Banished To Earth Book One 4

 There was no pain, though he was fully expecting agony. However, there was much more to this than physical intrusion.

  Apart from Trudy Mars, a dear childhood friend, he had never been close to anyone. Now an alien was literally invading not only his flesh but his mind.

  Suddenly the possibility of death seemed trivial. This was new, utterly intimate, out of this world intimate. No one on Earth had ever experienced what he was about to go through. Uncertainty and embarrassment began to boil up inside of him. He peered deeply into her blue diamond eyes to focus on her need and distract himself from his own childish modesty. And found himself feeling he had been here before.

   Long ago, somewhere far away they had shared a similar intimacy. It had cost them their lives and torn them apart.

   ‘…the love that binds, is a love that finds..’  he heard someone say. Then slowly realized he had not heard those words. He had said them to her a long time ago and trillions of light years away.

   “Priathamel, my wife,” he whispered.

   Her eyes swelled with shock. He knew her name. He knew her! Then she too began to remember, but only flashes, fleeting images, pink sky, blue trees, a beige ornate balcony. Flesh melting, melting together coalescing into a tiny dot, then exploding like a bomb.

   Chase reached out to her. His fingers raked through empty air. Suddenly she was gone, out of sight far beyond his grasp. Where?  Darkness had taken her place. He flailed at it, fell forward, then down, then off the world tumbling headlong into cold black empty space.

    She too had lost him and like him, she raked the darkness with pleading fingers, desperate to find her husband, just as she had done so many years ago.

   And like him she had lost her footing, and was now unseated from the temporal plane, Now she too, found herself cartwheeling through space until she was snagged by the gravity field of a yet unseen world, a planet called Earth!

 

 

 

 

Chapter 6

16

   Overwhelmed, Priathamel reached out to catch herself. She could not see her hands or arms or any other part of her body. She was no longer corporeal. Her body was still sitting on the couch fused to Chase’s by one strand of umbilical hair.

   She was not actually falling through space but sailing through his mind toward his past and as she was about to discover a sliver of her own past she never knew existed. 

   A blue star appeared amid the star sprinkled distance. As she watched, it grew more prominent than all the other stars. Transfixed by the growing speck of blue light, she slowly realized it was his home world. Suddenly it ballooned in size with explosive speed until it was a massive sphere of azure, green and white, turning gracefully against the black.

   Having no hands to shield herself, or even eyelids to close, the terrified young alien plummeted utterly denuded and completely defenseless toward an unimagined yesterday.

   Like a sleeping limb slowly waking up, a swirling swarm of electric pinpricks began to prickle from deep within her being. Strange new flesh was forming around her soul. She was filling a body, but what sort of body? This she did not know.

   A curtain of invisible coolness swept up from a sea of blue green haze. Her newly formed body tipped backward like a falling leaf caught up in a sudden updraft and fluttered down toward a great oak standing tall in a grassy field.

   She landed like a feather, feet first, then face down but unhurt just beyond the shadow island of the massive tree. Cool soft blades of green grass and tiny yellow flowers gently cushioned her.

    She might have happily lain there forever amid the soothing cool comfort and sweet subtle fragrance had she not heard a boy yelling odd words, earth words, English words, words she suddenly easily understood.

    Priathamel raised her head. Dead yellow hair slid across her face. Shocked, she forced her hand to touch it. It was dry, lifeless and limp. Straw was evidently growing out of her head. She was no longer Cry’chi, her Phastanar race, Somehow she had become human, at least on the outside.

  “Green shadows, green shadows!” She heard a boy yell, as she turned toward the sound and saw a small skinny kid. He looked about nine years old, dressed in a white T-shirt and stiff new blue jeans and sneakers, peering up into the bushy boughs of the great oak. 

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  Forgetting her lifeless hair, she hopped to her feet and realized she too was a child. She glanced down and saw she was wearing a simple white dress. Had she not been distracted by the frantic yelling boy; she might have explored her new state of being. Clearly something much more pressing was happening right in front of her. She ran toward the boy, who was flanked by two other children. 

   A red headed kid dressed in brown corduroy pants, brown lace up shoes and tan pull over shirt who was much bigger but not much older than the first, towered over him. His name was Tom Masters.

   A spindly plain black- haired girl in red shorts, white blouse and white sandals, stood beside him. She too was about his age, but much smaller. Her name was Trudy Mars.

   “Chase, you big baby,” said Tom, “you seein’ monsters again. When are you going to grow up, you sissy little punk!”

   “Don’t call him that Tom. He didn’t say anything about monsters. Did you Chase?” She drew near him. But didn’t seem to see her at first.

   “Uh huh,” Chase jerked toward her, “There are monsters up there! Their eyes are in the green shadows. I’m looking at them right now. It’s not even dark. Something is very wrong!” he said leaning back and peering up into the sun- streaked boughs. “You don’t see them?”

   Trudy gave him a tired sad look, then turned her face toward the tangled mess of knotty branches and thick foliage and saw nothing but green leaves and gray bent limbs. The green shadows were nothing more than sunlight backlighting the trees’ thick canopy. 

   “The boy,” thought Priathamel, “the boy is the Hunter, of course he is.” She ran straight up to them, but when Tom Masters looked at her, he looked right through her. He could not see her.

   “No Chase,” Trudy answered, “I don’t see them. I’m sorry. I wish I did.”

Tom shook his head in disgust. “You wish you did, then you’d be as crazy as he is!”

   Chase turned on Tom, but as he did, his eyes fell on Priathamel. “Prissy.” The name popped out of his mouth before he could stop it. She reached out to him, but her hand passed right through him like a ghost.

   “You see me,” she asked, but could not hear her own words come from her mouth. Though she heard them clearly in her mind.

 

18

  Chase looked at her but only for a moment. He blinked and turned his head away as his expression changed from pleasant surprise to not now irritation.

   “Prissy?” Tom asked, “you callin’ me prissy? You’re the one who’s afraid of the boogy man, ya’little whimp!”

   “Stop it Tom,” said Trudy, stepping up beside of Chase, “if Chase says he sees something in the tree, then there’s something in the tree!”

   “All right,” said Tom, “then let’s climb up and drag it down. Then we can all get a good look at it.” He spat on the ground. “I’m going up right after you Chase.”

   “What! No way I’m climbing up there. You had better not either.”,

   Tom reared back, squaring his shoulders, “My daddy raised a man. Your Daddy raised ah, oh wait, your Daddy run off, or should I say was chased off by that hag of a Mom, you got. Is that why you’re such a baby?”

   “Shut up Tom.” Trudy yelled, stepping in front of Chase, “that was mean!”

   Tom smirked, “the truth is mean, the world is mean. Ya gotta be just a little bit meaner if ya wanna get along in it. That’s what my Daddy always says.”

   Her eyes flashed, “You’re Daddys nothing but a great big poop head!” Trudy said, putting her fists on her hips as she shoved her face right up to his.

  Priathamel wondered how Chase could make his face turn so red, as she stood by, helplessly phased out of the action. 

 “Not helping Trudy,” Chase whispered in her ear, “Please let me handle this.”

  She turned on him. “Boys!”

  “Okay little Mama, why don’t we just follow you up? Unless you’re a scaredy cat too.”

  “Mother doesn’t want me climbing trees, says it’s not lady like.”

  “Huh, grunted Tom, “you’re too ugly to be a lady.”

   Chase jumped in front of Trudy, but Tom was waiting for him. He stuck his foot out just as Chase stepped around the wiry little girl and tripped him.

   “You’re such a spazz. You wanna prove how brave you are, climb up the tree.”

 

19

 Chase lifted his head from the root-rippled ground, shaking it as he did, “No, I can’t. They’re real. They might break out this time!” He was not sure where those last few words came from, but they made perfect sense to him.

   “You’re such a baby. You make me wanna puke.” With that, Tom stomped off toward the trees’ great trunk, latched onto a low-hanging limb and jerked his chunky frame up, shimmied higher and higher until the thick foliage completely hid him.

  “No Tom!” Chased yelled as he jumped up and ran toward the limb, leapt at It, missed and slammed his knees hard against the old oaks’ stone-hard roots. He yelped and curled up in a ball. Rocking and cradling his bloody left knee.

  “My pants,” he moaned as his index finger stumbled over a bloody tear in his brand-new blue jeans.

   “Who cares about your pants. Chase! Your knee. Is it broken?”

   Wincing, he rocked his body up into a sitting position and yelled, “Tom, get down. You don’t know what they are!”

    “Tom! Who cares about Tom? We need to get you home.”

  “You don’t believe me?”

  “Doesn’t matter, Chase.”

  “It does, Trudy.”

    She looked down at him shaking her head, “How did a witch like your mother birth such a sweet, stupid kid. I’m sorry Chase. Shouldn’t say stuff like that…”

   A large bushy limb suddenly started shaking. Tom shrieked. A low growl, followed by a loud groan came from high above their heads. Then stillness. Silence.

  They looked at each other, as Trudy helped Chase up.

   Ever so slowly they made their way to the oak’s ancient trunk. Stopping they peered up but saw nothing. Then a tap, a moment later another tap. It was coming from several feet in front of them. Scanning the branches then the ground they finally saw a dime sized red spot on the ground, shining bright against a dead brown leaf.

  “Is that blood?”

“Could be Trudy, maybe not though.”

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