Excerpt 1 I lay in bed, quivering underneath my blankets, staring up at the ceiling above me. I heard the pattering of feet, like a small child running on tiptoe. I turned onto my side and closed my eyes. Something was in the attic.
"It's just my imagination," I said quietly.
Scenes from earlier that day played like a movie in my mind. I saw my family's car turning off the highway. I watched as our car turned onto a winding road. The sky was cloudy, and the wind rustled through the Spanish moss hanging from the cypress trees. We drove into the darkness of the trees' shadows.
Excerpt 4 Jeremy raced to the beach and scrambled up onto a log. He pretended it was a spaceship. "Vroom! Roar!" The spaceship blasted off. Jeremy pretended he was soaring through space, searching for flying saucers.
That's when he noticed a small black head poking up from the water. Its two beady eyes stared at him. This creature was definitely not pretend. "Yikes, a space alien!" he screamed, leaping off the log. He dashed for the cabin and burst into the kitchen.
