Attack of the Spider Bots (18 page)

Then Beamer heard something groaning and then wailing in a high pitch.
The chandelier is about to fall!
Beamer twisted and turned, trying to get the carpet rolling. But instead of rolling across the room, he started rolling up the stairs!
Hey,
what happened to gravity? You can't roll up stairs!
But then, what else could he expect from a flying carpet? “Ow! Ow! Hey! Whoa!” he yelped as he bumped along, lickety-split, up the stairs. The staircase must have been much taller than he thought. He just kept on bumping and rolling without coming to the top of the stairs. Of course, he wasn't seeing things all that well. Spinning around in that rug was making him pretty dizzy. Everything was swirling around like a pink tornado.

Beamer finally thudded to a stop. As the whirl of pink in his head slowed down, he noticed that he was no longer on the stairs. He also began having second thoughts about what he was wrapped up in. It wasn't a rug or a carpet or a straitjacket anymore. He was in a cocoon — a pink cocoon! What was worse, he was stuck in the middle of a huge pink spiderweb! He twisted and kicked, trying to break out of the cocoon. The web shook beneath him. Pretty soon it was shaking even more. He strained to tilt his head back. Then he saw it — a pink nightmare whose eight legs were churning in perfect order across the web. Soon he was going to be one big Slurpee for that hairy spider behemoth.

Soon it would be all over — no obituary, no tombstone, no nothing. Since none of this could possibly be real, Beamer MacIntyre wasn't even going to be history — he was just one more fantasy character crumpled and tossed in the trash can. He flailed about one last time, trying to escape —

Beamer thumped on a hard surface. “Ow!” he yelped in pain. Anxiously, he fought the confinement of the cocoon. Finally, he threw it off. But it wasn't a cocoon anymore. It was a blanket — his sister's pink quilt!
Yech! No wonder
everything was pink.
His blanket must have been in the wash and his mom snuck his sister's on his bed under the bedspread. He looked up and saw the ceiling with the ice-cream-cone water stain. He was back in his bedroom, on the floor next to his bed.
It was all a dream — a silly old dream.
He sighed.
Talk about twisted fairy tales!

“Beamer, you'll be late for school!” his mom called from the kitchen downstairs. “Stove, plate fo'ah low. Toastah own!” he heard her say. The only way to get the kitchen appliances to work in this house was to talk to them. But you had to talk to them nicely and in a Southern accent. Californian wouldn't cut it. That's where Beamer had come from — California. Living on Murphy Street in Middle America was turning out to be a whole new ball game.

“Mo-o-o-o-ommm!” a shrill voice shouted at the same time. “Where are my pink Nikes?” It was Beamer's big sister, Erin, otherwise known as Zero, Zero, Zero (0,0,0). Those are the coordinates for the center of the universe, which is what she thought she was. It was totally disgusting. As far as she was concerned, everyone and everything else in the universe revolved around her.

Also, at the same time, Beamer heard alternating thumping and slapping sounds on the staircase. That was the sound of a strange quadruped named Michael, his nine-year-old brother, who always came up the steps on all fours.

The last set of sounds came from his dad in the shower: “Too hot, too hot!” he said to the plumbing. “
Caolder
,
caolder
,
caolder
. . . ahhhh,
jaust raight
.”

This was why Beamer didn't have many sleepovers at his house.

During history class, it finally occurred to Beamer where at least part of his dream had come from. It should have been obvious.
It was the web! — his web!
Nearly two stories tall and as wide as the house, the famous MacIntyre Web was the nightmare in the attic — the greatest entomological mystery this side of Cleveland.

Up until Christmas, the scientists experimenting on the web in their attic weren't even sure that it was a real web. Some thought it was man-made, somebody's joke or a hobby project or a mad scientist's experiment. But back on Christmas Eve, Molgotha, the web maker, had returned. She'd spun a cocoon around every piece of scientific equipment surrounding the web. Then she sucked the electronic life out of them, leaving them totally useless, as dead as the flies in the little web under the corner gutter.

So now, scientists from all over the country were in the MacIntyre attic, hovering around the web, hooking up this and that sensor. More than ever, the attic looked like the bridge of Darth Vader's Star Destroyer. Cameras now monitored the web 24 – 7, and multiple alarm systems registered every movement. The only reason the MacIntyres were still willing and able to live in the house was because the scientists calculated that all of the security systems gave the spider only “one chance in a hundred” of getting down where they lived. Of course, that “one chance in a hundred” was covered by family prayers every night. How many spiders do you know of that get into people's prayers?

That was three months ago. Spring vacation was only a half circle of the moon away, and still nobody knew who or why or what Molgotha was all about. Part of Beamer hoped they never would. It was kind of cool having a big mystery in your attic, except for the fact that it gave you the heebie-jeebies every time you got near it. You could never lose the feeling that Molgotha was up there somewhere, hiding in the shadows, smackin' her chops for your yummy red corpuscles.

There's a Spaceship in My Tree!: Episode I
Softcover
ISBN 0310714257

Beamer, age 13, who speaks only Californian, is an alien in the world of Middle America, exiled to a bizarre, ancient house on a mysterious street that may or may not exist on any map. With the help of a nerdy African-American kid named Ghoulie, a gangly tomboy named Scilla, and a miraculous, broken-down tree house shaped like a spaceship, he bales the indigenous life forms in his new home, from bullying creatures to the strange inhabitants of dark castles, subterranean caverns, and a spider web the size of a house, to discover how God gives a distinctive purpose to each uniquely designed human being.

Available now at your local bookstore!

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. Franken-stein's laboratory, the Star-Fighters learn of the temptation to play God when faith is challenged and discover beauty in the most unlikely beasts.

Available now at your local bookstore!

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