This is just a short story I wrote for Halloween 2009. And I don't own Animorphs. By the way, English is not my native language so this may contain some spelling mistakes.

Marco

Okay, so this all began an early Saturday afternoon… about in the middle of the day I think, maybe 13:00. Or maybe I should say it began when Jake ran over to me in the morning looking quite upset.

It had taken him about ten minutes to tell me what he wanted to say. Tom had succeeded to make their parents promise that the entire family would go to the Sharing this evening and to come to the important thing in all this. Jake wanted help.

We had just been at Cassie's. Rachel and Tobias wanted to stay for a while so Jake and I walked home alone.

Jake seemed a little calmer now, we had made up a plan over how to get his parents out of the Sharing and he believed it in 100%. But he was still worried; he wasn't really with me when I tried to tell him jokes and most of the time he just stared at his own feet.

"You don't think you will look like that at home, do you?" I asked, and he actually looked at me.

"How?"

"Like the world is about to explode of course! How do you think you would explain to Tom that you look like you would want to hide under your bed and cry when the only thing you know is that you are going to the Sharing and have fun? He has to get that something is wrong!"

Jake stopped sigh and look at the ground. But he still seemed down. Now I began to sigh instead of him.

"Jake, this plan is the best one we ever had! For once we have even found a way to make sure that we are all going to survive. Nothing can go wrong this time so what's wrong?"

"Nothing, except that they wants my parents. And me too, if you haven't thought about that before!" He muttered.

"Actually I have thought about it, but as I just told you, this plan can not fail. Nothing to worry about… as long as Tom doesn't see that you are walking around as if you knew something!"

"I can always tell him that something happened in school!" Was his answer to this?

"But if he don't ask? If he just makes up conclusions…"

Suddenly all sounds disappeared, no birds were singing, no dogs were barking, no engines, no wind… and then the light began to disappear too. It got darker and darker and when it couldn't become darker a horrible mist began to grow around us, but without letting the light come back. I can't explain it better than that; it was a dark wicked and totally impenetrable fog that really was close to scare us to death. Jake and I stood there horror-struck and starred at each other.

"What is this?" Jake asked quietly. I didn't even dare to joke about it. This mist was the most horrible I had even experienced, even the most horrible I could think of.

"I don't know, but I'm quite convinced that the Yeerks are involved." Now we could hear some sounds again, but it wasn't normal sounds as singing birds and mooing cows we heard. Horrible, evil, echoing laughers, footsteps, and it were definitely not human. I don't know who was walking but I know one thing, I didn't like it.

We didn't even recognize most of the new sounds. Some of them are indescribable. One sounded as two beating hearts, I suspect that it was my own and Jake's hearts we heard.

The terrible laughers, steps and heartbeats and all the other horrible sounds came closer, they grew stronger, higher. And at the same time the darkness got darker and the fog heavier. It was like they wanted to swallow me. Then suddenly…

I was back, sunshine, I was on the same spot as I had been when it had begun. I was lying on the ground and gasped for air. I could hear the birds, cows, horses and cars again. The only sound that was still there was the heart.

First several minutes later, when I had calmed down enough to stand up I discovered that everything was not back to normal. One very important thing had changed.

Jake was gone.