Aliens on Aventine Hill

Creatures of Static [Part 3]

Gray noticed Alice immediately.

Her denim shorts cut off less than midway down her thigh, flush and tight against her skin. A Polaroid camera hung from her slender neck between waves of auburn hair that tumbled over her shoulders like a river.

A blue-eyed boy with his hair slicked back had his arm slung over those shoulders. For a heartbeat, Gray mistook him for Joseph, but he knew better: he could see the beat-up old station wagon outside.

James.

The same James that had hurled the brick through the front window last summer. Gray still remembered the dread that had paralyzed his body after the crash, how he had thrown himself over Roman—fearing it was a grenade or gas and half-expecting the roof to come down on their heads. It'd only been a month since the incident in the attic, and he'd lived in fear of them exacting their revenge.

But all that had followed were hideous peals of laughter and errant flashlights. He remembered what Joseph had said about it: They're just kids. They don't know any better. It wasn't any worse than kids burning ants with a magnifying glass, though as he'd picked through the glass the next morning, Gray had felt the blind cruelty of it.

He let the thought go with a tense sigh and resumed scrubbing the counter as Alice and James plopped down in a booth. They kissed, and Gray fixed his eyes on the clock.

Friday. Just a little longer, and then it would be Saturday and Sunday. Then they too would pass, and summer would drain away, the heat would leech from the air, and it would be cold, cruel winter, but soon enough spring would open up the flowers, rain would pour down and the river would flood. Then it would be summer again...

And the years would pass and pass and pass like all the wasted weekends. Gray swayed as though he could feel the revolution of the earth beneath his feet, tugging him along in these slow, meaningless spirals.

He didn't realize anyone was talking to him until Alice reached over the counter and prodded him, "Grayson?"

He hadn't noticed before how blue her eyes were. They were the color of summer cornflowers. It was such a lovely color, he thought, something he would've liked to drown in. She was speaking to him, he knew, but her words were slipping past him, bubbling up over his head and drifting slowly towards the surface...

Her last sentence burst in his face, and his ears began to ring, "What?"

"Joseph told me the truth," she repeated, "about the lights."

"The lights...?"

She lowered her voice, cupping one hand around her mouth, "About the aliens."

A shudder worked its way through his skin as he stared at her. He whipped his eyes away and they landed on a wolfish, sharp-eyed figure in the corner—What are you doing here? —as he shook his head dismissively, "They're not..."

His gaze flitted away from the officer and out the window, where it landed on the pristine, black car across the street. Gray felt his eyes widen, and Alice turned her head to look at whatever had caught his attention.

She glanced back at him with one eyebrow raised: There's nothing there, just a man in a black suit and bowler hat.

He could be nothing more than that, Gray tried to tell himself, but he knew that glare. It was piercing even from beneath the black beneath the hat's brim. It bored through his skin, peeled away his flesh and melted into his bones.

Each time he blinked it was a new nightmare. The fear surged up his throat, raw and unstoppable, as the man across the street lifted his chin. His unnaturally pale skin stretched tightly over his skull, so that his mouth seemed more like a tear than a mouth. It tore further as the face twisted into a terrible knowing smile, and then—as Gray looked on in horror—the face split ear to ear with needle teeth.