There's a Spaceship in My Tree! (15 page)

“Hey, it's not my fault!” Scilla protested. Putting her ear to the wall, she listened and then continued, “Don't you hear it? The clanking sounds are coming from the other side of the wall!”

After putting their ears to the wall, Beamer and Ghoulie had to agree that Scilla was right. “Okay, Plan B,” Ghoulie said.“The Indiana Jones maneuver.” As if the wall was one big pinball machine, they started punching and pulling every symbol and protruding rock they saw, looking for a trigger that would open a hidden door.

Finally, when their fingers were seriously throbbing, they stopped. “There's got to be another way in there,” Beamer said, blowing on his finger. “Let's backtrack.”

That's what they did until the found a side tunnel. Careful to scratch little rocket symbols into the wall so that they could find their way back, they again struck off into the unknown. Making one turn after another, trying to head in the direction of the clanking sound, they fought through major spider colonies and piles of rubble. Suddenly they heard another sound, this one loud and shrill. Scilla stopped abruptly and shouted, “Go back!” But it was too late. The next thing they knew there was a one-eyed creature with bad breath wailing like a banshee hot on their behinds. That's
hot
as in “burn-your-buns hot” and getting hotter by the second. The Star-Fighters ran down a dark tunnel as fast as their middle-school legs could go, which wasn't all that fast since they had to run bending over like orangutans. The trouble was that the tunnel was so small they couldn't stand up — not even Scilla. Frankly their prospects didn't look good. In fact, you might want to see if anything is written on the rest of the pages. This could turn out to be a very short story.

Just an hour before, on their way home from school, the threesome had decided to take their subterranean shortcut. It wasn't all that short when you considered that they had to take a long ladder beneath the park, wind through a maze of caves, and then come back up and cut through a bizarre garden behind Parker's Castle. That “Castle” was Murphy Street's own little corner of Transylvania — dark towers, moat, and all. It belonged to Ms. Parker, who just happened to be the scariest person on the street.

Shortcut or not, that passage beneath Murphy Street had saved their hides more than once. It was their emergency escape route and their hideaway from bullying gangs. This summer, the caves had been lit up like Christmas from the clouds of fireflies and the moss glowing on the walls. With the coming of winter, though, the fireflies were burrowing into their tiny winter caves, leaving only the dim, creepy glow of the moss for illumination. That might be enough if you're a bat, but not if you're human.

Luckily the lanterns still worked, if you could really call them lanterns. After all, lanterns were supposed to have a flame, right? These didn't; instead, when you turned one on, it had a large round bulb filled with glowing liquid. The eerie part, though, was that the light was the same color as a firefly's light. Of course, the really eerie part was that no one knew who made them or how they worked. But somebody had made enough of them to place all over the caves so that you could find one when you needed it.

That was a good thing, since you couldn't always count on having a flashlight when an emergency turned up — like the one they were having now.

The bad news was that a lantern had guided them into the tunnel they were now wishing they could find a way out of. The good news? . . . They were still young, and their parents could probably get discounts on their tombstones.

The beast was almost on them, with its hot, steamy breath making them feel like shrimp on a barbie. Suddenly the tunnel floor slipped out from beneath them.

“Aiiiiiiiiii!” they cried as they flailed momentarily in midair. Then they fell. The next thing they knew, they were plunging through a chute — as in a water ride — and splashing into a fast-moving stream. The sound echoed all around them. They had the sense of being in a large space.

“Help, help!” Ghoulie burbled as he splashed the water frantically. “I can't swim!” Then he saw Scilla standing up, hands on hips, looking down at him with a smirk. He felt his knees bump against the streambed and stood, giving Scilla a sheepish, red-faced look.

“What was that thing?” Beamer sputtered as he crawled, drenched and muttering, out of the stream.

“I don't know,” said Scilla, “but it could use some work on personal hygiene. I can still smell its breath.”

“Next question,” Ghoulie said as he peered through the darkness. “Where are we?”

A faint light grew in the distance . . . behind a range of hills.

“Are we outside?” asked Scilla. “It can't be night already.”

“Worse than that. It looks like sunrise,” groaned Beamer. “It's almost time for school.”

A soft line of light slowly crawled across the landscape, revealing more hills and valleys, then roads and a village. There was a church with a steeple, a train station, shops — some with windmills — and a group of houses.

“One thing's for sure,” said Scilla. “We're not in Middleton anymore.”

Something didn't seem right about the scenery. Beamer couldn't quite put his finger on it. Again they heard the beast scream, and they whirled around to see the one-eyed monster charge across a double-arched bridge.

“It's . . . it's a train!” cried Ghoulie.

Now there was enough light to see that the eye was the headlamp for a steam locomotive.
Looks about the size of our living room sofa
, thought Beamer
.
That was when he realized what was wrong — the scenery was miniaturized!

“Holy tamole! D'y'all mean we're trapped in somebody's train set?” asked Scilla.

Attack of the Spider-Bots: Episode II

Softcover
ISBN 0310714265

Star-Fighters Beamer, Ghoulie, and Scilla follow a strange clanking sound in their cave labyrinth and stumble onto a screaming one-eyed monster that chases them into a huge cavern enclosing a fully animated miniature world. Their search for the person who created that world leads them on a wild adventure to a palatial mansion within a wintry jungle that hides a terrible secret—a secret that they will have to trust God to expose.

Escape from the Drooling Octopod!: Episode III

Softcover
ISBN 0310714273

The Star-Fighters, under a ack from pink goblins and Molgotha, a drooling giant octopod, must save a girl locked in a "pink palace." In a wacky adventure which takes them to a pink planet, through subterranean civilizations and into a modern day Dr. Frankenstein's laboratory, the Star-Fighters learn of the temptation to play God when faith is challenged and discover beauty in the most unlikely beasts.

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