Invasion

way to get through the next six hours.
        The trouble came sooner than I had expected.
        Twenty-three minutes past eleven o'clock. I knew the precise time because I had just looked at my wristwatch. I was no more than one-third of the way through the paperback novel, having absorbed little or nothing of it, and I was getting bored.
        Gentle, all but inaudible footsteps sounded in the second-floor hallway behind me, and when I turned around Toby was there in his bare feet and fire engine-red pajamas.
        "Can't you sleep?" I asked.
        He said something: an incoherent gurgle, as if someone were strangling him.
        "Toby?"
        He came down onto the first step, as if he were going to sit beside me-but instead of that he slipped quickly past me and kept right on going.
        "What's up?" I asked, thinking that he was headed for the refrigerator to get a late-night snack.
        He didn't answer.
        He didn't stop.
        "Hey!"
        He started to run down the last of the steps.
        I stood up.
        "Toby!"
        At the bottom of the stairs he glanced up at me. And I realized that there was no expression whatsoever in his eyes. Just a watery emptiness, a vacant gaze, a lifeless stare. He seemed to be looking through me at the wall beyond, as if I were only a spirit drifting on the air.
        One of the aliens had control of him.
        Why had it never occurred to me that the aliens might find a child's mind much more accessible, much more controllable than the mind of an adult?
        As Toby ran across the living room, I started down the stairs, taking them two at a time, risking a twisted ankle and a broken neck. As I ran I shouted at him, hoping that somehow my voice would snap him out of the trance.
        He kept going.
        Bones… bones… a horse's bones, a complete skeleton… bones in a forest clearing…
        I almost fell coming off the steps, avoided disaster by a slim margin, and plunged across the living room. I reached the kitchen in time to hear the outer sun porch door slam behind him: a flat, solid, final sound.
        Bones in a forest clearing… white bones lying in white snow…
        I didn't stop for my gloves, boots, or coat.
        A horse's bones, a skeleton… picked clean…
        I ran across the kitchen, striking a chair with my hip and knocking it over in my wake.
        Toby's bones, Toby's skeleton… picked clean…
        I crossed the sun porch in three long strides, bounding like an antelope.
        Picked clean…
        I tore open the door and went out into the black and snow-filled night.
        Bones…
        "Toby!"
        The cold slammed into me and rocked me badly, as if sharp icicles had been thrust deep into my joints, between muscle and sheath, through arteries and veins. That was the "one" of a one-two punch that Nature had for me. The "two" was the wind which was seething up the hill at better than fifty miles an hour: a mallet to drive the icicles deeper.
        "Toby!"
        No answer.
        For four or five or six seconds, as I desperately searched the bleak night ahead, I couldn't see him. Then suddenly I got a glimpse of his bright red pajamas outlined against the snow and flapping like a flag in the wind.
        "Toby, stop!"
        He didn't obey, of course. And now he was nearly out of sight, for visibility was just about nil.
        Bones…
        In the knee-deep snow-which was more likely hip-deep for him-I was able to make much better time than he did. Within a few seconds I reached him and caught him by the shoulder and pulled him around.
        He struck me in the face with one small fist.
        Surprised more than hurt by the blow, I tumbled backwards into a drift.
        He pulled loose and turned and started down toward the woods once more.
        Hundreds of big bear traps began to go off all around me: snapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnapsnap! And then I realized that I was only hearing my teeth chattering. I was half-frozen although
        I had spent no more than a minute in these sub-zero temperatures, lashed by this ferocious wind. Toby would have to be in even worse shape than I was, for his cotton pajamas offered less protection from the elements than did my jeans and thick flannel hunting shirt.
        I pushed up and went after him, weaving like a drunkard in anxious pursuit of a rolling wine bottle. In a dozen steps I