Lost on Mars (9 page)

The whole gathering burst into spontaneous applause. Da ducked his head and smiled into his beard, embarrassed. The Sheriff on the stage looked mortified. ‘Mr – ah – Robinson. We don't have access to the kind of knowledge that you're talking about. We…'

There came mutinous murmurs from the crowd. ‘Yes, yes we do!' someone catcalled. Another voice cried out, ‘They have been witnessed! They have been seen in the night, going about their ghastly business!' ‘Phantoms!' gasped another and a strange thrill went through me. I should have been scared and more grown-up acting. But I was thoroughly excited.

‘It's the Martians – they're coming back!' This was a louder voice, closer to us and we all turned. Vernon Adams stood up, sweating and feverish. He clutched the back of the bench in front of him, his eyes staring crazily round at all of us.

Either side of him, Mrs Adams and his poor daughter Annabel were in their chintziest frocks, with their hair set in ringlets, as if they thought tonight's emergency meeting was gonna be some fancy social shindig. Mrs Adams was pulling at her husband's arm, tugging at his waistcoat. ‘Come off it, Vernon. Please, my dear…'

But that small, pink-faced man stood firm. He had a bellyful of stuff to say. ‘We've been burying our heads in the red desert sands. We all know that there's an indigenous population here. At least, our older folk do. It's only sixty-odd years since they came here from Earth. And yet somehow – in the scrabbling for existence and survival and keeping ourselves going – we've limited our horizons and put the wider and deeper world out of our minds.'

A ripple of fear ran through the room like a desert snake in wet grass.

‘We heard them first,' Mr Adams said. ‘When we were last aboard the
Melville
. One of our salvage operations. Annabel – my beautiful daughter here – she was deeper within the ship. And she saw them, didn't you, darling?'

All eyes moved to the pretty, powdered face of Annabel. ‘Yes, father,' she said, in her singsong voice. ‘They weren't human at all. They were tall and skinny and they were laughing.'

Da voiced everyone's question, ‘Laughing?'

Annabel nodded. ‘They went, “
Heeee heeeee heeee
.”'

She put on a warbling voice to do that laughing as she'd heard it, and it startled everyone present. It was like the laughing Martians were there in the room with us. Annabel carried on doing it, like she was losing her grip, ‘
Heeee heeeeee heeeeeee
,' until her father grasped her shoulder and squeezed hard. Then she got that distant look on her face again and Mrs Adams produced a lacy handkerchief and began crying into it.

‘We didn't listen to our wonderful, darling Annabel at first,' said Mr Adams. ‘But really we knew. These Martians are out there. Watching us. And laughing.

‘And then … last Monday night, they actually came to our shop!

‘Now, we lock our doors and windows just as tightly as anyone else. But I'm here to tell you that it doesn't matter. They ripped that electronic seal away like it was silver paper round chocolate. The stark truth is, if they want to get inside – then they will.

‘We sleep directly above our emporium and there was no mistaking the slapping noise of bare feet on boards. The scrabbling of skinny fingers on the shelves and in the drawers and the barrels. Dirty Martian hands touching our wholesome goods. Fingers rifling and patting, stroking and scratching.

‘We sat up straight in bed, Mrs Adams and I, and we held hands, listening to this abominable racket. Annabel came from her room to sit with us. We three listened to the noise from downstairs … and the giggling. “
Heeeee heeeee heeeeeee
.”

‘I thought, if we kept still and didn't draw attention, then they would forget we were there. After a while – we heard a closer sound. A footstep on the staircase. Then another, and another. We heard their fingers scratching at each of the doors in the hallway. And … at last the bedroom door. We sat up in bed, clutching one another. The door came squealing open.

‘One of them slowly poked his head round the door and into the room. He looked at us and we stared back. He looked like he was smiling at us. Purple, swirling eyes, like blood running down a plughole.

‘He was moving on horrid, twiggy limbs that actually creaked out loud. He said, “Now we've got you.
Heeeee heeeee heeeeee
.”

‘There was something so deathly about that creature's voice when he spoke our language. He sucked all hope out of the air we were breathing.'

The meeting room was absolutely quiet.

Da broke that silence, asking, ‘How are you here to tell the tale?'

Mr Adams said, ‘The creature said my family and I would be spared that night if I came here to tell you all what the … the Martians wish you to know.'

Sheriff Baxter spoke up then. ‘I – I insist that you tell us what this message is, Vernon Adams.'

The shopkeeper said, ‘The creature told us he and his fellows have shrugged off their slumbers and are about to reclaim their world. The Martians are, in fact, coming back.'

Anger erupted to replace the fear. People got up on their feet and shouted stuff out. Mr Adams looked white and sweaty and I knew we hadn't heard the full message yet.

The tableful of Elders weren't shouting out. They sat there, very still and shrivelled.

Suddenly Annabel Adams was up on her feet. ‘He said they were going to eat us! Now they've got a taste for human flesh! That's what the Martian wanted us to say!'

14

Some of the men said they wanted to go on the offensive, and take the fight to the Martians themselves. They started to stockpile weapons, dragging ancient blasters and dusty automatics out of their basements and polishing them up. My Da tried to make them see sense. ‘How will you find them? You don't even know how many there are! How do you know you even stand a chance?'

That was one of the most frightening things about the Martian Ghosts. They were subtle and slippery and numberless. They came and went by darkness, sticking mostly to the shadows.

That long winter was a tough time. The Disappearances continued during the months of snow. Peculiar footprints were left over town and traced all over the Prairie. Our enemies were starting to care less about being secretive.

There were blizzards and we bolted and sealed ourselves into our homesteads. Ma and Da gave us homemade toys and gifts and we tried to recapture the magic of the great Christmases we had known when we were much younger, but it was hard. Knowing what was out there, wishing us ill.

We tried to celebrate for the sake of Hannah. She was only four and these were the times she would eventually look back upon. Would she want to remember us all being scared and miserable?

When the winter weeks drew to their dreadful close and people emerged again into the sunlight, it seemed that fewer of us were out and about in town. Rumour had it that certain families were so scared about the Martians that they had sealed themselves up in their underground shelters. They would stay down there until they felt the menace had blown over.

‘The fools,' Da said, knowing that nothing but desert dust was going to be blowing over any time soon.

Then came the gossip that certain families hiding in bunkers had taken lethal poisons and ended their lives before the Martian Ghosts came and dragged them away. Sheriff Baxter did a roll call in the February and seventy people failed to answer their names.

Da was perturbed by this.

‘We have to stick together,' he said. ‘That's what humans need to do. We belong together.'

He went to the Elders and told them how we all needed to leave right away and find somewhere new to settle, and we had best do it collectively, en masse, altogether. Da spoke passionately and Sheriff Baxter tried to relay his ideas to the line of withered old men.

Late that night, I looked out of the attic window of Ruby's house and I saw a single Ghost, dancing slowly down the road. It looked smaller and more graceful than the others. My heart went crazy, banging with terror, but my brain was telling me not to be fearful. This Martian Ghost looked like a child. I stared and stared as it came down the street and somehow it must have sensed me, because next thing it looked straight up at my window.

I tried to duck behind the dusty curtains but it was too late.

Then – the strangest thing. The Martian smiled at me.

This was how I came to meet Sook.

She wasn't a child. I don't know what she was – how old or anything. I just know that she was very different from the others, and that she wanted to talk with me. She beckoned me down into the dark street, waving those skinny arms.

Hardly knowing what I was doing, I left my bedroom and went downstairs, really carefully not to wake any of the others. I agonised my way through the house, wincing at the cold of the boards on my bare feet, wondering if those lit-up eyes were making me do things my waking self never would.

I stepped out into the chilly night.

I was in the street, about to come face to face with one of our deadly enemies.

Already I felt like I had always known Sook. I was never very good at making friends. Al always made that kind of thing seem so easy, but I never got the knack. But this time – at that very moment – I knew I was looking into the ravaged, alien face of a true friend.

She was purple in the Earth light. Her skin was corrugated and patterned so it looked a bit like when you cut into a red cabbage. Intricate and rough. She blinked at me, as if she was considering me and weighing up.

When she spoke I heard the words inside my head. They were very gentle and I didn't think it odd that she spoke in English. ‘Come with me.'

It was the most foolhardy thing I'd ever done, and the most dangerous too. If I ever came back from this, Da would kill me. I recall thinking this and wanting to giggle as Sook took my hand in hers. It was dry and felt like gnarled tree bark.

She tugged on my arm and she started dancing off down the sandy road, which was still frozen solid. She was dancing and running at the same time, moving faster and faster, so that her thin, flapping feet were hardly touching the ground.

Miraculously, I was being drawn along after her. I was feeling lighter and faster than I ever had in my life. It was like we were both transforming into another substance. No longer pinky-brown or purple human or Martian flesh. We were waltzing and whirling through the frozen streets of town. I heard my Martian companion laughing – a light, breathy noise – and suddenly we were shooting far beyond the boundaries of Our Town.

We went out in the wilderness, heading west over crags and rocky outcroppings, lopsided hills and dried-out seas. I looked for the lake bed Toaster had cracked apart with Grandma's eye, but it flashed by in a blur. Then we were tangled up in streams of frosty clouds, all sparkling pink, wrapping themselves about us. It hit me for the first time, properly, that we were flying.

We flew and I didn't know how long it lasted or how far Sook had taken me away from home. Hundreds of miles, it felt like. I was looking down at maps and charts far more detailed and lurid than those hand-drawn efforts I'd examined with Da.

I saw that this was a whole world we were living on. A vaster, much more complex place than I had ever considered.

We flew over a plain of bulging monoliths and icy hummocks, where everything was trimmed in black, encrusted vegetation. I blinked and looked again, but already we had moved on. We flew over lakes and mountains and mysterious forests and I thought about how much Al would have loved this. But it was me Sook had called out to.

By dawn she returned me to the dirty little road outside Ruby's house. She set me down and then danced off again, turning to points of light and disappearing herself.

I was left standing alone. Sook had danced me right around the world, the whole shining circumference, and dumped me back here without us speaking more than ten words to each other. I knew her name was Sook. She knew mine was Lora. I knew I had never been so excited in all my life. I stood there alone for some time, shaking.

I let myself back indoors and sealed up the front door before the rest of the family could discover what I had been up to.

15

I'd never had friends of my own age. At the Homestead I worked with Da, and I had Hannah and Al and that was quite enough. Occasionally when we went to town I'd see other kids my age, but I never really had friends. Not to confide in or share with.

Maybe it's weird Sook became my friend, what with her being a different species and all. To me she was just Sook. Our forays into the night never seemed like part of the life I led by day.

This nighttime creature was the most fabulous being I'd ever met. She was half-dream, half-real.

On our third or fourth trip into the night, she talked to me a little more. Until that moment, when her chiming, golden voice bloomed inside my head, it hadn't struck me as surprising that she hadn't said much as yet.

‘Have you told your parents? Do they know you come out to see me?'