head toward the sound. He saw something moving down the tree. It didn’t glide slowly. Rather, it fell and tumbled, hitting branches hard, until it finally crashed into a thatch of bushes at the tree’s base.
The phantom was done with the bully. It had smothered Ox and discarded his body.
Frantic, Jonathan searched the banks for any of the creatures. His foot slipped in the muck, but he righted himself quickly. Maybe he could hold his breath, escape them under the water.
The desperation built.
He stood in the lake for another three minutes before his fear and discomfort crystallized into anger.
Jonathan emerged from the lake, and a deeper cold, one he couldn’t believe existed, wrapped around him. His bones and skin ached under this cold.
“Da-a-a-mn!” he said through chattering teeth.
He stood on the path, dripping, exhausted, and trembling. If the Reapers were going to attack, it would be now.
But they didn’t attack. They had come for Ox and Cade, not him.
Jonathan turned into the mouth of the woods. He jogged into the trees, down the uneven dirt path. Then he ran.
10
No one stopped to give him a ride. Whenever the street lit up with the lights of an approaching car, Jonathan turned with his thumb raised, but the cars just sped by, ignoring him, letting him freeze. He ran until his sides ached, then walked for a while. Then ran. He searched the streets, the sky, the yards for signs of a new attack from the Reapers. His mind raced, but every thought was a spark, a mere firefly dashing through his brain, and there were so many of them. It felt like his head was filled with television static. White noise.
At home he went into the bathroom and stripped off his wet clothes, hung them over the shower rod. He turned on the hot water and climbed in. The spray felt like acid on his skin as the heat confronted the cold that had worked deep into his bones. He stood under the scalding spray for five minutes before adding a touch of cooler water. Then he leaned against the wall and let the shower run over him for another twenty minutes.
He dried himself, went to his room, and put on a pair of sweat pants and a T-shirt. He put on socks because his feet were still cold. Then he climbed under the covers, pulled them tight to his chin, and stared at the ceiling.
He didn’t even think of turning off the overhead light.
The first thing he did the next morning was call Bentley Books and tell Stewart he was sick and wouldn’t be in today. Stewart acted like he didn’t believe Jonathan’s story, but Jonathan didn’t really care what the manager thought. No way was he leaving the apartment. After the call he gathered up his clothes from the bathroom and walked down the hall to the utility closet. Dropped all of the garments, still damp, into the washer. He poured detergent over them and turned on the machine.
In his room he sat at his desk. He needed to write things down, to make sense of them. He reached to turn on his computer, then paused.
If he wrote his thoughts on the computer, they might be retrieved. David told him once that nothing was ever really erased from a computer. Jonathan didn’t know if this was true. It sounded impossible, but his fear and paranoia were so great, he wasn’t going to take the chance. What if the police questioned Cade, and he told them about Jonathan being there? They might come to question him, might take his computer. They could misinterpret something. They could blame him for Ox and Toby and Mr. Weaver. It was nuts, but it was possible.
He pushed the computer keyboard out of his way. On a plain sheet of copy paper, Jonathan began to write.
Jonathan turned the sheet over. He shook out his hand. He needed all of these thoughts out of his head. He needed to make sense of things or else he’d never be able to stop it.
