Welcome to Alien Inn

Chapter 5

Matt's eggs tasted terrible. He loaded them with salt, but it didn't help. Plastic would have been more tasty.

No one else at the table was eating with enthusiasm, either.

"These waffles taste like Styrofoam," complained Julee. "They need to get a better cook in this place."

Again, the waitress seemed to materialize out of thin air.

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

"I'm afraid you got our orders mixed up," said Mrs. Meyers. "And the menu...everything is misspelled."

"Oh, that," said the waitress, pointing to a menu in her hand. "We made up the menu that way on purpose as a challenge to the children. Actually it's a game. We like to see which child can find all the errors and correct them the fastest."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out three pencils, handing one to Matt and the others to Julee and Ashlee. "Here's a pencil for each of you to write in your corrections," she went on. "The one who corrects all the menu items first wins a scrumptious dessert. Your parents will judge if you've found all the mistakes. That makes it a family game."

"What a nice idea," commented Mrs. Meyers.

"I like it better when there's a place mat you can color," grumbled Ashlee. "This is no fun."

"Go ahead, children," urged their father. "It will help you with your spelling."

Julee and Ashlee reluctantly picked up their pencils, but Matt shoved his aside. "It's a baby game," he muttered. But that wasn't all that bothered him about it. He suspected that the people at Snowed Inn didn't know how to spell the things on the menu any more than they knew how to fix the dishes.

Suddenly he noticed two men enter the dining room dressed in football uniforms.

"Look at those guys," he said in amazement. "They've got on pads and helmets and everything."

The two men were wearing black uniform pants and orange jerseys with numbers on them, but no team name. Their faces were hard to see because of the face masks on the fronts of the helmets, but it was easy to hear them coming. They were wearing cleats!

"Are they going to a costume party?" his mother asked a waitress.

"Oh, no, ma'am. They're going to the Super Bowl," she announced proudly.

Mrs. Meyers looked at the others at the table and frowned. "Isn't it a little odd to wear uniforms to a restaurant?" she asked.

"I think it's cool," said Julee.

"It's not cool," argued Matt. "And besides, they couldn't be going to the Super Bowl. It was played two weeks ago."

"You're right, son," said his father. "That is strange, isn't it?" He glanced toward the two football players, frowning, and shook his head.

"May I be excused?" Matt asked. He didn't want to stay in the dining room any longer.

"But you haven't finished your breakfast," Said his mother.

"I'm not hungry, and even if I was, these eggs are awful," Matt said. He saw a frown forming on his mother's face and added, "And I want to take Dotti out. She hasn't been out since last night."

"Good idea, son," Mr. Meyers said.

Matt scooted out of the dining room before his mother could protest. It felt good to escape that place. He hurried up the stairs, eager to see Dotti.

"She's the only sane one here," he muttered under his breath.

He unlocked the door to the room he shared with his sisters and went inside, but he didn't see Dotti anywhere. The maid had cleaned the room and made the beds. He stood in the middle of the room and looked around. Dotti wasn't on either of the beds. She wasn't stretched out on the floor. Where could she be?

"Dotti? Dotti, come here, girl," he called softly. He poked his head into the bathroom, but she wasn't there, either. He looked under the beds. No Dotti. And she wasn't in the adjoining bedroom his parents shared.

"Oh, I know. Dumb me! I should have figured it out before," he said to himself. "The maid must have left the door open while she was cleaning, and Dotti went exploring."

He hurried back into the hall and looked in both directions. No Dotti. He started toward the stairway leading to the lobby and changed his mind. I might as well look up here first, he thought.

He wandered up the dark and gloomy hallway, stopping at every door to see if it was open and if the dog had wandered inside.

"Dotti, Dotti! Where are you?" he called. "Wanna go outside, girl?"

By the time had had been to the end of the hall and back, Matt was convinced that Dotti wasn't upstairs. He made a quick stop in his room again to get her leash and a handful of dog treats and headed downstairs.

The lobby was deserted, and a radio he hadn't noticed before crackled with static on the registration desk.

"And now for the latest weather," an announcer said through the static. "According to the National Weather Service, a large blizzard is blanketing the East Coast. Meteorologists say a high pressure system is stalled and is blocking the cold front, and it could be several days before it moves out into the Atlantic Ocean."

"Several days!" Matt cried in disbelief. "They've got to be kidding!"

He stuffed his fists into his jeans pockets and went over to warm himself before the fire. He needed to find Dotti and take her outside. It was going to be miserable out there, and he had left his coat up in the room.

Matt glanced around at all the sofas and chairs to see if she was snuggled up in one of them. No luck. Then he looked toward the dining room. She wouldn't be in here. Not that she wouldn't want to be, he thought, but he knew a begging dog in a restaurant would be kicked out fast.

Glancing past the game room, he saw a hallway that angled off to the left and appeared to be narrow and dark.

It didn't make much sense that she would go down a dark, narrow hallway, but he headed toward it anyway. There was no place else to look.

The hall was shorter than the one upstairs, with two doors on either side and a double door at the end. The sound of his footsteps was muted by thick carpeting.

It only took a second to realize Dotti wasn't in the hall. There was nothing for her to hide behind, and all the doors were closed.

Still, Matt reasoned, maybe one of them had been left open earlier, and Dotti had wandered inside. Cautiously he tried the first door on the right. It was locked. So was the first door on the left. He tried the next door on the left side of the hall. It was locked, too.

This is a waste of time, he thought, and turned to go back to the lobby.

He stopped. Had he heard a funny sound coming from the room at the end of the hall? The one with the double doors?

Pressing an ear against the door, he listened again. There were voices! But they were speaking in a high-pitched tone and in a language he had never heard before. They sounded more mechanical than human, like a tape recording being played backward. But there were two of them, and they were definitely carrying on some kind of conversation. One voice sounded young and excited. The other, older and more cautious.

"Ugeeh lsier vbk! Wqqq! Msoxaz squark!" said the excited one.

"Ummmuh...rtyu...smoooog," replied the cautious one.

A tingly feeling raced up Matt's spine, and he slowly backed away from the door. What kind of people were in that room? And what where they doing in there?

Suddenly he heard another sound.

It was the whimpering of a dog.