Felix and Olive backed down the hall; Olive did as she was told, but Felix did not go all the way into Demi’s room, instead keeping his eyes on Cora. Slowly, like a technician preparing to defuse a bomb, she approached the computer. This is insane, she thought. All evidence pointed to someone having broken and entered the house, and she couldn’t stop fretting over whether or not she’d seen a space monster. Someone broke in. They’re looking for dirt on Nils or something. Call the police.
“I think we should call the police,” she finally managed.
“What?” she heard her mother’s groggy voice from her bedroom.
“I think we should call the police,” said Cora again, louder this time. She stood up and backed away from the computer as though the undetonated bomb were still a threat. “I think someone—”
For the space of a heartbeat, she thought she saw a dark silhouette on the other side of the living room, distinctly inhuman, a massive reptoid thing in a crouch. She definitely saw eyes, black orbs imbued with the faintest of golden glows.
In the space of another heartbeat, she was screaming and running in the opposite direction, summoning a strength she was heretofore unaware of to lift her thirteen-year-old brother off the ground and force him into their mother’s bedroom, where their confused mother and sister awaited. Felix was too shocked to protest. Monster Truck had followed them on instinct. Cora had already slammed the bedroom door shut before she saw that Thor had not.
“What is going on?” shrieked Demi, shooting out of bed.
“Something’s in the house!” Cora yelled. Demi had a dresser next to the bedroom door, nearly as tall as an adult and twice as wide, which Cora toppled on its side to block the door, spilling jewelry boxes, pill bottles, and all manner of mom detritus onto the floor.
“What are you doing?” yelled Demi. Olive was screaming. Monster Truck was barking madly, and Cora could hear Thor doing the same on the other side of the door.
“There’s something in the house!” repeated Cora.
Demi’s face contorted as though she were about to excoriate Cora or at least demand a better explanation, when the door started shaking. Cora backed away from it, wondering if that thing could be held back by a door and a dresser if it really wanted to get in. She turned and looked at the one small window in the room, wondering if there was a glimmer of hope of getting all four of them and the dog out through the window before that thing broke down the door, when she felt a high-frequency noise ringing inside her head. She tried to say something but fell to her knees. She sensed the dog stop barking, her sister stop crying. The noise was telling her to close her eyes, go to sleep.
5
Monster Truck was awake and alert by the time Cora regained consciousness, snorting bravely in pug. Olive was also awake, sitting on the floor next to her, breath heavy but even, eyes glued to the window. The sky was starting to turn a dark cerulean blue with the approaching sunrise.
“Olive,” she gasped, shaking off her grogginess. “You see anything?”
Olive shook her head.
“Felix?” Cora blurted, realizing Felix had not yet moved or spoken. Cora shook him, and Felix’s eyes creaked open.
“Wha—” Felix shot up.
Demi, who had collapsed next to the bed, began to stir, looking up at the door—dresser barricade still in place, still closed.
“Did you see anything outside the window?” Cora asked.
“No,” said Olive.
“What was that?” asked Demi absently.
“I … don’t know,” said Cora. She shook her head and looked up at the window, carefully standing on the bed to peek outside. “How long do you think we’ve been out?”
“Not long,” replied Demi.
“You said the aliens aren’t real,” said Olive, looking at Cora, betrayed.
“I …” Cora shook her head. “I didn’t think that they were.”
“That was one of them, wasn’t it?” said Felix. “Did you see it?”
Cora’s breaths were still trembling, her gaze running over all the spilled items on the floor, wondering if it all had really happened. “I don’t know.”
“I saw it,” he said. “It looked like it was crouched, but I saw it. It was huge.”
Cora shook her head. She thought she had seen something, or at least imagined it, but she wouldn’t characterize it as “huge.” “Are you sure?”
Felix nodded fervently. “That email Dad leaked was true. The meteors aren’t really meteors. They’re spaceships. It’s all true.”
“You said there wasn’t an invasion,” said Olive, leveling an accusatory glare at Cora. “You said the aliens aren’t real.”
“This doesn’t prove anything,” said Cora.
“I think it does,” said Felix, his voice urgent. “Where’s Thor?”
Olive’s expression of betrayal turned to one of alarm. “Where’s Thor?” she asked, matching Felix’s intensity.
“He’s just on the other side of the door, sweetie,” said Demi, now alert, her voice shaking.
Cora sprang to her feet and tried to lift the dresser, but quickly gave up, as it was much easier to topple than it was to stand back up. Even so, they didn’t know what was on the other side of that door. “Shit.”
“He isn’t barking anymore,” said Felix, looking at Cora like she personally had killed the family dog.
“Where is Thor?” cried Olive, now unable to hold back tears.
“I’ll find him,” said Cora, slipping on a pair of Demi’s tennis shoes.
“Cora,” said Demi, grabbing Cora by the arm. “What are you doing?”
“I’m going outside to look for Thor,” she said as she finished lacing up her shoe. “I need to see if whatever did this is gone.”
“Fuck,” said Felix, the implication of the whole situation hitting him.
“Cool it!” snapped Demi. “We’re calling the police.” Demi jabbed the phone cradle repeatedly, then slowly hung it up. “Line’s down.”
“Cell phone’s dead, too,” said Felix, holding up Demi’s cell phone and impotently mashing the power button.
Cora finished lacing her shoes. “I’ll be back.”
“Cora, I am dead serious,” said Demi, taking her phone from Felix. “Don’t even think—”
“Keep trying with the cell. Olive, it’s okay. I’m going to look for Thor, okay?”
Olive shook her head, tears streaming. She had such a strange way of crying for a child her age. It was almost always silent.
“Not okay!” said Demi. “What if that thing’s still out there?”
“What do you think it’s going to do, interrogate me? ‘Hey, sorry you went to all that trouble and exposed yourself, but I really don’t know where my father is.’”
“Cora, we don’t know that’s what it wanted.”
“What else could it want? Why us?”
“What if it’s after Luciana?” volunteered Felix. “What if it has something to do with that time they took her into custody—”