light, Damon and Katelynn said their goodbyes when the nurse came, leaving Jake in her care.
He awoke later that afternoon. His room was empty, but a long white cardboard box rested atop the nightstand, wrapped with a blue ribbon. Reaching over, Jake picked it up and set it on the bed beside him. On the outside there was no card; no indication of who sent it or what it contained. Untying the ribbon, he opened the box.
Inside was a cane, carved from mahogany and with a silver handle in the shape of a wizard’s head. A note lay in the bottom of the box, tucked beneath the gift.
'Jake,' it read. 'Thought you might need this in the weeks ahead. Sorry I wasn’t there sooner.' It was signed, Sam.
The note was short but explained a lot. Jake hadn’t seen Sam, except for one quick visit, the entire time he had been in the hospital. It was obvious from the note that Sam was feeling guilty about not accompanying him back to Riverwatch.
While Jake hated the thought that he was going to need a cane, he knew that he would have to get used to the idea if he intended to walk anytime soon. 'Thanks, Sam.' He said aloud to the empty room, wishing his friend were there.
Downstream from Riverwatch in a small canyon formed by the twists and turns of the river as it flowed down the mountain, something crawled from the depths of the river. It dragged itself into the darkness of the dense undergrowth and slowly began to heal.
Chapter Thirty-six: The Beginning of the End
It was a gorgeous night. The air had that crisp, clean quality that comes with the fall. The stars overhead shone brilliantly. It was a good night for a walk and since Jake’s physical therapy required several of these a day, he had chosen to take advantage of the evening.
From the corner on which he stood, he could see Columbus Park.
His street met the park on the opposite side and he always ended his exercise by cutting through it.
He passed through the gate and entered the park. In the distance he could just barely make out the dark, squat shapes of the merry-go-round and the jungle gym. The baseball diamond was directly in front of him. A slide and a set of swings were there somewhere as well, he knew, but what little illumination that extended from the streetlamps behind him did not reach that distance.
From center field to the exit on the far side, the park lay nestled in a darkness broken only by the faint light of the stars above.
A sudden unease about crossing that distance struck him then, and for a moment he considered going back and taking the longer route home.
Get on with it.
Settling the grip of his cane comfortably in the palm of his hand, he started across park. A wide stretch of grass marked the area between center field and the playground. As he headed across this no man’s land, Jake was struck by the sudden stillness of the night around him.
The park was silent.
Utterly, eerily silent.
Not a breeze blew, not a bird chirped. The swings hung still and motionless. Even the street behind him was empty and therefore silent.
Jake’s nerves began jangling like high-tension wires.
This is weird.
Jake stood there and tried to gather his thoughts.
So its quiet, he informed himself. Of course it’s quiet. It’s close to eleven p.m. on a weeknight in the middle of October.
But why does it feel so empty? he wondered.
He glanced behind him.
The darkness seemed thicker behind him, denser, blackness with blackness, each level somehow more sinister than the last.
No, he wouldn’t be returning in that direction.
'So, it’s the other side or bust. So be it.'
Despite his bravado, Jake wished he’d taken the long way around. Looking ahead of him, it dawned on him that once he reached the playground, he’d be in the dead center of the park.
In the center of the darkness.
His feet started moving almost of their own accord, and this time his pace matched the accelerated beating of his heart.
The darkness and the silence pressed in on him now, as if they had gained sentience through the admission of his fear.
By the time he crossed into the gravel of the playground, he’d worked himself into quite a state. His cane had trouble finding a purchase on the rock-strewn ground, and when combined with his nervous excitement, it almost pitched him forward on his face. His teeth were chattering from the cold, the sound only serving to remind him of empty rooms full of skeletons, their bones clicking away in the dank darkness that?
'Hold on there Jake!' he told himself, suddenly angry. This is absolutely ridiculous. There is nothing to be afraid of. He knew his imagination had run away with him and he wasn’t happy about his loss of control. Ever since his encounter with the Nightshade he’d been seeing ghosts in every shadow, demons behind every doorstep. He’d proven the damn thing had been flesh and blood, hadn’t he? Proven it could be killed? It hadn’t been some unholy, supernatural being that couldn’t be stopped. He, Jake Caruso, had stopped it!
Replaced by his anger, the fear slipped away into the back of his mind.
Jake moved on, confident he had gotten himself under control. Off in the distance, he could see the glow of streetlamps from the parking lot on the far side of the park, and it was toward these that he headed.
After only a couple of steps he found his pace quickening.
'Here you go again,' he told himself aloud, his words hanging in the night air.
He didn’t slow down, however. The unease that had been poking away at the rational wall inside his mind suddenly blossomed into a heavy sense of dread and was gathering momentum inside him with every step he took. He had only one objective in mind, and that was to reach the lights ahead of him. In the lights he’d be safe.
He broke into a shambling sort of run, leaning heavier on his cane and dragging his bad leg behind him, his eyes trained on the lights before him.
He left behind the slide, the seesaws, then the swings, and was coming up on the jungle gym.
One minute he was running in his lumbering gait, the next, he found himself lying face down in the gravel, dazed and disoriented.
The pain in his shoulder made itself known just about the same time the first warm trickle of blood oozed around the side of his neck.
Jake pulled himself into a sitting position. Supporting himself with his left arm, he used his right to carefully reach under the edge of his jacket.
Pain tore through him as his hand made contact with his ravaged flesh.
When he pulled his hand back, it was covered with blood.
Carefully, Jake moved the shoulder of his jacket around to where he could see it and stared at the three long gashes that extended completely through the thick material and into his flesh beneath.
He realized then that he had been struck viciously from behind and that it had been the force of the blow that had propelled him face-first into the gravel beneath him.
But there was no one behind him.
Maybe it came from above.
He froze at the thought, afraid of the implications.
