Had a spirited discussion with Schroeder just now. And by spirited I mean screaming.

“WHY DID YOU CHARGE OFF TO MILLER’S HOUSE LIKE THAT? YOU HAD TO KNOW THAT WAS JUST ABOUT THE STUPIDEST THING YOU COULD HAVE DONE!”

“UNLIKE SOME PEOPLE ON THIS SOFA, SCHROEDER, I WASN’T GOING TO JUST ABANDON SIMON TO HIS CRAZY MOTHER!”

I use all-caps because man, we were screaming in each other’s faces. Simon just put his head down and pretended to look for fish.

“JACK WARNED YOU ABOUT HOW DANGEROUS HER ESTATE IS! BY BUSTING INTO HER STRONGHOLD LIKE THAT YOU PUT YOURSELF AND NOELLE AT RISK! AND DORIS!”

“YOU HEARD WHAT SIKES SAID, SHE WAS GOING TO KILL SIMON! YOU WERE JUST AFRAID OF GOING NEAR HER!”

“WHAT I WAS NOT, YOU DON’T KNOW SHIT! YOU PUT MY KIDS INTO THE LINE OF FIRE JUST SO YOU COULD RESCUE YOUR BOYFRIEND!”

“THEY’RE NOT YOUR KIDS! STOP CALLING THEM THAT! AND HE’S NOT MY BOYFRIEND!”

And so forth. Simon finally stepped in when it looked like things were about to come to blows. Too bad. Fighting with Schroeder is just about the only form of therapy I’ve got in this miserable place.

We’re all fuming to ourselves now. Okay, Schroeder and I are fuming at opposite ends of the couch. Poor Simon is stuck in the middle. We must look ridiculous.

Man, my throat hurts. And I’m starving. Is it lunch yet?

I might as well write for a while. It will give me something to do other than listen to my stomach growl. Plus, I think it’s making Schroeder paranoid. Every time I pick up the pen and notebook he gets a hunted look on his face. I think he really does suspect I’m writing smack about him in here. Ha!

All right! Where did I leave off again? Ah HA. Oh yes.

I was right back to the point where Simon pushed me off the roof of a two-story house. How could I forget.

Let’s start from there.

I fell. Wow. Great descriptive prose there, Morgan.

I remember the moment vividly, though. It was surreal. The whole world went dark as I tumbled through it, the wind screaming in my ears. The chimney disappeared above me. All I could see was wheeling smoke and fire.

I remember thinking giddily that once I hit the driveway it would all be over. Crunch. The end. Good-bye, world. Morgan Mumford failed at life.

And then…

I remember this part clearly.

No sooner did I figure myself as good as gone than I felt an odd sensation beneath my back. I don’t know how to describe it. It was soft and yielding. You’ve seen that thing in movies where the hero jumps off a building and hits an awning on the way down that breaks his fall? It was like that. Just this gentle pressure that stretched beneath me, slowing my descent, and then – rip!

Wham. Darkness.

A lot of it.

And then…

Rain in my eyes. Mud under my hands. My back was killing me.

I slit open my eyes.

Everything was dark. Rain pounded into my face, silver drops that streaked down from the abyss. Moving sluggishly, I put my hands beneath myself and tried to sit upright. My body felt like an achy bag of cement.

Rain had turned the driveway into mud. I heard footsteps splashing nearby.

“Morgan!”

Something grabbed my shoulder.

“Morgan!” it shouted. “Morgan!”

Wet and bedraggled, Simon knelt down beside me. I hadn’t even seen him coming.

I sat there and stupidly watched his face move as it said things at me. His voice and his mouth did not seem to want to sync up properly, like bad dubbing. Everything was blurry, indistinct.

“It’s all right, you’re alive!” he was saying. “Look, you’re okay! Nothing’s broken! I can’t believe that worked. Does your head hurt? How many fingers am I holding up?”

He was babbling. I squinted up into the rain. How had I survived that without breaking my back? I should be dead. I had fallen head-first into the ground. That wasn’t something you just walked off.

I was alive!

The fog in my brain swept away. I felt the gravel that dug into my butt. I felt the rain that beat against my face. I held up one hand and watched it hammer into my palm.

I felt…

Pretty damn angry. I put that anger to good use by seizing Simon around his throat.

“You pushed me off a roof!” I yelled.

He choked. “I had to!”

“Why?!”

“It was the only thing I could do to get you here!”

“Where, the ground?!”

“There wasn’t time for anything else!”

“Oh yes, I suppose a warning would have wasted precious seconds!”

Simon’s eyes rolled. I released him and we fell apart, gasping.

“I’m sorry,” wheezed Simon. “I found your shoes and your backpack.”

“What the hell just happened?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Simon…!”

“Not yet,” he said hastily. He rubbed his throat. “First we have to get out of here.”

That sobered me up. “Your mom?”

He nodded.

“That crazy bitch! She really is out to get you, isn’t she?”

“Yeah.”

I dropped my face into my hands. Dear god. You heard all sorts of stories about divorced parents who go berserk and kidnap their own children, but this woman took the cake. She took fifty cakes.

But that wasn’t important at the moment. We had to run, and fast. Simon’s mother had just burned down a house and was out there somewhere, stalking the night. Plotting to bundle us into the trunk of her car. Possibly after murdering me.

“Shoe me,” I said.

Simon pushed my shoes at my chest.

“We have to get as far away from here as we can,” he said. “We’ll stick to the ditches and work our way into town. Mom’s bound to have sent for a patrol already.”

“Into town?” I snapped. I sat in the mud and yanked on a shoe. “Simon, my grandparents’ house is on fire! We’ve got to call the fire department! And the police, so they can bust your psychotic mother!”

“Morgan-”

“And what about my dad? When he comes home and finds out your mother just burned down the family farmhouse he’s going to freak!”

Simon looked grim.

“Morgan,” he said. “Look behind you.”

I glared at him and jerked my shoelaces tight. Then I turned around.

I stared.

There on the top of the grassy knoll stood the farmhouse, serenely untouched by fire.

I shook my head. Rubbed my eyes.

But nothing changed. There were the dark windows with their lacy curtains. And there was the prim white veranda surrounded by beds of fluffy summer flowers. And there was its horrible roof, pitched steeply against the rainy night sky.

“Oh my god,” I said.

“Don’t freak out,” said Simon.

“That is – not possible!”

“I know. Come on. We’ve got to get out of here.”

“How-”

Simon dragged me to my feet. “Morgan, we really need to go!”

An engine roared in the night. Light broke over us, blasting us into silhouettes. I threw my arm over my eyes and squinted painfully against the glare.

A pair of headlights shone across the lawn. Rain stood out like twinkling diamonds in the beams. The engine roared again, a big and angry sound.

Simon shouted, “It’s the Jaguar! Run!”

We leapt off the driveway and onto the lawn. Behind us I heard the scattershot sound of tires fishtailing through loose gravel. The headlight beams bounced around wildly, flickering over us like spotlights – and then I ran straight into a hay field.

I thrashed through it, sputtering. The pungent scent of alfalfa and clover filled my nostrils. Simon was a dark arrowhead winnowing through the grass ahead of me. A moment later we tumbled into a ditch on the side of the road.

Panting, we stared back at the farmhouse. It was dark.

“Mom’s cars have to keep their headlights on at night,” whispered Simon. “Otherwise they run off the road and crash. We should be able to see them coming a long way off. See there?”

He pointed. Sure enough, through the rain I saw a pair of headlights rushing down the driveway. They disappeared briefly behind the maple trees, though the underside of the leaves lit up. Then there was a flash as the car turned onto the road.

“Quick!” said Simon. He dragged me back into the ditch.

Breathlessly, we crouched in the grass. A light shone on the road, casting a misty nimbus against the top of the ditch. The car roared past in a blast of wind and tumbling leaves. Then it sped off into the night, until its tail-lights were just a pair of coal-red eyes on a distant hill.

Simon let out a deep breath and stood up.

“We’d better watch out for that one,” he said. “That’s the Jaguar – mom’s car.”

I brushed mud off my butt as I scrambled after him. “You’ve been hiding from her all this time, haven’t you?”

“Yeah. Just on weekends.”

“The days she’s got custody, huh?”

“That’s right.”

“She’s insane! Would she really have kidnapped us?”

“Without even thinking twice about it.”

I shivered. It all seemed too surreal. All of this was something that happened to kids on the news, not me. Mrs Miller had called me a witness. I’ve watched enough television to know what happens to witnesses. Car bombs, usually.

Then it hit me. I clapped a hand over my mouth.

My Dad!

He would panic if he drove back to the farmhouse and discovered neither Simon or I were there. I had to call him and let him know we were okay. And then I would call the police and together we would tag-team Miller’s butt straight into jail, blam!

“What are you doing?” said Simon when I fumbled at my pockets.

“Calling my dad! He’ll get us out of this.”

“It won’t work.”

“What do you mean, it won’t work?” I dug my cell phone out of my shorts. “Look at that, it’s perfectly fine! Didn’t even get busted in the fall.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he said, but he stood and watched me dial my Dad’s cell phone.

Which… didn’t work. All I got was an echoing silence when it should have been ringing.

“Damn it!” I said. I looked at the screen. Zero bars of reception. “That’s just great! Fantastic! That’s all I need right now – a dead zone! I hate the country!”

Simon sighed. “Come on. Let’s just get closer to town, okay?”

I shoved my phone back into my pocket. “Yeah, all right. I’ll get better reception there. How far out are we?”

“Um, about twelve kilometres?”

“Ugh! Can’t we just find a farm and call the cops from there?”

“That won’t work either.”

“What are you talking about?”

He motioned for me to follow him.

“We’ll want to lay low for a while,” he said. “If we run into anyone there’s a good chance they’ll be, uh… friends of my mother.”

“I don’t get it. Is your mom involved in some kind of shady business? Are her friends her enforcers? Does she have a racket.”

“No. But she’s a pretty influential person here. In some ways she is the most powerful person in Coching. I can’t explain it.”

“So… no hitchhiking.”

“No, definitely not.”

I grumbled, “You make it sound like everyone is out to get us.”

“If it will make things any easier, let’s just assume for the time being that everything is.”

Ominous!

So yeah. Thus began our twelve kilometre odyssey into Coching. What a miserable experience that was. Allow me to elaborate.

First off, the rain did not let up. At all. It hammered into the earth so hard a misty haze clung to the ground. It turned the road into gravy. Water coursed through tire ruts and gurgled into ditches. The wind threw rain into our faces in fits and starts.

We trudged past dreary corn fields and muddy cow pastures. Sometimes I caught a glimpse of tiny headlights racing in the distance. It annoyed me to think that there were people out there having perfectly ordinary nights driving in their snug cars at speeds in excess of eighty kilometres an hour, even while we plodded through the rain. Unfair.

Simon greeted the appearance of every set of headlights with dread. Whenever they popped up on the road he would grab me by the arm and drag me into a nasty-ass ditch, where we would crouch in the grass until the car roared past. When we finally reached the little two-lane county road into town I stood on the asphalt for a moment to savour the luxury of having firm ground beneath my feet. Then Simon dragged me into a ditch again. Okay, no he didn’t. I’m just hung up on the ditch thing.

We walked for what felt like hours, while the rain beat down against our bent heads. The county road wound through towering pine forests, past houses with dark windows and empty driveways. I didn’t see a single light anywhere. Not in a window, not over a porch or a garage – nothing. It was utterly dark out.

Without warning, Simon stopped dead in his tracks. I blundered into his back.

“What?” I snapped. It was the first word either of us had said in over an hour.

“Shh! Listen!”

I did. A squealing howl rang in the distance, getting louder by the second.

“Uh oh,” I said. “Sounds like someone is hydroplaning like a mother.”

Simon looked around wildly. We were walking on the dirt shoulder of the road, in a sleepy little hamlet with a thicket of trees on one side of the road and a row of houses on the other. There wasn’t a ditch in sight. Thwarted.

He grabbed my hand. “This way!”

We bolted across the road towards the forest. No sooner had my feet touched the yellow divider than a brilliant light strobed through the trees. The hardtop shook as all at once a car burst around a bend, fixing us between its high beams.

I froze. The blazing light seemed to bore into my brain. It threw my shadow against the falling rain behind me while I dumbly waited for the screech of tires. But instead of slamming on its brakes the car bore down on me with its engine howling, rain flinging out of its wheel wells.

Simon screamed into my ear. I squeezed my eyes shut and hurled myself aside. I hit the asphalt on my hands and knees just as the car shrieked past, buffeting me with wind. Someone clawed at the back of my shirt.

“This way!” yelled Simon. “Hurry, before it doubles back!”

As I scrambled to my feet I gasped, “Before it what?”

Brakes screamed in the night as the car fishtailed to a halt. Its engine reversed with a whine, lighting up the road behind it in red.

We broke for the trees at a run. Branches scratched my face and legs when we hit the underbrush and mangled our way through it, until we stumbled into a small clearing and skidded down a pebbly slope. The sound of rushing water echoed all around us.

“This way!” said Simon. “Watch your head.”

“Watch my head on what?” I said, and swore when my forehead cracked off something. The bridge hidden in the darkness ahead echoed back my obscenity.

“Sorry. Don’t worry, there’s room underneath it if you duck.”

“Is there?” I groaned as I clutched my head. But I ducked this time, and gingerly crawled under the bridge.

The night got even darker. The cold, rough wall beneath my hand felt like concrete, all pitted and slimy. A thin gravel bar ran down the side of the creek. Moonlight glittered on the rapids at the other end of the tunnel.

There was barely enough room to stand upright. The air stank like a cellar, all mildew and mould.

Bent over awkwardly, I said, “How long do you plan on hanging around down here?”

“Let’s give it twenty minutes,” whispered Simon. “If we’re lucky the car will get bored and move on. If not, we’ll just have to sit it out a little longer.”

“You can’t be serious.”

I heard little crunching noises in the darkness as he sat down with his back against the tunnel wall. “Don’t worry, we’ll be okay. I’ve done this before.”

“You have? Why?”

“Mom again.”

Shivering, I sat down beside him. I tucked my knees to my chest. “How long have you been running away from her like this?”

“A long time. It’s been weeks since I’ve spent a weekend at her house. That’s why she’s so mad.”

“Were you hiding from her when I found you in that warehouse?”

“Yeah.”

“What would you have done if she had come looking for you while you were hiding at my place?”

“I hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet, to be honest with you.”

Like someone had thrown on a switch, a strange face lit up beside me.

“Simon?” it said.

Shocked, I flailed sideways into Simon and fell over his lap, just as he tried to leap to his feet.

“Who’s there?” he gasped.

A hand held up a flickering cigarette lighter. Eyes peered out of the face’s shadowed sockets.

“Simon!” it said. “Oh my god, it is you! You just about scared me half to death! What on earth are you doing down here?”

Simon stared.

“Oh!” he said. “It’s you. We’re hiding from a car that caught us up on the road.”

“You are? Wait, who is that with you?”

The lighter veered in my direction. I squinted.

“Oh,” said the head. “Oh no. Not a new one?”

“Yeah. She’s a friend of mine.”

“Oh. Oh, I’m sorry.”

“It’s my fault. Mom ambushed us out on the fringe. I had to bring her here.”

The face looked startled. “You can do that?”

“I guess so.”

“Oh my god! Can you do it in reverse?”

At that moment I felt pretty damn certain I was missing at least half of this bizarre conversation.

Simon sighed and looked away.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t think it works that way.”

The face nodded glumly.

“No worries,” it said. “I had to ask. But wow. Schroeder is going to pitch a fit when he hears about this. You might not want to stick around town this time. He’s already stressed out enough as it is.”

“Did someone go missing recently?”

“Yes! How did you know?”

“Mom was bragging about it. She said a patrol got him. I think it was the Triumph.”

The face clutched the lighter a little closer to its thin chest. To my surprise the gaunt cheeks and dark eyes belonged to a girl my age. She had olive skin and black hair that was cut raggedly short along her jaw, and she wore some kind of hunting vest patched up with duct tape. Her face was pale. Like, sickly pale.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “Oh, we thought… well, we hoped that he was just pinned down somewhere. He was one of the original four. Schroeder is going to be so upset.”

“I’m sorry,” said Simon.

The girl just shook her head.

“Were you out looking for him?” said Simon.

“Yeah. I’m on a wider patrol than usual tonight. I was going to go all the way out to the fringe, but…”

Water trickled in the silence.

Eventually, Simon cleared his throat.

“I don’t hear the car any more,” he said. “Maybe we should be going.”

“Maybe you should,” said the girl. “You can get back to the road from here.” The lighter reared up. “Here, let me show you out.”

It was still raining outside, a steady downpour that beat against the surface of the river. Simon scrambled up the bank and disappeared into the wet bushes at the top. He popped up again a moment later.

“Looks clear,” he said. “Come on up, Morgan.”

“That reminds me,” said the girl as I began to clamber after him. She hung back in the tunnel, looking grim. “Watch out for the gas station outside of town. I don’t know what the fuss is all about, but there was something going on there a couple hours ago. The whole area might still be hairy.”

Simon held out his hand to help me up the bank. “Thanks for the warning,” he said.

“No charge.” The girl gave me a little wave and the lighter blinked out as she melted back into the shadows underneath the bridge.

“This way,” said Simon.

Only when we were back on the road did I speak up.

“Was that a friend of yours?” I said.

“Not exactly. We’ve met, though.”

“Uh huh. She spends a lot of time outdoors, does she?”

“I guess.” Simon side-eyed me. “Why do you ask?”

“Is she homeless?” I said.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“That’s cool,” I said. I held up my hands to show how cool it was. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t care. We’ve got lots of homeless people back home. I just hadn’t seen any out this way.”

“There are a few around.”

“She seems nice. Sleeping under a bridge in the rain has got to suck, though.”

Another thought hit me. “Hey, that kid you guys were talking about, the one who died – was he homeless too?”

“You could say that.”

“Oh my god.” Crazy things clicked in my brain. “Your mom really was bragging about it, wasn’t she? She’s the President of that Heritage thing, right? Is she killing off the homeless to make her stupid town look better?”

I thought for sure that Simon would laugh at my insane theory. But he only gave a tight-lipped grimace and said nothing.

We trudged on through the night. Soon a ruddy glow appeared on the horizon to the south, an ugly orange smudge against the gloomy underside of the rain clouds.

Man, was I relieved to see it. I was soaking wet and my back hurt. But no sooner did I open my mouth to say so than Simon dropped to his haunches.

I scuttled up beside him. “Whaddya see?”

Wordlessly, he pointed.

I sighted down his finger. Straight ahead of us the county road ended at a crossroad. A yellow caution light blinked over the intersection. A small gas station sat on the corner closest to us. Unlike all of the houses gathered around it, it was brightly lit up with fluorescent lights. Even a string of old Christmas lights twinkled along the edge of its roof. A giant red and white sign with gas prices on it loomed overhead like a glowing beacon.

“The gas station!” I said. “See anything around?”

“No, nothing.”

“Great! Let’s boot before one of your mom’s friends shows up.”

Simon gnawed his lip. “I dunno. I don’t like it. Maybe we should circle around and cut through the yards instead of running through the intersection.”

“I think that’s called trespassing, Simon.”

“No, it’s-” He shook his head. “Forget it. All right, we’ll make a break for it. We’re less than a mile out from town now anyway.”

“Finally!”

Together, we made a mad dash for the intersection. We barely made it fifty feet before everything went wrong.

An engine roared to life as we hared past the row of houses. From within a dark garage a pair of headlights sprang into full intensity. With a bellow a car shot out of hiding. It was a great big sky-blue monster that sprayed gravel from its tires as it spun out onto the road.

“The army’s up the road!” it howled.

Simon screamed, “I know that car! Run!”

I sprinted for the gas station. As we tore past the houses more and more headlights sprang alight, until the road behind us was crowded with a pack of swerving cars. Above the cacophony of screeching horns I could hear the radio of that one car howling, “Salvation à la mode and a cup of tea!”

I sailed over a guard rail and landed in the gas station parking lot. Without looking back I ran straight up to the front door of the gas station, which rattled when I yanked on it.

“Let us in!” I yelled. I banged on the glass with my fist. “I know you’re still open, asshole! I see all your lights on!”

Simon ran up behind me. “Morgan, look out!”

Tires squealed. Bright lights shone against the glass storefront and intensified rapidly. Simon grabbed me by the shoulders and threw us both aside, just as a little red hatchback gracefully sideswiped the door.

With a noisy crash the air filled with bits of flying glass, most of which went sheeting across the hood of the car. It rocked back on all four tires and revved its engine. The front wheels spun furiously as it struggled to pull its front fender from the crumpled remains of the door frame.

Flat on my ass, I stared at it in horror. There was no driver inside.

“Look out!” said Simon.

I looked back over my shoulder, then scrambled onto my hands and knees as a white sedan careened past me. It shot into a sharp U-turn, its squealing rear wheels burning smoking skid marks into the pavement.

In panic, I bolted for the pumps. I ran past the attendant’s booth and that sky-blue monster leapt out of nowhere. I fell back with a terrified cry as it reared up with its hood gaping wide. “You poor old sod, you see, it’s only me!”

And then Simon was there, swinging a squeegee. It made a blurry arc before it smashed into the car’s right headlight with a popping sound and a tinkle of broken glass.

The sky-blue car let out a screech and fishtailed backwards. Simon stumbled as the squeegee was torn from his hands. He collided with me and we both went tumbling backwards.

Crack! went my head off the pavement. I lay stunned, with Simon sprawled on top of me. The car hurled the squeegee into the air and leapt onto its rear tires and caught that sucker inside its hood, chomp chomp chomp. Then it roared and lunged at us.

All I could see were blazing headlights and a shiny chrome bumper, barrelling straight for me-

– and wham! Darkness.