in?”
“No,” Paul said. “I just need…could you tell her there’s a phone call for her at our house? Tell her it’s Aunt Pearl, and she says it’s important.”
“Sure thing, kiddo. Are you sure you don’t want to come inside?”
“I’ll be fine out here.”
“Suit yourself.”
Mr. Grubb closed the door, and a minute later the door opened again. This time it was Paul’s mom who had opened it.
“Did Aunt Pearl say what this was about?” she asked.
“Hmm? Oh, no. She just said that it was important.”
“Well, all right.”
She followed him back to their house. When she saw that the phone was still sitting in its cradle, and realized that there had been no phone call, she got angry. Paul tried to explain that it was just a joke, a little prank he had pulled on her. She looked at him like he was weird, and told him that there had better not be any more jokes like that.
“And I was having such a good talk with Mrs. Grubb,” she said. “Her kids are sweet, too. Especially the boy. He does look sick, though. I didn’t want to say anything, but I wonder if he has some disease or something. But that’s too terrible to think about.”
That night the light returned. From the bedroom window he couldn’t hear any noise, or feel any rumbling, but Paul was certain that if he got closer to the Grubb house he would be able to. After an hour the light show ended, and he went to bed.
4
The next day Paul watched from his window as Ken and his sister (whose name he still didn’t know) played in the side yard of their house. They either didn’t notice him watching, or didn’t care. Ken appeared to get tired frequently, and had to take rests. He looked even paler than the first day that Paul had met him. Eventually Paul gave up watching them, and played some video games.
That evening, while Paul and his parents were eating dinner, there was a knock at the front door.
“I’ll get it,” his dad said.
Paul watched as his dad walked to the front door and opened it.
“Hello, Mr. Berry, I’m Vanessa. From next door?”
“Oh, yes, my wife said she went over and introduced herself to your folks yesterday. I would have gone, too, but I’ve been busy with work, you know?”
Paul got out of his seat and walked into the living room. He saw Ken’s sister standing out on the porch. She caught sight of him over his dad’s shoulder and waved. Paul didn’t wave back.
“Can I help you with something, dear?” Mr. Berry asked. “It’s just that we’re trying to eat dinner, so….”
“Sorry about that. It’s just that we got a call from my dad’s brother in Sag Creek. It’s sort of a family emergency, and we need to drive there tonight. We’ll be gone until tomorrow. My dad asked me to ask you if you could just keep an eye on our house tonight. I guess he’s kinda nervous, this being a new neighborhood and all.”
“No problem. Tell him we’ll keep an eye out.”
“Thanks, Mr. Berry,” Vanessa Grubb said. Then as she was turning away, “Bye Junior”.
Paul’s dad closed the door.
“Junior?” he asked. “You got yourself a girlfriend or something, Paul?”
Paul blushed.
“No way,” he said.
They went back to the dinner table to finish eating. While his mom and dad talked among themselves, Paul was quiet. He was thinking. The Grubbs would be away for the night.
5
There were no flashes of light from the basement next door. Paul waited for the light show to begin, but it never did. At one o’clock in the morning, long past the time when his parents had gone to bed, Paul climbed out his window. He had a flashlight with him. He crossed the grass that separated the two houses, and knelt next to the basement window. He tried opening it, but the window wouldn’t budge. He stood up and tried a higher window a few feet away. This window slid open easily. He pushed it up all the way, then clicked on the flashlight and pointed it into the house. He was looking into a bedroom. From the boy band posters hanging on the walls, he figured that this was Vanessa’s room.
Paul turned off the flashlight and climbed into the bedroom, leaving the window open behind him in case he had to make a quick exit. He clicked the flashlight on again and made his way through the house. Even though there wasn’t supposed to be anyone home, he still made an effort to stay quiet. He walked along the hallway, and then into the living room. He was searching for the door to the basement. He found the door in the kitchen. He opened it and searched for a light switch to turn on the basement lights. He found the switch, but when he flipped it up nothing happened. The basement remained dark. Paul flipped the switch up and down a few times, but still nothing happened. He swallowed hard.
Paul thought about going back home, but curiosity had a hold on him. He started down the basement steps, holding the flashlight out in front of him like a shield. At the bottom of the steps he noticed a wet odor that sort of smelled like the pond behind the school, the one Mrs. Kinsky, his first grade teacher, had warned her class never to drink from. He cast the light around the basement. He didn’t see much. An old ironing table, a basket of clothes, a few boxes. The light swept over something quickly, and he swung the light back.
There was a big, round rock at one end of the basement. It was huge, and Paul wondered how the Grubbs had gotten it down there. He hadn’t seen them carrying it off the truck, that was for sure. He went over to the rock, and that pond scum smell got stronger as he got closer to it. It was almost a perfect circle, and the top of it was nearly even with Paul’s head. He figured the thing must weigh a ton, or even more. Its surface wasn’t smooth, but covered with little cracks and fissures. It was dark, but not quite black. Paul reached out and touched the rock, and when his fingertips made contact with it the flashlight fell from his other hand, clanking on the bare cement floor of the basement.
A series of images shot through Paul’s head then, flashing by so fast that he didn’t think he would be able to make sense of them, but he was able to anyway. He knew this rock (but it wasn’t a rock, no way, no matter if it looked like one) had been here for a long time. He saw an image of the Thing That Wasn’t a Rock in a meadow, and he saw a huge beast lumber past It without taking notice. Paul thought about what he had learned in school, trying to remember what the beast was called. Then it came to him: it was called a stegosaur. The Thing had no use for the stegosaur, or for any other dumb animal. The Thing was hungry, but the stegosaur wouldn’t make a good meal as it had no thoughts, just instincts.
The Thing waited. It had waited before, and It could do so again.
The stegosaurs, and the rest of the giant lizards, died off, and the Thing didn’t care. More time passed. Species rose and fell as the Thing waited. Finally, after millennia of waiting, It’s patience was rewarded. A new animal showed up on the scene, and this one was so tasty.
Over time the Thing had developed a preference for the balance of It’s hosts. A family, a father, mother, a son and a daughter. It had no practical reason to keep things just like that, but It didn’t need a reason. It did as It pleased, as It always had, even when It had lived under stranger suns than this.
So It fed on It’s hosts, bathing them with It’s warm light, and taking something from them in the process. It fed on their minds. The problem was that eventually too much was taken, and the hosts died. Death, being a strange thing that the Thing couldn’t understand, even when It understood so much, didn’t mean much to It except that death left an open slot, a slot that had to be filled if the preferred balance were to be maintained. It liked balance.
All of these things filled Paul’s mind, and when they were done he fainted. He was still unconscious the next morning when Mr. Grubb found him and carried him upstairs.
6
The Grubbs helped post missing posters around town with Paul’s face on them. They were so kind, and Mrs. Grubb made dinner for the Berry’s every night for a week. As the two mothers sat alone toget
her, Mrs. Grubb comforted Mrs. Berry, telling her that it would be okay, that she was sure that Ken was safe. He would be home soon.
The Grubbs all took part in the search party that was got together to look for Paul. Except for Ken, who Mr. Grubb explained had decided to spend the rest of the summer with his relatives in Sag Creek.
Mrs. Berry was saddened when Mrs. Grubb told her that they had to move again. Mr. Grubb had been transferred to Ohio; they had no choice, really. They would write when they got where they were going. The mothers hugged goodbye, and Mrs. Grubb gave a last few words of comfort before the Grubbs headed off in another moving truck. Mrs. Berry waved at them until they turned and disappeared down Low Street. They never did write.
7
The Grubbs moved into the old Powell house on a Tuesday. Mrs. Dollarhyde watched them from her front porch as she sipped ice cold lemonade. She often sat out on her porch, watching the neighborhood, and it nothing to do with being nosy, like her Herman always used to say before he went up to be with the Lord. She figured that later on, after the family had settled in, she would take them a welcome basket. She might even make a fresh batch of lemonade to share with them.
They looked like such a nice family. Two kids, a girl and a boy. The boy looked like an angel. After all the things had been carried inside the boy closed up the back of the truck and started for the house, but stopped, frozen in place