m not human, I realized.

The egg alien inside me must have died—because I’m not human!

Suddenly, I pictured the leader. The biggest, ugliest, most powerful alien.

What had I overheard about that big alien? They need the leader to survive—or they’d all die.

Maybe there’s a way to defeat him, I thought. If I can do that, I can defeat them all.

But how?

My head swirled with crazy thoughts. I couldn’t sleep, but tossed and turned in a strange half-dream state, my mind racing.

Rikki, Ms. Crenshaw, and the others were going to force all the kids at school to swallow those aliens. The aliens would live in their bodies forever.

Tomorrow…tomorrow…

They planned to carry out their plan tomorrow.

But how? How were they going to do it?

How would they force each kid, one by one, to swallow an alien?

Think, I instructed myself. Think, Ben. What is special about tomorrow?

“Oh!” I sat up in bed with a cry. I knew! Suddenly, I knew exactly what they planned to do!

“Ben, change your shirt,” Mom said the next morning. “You’re having your school picture taken today. Don’t you want to look nice?”

Actually, looking nice was about the last thing on my mind. But I dutifully went upstairs and changed into a white button-down shirt.

“That’s better,” Mom said. She smoothed my hair over my ears. I suddenly realized that she’d done that all my life—smoothed my hair over my ears, I mean. And now I understood why.

“Ben doesn’t have time to get his picture taken,” Will teased. “He’s too busy hunting aliens. He has to hunt for them at all times!”

I considered offering Will up as a sacrifice to the
egg-shaped aliens. They’d take over his personality. I thought it would be an improvement.

Then I shuddered. That could really happen, I realized. That could happen today.

At school, the kids looked extra nice. I could tell that their parents had made them dress a little neater than usual. Some of the girls looked as if they had their hair curled or straightened just for today. School Picture Day.

I felt so tense, I thought I might burst. I wanted to run down the halls shouting, “Go home! Go home! You’re not safe here today!”

But instead, I found Ms. Crenshaw in the photo room. And I volunteered to help her with the school photos.

“Thank you, Ben,” she said with a smile. She winked at me. She believed I still had the alien inside, controlling me. She believed I wanted to help her with her evil plan.

When photo time came, I headed for the gym, where the pictures would be taken.

Kids were lined up along the gym wall, waiting their turn. A few teachers hung around on the sidelines, making sure everything stayed under control.

Ms. Crenshaw had set up a curtain as a backdrop. Each kid was supposed to go behind the curtain.

Summer waved to me when she saw me. She was
acting as Ms. Crenshaw’s assistant. Rikki stood near the velvet curtain, ushering kids inside when it was their turn.

I stepped into the photo area. Ms. Crenshaw and Summer were setting it up.

Against the wall, I saw a tall stack of cages covered with a sheet. I knew what was under that sheet, what sat inside those cages.

The aliens.

“I think Ben will be a big help to us—now,” Ms. Crenshaw said to Summer.

“Uh, yes,” I replied. “I’ll do whatever I can for the mission.”

“Okay, Summer,” Ms. Crenshaw said. “We’re ready for the first host body. I mean, student.”

Summer nodded at me. I went around to the other side of the curtain, where the kids stood in line. They were mostly from my class.

Summer poked her head around the curtain. “Go ahead, Ben,” she said. “We’re ready.”

I had to go along with it. What else could I do? If I resisted, Summer would know that I was no longer an alien host. And then I’d have no chance to save the others.

The first kid in line happened to be Dennis Corcoran. I pointed to him. “You’re up,” I said.

Dennis’s wavy hair had been wetted down and combed flat, probably by his mother. Even though I
didn’t like Dennis, it made me sad to think about what was going to happen to him behind the curtain.

Dennis walked around the curtain. He nodded at Ms. Crenshaw, who stood behind the big camera on a tripod.

“Smile,” Ms. Crenshaw said. “And open wide.”

Dennis said, “Cheese.” Then Rikki and Summer grabbed him. Rikki held him down while Summer opened his mouth and shoved a furry alien down his throat.

I cringed as I watched Dennis struggle. He tried to cry out, but his voice was muffled by the alien.

After a few seconds, he swallowed it.

He was now an alien host. And I was too late to save him.

Could I save the others?

What could I do?

Ms. Crenshaw snapped Dennis’s picture. He stared blankly at the camera. The flash went off, blinding me for a moment.

Then Ms. Crenshaw called, “Next!” Dennis stepped out from behind the curtain, smiling as if nothing had happened.

A girl disappeared behind the curtain. I had to think quickly.

If I didn’t do something, all the aliens would have human hosts. And I would be the only kid left in school who wasn’t possessed.

One after another, the kids stepped behind the curtain. They had no idea what horror lay behind it.
No idea what was about to happen to them.

Summer stuffed an alien body down each throat. Ms. Crenshaw snapped a picture.

It was as if she were recording the first moment of their new lives. They were no longer human kids. Now they were just bodies, houses for aliens.

This can’t go on, I thought. I racked my brain. Do something! Do something!

If only Rikki would stuff those aliens down
my
throat, I thought. Then they’d all die, just like the first one.

Yes!

Yes!

I finally had an idea.

I turned to the aliens’ cages covered by a sheet. Was the leader in there?

I knew he had to be. The aliens couldn’t go far without their leader.

I crossed over to the cages and peeked under the sheet. There he was. The biggest of the egg-shaped aliens, pulsing with energy.

Keeping the other aliens alive.

I knew what I had to do.

But I stopped in panic. The leader was more powerful than the others. A lot more powerful.

I remembered how the alien had fought inside my body. How I’d felt as if I were going to die.

What if the leader fought even harder? What if he
beat me—and survived inside me?

It’s a risk I’ll have to take, I realized. I’m The One. The One to defeat these aliens.

I opened the door to the leader’s cage.

“Ben, get away from there!” Rikki scolded. She tried to pull me away from the cages. “What are you doing?”

I reached into the leader’s cage and snatched him out. Rikki and Summer rushed at me.

“Put him down!” Rikki ordered. “Put him down!”

They tried to grab me, but I dodged away from them.

I opened my mouth as wide as I could.

“Ben, no!” Rikki screamed.

I froze. I gazed at the big hairy creature. Thick blue mucus dripped from its body onto my hands, my arms.

Could I do it? Could I swallow the disgusting thing?