by that but wasn't.
His grandma went over to the window, looked out. She put her hands to the sides of her eyes like a reverse image of the creature. 'Don't be ridiculous,' she said. 'It was probably just a kid from-'
'He's not being ridiculous,' his mom said, and that made him feel good. Her arms tightened around him. 'It was ... I don't know
'Well, I don't see anything out there now.' His grandma turned away from the window and faced them. Skylar saw not sympathy or understanding in her eyes but disapproval.
'Turn on the yard lights,' his mom commanded. 'Check.'
The old woman must have heard the same seriousness in her voice that he did, because instead of refusing, as he'd expected, she left the room and walked down the hallway. A moment later, the exterior of the house was flooded with light. Holding his hand, taking him with her, his mom moved over to the window. All was was had fled.
The outside lights flicked off, and his grandma returned. 'Nothing,' she announced. He thought she sounded pleased.
His mom didn't say anything, and he didn't either. But she continued to hold his hand, and while he knew that creature might still be out there, might even be watching them from some vantage point within the trees, he no longer felt afraid.
'I'm going back to bed,' his grandma said. 'I'll see you in the morning. If you see any other monsters? Don't call me.'
She disappeared around the corner. Skylar and his mom looked at each other and after a beat, they both burst out laughing. It was the first time he'd laughed since leaving Yuma, and even under these bizarre circumstances it felt good. Through the thin walls, he heard his grandmother's wordless sounds of disapproval-they both did-and that only made them laugh all the harder.
His mom wiped the tears from her eyes. 'We're going to have to get some drapes in here,' she said. It was meant as a joke, sort of, but it brought them back to the here and now, and they both stopped laughing.
Skylar looked at his cot, then over at his mom's bed. She knew what he was thinking before he even said it, and she let go of his hand and put an arm around his shoulders. 'You can stay with me tonight,' she told him.
He felt grateful that she hadn't made him ask-he felt like a baby enough as it was-and he crawled into the bed first, taking the space against the wall, away from the window. She climbed in after and gave him a kiss on the forehead before turning in the opposite direction. 'Good night,' she said.
'Good night,' he replied.
But it was a long time before either of them fell asleep.
Seven
Dennis was awakened by the train.
It shook the cheap motel like an earthquake, accompanied by a deep bass rumbling that he felt in his gut and that threatened to turn his stomach to Jell-O. It was the train's whistle that had shaken him from sleep, a loud sustained blast of air horn powerful enough to penetrate the plaster walls, cut through the static of the television he hadn't turned off and yank him from the deepest REM.
He'd seen the tracks in the daytime, of course. In fact, the highway he'd been taking had followed them for most of the afternoon. But he hadn't expected passing trains to sound so close. Or so loud.
The Midwest was weird. Especially the small towns. He'd spent all of his life in a large Eastern metropolitan area, so it was strange to him to see streets and neighborhoods where the houses had no fences, the yards no boundaries or definition. Stranger still was to see train tracks that seemed to run right through people's back lawns, tracks that were not segregated in a certain section of the city or fenced off in any way but proceeded over yards and down streets as though their builders had been completely oblivious to the community around them.
He wondered now what it was like for the people in those places. Were they awakened every night like this, jarred from sleep by trains speeding past only inches from their bedrooms? Or did they eventually adjust to the all- encompassing noise?
The train was long, but finally it passed, and Dennis lay there listening to the receding sound of its whistle. He tried for several minutes to fall back asleep but couldn't, so he flipped on the nightstand lamp, got out of bed and got a drink of warm flat Coke from the can atop the dresser. His cell phone lay next to the TV, charging, and he picked it up and looked, hoping for messages, but there were none. Earlier in the evening, when he'd called home to check in, he'd missed his mother and sister so much that he almost felt like crying. Travel was much more stressful than he'd been expecting. And much less fun. The lure and excitement of the open road had faded. Most of the time he was alone, driving through unfamiliar territory, listening to local radio stations that depressed the hell out of him. Hearing the voices of his mother and his sister made him realize what he had left behind.
But still he could not go back.
Not yet.
He did not know why, but he knew it was so.
The problem was, his money was going much faster than expected. Even with his skipping breakfasts and sometimes lunches, eating off the dollar menu at fast-food restaurants, and staying at the cheapest fleabag motels, his plan for a grand tour of the United States was destined to be over before it was finished unless something changed.
And all of his sightseeing side trips didn't help.
He toyed with the idea of stopping for a while in some picturesque town and taking a menial job. Janitor or newspaper deliveryman or box boy. In the abstract, the idea was romantic, exciting, and when imagining such scenarios before, he'd always ended up meeting some gorgeous woman or getting involved in some type of adventure. In real life, however, he knew that he would simply be performing manual labor with sullen teenagers in a dead-end community. He needed some way to get money, though. Maybe he'd just buy a lottery ticket. He sat back down on the bed and looked up. The dull yellowish glow of the lamp illuminated a water stain on the ceiling. He thought of his own room at home with its clean walls and modern furniture. It might be a long time before he had something that nice again. He sighed. Right now, even his job at the rental agency didn't seem so bad.
Still, he had that strange nagging sense that he was
Dennis sat there for a few moments, not sure he could fall asleep but not wanting to stay up. The rug under his bare feet felt grainy, dirty. He listened carefully for the sound of any more trains, heard nothing and, deciding to give sleep a shot, finally switched off the lamp, lay back down and closed his eyes. This time, he had no dreams. He felt better in the morning. For breakfast, he bought a paper cup of bitter coffee from the gas station where he filled up the car, and then he was on the road again, the dejection and discouragement of the night before little more than a memory. No matter how the day ended up, it always started well, and essential optimist that he was, he began each morning thinking that today things would be different.
This time he was right.
He was planning to drive straight through to evening. He still had half a bag of leftover Doritos that would suffice for lunch, and if he could make better time, perhaps he could buy himself a free day down the road. By noon, however, after four straight hours of nearly identical woods and rolling hills, with nothing but bad music and fire- and-brimstone sermonizers on the radio, he was ready for some sort of diversion, desperate for a distraction or amusement that would take him out of himself.
ENTER IF YOU DARE!!
The sign was impossible to miss. Bright yellow against the mellow green of the trees, its letters a shocking red, the sign was designed to attract the attention of passersby. It definitely attracted his, and Dennis looked at the cartoonish illustration of a haunted castle and the name below it: the keep. His mood brightened considerably, and was boosted even more when he saw the big red arrow up ahead pointing to a small paved parking lot and a series of old wooden buildings. A plank fence in front of the buildings was painted like a castle wall, with names of the
