Aliens on the Lake Read online

  Aliens on the Lake

  Part 2 of the

  Sleep Writer Journal

  © 2019 Keith Robinson

  Published by Unearthly Tales

  on February 15, 2019

  Cover by Keith Robinson

  No part of this book may be reproduced without permission from the author, except by a reviewer who may quote short excerpts in a review.

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  Contents

  A Week Ago

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  COMING NEXT

  Author's Website

  A Week Ago

  “Madison, don’t just storm off,” her mom called after her. “Let’s talk about this.”

  “What’s there to talk about?” Madison yelled. “You’ve already made up your minds!”

  She slammed her door and threw herself on the bed, fighting back tears of anger. Pulling out her phone, her thumb hovered over Jenny’s smiling face—but her hands were still shaking, and she felt on the verge of breaking down, so she tossed the phone aside and rolled onto her back instead. She’d call in a little while when her heart wasn’t trying to beat its way out of her chest.

  It was getting dark out. Jenny was already sixteen and driving, but still on a learner’s permit, otherwise Madison would call her and say, “Get over here and pick me up.” But Jenny didn’t like driving in the dark anyway. She said the glare off approaching headlights looked like an exploding star on the lens of her glasses.

  Madison checked the time. Four-and-a-half hours to go. She always got nervous before an event, but there was something different about this one. Taking her journal out of a drawer, she flipped it open toward the back and studied the loose, handwritten note she’d woken up to that morning.

  11:58 PM. Backyard. Behind garage.

  Why so close to home? Was it a coincidence? Or were they tracking her?

  This was the one and only reason she could think of to suggest that moving away might be a good thing.

  In the next room, her mom put Cody to bed—urged him to brush his teeth properly, read him a story, then quietly closed the door. Madison could hear her in the hallway, or rather not hear her, meaning she was standing right outside the door wondering whether to knock and come in.

  After a while, soft footfalls headed downstairs.

  Madison sighed and called Jenny.

  Her friend answered immediately. “Hey, girlfriend. Wassup?”

  “We’re moving down south,” Madison said through gritted teeth.

  “You’ve said that before. Is it definite now?”

  “Yup. Dad just landed a new job in some hick town called Brockridge. In Georgia.”

  “But . . . but why? Why some country town in the middle of nowhere?”

  “A change of pace,” Madison said bitterly. “Dad’s been complaining about his coworkers for months, Mom hates the city, and none of us can stand our neighbors or this street. Naturally they brought up the fact that I don’t like my school either, like they’re doing all this for my benefit.”

  Jenny sighed. “I can’t believe this. When?”

  “He already put the house on the market today. It’s really happening. He’s supposed to start the new job next week.”

  “N-next week?”

  Madison could almost see Jenny’s glasses wiggling up and down along with her eyebrows. She had a very expressive face.

  “But Maddy—school—your exams—”

  “Yeah, yeah, tell me about it.” She paused. “I guess this is what I get for telling my parents I’m not going to college. They’ve given up on me.”

  “That’s not true.”

  “Well, whatever.”

  “But next week, though! That’s like—that’s crazy!”

  “Dad says there’s no point prolonging things. Plus, it was a choice between him and another radiologist, and he had to tell them he could start straight away or he might have lost out.”

  Jenny was quiet for a moment. “I guess he really wanted that job.”

  Even Madison could understand his urgency in that respect. “And there’s a house on the market, going pretty cheap. Everything’s cheap compared to the city, but this place is perfect, or so he says. Been empty a while. He and mom took a look at it when they went house hunting once. It’s close to a lake.”

  “Ooh, nice.”

  They chatted a while about the pros and cons of moving away, but Madison found her thoughts drifting, turning instead to the event due at midnight. She desperately wanted to tell her friend about it but knew exactly how the conversation would go. Jenny would fly into full-on panic mode and call the police, the FBI, the President, everyone. As far as she was concerned, aliens from another planet popping in for a visit wasn’t something you kept quiet.

  One event had been all she could stand. The early-morning alien field trip on Blue Holt Lane had shocked her so deeply that she’d spent a day or two walking about like a zombie. Those aliens had been friendly, a bunch of childlike Greys just like out of the movies, but Jenny had bolted in terror.

  After that, the pleading started. “You have to tell someone, Maddy. You can’t keep this to yourself. I won’t let you! It’s way too dangerous. We need to tell the CIA or Homeland Security or something . . .”

  It had gone on like that for a day or two. In the end, Madison flat-out lied to her. “It’s okay, I’m not writing myself weird notes anymore. There are no more gateways, no more aliens. I guess it’s all over. Relax.”

  Jenny might not have fully relaxed, but she never brought it up again, probably afraid of knowing the truth.

  So, as Madison clutched the phone to her ear and listened to her friend talking about ordinary, everyday things like new schools, new friends, and new boys, she bit her tongue and said nothing about the aliens due to come knocking at midnight.

  ****

  It was time.

  At 11:45 PM, Madison slipped out of the house and into the backyard. It was a small, fenced-in area typical of their street, barely room for a large dog to run around—not that they had a dog. A garage took up half the space. Her parents shared the car, or rather her dad used it every day while her mom stayed home with her illustrating work, but neither of them ever parked it in the garage.

  Stumbling in darkness, Madison crept around the side of the garage. There was just a narrow walkway back there between the rear wall and the wooden fence. Not enough room for an alien gateway to form.

  She upturned a bucket and stood on it so she could peer over the fence into the backyard of an elderly man. His yard was far bigger, and it was lightly wooded. The gateway would most likely appear among the trees.

  The bolt of light appeared at 11:58 PM, quickly opening up to a full circle suspended at knee-height above the ground. The light was blinding. If anyone glanced out their windows right now, they’d think someone was messing about with a powerful searchlight, shining it up through the branches.

  When the gateway steadied into a swirling tunnel, Madison ducked a little lower, her nose pressed to the top of the fence, fingertips hanging on tight in case the bucket tipped sideways. Her heart thumped.

  It always seemed to be a toss-up whether the visitors would be friends or foes. Tonight, she let out a gasp and mentally filed them away as ghastly monsters. They were giant insects—or buglike anyway, each with hard shells and six thin legs. The dazzling gateway silhouetted them, making it difficult to see them clearly, but a name popped into her head: Stick Insects.

  Not the most creative name, but accurate. They really looked like stick insects, but the size of people and with legs thicker than her own. They scuttled between the trees, five of them, moving about with their heads low as if following a scent.

  Then one stood up. Madison muttered something under her breath at the sight of an insect monster rearing up like that. The other four legs were now arms, and the creature was even bigger than she’d thought, probably seven feet tall not including the antennae poking up from its forehead between the huge, bulbous black eyes. And its mouth—full of teeth!

  Madison stepped down off the bucket and cowered against the fence, listening hard. Okay, so moving down south doesn’t sound like such a bad idea now. This is a little too close for comfort. Next time they’ll burst straight out of my closet . . .

  She waited there awhile, crouched in the shadows, her ear pressed to the wooden fence, grimacing at the sound of the Stick Insects as they scuttled and stalked about. She jerked with fright when one of the monsters knocked against the fence. When she looked up, she saw creepy fingers hanging onto the top, and antennae quivering as the thing looked over into her yard.

  Madison held her breath, pressed hard against the base of the fence, ignoring the cramp in her left foot.

  After what seemed like two minutes but was probably just thirty seconds, the creature moved away.

  Okay, I’m done with this.

  She tiptoed back to the house. She felt safe once inside, but that was on the basis these aliens weren’t interested in making a scene and taking prisoners, or worse, leaping on people and sucking their brains dry. So far, the visitors had been nothing but inquisitive. These Stick Insects were no different. Creepy, but still following the rules and remaining incognito.

  Following the rules . . .

  Whose rules? Was it some kind
of intergalactic law?

  She peered out of her bedroom window until the monstrous shadows vanished into the gateway. Not long after, the shimmering light broke apart, and the wooded area beyond the fence was plunged into darkness.

  Madison dutifully wrote in her journal:

  11:58 PM. Backyard. Behind garage. Tall, thin, two legs, four arms. Horrible. Called them Stick Insects. Worried they showed up so close to the house. Are they onto me? Have they detected that I watch these events?

  She had a hard time getting to sleep that night, but as she drifted off, she vowed not to wage war on her parents for dragging her to some backward town in the south. Maybe it was for the best. Maybe Jenny was right—that regular visits from aliens wasn’t something she should keep to herself.

  ****

  A few days later, midweek, she woke to another message. The pencil lay next to the notepad as usual. Even now she found it difficult to believe she’d picked that thing up and scrawled words on the pad without being consciously aware.

  Hardly daring to read it in case it said something about monsters under the bed or leaping out of closets, she put it aside for a moment and crawled out of bed.

  Once she’d composed herself and taken a deep breath, she read the message.

  Trust the boy next door.

  She stared and stared, mystified.

  This was so unlike all the other messages she’d written in her sleep. And what boy? There was no boy next door, just an angry young couple with an angry dog and a royally ticked-off cat. And the other neighbor was a blind woman.

  Trust the boy next door.

  Perhaps . . .

  Her mouth fell open. Maybe, just maybe, a boy lived next door to the house her parents had bought in Brockridge.

  The idea of it took her breath away. It meant these events weren’t confined to the city. Either that or the events followed her, like these aliens had their sights on her, and were watching.

  “Maddy, are you up?” her mom called, breaking her train of thought. “I know you only have a few last days of school, but you still have to put in an appearance.”

  “Coming,” she murmured, folding the note and stuffing it into the back of her journal.

  The next three days were surreal. Students looked at her funny, unsure what to make of a girl who was leaving school, leaving the city, forever. Teachers glared down their noses at her as though moving to Georgia was all her idea, her way of getting back at them for being so hard on her through the years.

  She spent all her free time with Jenny as usual, although it was oddly strained, like neither of them wanted to bring up the subject of moving away. Instead, they talked about normal stuff. And it wasn’t until mid-Friday afternoon that Madison finally had to say goodbye.

  It was way tougher than she’d expected. Tears flowed, and their hug went on for ages. It wasn’t like they could get together after school either, because Madison had a lot of packing to do. The whole family did. They were literally leaving for Georgia first thing in the morning.

  “Don’t you dare forget me,” Jenny said, wiping her eyes with shaky hands before putting her glasses back on.

  “I won’t,” Madison said, wondering how much eyeliner had streaked down her cheeks. Probably all of it. “And it’s just a few hours away, really. When you’re driving on your own . . .”

  Jenny rolled her eyes. “Sure. I’m that confident on the road. Ten hours on the I-75 to Georgia? No problem.”

  “It’s not ten hours.”

  “Have you seen the way I drive?”

  They hugged again, and that was that. Madison found her mom waiting in the parking lot as usual, and the school faded into the background as the car pulled away. Apart from Jenny, the place would continue as normal as though nothing had changed.

  Despite everything, Madison found herself looking forward to the new life down south. She’d never lived in the country, but she thought she might like it. A nearby lake sounded nice. And as for trusting the boy next door . . . well, she’d just have to meet him first.

  On Saturday morning, she woke to find a message.

  2:11 AM. Cemetery. Judith E. Chambers.

  Her first thought was that she was going to miss this event.

  “Too bad, Universe,” she said, glancing up toward the ceiling. “I won’t be here, sorry. You’ll have to manage without me.”

  Then she paused.

  “Unless . . . unless there’s a cemetery near our new house in Brockridge.”

  She smiled. Maybe she could ask the boy next door.

  Chapter 1

  Liam and Ant gasped and stared at Madison.

  “Another one?” Liam demanded. “When? Where?”

  He could barely contain his excitement. Annoyingly, Madison seemed to enjoy stringing out the big reveal.

  She ever-so-slowly opened her journal—the very special journal where she recorded actual alien events. Liam wanted to snatch it from her hands and tear through it, but he restrained himself.

  A folded piece of paper was tucked between the pages toward the back. She held it gingerly as if it might bite. “Two messages in two nights,” she whispered. “That’s never happened before.”

  “What does it mean?” Ant asked.

  “Don’t know.”

  Madison took a deep breath, and Liam noticed her hand was shaking as she held the message aloft.

  “You know, at first I thought moving to a new house meant leaving all this behind. It seemed like I’d discovered this amazing, special gift too late. I thought, ‘Why now?’ Anyway, the night before we left, I wrote myself the Judith E. Chambers message and realized it wasn’t over. It couldn’t be. The message had to be about a cemetery near our new house in Brockridge. And it was.”

  We know this, Liam thought impatiently. “So . . . ?”

  “So we did the cemetery thing, and you were a complete idiot, Liam, and I went to bed last night all steamed up. But I woke this morning to find another message. I’d been worried about this special gift of mine being finished and over with, but it’s not.” She turned to face him with a gleam in her eye. “Things are just getting started.”

  “What’s this new message?” Ant pressed.

  She unfolded it. Liam and Ant leaned closer.

  Unlike the carefully printed journal entries, this lettering was a little rough and much larger, scrawled in pencil on the same lined paper as the last one Liam had seen. It was a shorter message than all the others in the journal:

  2:34 PM. Lake.

  Liam felt a chill. To anybody else, the location was vague. Which lake? And lakes were usually huge by definition. But Liam knew immediately the message was referring to the end of the lane where his boat was moored.

  “Wait—2:34 PM?” Ant said, tapping the paper. “As in this afternoon?”

  Madison placed the message on top of her journal in her lap and smoothed it out. “That’s what I wrote. Seems like these aliens usually show up when everybody’s asleep in bed, because it’s safer, not as many prying eyes, but they’ll show up in the daytime if the place is remote enough.”

  “That suggests they scope the place out beforehand,” Ant said, frowning. “So . . . what, they’re not random?”

  “Don’t know.”

  Liam glanced around the room and couldn’t find any wall clocks—nor any picture frames for that matter, just lightened outlines where frames had once hung. He pulled out his phone. “It’s not even eleven yet. We’ve got ages to wait.”

  Madison passed the journal and message to Liam and hoisted herself off the sofa. “Let’s watch a movie. I have the perfect choice.”

  ****

  When Close Encounters of the Third Kind started, Madison grinned and settled back on the sofa. “I’ve heard this is good.”

  Liam swung around. “You haven’t seen it? My dad watches this every time it shows. He says the UFOs are awesome.”

  “I don’t watch many sci-fi movies. I like horror.”

  She’d taken up one end of the sofa, leaving Ant with the other. Liam sprawled in an armchair, a little envious that his friend was closer to Madison. At the moment, though, he was more perturbed by the feeble TV. He didn’t like to say so, but Madison’s parents needed an upgrade. This old picture-tube TV couldn’t be more than thirty inches, and it was square. Pathetic. He yearned for the plasma in his own living room.

  For the first twenty minutes, Liam thought of nothing but wormholes. He still clutched Madison’s journal and had worked through each page, soaking up every detail. Each event brought a different type of extra-terrestrial species, and she’d named them appropriately based on their description.