That’s what would happen. Jennifer knew. It had happened before. Then her mother would turn out the lights again, flicking the switch with an angry snap. Jennifer would hear her heavy, weary, long-suffering footsteps returning down the hall to her room. She would hear her bedroom door close.
Snap
.
And then it would all start again. The whispers. The staring. It would all come back and there’d be no chance of calling for Mom this time. Jennifer would be totally helpless.
She tried to swallow now but couldn’t. She was too scared, her throat was too dry. She looked around for an idea, a way out, a way to escape. She saw the door. Ajar. When is a door not a door? When it’s a jar—right? She could see the lighter dark of the hallway. Her mom kept the bathroom light on so she could find her way there in the night. The glow bled out into the hall a little, and the lighter dark was a thin line where the edge of the door parted from the jamb.
Oh, I’m in a jam, all right
, Jennifer thought frantically.
But at least the door is a jar
.
Mark
, she thought.
Her brother, Mark. She could go down the hall. Knock softly on his door so it wouldn’t wake her mother. Mark would help her. Mark would protect her. He always protected her. He was strong where she was weak, brave where she was frightened. Mark was her hero—and he was here-oh! When kids made fun of her at school, he stopped them. Whenever anyone picked on her or called her crazy or pushed her or tipped over her lunch tray, Mark grabbed them by the shirtfront, pinned them to the wall, and made them apologize. Whoever was whispering would be afraid of Mark. Whatever was hiding in the room, watching her . . . Mark would make it leave her alone and go away.
She held her breath for courage and darted quickly through the staring, whispering shadows to the partly opened door. She was afraid—so afraid—afraid that any moment some whispering shadow-thing would rush at her out of a corner, would grab her and drag her forever into its world of whispering darkness. But she kept moving, as quickly as she could, toward the thin line of light.
She made it. Opened the door. The moment she stepped into the hall, the whispers ceased. It was quiet. The whole house was suddenly hugely, darkly silent. She could hear the silence of it, settling, ticking, waiting.
She breathed out: Oh.
Her brother’s room was down at the end of the hall. Far away, it seemed. His lights were out. His door was shut. He must be sleeping.
But Jennifer started down the hall. Through the dark silence—so silent she could hear the brushing-together of her cotton pajama legs. Stepping slowly down the hall.
But the hall—the hall was different! The hall had changed. She turned her head this way and that. The usual wallpaper was gone. The yellow paisley wallpaper . . . She saw drawings on the walls now. Horrible drawings. Dark, violent, horrible images spray-painted and slashed onto the walls. And the walls themselves were different. Not like they were during the day. The walls were rough, splintery broken. And beneath her feet she felt . . . not the carpet of her own home but packed dirt with pebbles that bit into the flesh of her bare feet . . .
She was halfway to her brother’s door, near the stairway—the stare-way—when without warning, they started again:
They will be afraid
.
Afraid of us
.
Because we are angels of evil
.
Jennifer gave a little cry of fright—no, no, no, stop—and stumbled around, turning this way and that trying to find out who—who—who was whispering?
And there! Something! A shadow. Yes. Hunkering, moving. A terrible shadow-thing, with the whispers dancing around it like worshippers at a primitive shrine.
We will kill them all
.
Kill them all
.
In a sudden moment of courage and determination, Jennifer reached out for the light switch. She would turn on the lights. She would catch it. She would face it. It was a thing of darkness. It couldn’t stand the light.
Her fingers felt the wall. Not her wall. Not the wall at home. The rough, splintery wall splashed with hideous drawings and signs.
But there. There it was: the switch. The light switch. She flipped it up.
Light, blessed light, flared through the room. Jennifer braced herself and looked—looked down the hall—her heart beating hard.
No one.
No one was there. Nothing. The hallway was empty. And it was her hallway. The old familiar yellow paisley wallpaper. The carpet. The bathroom door with the light on. Her mother’s door. Her brother’s.
Her house. Just her ordinary house. Everything the same.
She stood there a long moment as relief started to creep through her. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe it was all a dream.
Then—from directly behind her—from inches behind her—a single voice—deep, gruff, clear, commanding:
Jennifer!
She cried out, spun around, and the thing stood towering above her, eyes red, flaring, fangs bared, dripping, lowering toward her, closer, closer!
Jennifer could not even scream.
I was running when the thugs attacked me.
I ran a lot, almost every day after school. It was part of my secret plan to get in shape and try out for the track team. Which was a
secret
plan because I was never much of an athlete, and the track team was the most important team in school, and I didn’t want anyone to laugh at me for thinking I could make the grade.
So almost every day, without mentioning it to anyone, I would go home and change into my running clothes. I would ride my bike out of town, then set the bike down among the trees and take off on foot along one of the empty country trails.
This particular day was in early March. I was pounding my way over the McAdams Trail, which goes up a steep hill through the woods and then comes out for a long, steady stretch along a ridge. It’s a nice run with a great view of my hometown below. You can see the houses clustered in the light-green valley and the brick towers of the town hall and the column of the Civil War monument and the river sparkling reddish in the afternoon sun. I could even make out the steeple of my dad’s church as I ran along above it.
The cold of winter was still holding on. The trees were still bare, their branches stretching naked into the pale-blue sky. But as I ran along, I caught an occasional whiff of spring drifting through the air. The last snow had melted. The ground that had been ice-hard all winter long felt softer now under my sneakers.
Up ahead of me, at the end of the ridge, there was a railroad bridge. Very old, very narrow—just one thin track supported by concrete pylons. The bridge stretched from the crest of the hill, over the river, to the edge of another hill on the far side. Then the train tracks took a long looping curve around the far ridge over the valley before they ran out of sight behind the surrounding hills. It was an old line, but the freights still used it. They’d go whistling past above the town two and three times a day.
Usually, when I reached the cluster of trees just before the bridge, I would turn down and follow the trail along the descending slope of the hill, heading back for home. That was my plan for today. Only I never made it.
I had just come into the trees. I was running along under the lacework of tangled winter branches. I was feeling good, feeling strong, my legs pushing hard, my wind easy. I was enjoying the touch of spring in the air. And I was thinking about getting on the track team. I was thinking:
Hey, I might do this
. Thinking:
I might really be able to do this
.
Then suddenly, I fell. For no reason I could tell at first, I pitched forward, just lost my footing and went flying through the air. I came down hard on the earth. I was going so fast that I knew I couldn’t catch myself on my hands—I’d have broken my wrists. Instead, I twisted as I fell and took the worst of the impact on my shoulder. It was a good, solid jar too. I felt it right up through my forehead, a lancing pain. My momentum carried me along the dirt path a few inches, the stones tearing at my clothes.
When I finally came to rest, I lay where I was for a second, dazed. Thinking:
What just happened?
Then I looked up—and I knew.
Jeff Winger was standing above me. Seventeen, wiry, narrow rat-like face with floppy sandy-brown hair falling down over his pimply forehead. Black hoodie and sweat-pants too low on his waist. Quick, darting weasel eyes that seemed to be looking in every direction for trouble. A thug.
And he wasn’t alone. Ed Polanski and Harry Macintyre were also there. They were also thugs. Ed P. was a big lumbering thug with short-cropped blond hair and a face like a potato. Harry Mac was a muscular thug with bulging shoulders and a broad chest.
They must’ve been hanging back in the thick bushes behind the trees, hidden from my view as I ran past. I figured one of them—Harry Mac, judging by his forward position—had seen me coming and tripped me as I ran along.
Now Jeff Winger looked down on me where I lay. He grinned over at his two friends.
“Somebody fell down,” he said.
Ed P. laughed.
Harry Mac said, “Awww. Poor baby.”
Painfully, I sat up. I brushed the dirt off my face, also painfully. I spit the grit out from between my teeth. I rolled my shoulder, testing to see if it still worked. It hurt when I moved it, but at least it was operational.
I looked up at the thugs laughing down at me. “That’s funny,” I said to them. “You’re real funny guys.”
Now let me get something straight right up front. I am not a tough guy. In fact, I’m not a very good fighter at all. I’m a little under average height and not very big across. I’m not particularly strong, and I never learned to box or anything like that. Every time I’d ever been in a fight, I got beaten up pretty badly. So probably? In a situation like this? I should have tried to be a little bit more polite. It would’ve been the smart thing to do, if you see what I mean.
But here’s the problem: I hate being pushed around. Really. I hate it. Like, a lot. Something happens inside me when someone tries to bully me—when someone shoves me or hits me or anything like that. Everything just goes red inside. I can’t think anymore. I go nuts. I can’t help it. And I fight back—whether I intend to or not—and even if it means I get my head ripped off. Which, in my limited experience, is exactly what happens.
Now, I could already feel the anger building in me as I climbed to my feet. I dusted myself off. I saw Jeff watching me, still grinning. That made the anger even worse.
“I guess you want to be more careful next time,” Jeff said. His thug friends laughed as if this were really hilarious, as if he were a professional comedian or something. “Running around here can be kind of dangerous.”
Again, this would have been an excellent time for me to keep my mouth shut. But somehow I just couldn’t. “Okay,” I said. “You tripped me and I fell. Ho ho ho. That’s very funny. If you’re, like, seven years old . . .”
Harry Mac didn’t appreciate that remark. “Hey!” he said, and he pushed me in the shoulder—hard. I knocked his hand away because—well, just because, that’s why. Because I don’t like being pushed around. That made Harry Mac even angrier—so angry, he cocked his fist as if he were about to drive it into my face. Which I guess he was.
But to my surprise, Jeff stopped him. He slapped Harry Mac lightly on the shoulder. Harry Mac hesitated. Jeff gave him a negative shake of the head. Harry Mac lowered his fist, backed off me with a look that said:
You got lucky this time
. Which was true.
Jeff looked me over, up and down. “I see you in school, don’t I?” he said. “Hopkins, is that it?”
I slowly drew my eyes away from Harry Mac and turned them on Jeff. “That’s right. Sam Hopkins,” I told him.
Jeff nodded. “And you know who we are, right?”
I nodded back. Everyone in school knew Jeff Winger and his thug buddies.
“Okay, good,” Jeff went on in what sounded like a reasonable voice. “Because here’s the deal, Sam. This isn’t a good place for you, okay? This isn’t where you want to do your running anymore.”
Some part of my mind was telling me to just keep quiet and nod and smile a lot and get myself out of this. Any one of these guys could’ve pounded me into the earth. All three of them could pretty much kick me around like a soccer ball at will. But the part of my mind that understood that was somehow not getting through to the part of my mind that