“You just saved my life,” Rafe said.
“You saved mine back at the house. New meaning to giving someone the kiss of life. Ready?”
“Not yet.” Rafe wasn’t ready. He could feel this place getting to him. He’d almost died. Jeremy had almost died. If he was going to die, he wanted to know everything now. “Tell me the truth.”
“About what?”
“Back there, that wasn’t our first kiss. Right?”
Jeremy looked at him. “No, it wasn’t.”
“When were you going to tell me?”
“Now, I guess. I was going to tell you at Granny’s, but I chickened out.”
“When we were here before, we were, what? Fooling around? Experimenting?”
“In love,” Jeremy said simply. “If you can believe it. Maybe you can’t.”
Rafe grabbed him by the back of the neck and pulled him down for another kiss. No excuse this time. No Bright Boys around. A kiss for the sake of kissing.
And then Rafe let him go. “Come on. Now I really want this stupid book back.”
“Let’s get it back then.” Jeremy held out his hand. Rafe took it and they started off down the dark road that ran along the black waters.
They walked on for what felt like hours. That terrible sense of déjà vu crept up on Rafe again. The hills, the curve of the road, the empty houses…
“I know where we are,” Rafe said.
“This is the way to your house.”
Jeremy held his hand tighter.
They found the gravel drive and walked toward the house. It looked like home with the porch swing and his mother’s flower bed out front. Home but not home. The flowers were all dead, long dead and decayed.
He felt the darkness coming for him now. He didn’t want to go in there.
“Rafe?”
“Mom was right. I don’t miss Dad. I’m glad he’s gone. He made everything so hard. It didn’t have to be hard. Who cares if I liked to draw at the kitchen table? What did that have to do with him? When I was little, Mom got me a book from the library. How to Draw Animals. I was trying to draw a wolf, and Dad saw me and shut the book. He made me go outside with him. ‘Forget all that,’ he said. ‘I’ll teach you how to hunt wolves.’ ”
Rafe took a step back, then another. “There aren’t even wolves in West Virginia. The hunters killed them all over a hundred years ago.” He didn’t even know what he was saying, but he knew he couldn’t go in there. Even if Emilie was there. He couldn’t go in there at gunpoint because what if—
A light came on in the window. The front door opened. The Bright Boy who called himself Ripper came out and waved. More Bright Boys…they all rose from the ground, poured out from the trees, all of them grinning, baring their fangs, all in gray rags. Ripper sauntered down the porch steps toward them.
Jeremy tried to move in front of Rafe, but Ripper raised his knife.
“About time,” Ripper said. “King’s been waiting. But first, let’s lighten your load.”
The Boys surrounded them, and Rafe and Jeremy had their weapons taken from them. Even worse, the Bright Boys found the last Golden Sun apple in Rafe’s pocket. They took it like it was a grenade and tossed it onto the ground. The one called Chopper took his ax to it, and that was that. They were on their own with only the light they had left within them.
Unarmed, they were marched toward the front door.
“This is my house,” Rafe said to Ripper, whose sharp fingers were digging into the back of his neck. “Let Jeremy go. He—”
“No,” Jeremy said. “Not a chance. Don’t even think about it.”
“You heard ’em, pretty boy,” Ripper said in a cruel, mocking tone.
Jeremy only said to Ripper, “Didn’t I cut your head off once?”
Ripper pulled his stained collar down to reveal the black thread stitches that encircled his neck.
“Sewed it back on.” Ripper kicked Rafe in the ankle to make him stumble. Jeremy struggled against the two Boys holding him, trying to fight his way free. “Take him away.”
“No!” Rafe screamed as they dragged Jeremy away from him and around the house.
“Sorry,” Ripper said. “King wants you alone.”
Ripper knocked on the door but didn’t wait for a reply before pushing it open. In a parody of Rafe’s mother’s singsong voice, Ripper called out, “Honey, we’re home!”
“Kitchen!”
No. No. No. Rafe knew that voice.
Ripper shoved him into the kitchen.
And there was his father sitting at the table and looking just as he’d looked fifteen years ago, in those last days before Rafe went missing, and he’d aged ten years in six months.
