his wife ran in from the kitchen.
“Get away from the windows, Jamie!” he shouted.
“Dad, what’s-”
“Just do what I tell you and don’t argue! There isn’t time.”
“Time for what, Julian?” asked Jamie’s mom, her voice tight and high-pitched. “What’s going on?”
Julian ignored her, taking out a cell phone that Jamie didn’t recognize. He punched numbers into the handset and held it to his ear. “Frank? Yeah, I know. I know. What’s the ETA? And that’s accurate? OK. Take care of yourself.”
He hung up the phone and grabbed Jamie’s mom’s hand.
“Julian, you’re scaring me,” she said, softly. “Please tell me what’s happening.”
He looked into his wife’s pale, confused face. “I can’t,” he replied. “I’m sorry.”
Jamie watched in a daze. He didn’t understand what was happening here, didn’t understand it at all. What was moving through the darkness outside their house? Who was Frank? His dad didn’t have any friends called Frank, he was sure of it.
The window behind Jamie exploded as a branch from the oak tree came through it like a missile and smashed their coffee table into splinters. This time his mom screamed as well.
“Get away from the windows!” bellowed Julian again. “Come over here next to me!”
Jamie scrambled up from the floor, grabbed his mom’s hand and ran across the room toward his father. They backed up against the wall opposite the window, his dad placing an arm across him and his mother, before putting his right hand into his coat pocket and taking out a black pistol.
His mother squeezed his hand so tightly that he thought the bones would break. “Julian!” she screamed. “What are you doing with that gun?”
“Quiet, Marie,” his father said, in a low voice.
In the distance, Jamie heard sirens approaching.
Thankyouthankyouthankyou. We’re going to be all right.
Outside in the garden a grotesque high-pitched laugh floated through the night air.
“Hurry,” Julian whispered. “Please hurry.”
Jamie didn’t know who his father was talking to, but it wasn’t to him or his mom. Then suddenly the garden was full of light and noise as two black vans, sirens blaring and lights spinning on their roofs, screeched into the driveway. Jamie looked out at the oak tree, now lit bright red and blue. It was empty.
“They’ve gone!” he shouted. “Dad, they’ve gone!”
He looked up at his father, and the look on his face scared Jamie more than everything else that had happened so far.
Julian stepped away from his family and stood facing them. “I have to go,” he said, his voice cracking. “Remember that I love you both more than anything in the world. Jamie, look after your mother. OK?”
He turned and headed toward the door.
Jamie’s mom ran forward and grabbed his arm, spinning him round. “Where are you going?” she cried, tears running down her face. “What do you mean, look after me? What’s happening?”
“I can’t tell you,” he replied, softly. “I have to protect you.”
“From what?” his wife screamed.
“From me,” he answered, his head lowered. Then he looked up at her and, with a speed Jamie had never seen before, twisted his arm free from her grip and pushed her backward across the living room. She tripped over one of the smashed legs of the coffee table and Jamie ran forward and caught her, lowering her to the ground. She let out a horrible wailing cry and pushed his hands away, and he looked up in time to see his father walk out of the front door.
He shoved himself up off the floor, cutting his hand on the broken table glass, and ran to the window. Eight men wearing black body armor and carrying submachine guns stood in the driveway, the barrels of their weapons pointed at Julian.
“Put your hands above your head!” one of the men shouted. “Do it now!”
Jamie’s dad took a few steps and stopped. He looked up into the tree for a long moment before glancing quickly over his shoulder at the window and smiling at his son. Then he walked forward, pulled the pistol from his pocket and pointed it at the nearest man.
The world exploded into deafening noise, and Jamie clamped his hands over his ears and screamed and screamed and screamed as the submachine guns spit fire and metal and shot his father dead.
TWO YEARS LATER
1
The Strand, London
June 3, 1892
Jamie Carpenter tasted blood and dirt and swore into the wet mud of the playing field.
“Get off me!” he gurgled.
A shrieking laugh rang out behind his head, and his left arm was pushed further up his back, sending a fresh thunderclap of pain through his shoulder.
“Break it, Danny,” someone shouted. “Snap it off!”
“I just might,” replied Danny Mitchell, between gales of laughter. Then his voice was low and right next to Jamie’s ear. “I could, you know,” he whispered. “Easy.”
“Get off me, you fat-”
A huge hand, its fingers like sausages, gripped his hair and pushed his face back into the dirt. Jamie squeezed his eyes shut and flailed around with his right hand, trying to push himself up from the sucking mud.
“Someone grab his arm,” Danny shouted. “Hold it down.” A second later, Jamie’s right arm was gripped at the wrist and pressed to the ground.
Jamie’s head started to ache as his body begged for oxygen. He couldn’t breathe, his nostrils full of sticky, foul-smelling mud, and he couldn’t move, his arms pinned and 210 pounds of Danny Mitchell sitting astride his back.
“That’s enough!”
Jamie recognized the voice of Mr. Jacobs, the English teacher.
My knight in shining armor. A fifty-year-old man with sweat patches and bad breath. Perfect.
“Mitchell, get off him. Don’t make me tell you again!” the teacher shouted, and suddenly the pressure on Jamie’s arm and the weight on his back were gone. He lifted his face from the mud and took a huge breath, his chest convulsing.
“We were just playing a game, sir,” he heard Danny Mitchell say.
Great game. Really fun.
Jamie rolled over onto his back and looked around at the faces of the crowd who had gathered to watch his humiliation. They looked down at him with a mixture of excitement and disgust.
They don’t even like Danny Mitchell. They just hate me more than they hate him.
Mr. Jacobs hunkered down next to him.
“Are you all right, Carpenter?”
“I’m fine, sir.”
“Mitchell tells me this was some kind of game. Is that true?”
Over the teacher’s shoulder, Jamie saw Danny looking at him, the warning clear in his face.
“Yes, sir. I think I lost, sir.”
