it, right?”
“Okay, nobody wants to hear that,” said Toby. “Go back to the bones now.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then melt.”
Larry shrieked as his skin began to bubble and smoke. There was a sizzling sound as pieces of flesh curled and dropped off his body, bursting into flames as they hit the ground. Within seconds Larry was nothing more than a knife-filled skeleton. Then the bones fell apart and he collapsed back into the pile.
Good. Toby had control over his imagination today. That wasn’t always the case.
“You know what would be funny?” he asked Owen. “If you didn’t exist, either. I could be out here talking to myself. The people at the loony bin would love that.”
Owen opened his eyes, looking sort of annoyed that Toby was still making noise when he didn’t feel well.
“If that were the case, though, I’d be a cannibal. I may be crazy, but I’m not that far gone.” He knelt down next to Owen and stroked his fur. “You’re not going to die on me, right? If you ever leave me, I’ll…I don’t know. I’d just be really sad, I guess. I’ll stop talking now.”
He sat with Owen until the monster fell asleep, and then went home.
Toby had hated his senior year of high school, but he had to admit that his senior photo was pretty good. If nothing else, it was the best picture taken of him in at least a decade. His parents wouldn’t miss a five-by-seven print. Tomorrow he’d take it to the cave and give Owen something to remember him by when he wasn’t around.
Or…maybe he’d decide instead not to be a complete idiot.
Owen was his best friend, but he’d also devoured two humans. Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t in Toby’s best interest to have his picture posted right there on the cave wall. That might be a challenge to explain to the police.
As a double murderer who was buddies with a flesh-eating monster, it was very important that he not do stupid things. What he should do, right now, was make a list of dumb things to avoid. A mental list, though-if he wrote it down, it could be discovered, and that would be spectacularly dumb.
No pictures of himself on Owen’s wall, obviously.
Always leave in enough time to get home before dark. He’d screwed that up a few times. Yeah, he always carried a flashlight and had spare batteries in his backpack, but still, he should avoid walking in the forest at night. What if Owen had relatives?
Don’t talk to hallucinations. To be fair, he’d only done that once outside of the forest. Larry had sat down next to him at the library, and Toby had told him to go away. Not a big deal. Nobody had heard. But still, the “talking corpse” versions of Larry and Nick were figments of his imagination, and speaking to them outside of his mind was dumb. He did it fairly often when he was hanging out with Owen, only because he was so used to talking to somebody who didn’t talk back, but that needed to stop.
Don’t think about feeding people to Owen. Well, that wasn’t necessarily something he could control. He thought about it a lot. But after that one time sophomore year when he’d lost his mind and tried to lure J.D. out here-God, how could he have let himself get that far out of control?-he’d never done anything like that again. And he never would. So it didn’t need to be on his list.
Don’t get too comfortable. He messed this up all the time. He just couldn’t conceive of Owen hurting him. But there were a lot of lion tamers missing limbs because they stopped being cautious around their beasts, and he needed to remain aware that Owen was dangerous. He didn’t want to find himself lying in a hospital bed without his arms thinking, “Wow, I really should have been more careful around the creature with claws and razor-sharp teeth.”
Never tell anybody about his friend. This was the hardest one. It was no longer a case of just wanting to share his cool discovery. He had a friend-his only friend-and didn’t dare tell anybody about it, for his sake and for Owen’s. Every time Mom or Dad asked what he was doing out in the woods all the time, he was tempted to tell the truth, but he never could. They were worried. They didn’t think it was healthy to spend this much time alone. If they knew the truth, they’d think it was even less healthy.
Those were the rules. Those were the dumb things he had to avoid. There was nothing on that list he couldn’t handle. And if he broke the rules…well, then he deserved whatever ghoulish fate was in store for him.
C HAPTER E LEVEN G LIMPSES
1964
“We brought you a housewarming present!” said Mom, excitedly walking through the front door. She held a large present wrapped in shiny orange and green paper, big enough that she had to wrap her arms around it as if giving it a hug.
“What is it?” Toby asked as she set it on the otherwise bare dining room table. He always asked that when he got a present, which was silly because the whole point of having it wrapped was to hide the surprise until he opened it. It was similar to the way he said, “Hi, it’s me,” when he called his parents on the telephone. Who else would it be?
“You’ll have to open it and find out,” Mom said, as always.
While Mom and Dad watched, Toby tore off the wrapping paper. “A sewing machine?”
“That’s just the box.”
He ripped open the taped lid and looked inside. He pulled out another wrapped present, this one in shiny blue and purple paper.
“Obviously, your mother has a lot of time on her hands,” Dad said.
It took eight wrapped boxes to get down to the real present: a top-of-the-line coffeemaker that he absolutely loved. Although he’d bought Mrs. Faulkner’s house when she passed away, so Mom and Dad were right next door, and having his own coffeemaker now gave him one less reason to visit, so maybe it wasn’t such a great present.
While he was cleaning out his room, he’d found the undeveloped roll of film from when he’d taken pictures of Owen. He’d kept it hidden in his bottom drawer. The set of drawers went with him to his new house, and he left the roll of film where it was. He’d probably never take the pictures in to be developed, but he liked having it as a souvenir.
1965
“Toby. Toby. Toe-bee.”
Owen growled.
“No, that’s not even close. Just say Toe. Toe.”
Another growl.
“Maybe I could learn to growl in your language.”
1966
“That’s…that’s great news,” said Toby with much more enthusiasm than he felt.
“He won’t say anything, but your father is so excited he can hardly see straight.” Mom grinned. “He’s been hoping to get this job for going on six months now. It’s the opportunity we’ve been waiting for since before you were born.”
