He didn't miss his father. He felt guilty about that, but deep down he knew that he and his mom were better off by themselves. Only he wondered what came next, what they were going to do. Were they going to stay in this place and live here forever? Was this just a stop on their way to New York or Chicago or Los Angeles or some big city? Were they going to wait awhile and then go back home to Yuma?
He didn't know because his mom wouldn't tell him.
He hadn't exactly asked, but the way he saw it, he shouldn't have to. It was her job to explain what was going on.
And she hadn't done that.
He rolled over on the small cot, turned from his back to his side to his stomach, uncomfortable in every position. As bad as the cot was, he'd had no trouble falling asleep until tonight. Whether it was the altitude or the stress of being here, he'd been tired at the end of each day and was out like a light the second his head hit the pillow. This evening, though, he'd tossed and turned, unable to stop his brain from thinking about spooky stuff.
Those graves had really freaked him out.
Skylar flipped onto his back again, then sat up against the wall. He'd been thinking about that grave site all day long. His mom and her friend had acted like it was nothing, especially afterward, but he saw through that. They were scared of it, too. All afternoon, he'd found himself obsessing about those graves, wondering who was buried there. In a way, he wished that they'd stopped and he'd been able to get a closer look. He might not have been brave enough to do more than take a quick glance, but he still would have known what the gravestones actually looked like instead of relying on his overactive imagination. For, in his mind, there was a large stone marker and a small one, both weathered by time, the words Mother and Daughter chiseled in spooky horror-show letters. He imagined that nothing grew on top of the graves, the cursed ground bare of even a stray weed, and that wild animals instinctively avoided the site, afraid.
He tried to tell himself that the mother and daughter had probably been pioneers who'd been buried close to their cabin, but the witch theory seemed much more plausible, and he shivered as he thought about what the grave site looked like at night under the full moon.
Tick tick tick.
There was a light tapping on the window.
Heart thudding in his chest, Skylar glanced over at his mom. She was dead asleep, mouth open and snoring. Not only that, but she was way over on the other side of the room, a distance that suddenly seemed like miles.
Tick tick tick.
The tapping continued, grew louder. It could have been a windblown branch knocking lightly against the glass were it not for the fact that the noise was syncopated, a repeating rhythmic pattern no wind could have created. He'd been avoiding the window, not wanting to look at it, afraid of what he might see, but now he hazarded a glance at the drapeless pane.
A Yoda-like face peered in at him, a small wrinkled head, brown instead of green, partially illuminated by the light of the moon. The eyes shifted slowly, taking in the room, looking for something.
Him.
The beady eyes locked on his own, and the corners of the mouth slid upward into a malevolent smile. It was the most terrifying face he had ever seen, and his mouth went suddenly dry. He shut his eyes tightly, afraid of being hypnotized by those evil orbs, afraid of seeing the teeth inside that horrible mouth, afraid of ... just afraid.
"Mom!" he screamed.
She awoke immediately, leaping up out of bed and instinctively rushing to his cot. He opened his eyes. He expected the face to disappear-whether monsters were real or imagined, the presence of grown-ups usually made them flee-but to his horror, the terrible creature was still there and watching them, two brown wrinkled hands placed on the window to either side of the eyes in an effort to assist the viewing.
His mom saw it, too, and she let out a loud high scream that caused his grandma to shout out from her bedroom and finally made the thing at the window pull away and disappear into the darkness of night. A second later, the lights went on and his grandma was in the room, wearing dirty pajamas, her hair wild, her face without makeup looking old and a little scary itself. "What is it?" she demanded. "What happened?"
"Someone was at the window!" his mom said, her voice breathless and still almost loud enough to be a scream.
Someone?
"It was a monster," Skylar said. His voice came out small and babyish, and he should have been embarrassed by that but wasn't.
His grandma went over to the window, looked out. She put her hands to the sides of her eyes like a reverse image of the creature. "Don't be ridiculous," she said. "It was probably just a kid from-"
"He's not being ridiculous," his mom said, and that made him feel good. Her arms tightened around him. "It was ... I don't know what it was, but it didn't look human."
"Well, I don't see anything out there now." His grandma turned away from the window and faced them. Skylar saw not sympathy or understanding in her eyes but disapproval.
"Turn on the yard lights," his mom commanded. "Check."
The old woman must have heard the same seriousness in her voice that he did, because instead of refusing, as he'd expected, she left the room and walked down the hallway. A moment later, the exterior of the house was flooded with light. Holding his hand, taking him with her, his mom moved over to the window. All was was had fled.
The outside lights flicked off, and his grandma returned. "Nothing," she announced. He thought she sounded pleased.
His mom didn't say anything, and he didn't either. But she continued to hold his hand, and while he knew that creature might still be out there, might even be watching them from some vantage point within the trees, he no longer felt afraid.
"I'm going back to bed," his grandma said. "I'll see you in the morning. If you see any other monsters? Don't call me."
She disappeared around the corner. Skylar and his mom looked at each other and after a beat, they both burst out laughing. It was the first time he'd laughed since leaving Yuma, and even under these bizarre circumstances it felt good. Through the thin walls, he heard his grandmother's wordless sounds of disapproval-they both did-and that only made them laugh all the harder.
His mom wiped the tears from her eyes. "We're going to have to get some drapes in here," she said. It was meant as a joke, sort of, but it brought them back to the here and now, and they both stopped laughing.
Skylar looked at his cot, then over at his mom's bed. She knew what he was thinking before he even said it, and she let go of his hand and put an arm around his shoulders. "You can stay with me tonight," she told him.
He felt grateful that she hadn't made him ask-he felt like a baby enough as it was-and he crawled into the bed first, taking the space against the wall, away from the window. She climbed in after and gave him a kiss on the forehead before turning in the opposite direction. "Good night," she said.
"Good night," he replied.
But it was a long time before either of them fell asleep.
Seven
Kansas City, Missouri
Dennis was awakened by the train.
It shook the cheap motel like an earthquake, accompanied by a deep bass rumbling that he felt in his gut and that threatened to turn his stomach to Jell-O. It was the train's whistle that had shaken him from sleep, a loud sustained blast of air horn powerful enough to penetrate the plaster walls, cut through the static of the television he hadn't turned off and yank him from the deepest REM.