"What do you mean, he escaped?" said Tegan incredulously. "He's locked up in a mental hospital, no smarter than a two-year-old. He wouldn't even know how to turn a doorknob."
"I don't know," replied Alan, waving his hands anxiously. "But Mom just heard from the police, and apparently Mansch is gone."
The brown-haired girl, her face showing alarm, grabbed her younger brother by the shoulders. "What if the mind-wipe wasn't permanent?" she worriedly wondered. "What if he's recovered his memories? What if Ray is back?" She grinned toothily at the prospect.
"Sure, that would be good for you," said Alan. "But don't forget, I'm the one who wiped his mind. If he's really free, the first thing he'll want to do is track me down, and the second thing he'll want to do is get revenge."
(Author's note for those new to the series: Raymond Mansch was introduced in Arthur Goes Fifth I as a jewel thief and former accomplice of Molly's father. He later allied himself with Tegan, became leader of a group called the Brainchildren, and tried to strong-arm Alan into joining them. Alan, having recently discovered his own memory-erasing powers, wiped Mansch's mind in a moment of panic.)
They returned to the den, where their parents were bidding farewell to the Coopers. "I hope you all enjoy your lives in Crown City," said Mr. Powers to the family of waterfowl. "Though what we'd really like is for you to stay in Elwood City, at your old house, and restore the status quo."
"Now that we have Van back in one piece, I'm tempted to do just that," Mrs. Cooper admitted. "I thought moving away from Elwood would move us away from the weirdness...but then the aliens attacked, and we all turned into raving paranoid lunatics, and we realized that no place on Earth was truly normal."
"There's a problem, though," her husband interjected. "We already have a buyer for the house—a nice aardvark family."
"That's easy to fix," said Mrs. Powers. "Just put on a ghost costume and make them think the house is haunted. It worked in the movie Mother Carey's Chickens, and I don't see why it shouldn't work for ducks as well."
Van was the last Cooper to roll out of the house. Once the den was quiet again, Mrs. Powers explained to her children, "The police will be here shortly. They want to ask us some questions about Mr. Mansch, and since your father and I can't remember a thing about him, we'll need to rely on the two of you."
"I have some questions of my own," said Mr. Powers. "Just who is this Mansch character, and what does he have to do with us?"
Shame welled up in Alan's stomach. I don't dare tell them the truth. If they ever learn about what I did to Mansch, and how I wiped their memories of my whole life, they'll think I'm a dangerous freak, and they'll treat me like one.
"Ray Mansch was the man who kidnapped Fern Walters," Tegan explained to them. "He was the man I ran away with. You remember when I ran away, right?"
"Only vaguely," her father answered. "Is there a chance he may try to take you away again?"
"He was only interested in me because of my powers," the girl replied. "Now that they're gone, he has no reason to pay attention to us."
I wish I could believe that, thought Alan.
He rested uneasily, afraid that Mansch would visit in the night and bring danger with him. And danger did come that evening, but it missed his house entirely…
At the Nordgren residence, everyone was lost in unsuspecting slumber—Mr. and Mrs. Nordgren in their bedroom, Sal in the room she shared with Jenny the alien, and George in the room he thankfully shared with no one. Jenny had easily adjusted to Earth sleeping patterns (the day on Kressida was thirty-six hours long), but she found one peculiar habit very difficult to break. It wasn't that she snored, but that she whistled. She whistled like a teapot, constantly, whenever she was asleep. At first it had bothered Sal and kept her awake for hours, but she had learned to deal with it by continually reminding herself that 'omigosh there's a space alien in my bedroom!'.
The stillness was broken by a knock at the door. Mr. Nordgren opened his drowsy eyes and glanced at the digital alarm clock. "Who'd be calling at this hour?" he muttered impatiently to himself.
A hand with long fingernails seized his wrist. "Don't go, Carl," urged his wife. "It's the midnight knock—the Soviet thought police. If we stay quiet, they'll think we're not at home."
"Oh, for pity's sake, Lena," said Mr. Nordgren, dragging one leg and then the other off the mattress. "There are no Soviet thought police. You're still suffering from paranoid delusions."
"Maybe so, Carl," said the moose woman. "But don't forget—you thought there was radioactive waste buried under the house, and you turned out to be right."
"Coincidence," her husband grumbled. Throwing on a plaid bathrobe, he staggered down the stairway and yanked open the front door. The two strangers he saw were tall, wore blue robes and hoods, and had long, horse-like noses; what was more, their foreheads gave off an eerie golden glow. They stood motionlessly, as if waiting with infinite patience for the moose man to react to their presence.
Mr. Nordgren sighed peevishly. "I'm sorry, but George can't play Call of Cthulhu right now. Come back in the morning."
"The alien girl will come with us," uttered one of the visitors, a female. "It would be unwise of you to resist."
To be continued