For I Could Lift My Finger and Black Out the Sun (25 page)

Interlude

Rage. Fury. Anger. A tempest, bouncing in all directions. No goal, no point, just moving. Whirling, buzzing in the darkness. And the voices are still there, and they are whirling, too.

Then, like the effect of bending an ear toward a tuning fork, the sound grows, doubled by another.

Still whirling, still moving, in the black.

Like bats finding prey, without sight.

A turn, and the sound increases. Turning away, the sound fades. Turning back, and again the sound grows.

Recognition.

I’m coming to find you.

6

The look in Mom’s eyes was nearly desperate. “You
can’t
just be
gone
like that, John. You
can’t
,” she said. “Not now. Not with—” She looked away.

Not with Holly gone, too
. I’m sure that’s what she meant. “Sorry, Mom.”

“Where have you been all this time, John? You had me worried to death.”

“I saw Bobby, Mom, and…”

“
Bobby?
My goodness. He’s back? Do his parents know?”

“I don’t think so.”

Mom got really worked up. I should have seen that coming, what with me just disappearing all day, Dad gone, and Holly abducted. Bobby running away from home was probably what Mom considered to be a
solvable problem
. “Then we need to call them. Right now.” She went to the phone.

“Mom…” She started to dial. “Mom!”

With a wrinkled brow, she turned back. “Yes, John, what?”

“Don’t call Bobby’s parents,” I said, palms up in surrender. I thought about pushing her to hang up, to forget I’d said anything about Bobby, but the more I talked to Sol and realized what the powers were doing to him, the less stomach I had for using them, especially on the people I loved.

“What?” She lowered the phone, half-dialed. “Why?”

“Because he’s not going back. Or at least, I don’t think he is. He’s…” How the hell was I going to put this? “He’s chosen a new life. I’m not even sure where he lives, but I know he’s not alone. He told me he found a group of people and he’s staying with them.”

Mom looked confused. “John, that’s simply not acceptable. Bobby is a
14-year-old boy
.”

“I think he’s 15, now,” I said offhandedly. With the summer fast upon us, my own 15
th
birthday was only weeks away. And Bobby was a little bit older than me.

“Fifteen, whatever. He can’t just live in some sort of commune with a bunch of strangers. He needs to go back home.” She raised the phone and finished dialing.

While she talked, all I could think about was how I was going to get to Bobby, to Sol. To get Holly back. I was scared to use my powers sometimes, for what they might do to others. To me. And they had their limits. I’d learned that pushing a few people’s minds wasn’t good enough. Someone else would see me, and my plan would unravel. I had to be more careful. I knew it would tear Mom apart, especially now, but I had to do it.

I had to run away from home.

* * *

I’ve often thought about how it must have been for Mom. Nothing short of terrible. I can’t imagine how she felt, or how she could go on, day after day. The house that used to be so full of purpose and direction — organizing the family, cooking meals, cleaning up after countless messes, the work, the play, just the cacophony of a life where four human beings lived under one roof. And then, nothing. No noise, nothing urgent to do, no one there.

If I could have told her, I would have tried to make sense of it for her.
Mom, I can’t bring Dad back. But I think I can save Holly. And that’s why I have to go. I’ll give myself up to save her.

Which is exactly what I was planning to do.

* * *

Not knowing how to drive was a real pain in the ass. Sure, I could sneak out in the middle of the night, avoid having anyone see me go — and even then, who knew? — but it was really hard to make progress walking. Still, it was the best option. If I rode my bike, I’d have to follow some sort of trail or road, and that meant someone most likely would see me. Walking, I stayed out of sight. I followed my intuition — the inherent sense inside my head that somehow told me which way to go, which direction to walk to get closer to Sol. But still, on foot, I had a lot of time to think.

We didn’t have any camping gear to speak of, but I packed my school backpack with extra clothes and as much food as I thought I could carry. I rolled up a blanket, lashed that to the bottom of the pack, and thought I was as ready as I was going to get. Until I remembered water.

Water has got to be the single biggest hardship for life on the road. You have to have clean water or you’ll die, but it’s bulky and heavy to carry. In the end, I opted for a single large water bottle, which I figured I could refill by sneaking into yards at night. I wasn’t too proud to drink from a garden hose. Any garden hose.

It wasn’t a precise route by any stretch. The beacon in my mind would often point me directly toward a row of houses that I’d have to circle. But I made progress.

I knew as soon as I left that I couldn’t let anyone see me, like I apparently had when I went off to the capital, or it would be all over. With the police already searching for Holly, I knew there was going to be some sort of statewide manhunt setup if —
when
— two of us suddenly were gone. Turns out I underestimated. It was a massive effort that brought in every police force in three states, as well as several federal law-enforcement agencies. We captured the public’s attention: Two young kids from the same family, father killed in a tragic accident, one of the kids in a wheelchair, both abducted from their home, leaving their widowed mother devastated and alone. So yeah, I should have realized that story would gain traction. Many neighborhoods lived in fear, thinking it was the beginning of a spate of kidnappings, a
serial child stealer
. When all I’d actually done was walk out the front door.

Of course, all of the commotion made my progress even slower. Turns out that pretty much the first place law enforcement looks for missing kids is local wooded areas. So while those were great places to avoid being seen by the rest of the world, they were swarming with cops. I had to be much more creative. Most of all, I had to keep my ears open. Thankfully, people searching the woods for a missing kid don’t try to be quiet. Still, on at least one occasion, I felt I was too close and had to give a little mental push to make a cop head off in the other direction.

Then there was the issue of sleeping. I chose backyards carefully. The ideal candidates were homes owned by a working person or couple, with a few big, leafy trees — or better yet, dense pines — and no dogs. Thankfully, summer was just about in full stride, so the weather was uniformly warm. As dawn threatened, I’d climb a tree, find a hidden spot among the highest branches I could reach, then use my blanket and the straps of my backpack to secure a place where I could sleep without falling to my death. I figured that would be one of the stupider ways to die, or at least would hurt like hell before my body fixed itself, so I was extremely detail-oriented in my setup procedure. By my fifth day on the road, I had the system down pat. It helped that my blanket was green. Though of course by that time, like everything else I carried, it was impressively dirt-stained. Which I suppose was even better. Home-made camouflage.

I could feel that I was getting closer to Sol, inch by inch. As I settled in to sleep on the eighth day, the beacon in my head, sometimes crackling like electrical impulses, sometimes buzzing like a swarm of bees, was notably louder. I finished off my umpteenth granola bar, realizing I was getting pretty sick of them. As much as I hated to admit something my parents had told me over and over, it really did suck to eat the same thing for every meal, despite my 14-year-old disposition to want pizza three times a day.

I fell asleep knowing that soon I would be facing Sol. One way or the other, this whole thing would be over. But when I woke up hours later in the gathering dark, the sound — the beacon guiding me to Sol — was gone.

Suddenly, I was a boy, dirty and alone, hiding and running away from the law, looking down from my perch in a tall oak as night came on, realizing I had no idea which way to go.

7

Desperate, I spent the next two nights walking in the same general direction I had been traveling before, hoping that, like a human bloodhound, I’d somehow reacquire the scent.

I had a thin leather belt, a cheap thing my mom made me wear to keep my pants up, even though I didn’t need it. Putting it on had become habit, and I did it even as I was sneaking away from home. In the woods, in the dark, it actually came in kind of handy. But instead of wearing it, I took to swinging it forward and back as I walked, a simple effort to take out the inevitable spider webs that I’d otherwise collect on my face. It was remarkably efficient, and every so often I’d have to stop to wipe a white, cottony mass of collected spider webs off the belt.

It was on my twelfth night away from home, walking in what I had come to realize was pretty much a due-west course, still with no beacon to call me forward, that I was attacked by wild dogs.

That sounded dramatic and dangerous, didn’t it?

I’ll boil it down, because otherwise you’ll reach the end of this part of my tale and you might want your money back.

The “wild dogs” I’m talking about
did
terrorize me and push me along through pitch black woods for hours, many hours on that night. I chucked rocks at them. I diverted across a ravine and creek, trying to throw them off my scent, much like I’d been thrown off Sol’s. I thought I’d be attacked at any minute, and yeah, sure, I’d most likely live, but the idea of becoming a human chew toy was not at all appealing. I had visions of huge Rottweilers and Mastiffs and German Shepherds and Doberman Pinschers ripping me limb from limb. In the deepening woods, spurred on by my youthful exaggeration, I wondered if the dogs might be worse still, some sort of hybrid beasts of doom. Or even wolves. They might have been wolves.

But guess what? We lived in a suburban area. Most people had Dachshunds and spaniels and terriers and plain old little mutts.
That’s
what was chasing me. A bunch of
little
dogs. In many cases,
tiny
dogs. Strays. The lost dogs. The ones that had gone missing, or worse, got kicked out by some cruel human owner, and somehow managed to survive. Banded together, a pathetic miniature wolf pack. Howling and padding through the pine-needle-covered pathways of the woods. Living on the fringes, probably off the largesse of the suburban neighborhoods they circled. They’re there, folks. If you live in the suburbs, they’re there. Spend the night in the woods behind your house or a local park. You might find them. The little yippy discards and forgotten companions of a glut of repetitive housing projects. Born to be mild.

Still, the dogs startled me when their pack suddenly appeared.

I jumped, my belt still in my hand.

I didn’t think. I didn’t try. I
reacted
, whipping the belt out like a weapon, toward the nearest dog.

There was a yelp. Dogs scattered. I looked down and saw the belt, straight as a line. Instead of the limp, flopping strip of cheap leather I expected, there was a solid length of… what? It was still leather, but hard as stone. As the dogs distanced themselves from me, I reached out and touched the belt; it was like a rod of metal. Milliseconds before, it had been a floppy belt, but now…

I gave a brief laugh, thinking how silly it was to be afraid of the little dogs. At the same time, it was a laugh at myself. What was this new thing I had done?

And the leather belt drooped, slowly first, then falling all at once like melting snow finally sloughing off a roof. Within a moment or two, although I hadn’t moved, it was hanging down from my closed fist.

Somehow,
I
had done it. I had made the belt turn solid. Standing in the dark, dapples of moonlight around my feet, I flipped the belt up, willing it to
happen again
. Nothing.

Over and over, pointlessly, I whipped the belt through the air, straining my mind to make it solid, turn it into a weapon again.

Nothing.

The rest of that night, I walked on and on, my best guess at a westerly route, snapping the belt again and again and getting nowhere. Like pushing the pencil, whatever I had done was lost, a random doorway in my mind I couldn’t find again, and even if I could, I didn’t have the key. That door was hidden and locked.

* * *

In the morning, as the sun was just barely cresting the horizon, I found a row of tall pines just inside a small suburban park. Picking the one that offered the most concealment, I climbed up, nestled into a dense section of branches, and strapped myself in.

Little did I know I’d reached the end of traveling alone for a while.