Slither

by Patricia Keiller

When 14-year-old Charlie Hughes sees strange lights in the sky in the middle of the night, she does not realize that her life, and the lives of everybody around her are about to change forever as a threat deep from the outer reaches of space is about to endanger not only her existence, but the very continuation of mankind itself.

Science Fiction, Young Adult ISBN 1-59431-628-7

Cover art by Shelley Rodgerson

Also available in RTF and HTML formats.



Chapter 1

Fourteen year old Charlie Hughes woke up with a start. As her eyes shot open, she fumbled around for her alarm clock. A few seconds later, her hand clumsily found it. To Charlie’s surprise it was only four o’clock in the morning. Charlie then noticed that although it was still dark outside, there was more light coming into the room than you might expect for the middle of the night.

Charlie got out of bed and walked over to the window. She gasped as she saw what looked like multi colored lights in the sky. She had heard of the Aurora Borealis and wondered if this might be what she was looking at. Charlie stayed by the window until the colored lights had ceased, and then when she was sure the lights were finally over, she crawled back into bed wearily, and tried to get back to sleep. However, because she was now almost fully awake Charlie found that sleep would not come again easily, and it was at least half an hour before she finally dozed off once more. She had not been asleep all that long when her mother’s voice woke her up.

“Charlotte wake up. It’s time for school!” her mum, Stella Hughes, shouted up the stairs.

Charlie rubbed her eyes and slid out of bed. She padded into the bathroom, and glanced at herself momentarily in the mirror. Her auburn hair was dishevelled and there were dark circles round her eyes. Charlie ran a comb through her tangled hair and slipped on her glasses. When she looked at herself again in the mirror a moment later she looked much more presentable.

Charlie rushed downstairs to breakfast, and found that her mother was already standing by the door ready to leave.

“I’m off to work now, darling. I’ll pick you up outside school at the usual time,” Stella Hughes said, still eating her last slice of toast as she headed for the front door.

“Yeah, okay. Bye, Mum,” Charlie nodded as she watched her mother leave for work.

Once her mother was gone, Charlie finished getting ready for school, and by five past eight she was out of the house and heading towards the bus stop to meet her friends, Emma Goodwin, and Amir Patel.

“Hi, Amir, did you see the Aurora Borealis last night?” Charlie said, on greeting her friend.

“No, I didn’t, I always sleep like a log. I wish I had though. I’d love to see something like that,” Amir replied.

“What about you, Em? Charlie asked, turning to Emma.

“I was woken up by this loud whirring sound in the middle of the night, but then I went straight back to sleep,” Emma exclaimed.

“Aw, that’s not fair! You both saw or heard something, and I didn’t!” Amir grinned good naturedly.

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the bus, and the sudden appearance of a much larger group of students from their school. Once on board the bus they spoke of other things, and the subject was not returned to for the rest of the day either. By the time school was over that afternoon the events of the previous night had been all but forgotten by Charlie and her friends.

The school day went by uneventfully, and at half past three Charlie’s mother was sitting in her car outside the school gates waiting to pick her daughter up from school just as she normally did on most days. Charlie waved good-bye to her friends and strolled over to the car.

“Hi, Mum,” she greeted her mother.

“Come on, get in,” Stella Hughes smiled.

Charlie threw her school bag into the back of the car, and sat down in the passenger seat next to her mother. The car drove away from the school, and minutes later they were driving through Richmond Park.

“You don’t usually go this way home, Mum,” Charlie commented.

“It’s a nice sunny day, so I thought I’d take the scenic route,” her mother smiled.

Charlie stared out of the car window, it was true, the day was sunny, and it had been one of the only truly warm days in an otherwise rather insipid and rainy British summer. It was nearing the end of July and everything was in full bloom. Charlie smiled to herself, on days like these it was good to be alive, even if your dad had gone off with someone else and left your mum on her own. Charlie sighed, it was only six months since her father had left home, and she still had not fully come to terms with it.

“Goodness, what’s going on over there?” Charlie’s mother suddenly exclaimed, breaking her daughter’s train of thought.

Stella Hughes stopped the car by the side of the road, and Charlie looked in the direction her mother was indicating. In the distance she could make out a large group of people, many of whom looked like television reporters and newspaper journalists, standing around looking down from a ridge at something large on the ground.

“Let’s go and see what’s going on,” Stella Hughes suggested.

Mother and daughter walked over to the assembled group. The journalists and reporters were looking down from a high point on the hill at an enormous mound which seemed to have appeared overnight in the park. It was the height of a three story house and three times as wide.

Charlie asked a young reporter with a scruffy beard and glasses. “What do you think it is?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t like the look of it whatever it is,” the rather intellectual young man replied.

Charlie too found the mound’s sudden appearance quite disturbing, but she hoped that there might be a logical explanation such as unexpected volcanic activity or something. At least now that she had seen the mysterious mound, it would give her something else to talk about the next day at school.