He Laughed With His Other Mouths Page 5

  “Ta-da!” said Katie, and pulled two space suits out of the closet.

  Lily was just starting to say, “Katie, I’m not sure we should just—” when they all stopped still.

  There was a noise from Mrs. Dash’s bedroom. A crash. A clatter. Breaking glass. Crunching.

  Dolores Dash, Lily, and Katie looked at one another wildly.

  Something had just burst through the window in the other room.

  They strained to hear more. There was no sound.

  Mrs. Dash hissed, “Curse that wall-to-wall carpeting.”

  Down the hall, something surveyed Mrs. Dash’s bedroom. It found nothing of interest there. A bed. A nightstand. A lamp. A closet, full of clothes. The alien being moved to the door. It turned the knob.

  It made its way down the hall.

  Its footfalls were slow and deliberate.

  It came to Jasper’s room. It opened the door.

  It walked in.

  It saw all the experiments laid out on benches and frames and brackets. It walked to the teleporter machine. It examined the dials and the cranks.

  Then it turned.

  There was a frigid breeze in the room. The alien being looked at the bedroom window.II

  The window was open.

  It went to look out.

  There was a rope ladder leading down from the window. There was one pair—and only one pair—of human footprints in the snow, leading into the forest.

  It turned suspiciously and looked around the room.

  * * *

  I In Jasper Dash #113: Jasper Dash and the Gas Giant Picnic.

  II Through the window in your bedroom at the vacation house, Busby Spence used to stare up at the stars each night. He saw outer space above the pines.

  In one of those huge old pines you see, Busby and his father built a tree house. Busby’s father sawed the wood, singing funny songs. He and Busby banged in the nails together. It was a great tree house with a deck and a rope-swing and everything. You could jump off the rope-swing into the lake. All the kids from the neighborhood met at the tree house to read comics and talk about their baseball games.

  During the war, Busby Spence and his friend Harmon stopped using the tree house. This was because in the summer of 1942 it was completely taken over by a mean, sloppy gang of raccoons.

  Busby and Harmon tried to get the raccoons out of the tree house by banging on the floor from below with a stick. Then they tried throwing rocks in the window. The raccoons didn’t budge.

  So Harmon and Busby tried to hold a meeting in the tree house anyway. They sat in one corner and the raccoons sat in the other corner. Busby read out the Order of Business in a loud, firm voice.

  The raccoons stared at Busby and Harmon, and Busby and Harmon stared back.

  It was a short, loud meeting and was followed by a trip to the doctor and lots of shots and stitches.

  Finally Busby and Harmon built a new tree house. The second tree house was not as good as the first tree house. Busby’s father wasn’t around to help. He was great at building things—very careful and precise—and Busby wasn’t. Busby wished his father was there to teach him how to measure and cut everything right. None of the boards in the second tree house fit, and the whole thing wobbled. From the second tree house Busby and Harmon could occasionally see the raccoons lying on their backs and relaxing on the porch of the first tree house.

  Sometimes Busby and Harmon used the second tree house as a base to attack the raccoon thugs in the first tree house. And when Harmon and Busby left food in the second tree house, the gang of raccoons invaded at night and stole it, lugging it back to the first tree house. The raccoons would eat the food sitting on the porch, in full view. Then Busby and Harmon would huck pinecones. Then the raccoons would make a kind of scary laughing noise. Things went back and forth.

  This went on for many months. It was one of the lesser-known battles of the Second World War.

  Now, in a new century, you look out through those pines at the lake and the dark hills. The snoring of your cousin Maxwell rattles the walls. The tree houses are gone, and have been gone for two generations. You stare at the stars.

  Nights pass in your life too.

  HUNTED BY WHATEVER-IT-IS

  Katie and Lily crouched down on the floor of the teleporter booth, clutching their space suits. They were back to back, heads ducked. The shadow of something moving outside the booth fell across them.

  They scrunched down as far as they could. Lily closed her eyes.

  She heard the slow padding of alien feet across the carpet.

  She clenched her fists. She could feel Katie’s back sweating.

  They heard the footsteps moving to the window. The thing, whatever it was, paused.

  In those final few seconds before whatever-it-was had burst into the room, Mrs. Dash had opened the window and hissed to the girls, “Hide! I’ll draw him out into the woods!” The girls had looked hurriedly around the room—then they’d stuffed themselves into the teleportation booth.

  Everything depended on the monster following the obvious escape route out the window.

  Lily held her breath.

  Katie prayed, Be interested in the outdoors. Be interested in the outdoors. Be interested in the outdoors.

  But whatever it was, it was not interested in snow-covered lawns or forested areas.

  The footsteps came toward the booth.

  Katie and Lily crushed themselves down toward the floor. Lily put her face between her knees. But now her eyes were open.

  So she could see, in the window of the booth, the hideous head appear.

  A goggly, finned alien helmet peered down at them. She could see it grab the handle of the door . . .

  . . . and start to pull.

  GONE IN A FLASH

  Lily screeched—a high-pitched yip she was embarrassed by later.

  She reached out her hand and pulled a big lever—the biggest.

  There weren’t many to pull.

  Everything swam in front of her eyes. She saw the space monster struggling to open the door. She saw Katie turn toward her in horror . . . and then everything vanished.

  They sifted down to their atoms—flung through space.

  Across the arcs of a thousand suns.

  Past worlds with rocky deserts and worlds with purple gardens.

  Deep into the heart of the Horsehead Nebula.

  * * *

  The alien reeled backward in surprise. The humans were gone.

  It quickly inspected the teleporter machine. It ran its hands over the controls.

  It would not follow the humans. That would be foolish. They went to certain destruction.

  It went to the window. It would follow the other human’s footprints through the fallen, frozen water, into the scraggly black growths.

  It had many ways of finding what it needed to find.

  It began clumsily climbing down the rope ladder to the snow.

  JOG WITH ALIENS

  Through the woods ran Dolores Dash, her breath shooting out as steam.

  She could hear something crashing and walking steadily toward her.

  There were six square miles of forest behind Jasper Dash’s house, filled with bunkers from all his old experiments and even the entrance to a tunnel that led to the center of the Earth.I Now Mrs. Dash knew she had to get the monster lost in those six square miles, because she had to keep it from going back to the house and finding the girls—wherever they were hiding. (She didn’t know they’d already thrown themselves fifteen hundred light-years away and would be very hard to find.) So Mrs. Dash jogged through the woods, trying to make as much noise as possible.

  Now, you know as well as I do what usually happens in movies when women of the mid-twentieth century are chased through the woods by alien monsters: They trip on a branch and fall down. Then they lie there with their blond hair and their slim, scarlet-nailed fingers half covering their eyes until whatever is chasing them suddenly appears. . . . Their blue eyes widen . . . ROAR
! . . . end of scene.

  Mrs. Dash was just not interested in any of that happening. She had been on the cross-country running team back in high school and college. She knew the paths through the woods like the backs of her slim, scarlet-nailed hands. So she ran like the dickens.

  She jumped over branches.

  Behind her, she heard the monster trip and fall. It lay there, looking at her through its finned helmet and its slim, silver-gloved hands. It struggled to its feet and kept running after her.

  There were acres and acres of trees and snow and ice and shivery wind.

  She leaped over a ditch.

  The monster fell again.

  Ha, she thought. I haven’t lost it since I ran the mile against Amoskeag Junior Women’s College.

  She turned a corner.

  And there were three aliens there.

  They were too skinny to be human. They also wore huge, bulbous helmets with fins on the sides. Their wet suits glistened black against the dingy white snow.

  They were waiting. They reached out their arms for Mrs. Dash.

  Mrs. Dash ran the other way.

  She thought she had a chance. She really did. She knew a path through a clearing that would take her to the Herlihys’ house. It was just to the left, down the—

  Mrs. Dash stumbled into a clearing and came to a halt.

  In the center of the clearing, surrounded by black trees with spiky branches, beneath the dark and dirty sky, sat a flying saucer. It had burned away the snow beneath it, so there was one spot of color: the emerald green moss of summer.

  Mrs. Dash groaned: a long, sorrowful sound.II

  And then the aliens closed in on her.

  * * *

  I It was no longer accessible. The Boy Technonaut had dynamited it closed long ago to keep the pale, sightless dinosaurs of the nether regions from stampeding through the world up above. See Jasper Dash in the Court of the Fungus Lords.

  II Speaking of mothers and the noises they make, I would like to include a note here about Busby Spence’s mother. After his father left to fight in the Pacific Ocean, she hardly talked. In later years, Busby could not remember his mother saying a single thing during the whole Second World War. She was too sad to speak. Of course, she actually did say things, but he could never remember any of them later. He just remembered her standing and washing a lot of dishes, facing away from him. There were only two of them eating now, instead of three, but somehow it seemed like there were many more dishes when his father was away. His mother cooked and washed and cooked and washed.

  Busby would try to fill up the silence at the dinner table by telling her about the latest Jasper Dash inventions and adventures. “So, Mom, in Jasper Dash and His Locomotive Sieve, there’s this machine that makes gravity turn upside down. So things fly. But it’s not just like they’re flying—they fall up, instead of down. It sounds swell, but wouldn’t that be awful? Because then there wouldn’t be anything to catch you. You’d just fall forever, until there wasn’t any air. So there’s this one fellow, he’s a thug, and he’s part of this international ring of jewel thieves, and . . .”

  Busby’s mother listened, but she didn’t say anything. She didn’t have any opinion, apparently, about what would happen if gravity was reversed, and instead of things falling down, they, for once, fell ever upward.

  LIMOUSINE FOR THE LORD OF ELECTRICITY

  Jasper Dash woke up when shocks of static electricity zapped his hands.

  He scrambled into a sitting position. He was lying on the surface of Zeblion III beneath the sculpture of wires.

  He swiveled his head from side to side in its clumsy helmet. He saw no one around him. Just the endless range of steep, round mountains with their antennas.

  He carefully rose to his feet.

  ZAP! Another shock sent him staggering.

  Hey! an electrical voice demanded, right by his ear. Glad to see you’re awake.

  Jasper swung around. There was no one there.

  “Only cowards bully people without showing their faces,” said Jasper. “Yellow-livered cowards.”

  There was a flash of blue. Jasper jumped.

  The flash hadn’t appeared outside. It was inside his helmet.

  “Who are you?”

  The electric voice said, It doesn’t matter. Turn around. Start walking toward that bridge.

  Jasper said, “I shall not walk a single step until I am told where we are going.”

  I’ve been trapped in those wires for centuries. We’re going to a city of my people. I’m riding you like a camel.

  “I gather you are made of electricity?”

  That’s right. And I’m sitting in the metal of your space suit. I can give you a shock at any time.

  “Very well,” said Jasper. “I will walk you to your city. It is over this bridge?”

  Over this bridge.

  Jasper followed the spark’s orders. He asked, “Did your people build these antennas?”

  No. We were brought here.

  “Who brought you?”

  The Dirrillillim.

  “Who are the Dirrillillim?”

  The inhabitants of this world. They brought us here as prisoners, way back. Through some kind of teleporter machine. They’re gone now. I haven’t seen a Dirrillill for years.

  “So why, mister, aren’t you already at the city with the rest of your people?”

  I was just on vacation. You know, to get away from it all.

  Jasper did not believe him. He walked across a huge brown plain. In the distance, he could see the glitter of more wires. He figured that it was the city of the spark people.

  Jasper asked more about the Dirrillillim who had brought the spark person to this world. The spark man didn’t answer. Jasper stopped walking. He folded his arms.

  ZAP!!!

  “Jupiter’s moons! All right! I’m walking!” It seemed like forever as they crossed the plain.I

  Finally Jasper said, “I think you weren’t on vacation at all.”

  I was on vacation. I was relaxing. Enjoying nature.

  “The only thing more cowardly than bullying is lying.”

  The spark said, All right. I was in prison. When the rest of my people moved to their new city, they left me trapped back there, in the ruins of the First Wire City.

  “I’m sure they had a very good reason,” said Jasper. “And I am not going to help you escape any prison.”

  He stopped talking and turned around. “Here I stand,” said Jasper Dash. “I will not be a limousine for an electrical jailbird. I am no getaway car.”

  ZAP!!! BRRRKKVVVP!!!

  Jasper almost fell down this time. It took him a minute to regain his footing. The spark didn’t say another word.

  Jasper straightened himself up shakily. He heard a dangerous buzzing in his ears. He kept trudging toward the wire city of electricity.

  * * *

  I I hope you’re not wondering how Jasper and the intelligent spark understand each other. They are speaking Espace-eranto, the common language of all worlds. I don’t really know how to explain the electrical being’s knowledge of camels.

  NO AIR FOR THE WEARY

  Katie Mulligan and Lily Gefelty were reassembled fifteen hundred light-years from home.

  They were in a big booth.

  There was no air.

  Frantic, holding their breath, they tried to struggle into the space suits Katie had pulled out of Jasper’s closet. They were a tangle of arms and legs.

  Lily stuck her feet in her suit and then her arm, and then Katie’s glove whapped her in the face.

  “Sorry!” Katie coughed out quickly, giving up precious air.

  Lily’s elbow accidentally knocked Katie’s skull—“Sorry!” Lily croaked—and Katie’s helmet whammed into Lily’s shoulder—“Sorry!”—and then they were both hopping on one leg trying to get the boots to fit.

  Lily bounced onto Katie’s foot.

  “Ow!”

  “Sorry!”

  Their lungs were almos
t empty. Their eyes were bulging. They forced the helmets onto their heads. They were shaking, fighting with the clasps.

  Lily turned around. Her forearm nailed Katie in the back. Katie stumbled and kicked her in the leg. “Sorry!”

  “Sorry!”

  “Sorry!”

  “Sorr—” Lily did not finish the word. She couldn’t. She was out of air.

  There was no oxygen whatsoever in her lungs. She gagged. She started to see stars. She gripped onto the wall of the teleporter booth. She grabbed at her throat and slid down to her knees. She panicked on the metal floor.

  She had been too polite for her own good.

  Katie reached over and held her friend’s helmet firmly and flipped the locks into place.

  Lily heard the hissing of her air hoses. She gulped.

  She could breathe.

  She drew a big breath. Again and again.

  And gratefully, she sighed, “—rry.”

  * * *

  “There’s something wrong with this,” said Katie, looking around the dead Welcome Home party. “This doesn’t feel right to me.”

  “Jasper was here,” said Lily. “Look at all the scuffs in the dust.” She ran her suit’s fingers over the cardboard hats and the limp balloons.

  Katie said, “I don’t like it. This party doesn’t feel good. And remember, I’m someone who’s been at parties with nail-toothed, carnivorous dolls.”I

  Lily walked over to the drooping WELCOME HOME. She picked up the trailing JASPER off the floor and tried to stick it back up. The tape was too old and dry. “Poor Jasper,” she said.

  “Something is not right,” Katie said again. She walked forward with her hands spread out. “It’s—It’s—I’ve got it!”

  She rushed over to the table where the cake sat, sunken in its own cracked frosting. She grabbed a lump of it with her space-suited fingers and cried, in wild disgust, “Fruit-and-nut cake! It looks like chocolate, but they made him FRUIT AND NUT!” She threw the cake blotch down on the ground as if it had burned her. She backed away, scrubbing her hand off on her hip. “His favorite is chocolate with chocolate frosting. What kind of a person . . .” Katie shook her head in shock.