Click here to return Home. Click here to read Humdinger Literary E-zine.   Planet X and the Invasion of the Shadow People By Scott M. Starling               “Stop! Stop running right now!” Josh demanded, holding up his hand at the four kids ahead of him. They did stop, but urgently looked behind Josh. Josh took another glance over his shoulder, and verified what he saw moments ago; nothing. Just the peaceful sidewalks along 13th Avenue and a few trees and bushes littering the grass of the front lawns. A lazy hum of bumblebees and lawnmowers filled the air.             And Josh’s ragged breathing. He couldn’t avoid his own ragged breathing.             Josh turned back to the four strangers. Though he was panting and dripping sweat, the youths before him were breathing in slow measures. Their hair ruffled in the breeze, but not a single drop of sweat beaded their foreheads. “Just give me back my bag. Please? I don’t know you and I’m not going with you.”             The leader of the group, a tall boy who had earlier introduced himself as Marty, stepped toward Josh and held his hand out. He had an amazing brush of blond hair and a perfect row of teeth. “Come on. I told you already, we don’t have any time. We need to get you back home.”             “To Planet X?” Josh asked, not really intending a question. “I told you this morning, you guys are all crazy. I don’t need this schoolyard crap!”             “Let’s just take his bag and go!” one of the girls said. She was a pretty girl with skin the color of mocha, but her eyes were a bit unfriendly whenever they looked toward Josh. “We don’t really need him.”             “Wait!” Josh said, holding his hands up again. “Just give me my necklace out of the front pouch. Then you can take the bag. Get out of my life.”             Marty walked back to Josh, taking a deep breath and speaking calmly. “Look, we can’t give you your pendant. It’s what we need. Unfortunately, you need it too.”             “It was my dad’s,” Josh started, but Marty silenced him with a wave.             “That’s why you can’t leave it, and that’s why I am asking you to come with us. It wouldn’t be fair for us to take it.”             “It wouldn’t be fair for us to stand around talking until the shadows get long and our stalkers get closer either!” the dark skinned girl yelled. The other two kids agreed impatiently.             “Stow it!” Marty said to them. He turned his attention back to Josh. “Just come with us, please. Just for a moment. We can explain everything when we get there. As a matter of fact, the place tends to explain itself.”             “Planet X?” Josh said, reflecting back on the crazy nonsense this newcomer had told him in the school cafeteria.             Marty nodded.             “Well . . .” Josh grimaced. He hated confrontations. “Where is this place? Is it a store? A church or something?”             Marty grabbed Josh by the shoulders, and herded him toward the other kids, trying to get him moving again while they spoke. “No. It really is another world, one step removed from this one. A world in the middle of a crisis that you might be able to help with.”             His heart hammered in his chest, and it wasn’t just from the running. Marty and his friends terrified Josh. None of them were right in the heads if they believed this swing set shit, but he really wanted his father’s necklace back. It was the only thing his parents had left for him and, even though he couldn’t remember them, the need to keep it safe was almost physical; an aching in his chest that demanded he carry the necklace with him at all times.             It’s not like I have a choice, Josh thought. The girl with the wicked eyes appeared to have no intentions of relinquishing his bag.             “Okay,” Josh said. “But only for a minute. My mom’s expecting me home any second. When I’m late, she calls the police and stuff. She’s done it before.” The lie was lame on his tongue, and judging by the way the kids looked away and rolled their eyes, Josh figured they knew it was a lie. They ushered him down the street now, not running any more, but walking around him like a royal guard, eyes everywhere except where they were going.             “Is it very far?”             A cold breeze came up the street from behind them, and the sun dipped behind the clouds. All of Josh’s escorts stopped, and looked wide-eyed in the direction the breeze had come from. 13th Avenue held still in the darkening light.             “What is—” Josh interrupted himself with a small gasp. Something moved down the street, almost out of sight, a deep shadow that went from tree to bush, so quickly it may have been his imagination. Josh shivered.             “We’re out of time,” Marty said. He looked about, spotted the Stop-N-Go corner grocery store and gave Josh a shove in that direction. “Move!”             The kids burst into motion, still surrounding Josh and running across the street like maniacs. A red car coming from up the street screeched to a halt and Josh hoped the driver didn’t know his foster parents.             The driver honked, then moved on. The group of kids steered Josh behind the store instead of inside. They went all the way down the back alley and stopped when they reached the cover of the back fence and a sheer wall of blackberry bushes. “Dead end!” the other boy yelled.             “I know,” Marty said. “Start summoning the portal, Trevor!” He turned to the girls. “Jenny, Moon, get ready. We got incoming!”             The two girls reached down their shirts and came up with necklaces similar to the one in Josh’s bag. They faced the narrow alleyway, necklaces held up between their thumb and index fingers like wards; simple jade talismans that somehow seemed as important as life preservers on the open ocean.             While the other boy rubbed a jade ring on his finger and chanted in a strange language, Marty grabbed the bag off the dark girl’s shoulder (Moon, Josh guessed) and ripped open the front pouch. He tossed the beaded jade necklace to Josh and joined the two girls, looking down the mouth of the alleyway. Marty had a jade as well, but his was embedded in a wooden bracelet that Josh saw this morning but had taken no particular notice of until now.             “What is it?” Josh asked, putting his necklace on. He resisted the urge to hold the jade up in front of him as the girls did. It seemed a bit silly in light of the circumstances.             “A Shadow Man,” the Moon said. “A Dark One.”             “What’s he want?”             “You. Your necklace.” Marty focused on the alleyway opening.             Silence filled the back alley for the space of about ten seconds. Josh couldn’t take the suspense. “Is he from . . . ? You know.” It felt ridiculous to say, as if saying it might make him believe it, but he had to know what he was dealing with. “Is he from Planet X?”             “No!” Marty said as if the very idea offended him. “He’s from Obfuscatia. It’s another world, also one step removed from this one, but in the opposite direction of our own.”             “This is stupid!” Those words escaped Josh’s mouth, and no others, because at that moment he felt the hairs on his arm stand on end. The air itself literally crackled with enchantments and a soft glow lit the back alleyway.             Josh turned to the source of the glow, and his eyes widened when a hole appeared in the air before Trevor. The boy rubbed his jade ring and continued chanting as the hole grew larger. The light glow came not from the hole, which appeared dark and sinister, but from the edges of the hole, as if the very air were alight with magic.             “What the—?”             “Oh no,” Jenny whimpered. Josh whipped around, grasping for his necklace no longer afraid of how stupid it might look. He held the jade pendant high as he looked down the alley.             A tall shadow stood between the store and sidewalk. It was featureless in texture, only a dark splotch of shadow, but had the shape of a tall man wearing a trench coat and a sleek Stetson hat, a hat of back alley thugs and assassins. The hat of a killer.             The shadow lurched down the alleyway, and each of the girls shouted out senselessly as Marty stepped in front of Josh. Pink light shot from Moon’s jade, and hit the shadow in the thick of its body. The shadow slowed, but kept coming, leaning forward against the pink beam of light as if it offered strong resistance.             Jenny spoke strange words, gesturing at the shadow with he other hand as if throwing handfuls of pebbles or rice at a wedding. Each time she did, little sparkles flew from her open palm and pelted the shadow’s head. The shadow only shook these off as if they annoyed.             A blue wall of light appeared before Marty, a shield Josh assumed because it reminded him of a force field one might see in a science fiction movie. Complete with humming. Marty began to back up toward the hole calling to the others.             “Moon, Jenny! Let’s go! Let’s go!”             “I can take him,” Moon said, and strained even harder as she concentrated on whatever powers the jade granted her. The pink beam intensified, thickening and almost stopping the shadow. Red eyes appeared on the shadow’s head, but they looked no more human that a spider. Indeed, they were eyes like a spiders. A maw of sharp teeth opened below the eyes and a thick, purple tongue lolled out like a worm. It appeared to smile.             Another shadow appeared at the mouth of the alleyway, and came at them fast. Marty grabbed Moon and Jenny by the back of their shirts, and hauled them toward the hole, which was now tall enough to accommodate an eleven-year-old body.             “Go! Go! Go!” Marty yelled at Josh as he stepped, disappeared, into the hole. Josh didn’t need a second invitation as he flung himself forward and jumped into the hole like a jack rabbit. He rolled when he hit hard earth on the other side, and turned over just in time to see Trevor scream as shadowy hands grabbed him from behind. He and the hole vanished.             “Trevor!” Jenny screamed, scrambling forward and swiping at the air where the hole had been moments before. Josh backed away, in case the hole might reappear and admit the shadows to follow, then he stood and took a quick look around as he gasped in strange tasting lungfulls of air.             “I’m not in Kansas anymore,” he said, and realized he was crying.             The landscape around him had altered so completely that Josh had to turn in three circles, taking it all in over and over. He sky was a deep red. Purple mountains littered the distance beyond immeasurable fields of yellow grass and green trees. There was no fence, no blackberry bushes, and no Stop-N-Go. Indeed, there was no building in sight.             Moon crawled over to Jenny, grabbing her hands and trying to calm her down, though obviously upset herself. Marty stood up and walked over to Josh. He laid a hand on Josh’s shoulder and said, “Welcome to Adoria. Or as people from your place call it, Planet X. Welcome home.”     © Copyright, Scott M. Starling   Click here to read Scott M. 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