David Gardiner is your typical 1980's kid. An active social life, lots of friends, doting parents, a room filled to overflowing with toys (ah, rampant 80's consumerism!) and a healthy love of science fiction. And pennies. Yeah, for some reason, he collects pennies. He has a whole jar full of them and even more in a velvet marble bag. He once had to see a psychiatrist, though, for some pretty vague reasons. His parents are George and Ellen. They let him cuss. That automatically makes them the coolest parents ever.
We join David as he awakens to discover that George has attempted to cook breakfast again, and failed miserably, nearly burning the kitchen down. The poor boy is eager to get out of the house ASAP, even if it means going to school to avoid having to eat his dad's food. But his parents are insistent: David must remain and sample George's failed experiment, which he does, causing him to miss the school bus. No matter. After choking down what his dad calls food, George takes him to school, himself, in his black Ford Bronco.
On the way, they drive past Camp Puller, where George works. Puller is a Marine base, and George is part of a civilian science detachment employed there. Apparently there's some kind of top secret NASA experiment going on, but George can't discuss it.
At W.C. Menzies Elementary School, we're quickly introduced to David's friends Heather, Doug and Kevin. Kevin is kind of not a very nice person. We also meet Mrs. McKeltch, their new teacher, a thoroughly unpleasant bitch of a woman who seems to have singled David out as her least favorite student and is cruel to him for no real reason. There's also a rumor going around the faculty members that she's a lesbian. Y'know, your standard 1980's mean teacher.
Camp Puller's commanding officer General Wilson has come to visit the school, along with his aide Captain Rinaldi. The Marine base is a pretty big deal in town and Wilson visits the class once a year as part of come agreement between them and the school. He talks about military stuff and the important work they do, and doesn't like Mrs. McKeltch very much. The feeling is mutual.
The school day passes normally. Wilson leaves, David plays with his friends, puts up with Mrs. McKeltch, who explains that tomorrow they'll be dissecting frogs, and finally goes home. After dinner, he and his father sit outside and watch a meteor shower. Killjoy Ellen demands bedtime for David, forcing him to miss the best part. Saccharine scenes of family love and bonding as both parents tuck their son in. George reveals he got him a mint condition vintage penny, which he gives to David, who sticks it in his jacket pocket. They discuss General Wilson's visit to the class, and then it's
really bedtime.
Later that night, David is woken by thunder. It's storming outside. He'd left his window open, so he goes to shut it so everything he owns doesn't get drenched. From his bedroom he can see the largish hill that rises up behind their house and crests a sand pit. Copper Hill, it's called. As he's about to shut his window, he hears a strange sound and he sees...
something, covered in lots of bright, flashing lights, descend from the sky and disappear over Copper Hill. Terrified, David wakes his parents, but by the time he manages to drag the two groggy adults out of bed, whatever it was is gone. On the plus side, the storm is over.
David is insistent he saw something, so after putting him back to bed, George promises him he'll investigate over the hill tomorrow morning...
The following morning, though, George comes down for breakfast late and in a very odd, irritable state. He's still in his pajamas and only wearing one slipper, which along with his bare foot is covered in mud. When asked, he gets annoyed and explains he checked the sand pit out like he promised and found nothing out of the ordinary, losing the slipper in the process. This seems to satisfy Ellen, whose only concern is that they were her husband's
nice slippers. David, though...
Ellen leaves for work. At the breakfast table, David witnesses his father pour a
ton of saccharine tablets into his coffee, nearly the entire bottle, before drinking it boiling hot, seemingly without any pain or discomfort. David also notices a strange cut on the back of his father's neck, which George refuses to explain. Of the previous night's events and whatever David may or may not have seen, his father simply intones it was just a bad dream.
He changes his tune when walking his son out to the bus stop, though. Halfway down the drive, he pauses and tells David he was right; there is something over the hill, and he wants to show it to him. David rather pointedly refuses. The school bus' arrival puts an end to this rather awkward moment, and for the first time in his live, David is glad to go to school to get away from his inexplicably weird father.
Although creeped out, David is mostly willing to shrug this odd morning off, and attends school like normal. Mrs. McKeltch hands out the dead frogs for the students to dissect, which she explains she caught up at Copper Hill the previous night, which also happens to be where she'll be taking the class for a field trip after school tomorrow.
Kevin the not a very nice person throws his frog at Heather, who screams. David, grabbing it to throw it back, also accidentally seizes a scalpel and cuts himself. Despite this, he chucks the frog back at Kevin, earning Mrs. McKeltch's wrath (she saw David throw the frog, but not Kevin). When Heather points out David's finger is bleeding, Mrs. McKeltch grudgingly takes him to see the school nurse Linda Magnuson, whom David has a
severe crush on. She bandages his finger and gets Mrs. McKeltch's name wrong ("McKletch").
fter school, David is surprised to find his father's Bronco is still in the driveway, but the house empty. When Ellen returns from work, she too is a little concerned. Where has George gone that he didn't take his car? When night comes and there's still no sign of George, she calls the police. None other than the chief of police himself is sent out, an apparent sign of how important George's work at the base is. The police chief is Ward, and he has another officer with him named Kenney. David blabbers to them about the strange thing he saw landing the previous evening. The two cops are more bemused than anything else, but agree to go and investigate the sand pit on the other side of the hill.
No sooner have the two men disappeared over the hill than George pops out of the bushes with another man, scaring his wife and son. He's changed his clothes, too, wearing a suit and tie in lieu of his earlier pajamas. He introduces the stranger as Ed, whom David recognizes as being Heather's father, and the only explanation George offers for his presence is he works for the phone company. d is acting the same way George is; short-tempered, irritable and impatient. He leaves.
The police return, acting the same way as George and Ed. Ward comments that David has quite an imagination... in a way that seems somehow threatening. Since George has now been found, there's no reason for the officers to be here. In an odd moment, the conversation they have with George seems almost... rehearsed, like all three men knew what they were going to say to one another ahead of them. They even all nod in unison when agreeing that everything is "all right." As they depart, David notices Kenney scratching at the back of his neck...
After dinner, George sends David to bed early, and then comments to his wife that it's really quite lovely over on the other side of the hill. Uh-oh. Later that night, David is woken when his father enters his room, but pretends to still be asleep. George takes his penny jar and leaves with it. Getting out of bed, David sees George, penny jar in hand, leading a semi-resisting Ellen over the hill. Before he can do anything or call out, the two vanish over the crest of Copper Hill and are gone.
The following morning, the same thing has befallen Ellen. Cold and subtly menacing, she makes David a breakfast consisting of burned bacon and raw beef covered in sugar. She and George scarf this gruesome food down while enthusing about having a picnic with David after school - over on the other side of the hill, of course.
David is all too happy to escape the house filled with strangers he once called his parents to the relative safety of the school again. Upon arriving, he overhears Mrs. McKeltch talking to Chief Ward. Ward explains that, at midnight tonight, something is going to happen, for which George Gardiner has been chosen. What is his teacher doing talking with the chief of police? And what do they plan on having his father do?
After class, David sees Mrs. McKeltch disappear into the back room where she keeps all of the school supplies, including the preserved animals she uses for dissection. Poking in, he sees she has a bandage on the back of her neck! When she turns around, she has a pickled frog in her mouth, which she promptly swallows whole. Turning to flee, David runs into and knocks down Heather, who is now "one of them" as well, and finally runs to Linda Magnuson. She proves surprisingly openminded, enough to check out David's story. She sees the bandages on the backs of Mrs. McKeltch and Heather's necks.
After school, David runs from his parents when they come to pick him up, hiding in a van. Unfortunately, this van turns out to be Mrs. McKeltch's and it's filled with dead animals, cages and other unpleasant things. She drives out into the woods somewhere near the sand pits, stops, gets out, and wanders off into a tunnel leading underground.
David follows her. The network of tunnels leads to a large underground base of some sort, which appears to be located under the hill behind David's house, and David watches as his teacher, controlled via an implant of some sort in the back of her neck, meets with two large, hideous creatures, who escort her to their apparent leader, an enormous brain-like alien which extends from the wall at the end of a long tentacle. David's eavesdropping is discovered when one of the creatures comes up behind him, forcing him to flee back outside. Mrs. McKeltch yells after him that she'll get him. He runs into Linda, but when he takes her back to show her the tunnel, it's filled in; more, it's as if there never even was a tunnel there at all.
Linda is beginning to doubt the boy's story now, and, intent on proving to him that there isn't some kind of spaceship buried under the ground, she takes him to the top of Copper Hill, overlooking the sand pit behind his house. Just as David, despite his experience underground, is admitting that it honestly doesn't
look like there's anything buried under there two men wearing orange NASA jumpsuits arrive. The men begin using metal detectors to search for something beneath the sand, commenting on how odd George Gardiner has been acting.
Suddenly, the surface of the sand begins to ripple and bulge. As if by magic, a swirling "sand whirlpool" appears beneath the NASA men, and David and Linda watch as, shrieking, they're sucked down under the sand...
