This Town Is a Nightmare Read online

  PENGUIN WORKSHOP

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Penguin Workshop, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, 2021

  Text copyright © 2021 by M. K. Krys

  Cover illustration copyright © 2021 by Shane Rebenschied

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  PENGUIN is a registered trademark and PENGUIN WORKSHOP is a trademark of Penguin Books Ltd, and the W colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021008309

  Ebook ISBN 9780593097199

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  pid_prh_5.7.1_c0_r0

  For my mom, Phylis.

  Thanks for the McDonald’s dates.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

  1

  Beacon dropped his skateboard onto the cracked New York City sidewalk and pushed off. He weaved through the crowds, past brownstones and steel skyscrapers, churches and theaters and police stations. Cars zoomed past on the street. Horns honked and people yelled out cuss words. Chilly air blew across his face, carrying the scent of hot dogs and fresh-poured concrete.

  Beacon loved this board. He relished the rise and fall of the path under his wheels. He lived for the speed, came alive when he sailed past commuters and sliced across roadways. It didn’t matter where he was when he was on his board. He was home.

  He whizzed around a busy street corner and saw a flash of white-blond curls standing at a set of traffic lights. His heart lodged in his chest. Jane Middleton couldn’t be here, in New York City . . . right?

  He looked back, searching for Jane. But the girl had vanished. If she’d ever been there to begin with.

  Beacon had become a paranoid mess ever since his family had gone on the run from the Sov. Every scritch behind him was a predator; every blond-haired girl was his enemy ready to take him down. He was getting really sick of the constant fear, but unfortunately, it didn’t seem to be going anywhere.

  “Hey, watch it!”

  Beacon turned back around just in time to avoid slamming into a construction worker. He jerked out of the way and stumbled off his board, rolling onto the concrete. The sidewalk traffic flowed around him as if he were just a lamppost and not an injured twelve-year-old boy.

  “I’m okay, nobody panic,” Beacon muttered. He pushed himself up and wiped off his jeans.

  And found the exact place he’d been looking for.

  The flashing neon sign across the street announced “Ed’s Fast Cash Pawnshop.” There were about eight dollar symbols on the sign, which was what propelled Beacon to pick up his board and cross the street, even though his stomach felt like it was filled with slippery eels.

  As Beacon got closer to the shop, he saw a homeless man and his dog sitting in front of the building. The massive chocolate Lab leaped like a puppy when Beacon approached. It pushed its body into Beacon’s legs, nearly toppling him with his eagerness to be petted. Beacon obliged, laughing as the dog’s tail spun like a windmill.

  “Cute dog. What’s his name?” Beacon asked.

  The man looked up from under the dark hood he wore low over his face. Beacon suppressed a gasp. It wasn’t a man, but a kid not much older than him. His face was covered in patches of freckles, and his wild mane of blond hair hung over hard blue eyes. The maroon T-shirt he wore under his unzipped sweatshirt hung loosely on his thin frame.

  The kid stared at him contemptuously.

  “He’s really cute,” Beacon tried again. “He’s a Lab, right?”

  The boy said nothing.

  “Good talk,” Beacon muttered. He withdrew his hand and entered the pawnshop. The bell over the door jingled as he walked inside.

  The place was dank and musty. Every inch of its cluttered shelves was filled with toasters and ironing boards, Xboxes and power tools and gaudy gold jewelry under smudged glass.

  He approached the front counter, where a woman with a jam stain on her smock was watching a news report about unprecedented hurricanes blowing across the East Coast. Beacon pushed down the panic he always felt anytime he accidently caught one of these news reports and cleared his throat. The woman sighed heavily and looked over at him.

  “Um, hi. I’m here to sell this.” Beacon hefted his skateboard.

  He felt his throat get tight, and he swallowed hard. He couldn’t be a baby about this. His family needed money. It would be selfish and stupid to hang on to a Habitat skateboard worth hundreds of dollars when he could sell it and use the money to buy groceries for weeks.

  After narrowly escaping Driftwood Harbor, Beacon, his twin sister, Everleigh, their dad, and Beacon’s new friend Arthur, had driven straight to New York City, an eight-hour drive down the interstate from the fishing village. They’d planned to take out all of his dad’s savings at the bank, switch out the stolen Mercury Cougar for something less likely to get them all arrested for grand theft auto, then hit the road again. But his dad’s bank account had been frozen. They’d had no money for gas or food or . . . anything. So they were stuck here, what felt like a stone’s throw away from the town they’d discovered was controlled by shape-shifting aliens.

  “Put that here,” the woman said, slapping the counter.

  Beacon slid his skateboard onto the counter. He’d gotten it for his eighth birthday. He’d received a handful of newer skateboards since then, but this one was his favorite. So when they’d moved from LA to Driftwood Harbor and he could only take his most important possessions, this had been the only skateboard he’d kept.

  Now he would have none.

  “I’ll give you twenty bucks for it,” the woman said.

  “What?!” Beacon cried. “This board costs over three hundred dollars brand new!”

  “Twenty bucks, take it or leave it.” The woman went back to watching the news. Beacon ground his teeth.

  Five minutes later, he was shuffling down the street with a twenty-dollar bill in his pocket.

  Beacon walked. And walked, and walked, and walked. Soon, he was “home.”
<
br />   A siren wailed as he stared up at the derelict apartment building.

  He couldn’t believe he’d once scoffed at staying at Blackwater Lookout Bed-and-Breakfast. The inn practically looked like the Four Seasons Hotel compared to this place. Graffiti covered the crumbling brick facade. The windows that weren’t broken out entirely were covered in grime and had sheets for curtains. Scary-looking men smoked on the stoop out front, and Beacon didn’t think they were smoking cigarettes.

  But this was the only place they could afford. The landlord hadn’t cared about anything fancy like “background checks” or “identification” or . . . anything, really, as long as the rent was paid. So his dad had sold the car, and they’d used almost everything they got from it to put a roof over their heads for the next thirty days. They had about thirteen days left, and then things were going to get really interesting.

  Beacon stepped inside. A medley of TV shows, screaming matches, and babies crying could be heard through the thin walls as he climbed up the steps to the third floor. He unlocked the door of apartment 304 and went inside.

  Everleigh, Arthur, and the twins’ dad were crouched over something in the cramped living room. They didn’t even look up as he entered.

  “Hey,” Beacon said.

  “Oh, hey,” his dad said distractedly, running a hand over his bald patch. His tie was pulled loose and slung across his shoulder, a look Beacon was used to seeing lately as his dad and Arthur worked together on this or that.

  “What are you guys doing?” Beacon asked.

  “Come here. You have to see this!” Arthur said, beckoning him with a frantic sweep of his arm. He pushed up his cracked glasses and then bent over his work again.

  Beacon stepped closer and peered over Arthur’s shoulder. On the stained indoor/outdoor carpet was some type of thick, plastic wand with wires sticking out of the end, like an octopus on a stick.

  “What is it?” Beacon asked.

  “It’s a PJ,” Arthur said, as if that explained everything.

  Arthur was Beacon’s best friend and the president of YAT—Youth Searching for Alien Truth (and no, it’s not YSAT, thanks for asking). Beacon had met Arthur in the woods in Driftwood Harbor after they’d moved from Los Angeles all the way to the tiny fishing village in Maine. They’d come for a “fresh start,” after the unexpected death of Beacon and Everleigh’s older brother, Jasper—or so Beacon had thought.

  The real reason they’d come was that their dad had been recruited by the CIA to help an alien race called the Sovereign develop an antidote that would give humans the ability to breathe underwater so they’d have a chance of surviving the tsunamis and flooding soon to be caused by climate change. Only the “antidote” turned out to be an injection that turned humans into creepy, mind-controlled lemmings who worked for the Sov. They’d even gotten ahold of Beacon’s own sister, who had gone from a sarcastic, moody tomboy who wore busted overalls to someone who did bake sale fundraisers with the Gold Stars and wore pink skirts.

  “Ah, a PJ,” Beacon said knowledgeably.

  “It stands for Personal Jumpstarter,” Arthur said. “I modeled it off an old TENS machine.”

  “Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation,” Everleigh supplied in response to Beacon’s confused look.

  “My grandma bought one off an infomercial once,” Arthur continued. “For her arthritis. It’s a little machine that delivers small impulses through these electrodes that attach to your skin. They’re supposed to be for pain relief, but I figured with a little rewiring, we could use these to Jumpstart people the Sov mind-controlled with their antidote. We can carry them as weapons. A lot more convenient than trying to get a Sov to walk into an electrically charged puddle.”

  During Beacon’s frantic escape from the Sov’s underwater UFO, Beacon had accidentally electrocuted a whole group of Gold Stars who had been chasing him. Only the electrocution hadn’t killed them, like he’d thought it would, but zapped them out of their mind-controlled state.

  “Isn’t he a genius?” Beacon’s dad clapped Arthur warmly on the shoulder. Arthur beamed.

  “Wow,” Beacon said. “This is really great. But are you sure we have the money for all this stuff?” He gestured at the wires and tubes all over the floor.

  “There’s an entire alien race coming after us,” Everleigh said dismissively, pulling a strap of her overalls back over her shoulder. “I think self-protection should be a priority. Besides, we didn’t spend anything on this. This is all stuff I got from the junkyard the other day. The stuff you said was useless junk, remember?”

  “Oh.” Beacon suddenly felt like the kid in the group project who didn’t contribute anything but still got an A. Everleigh was a car mechanic prodigy, Arthur was Albert Einstein 2.0, and Beacon’s dad was a freaking CIA agent. What did Beacon bring to the table?

  “So where were you just now?” his dad said.

  A small bit of pride shot through him as he remembered his trip to the pawnshop. He did have something to contribute.

  “Getting this,” Beacon said.

  He produced the twenty-dollar bill from his pocket. He expected his dad to be happy, but a frown creased his forehead.

  “Where did you get that?” he asked.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Beacon said.

  “Did you steal it?” Everleigh asked.

  “What? No, of course not!” he said indignantly. “I just . . . sold my board.” He’d muttered the last part under his breath. He blinked fast and turned away so no one would see how close he was to crying.

  “You sold your skateboard?” His dad was standing now.

  “We needed the money,” Beacon said. “You don’t have a job. Money must be running out by now. What are we going to do when the rent is due?”

  “I’ve applied at a few places,” his dad said. “I’m sure I’ll hear back soon. It’s all going to come together.”

  “Wait a minute,” Arthur said, standing up. “What about my grandma?”

  “What about your grandma?” Everleigh said, with all her usual grace and tact.

  “I thought you said staying here was just temporary,” Arthur went on. “You said you’d bring me back to Driftwood Harbor once everything settled down. Now you’re talking about applying for jobs. That sounds pretty permanent.”

  “Even if we had a car to get back to Driftwood Harbor, it would be a terrible idea,” Everleigh said. “What do you think is going to happen—you’re just going to waltz back into town and they’re going to forget about the fact that they were keeping you as a prisoner in their underwater ship, and that you broke out, and oh, that you’re immune to the antidote they’re giving out to try to mind-control the entire population?” Everleigh shook her head. “You wouldn’t just get to go back to your normal life, Arthur. They’d find you again. They’d probably do some more freaky experiments on you, too. Or did you miss all that the last three weeks?”

  “So what, then? I just never get to talk to my grandma again?” Arthur said.

  “No one said anything about that,” the twins’ dad said.

  “I haven’t seen Grams in two weeks.” Arthur’s eyes were shiny behind his glasses. “She’s probably worried sick about me.”

  “We’ll get you back there, if that’s what you really want,” the twins’ dad said. “But now just isn’t the safest time. The Sov and the CIA are still looking for us—I saw an APB for a stolen 1968 Mercury Cougar at the precinct on the corner just last week. We need to wait until some of the heat dies down before we talk about bringing you back. Otherwise we’d just be putting everyone in danger. Including your grandma.”

  “Can’t I just call her?” Arthur asked weakly.

  “NO!”

  Beacon, Everleigh, and their dad had all shouted it at the same time.

  “Do you want to get us killed?” Everleigh said. “Because that’s exactly what woul
d happen if you did that. The Sov are absolutely tapping your grandma’s phone. A phone call would be all it would take for them to know exactly where we are.”

  “I could use a pay phone,” Arthur said. “At the library or something.”

  “They could trace that,” the twins’ dad said. “They’d know we’re in New York. Right now the Sov probably assume we’ve gone to someplace like Japan, or Canada, at the very least. It would have been the smart thing to do—get as far away from Driftwood Harbor as possible. That’s probably the only reason we haven’t been found yet.”

  All of a sudden, Beacon remembered the girl he’d seen on the street corner earlier. She’d looked so much like Jane. He briefly thought about mentioning the incident to his dad, but he quickly changed his mind. If he did, his dad would probably just decide that Beacon couldn’t go out without him. And there was only one thing worse than having a whole alien race and the US government after him, and that was being cooped up in this apartment that smelled like fish tacos 24-7.

  Besides, he knew it wasn’t really Jane. Not today, or any of the other times he could have sworn he’d seen her. He was just being paranoid. If Jane were here, she wouldn’t be following him around discreetly. She’d attack him, then drag them all back to Driftwood Harbor.

  “What about a burner phone?” Arthur asked. “Those are untraceable.”

  “Harder to trace, yes, but not impossible,” the twins’ dad said. “I’m sorry, Arthur, but we can’t take any chances of the Sov finding us. Everleigh, would you mind getting started on dinner?”

  The conversation was over.

  “You mean the Mr. Noodles?” Everleigh said.

  Her dad charitably ignored her barb. “Yes, thanks, sweetie. Beacon and I have somewhere to be.”

  “Wait, what?” Beacon said, standing up straighter.

  “Grab your coat,” his dad said.

  2

  Twenty minutes later, they were standing in front of $$$$ Ed’s Fast Cash Pawnshop $$$$.

  “What are we doing here?” Beacon asked.

  “Getting your board back.” His dad walked inside, and Beacon hurried to follow.