Read My Cousin, the Alien for Free Online

warm and drowsy.
    With a sudden thump, a white golf ball bounced into our clearing, knocking aside one of Ethan’s pine cones.
    He stomped over to replace it, then spun around at the sound of crashing.
    Two men stepped out of the bushes. Fat, bald men.

Agent Sorn crouched behind a flowering bush, talking hurriedly into her sender.
    “I tapped into meetings and communications, going to great lengths to get our Agent and his family to a new location. To no avail. The Gnairt are here and seem to have identified him.”
    “Under no circumstances are the Gnairt to capture or injure the boy,” Zythis’s gargly voice ordered. “His mission is too important to that planet and the Galactic Union.”
    “Understood. I will attempt to keep him in sight at all times, but these young ones have more energy than Arcturian jiggle bugs. They’re hard to keep track of.”
    “Do whatever is necessary, Agent Sorn.”
    The connection ended. Still crouching behind the bush, she returned the sender to her satchel, then reluctantly pulled out her silvery laser gun.
    “Looking for something, ma’am?”
    “Yeek!” The gun arched out of her startled hands, landing deeper in the bushes. She looked up at the gardener, her mind racing though its language implants. “I’m just looking for my . . . my . . . my hair dryer.”
    “Whatever. Just don’t you hurt the rhododendrons.”
    “I wouldn’t dream of hurting anything, sir.”

Maybe I’d been playing too much of this alien stuff, but suddenly our sunny little woods felt a lot colder.
    One of the bald men pointed at the golf ball and gave a burbly little laugh. “Sorry to disturb your game, kids, but our game isn’t going well either.”
    I guess that was a joke. The other man laughed. I just stared at the two. They were more than just fat. Their pink skin seemed stretched too tightly over its contents, like over-blown-up balloons. And they were
totally
bald. No eyebrows, no eyelashes, not even a little fringe of hair at the base of their shiny skulls. And even weirder, they were completely identical. Really creepy-looking twins. For a sickening moment, I remembered that the fat, bald guys at the mall had looked like twins too.
    So what? The world’s full of twins.
    Ethan stared at them for a moment too, then hurriedly scooped up his pendant.
    “You know, kids,” one said in a booming, trying-to-be-jolly voice, “we should join forces. We’ve lost lots of balls in these woods. If you two pick up all you can find, we’ll pay 25 cents a ball. What do you say, kids? You can bring them by our hotel room tonight.”
    Easy money, all right. There were probably dozens of lost balls in these woods. But, aliens or not, I didn’t like these guys. A glance at Ethan’s deathly white face cinched it.
    “Sorry,” I said. “We’ve got to go.”
    “Oh, but it’s such a lovely afternoon,” one balloon-faced man argued, making a practice swing with his golf club. “Tomorrow it may rain.”
    “In fact, Clyde,” the other said, rubbing a bloated hand over his glistening scalp, “let’s walk around with them. The woods are cooler than the fairway. They can go after all the balls that old guys like us can’t reach.”
    “Great idea, Bill. What do you say, kids?”
    “No,” was all Ethan said. I agreed. These guys could be child molesters or something. And the Clyde guy gripped his golf club like he was wielding a weapon.
    As we both backed away, I said, “Sorry, no. We’ve got to get back. Been gone too long already.”
    We turned and ran down the road, only slowing as we passed someone striding briskly up the path, the white-haired lady from the Vulcan Wasser Pavilion. At the sight of that perfectly normal, smiling person, I suddenly felt foolish. There I was, letting Ethan’s crazy game get to me—looking for bad guys everywhere, even in a couple of fat, too-friendly golfers.
    During dinner, we could see Clyde and Bill eating at the far end of the dining room, two tables away