“Let’s take it inside,” I said, as we struggled to climb the steps of the back deck.
Fortunately no one was home. My mother had taken Cody, my four-year-old brother, to the park and Dad was at work. We lugged the rock into the living room and set it down slowly, making sure it wouldn’t crash through the floor. Then we all sat around it, cross-legged, like three chiefs planning their battle strategy. My heart roared in my chest. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the rock, from the subtle and ever-changing patterns of faint luminescence on its surface.
MMMiiiiikkkeee, the thing taunted. But it was only my imagination.
Or so I told myself.
“How much do you think we can get for it?” Austin asked. I looked at him. When you’re a kid you ask dumb questions, dream stupid dreams, and wish for things that can never happen.
“Who the Hell would pay for something like this?” I asked him.
“A collector of some sort,” he mumbled, shaking his head.
“Of some sort,” Justin mocked, smacking him on the arm.
The rock, still breathing, waited.
I felt I had to ask the question that I knew was on all of our minds. “I wonder what it can do.”
Austin perked up. “You mean, like, its powers or something?”
“I’ll bet it has some,” I said. “I felt something inside the rock while I was carrying it in. Energy waves, or something.”
“Me too,” Austin said.
“Maybe it’s a meteorite,” Justin replied. His dad was an astronomer at the local university, so he was always talking about space.
I smiled. This wasn’t just a piece of cosmic scrap metal that fell from outer space. It was…intelligent. I didn’t sense a complex brain, however, but rather a desire to live, to feed. Yes, that’s what it was. A spike of fear drove through my body. I immediately put a stop to my thoughts before they led me to a place I didn’t want to go.
“It’s no meteorite,” I declared. “But I don’t think it came from here, either.”
“You mean the woods?”
I glanced at Justin. “I meant Earth.”
Time passed. The surface of the rock, the thing, whatever you want to call it, flowed in waves of dreamy color, entrancing us completely. Suddenly a cold, wet touch on the back of my neck made me jump. Our tabby cat, Mewler, was curiously nosing around us. She stopped in mid-stride when she saw the rock. She froze, the tip of her tail twitching curiously.
“I wonder what it can do,” Justin whispered to himself when he, too, noticed the cat.
Then he lunged with incredible speed and scooped up Mewler before I could stop him.
I must not have been the only one the thing was communicating with. Justin dropped the cat on top of the rock. At first, nothing happened. Mewler lowered her head and sniffed at the thing, pawed at it lightly, and issued a few warning sounds in the back of her throat. We remained still, gawping at the cat. I should’ve snatched her away immediately. Why didn’t I? It was Cody’s cat for Chrissakes, but what would happen if…
Suddenly a small opening at the top of the rock sprang open with a metallic clank, and Mewler got sucked inside. Bent and twisted at sickening angles, her joints popped and her leg bones splintered as she cried like a human baby for us to rescue her. The cat got drawn down into the rock in stages, like a python gulping its prey, and after about twenty seconds, she was gone. The rock made a series of disgusting slurping sounds and gaseous exhales as the last few inches of tail disappeared into its maw.
Then a horrific fount of gore erupted into the air, splattering all of us in the face. It flowed over the sides of the rock like an erupting volcano, and when I looked back on it later I didn’t think the cat suffered too much beyond the first few seconds. It was lights out for Mewler before she ever really knew what happened.
I must have blacked out, because when I regained my senses both of my friends were screaming and practically sitting on top of me. The thing was still in the middle of the living room floor, except that it had changed.
Mewler was back, only it wasn’t Cody’s cat anymore.
The lifeforce in the rock stared at us from behind those imperious, feline eyes. Not a cat, but something alien.
And hungry.
Mewler watched us with an icy gaze. Those crazy, geometric patterns from the rock were swarming all over her body, changing colors, shapes and sizes. They made her silky coat ripple, as though invisible fingers stroked it in haphazard directions.
“We have to kill it,” I sobbed. I loved that damn cat, but now I was thinking about my family. We had to kill it before they got home.
Before it grew large enough to swallow us whole.
But just as I thought it the cat leaped forward and dashed from the room. Her legs made grinding sounds, like rusty gears, as she fled down the hallway with all of us in close pursuit. She headed for Cody’s bedroom where Miranda, our labradoodle, slept during the day.
The cat was lightning quick, and it pounced on Miranda while she slept at the foot of the bed. We had no chance to stop what happened next. The cat’s mouth cranked wide open just as the rock’s hole had, the top of her head falling backward until she stared upside down at us with glassy eyes. A series of mechanical whirrings and buzzings emanated from her chest as it sprang open, revealing a menacing row of razor-sharp teeth.
I stared in horror as the teeth began chugging and spinning, just like a circular saw. They sank into the dog’s squishy middle, and gouts of blood erupted in thick waves
