“Except you know he wasn’t,” my father said. “Because Harry Mac was your informant, and he told you what happened.”
Detective Sims didn’t answer.
“Well, in that case, I’m taking him home,” said my father. Then to me he said, “Let’s go, Sam.”
Believe me, he didn’t have to tell me twice.
18
Prophets and Madmen
I followed my father out of the interrogation room into the detective room—and there was Jeff Winger.
The detective room was a windowless office with lots of flyers and papers pinned to bulletin boards along the wall. There were three gray desks crowding the floor. There was a detective sitting behind one of the desks, talking on the phone. At another desk, there was a detective tapping at a computer. Jeff was sitting next to him.
Jeff was in handcuffs. He looked totally miserable. His head was hanging down and his weaselly eyes weren’t darting around every which way like they usually did. They were just staring at the floor.
Until I came in, that is. When Jeff heard the interrogation room door open, he looked up. He saw me at the same time I saw him. He stared at me—and his eyes looked so dark and so unhappy, I actually felt sorry for him even though he’d beaten me up. He didn’t have a dad to get him out of trouble—and he was in a lot of it.
I paused for a minute and just stood there looking at Jeff as he looked at me. Then my father stopped walking. He turned back and took hold of my arm.
“Come on, son,” he said.
And I left the detective room with my dad as Jeff Winger sat there in handcuffs, watching me go.
I kept my mouth shut until Dad and I were in the Passat, driving out of the police station parking lot.
“Dad!” I said then. “That was so awesome! That was so cool! You turned that detective guy inside out! He never knew what hit him!”
“Well,” said my father quietly. “Then that makes two of us.”
I was about to say something else, but my mouth fell shut with a snap. I hadn’t really had time to think about how all this had seemed to my father. Me running off without telling anyone. Getting in more trouble over Jeff Winger without saying anything to him. And it was real trouble this time too. This wasn’t just some fistfight out by the side of the road. Harry Mac was dead! Murdered. And for a minute there, before my dad unleashed his death-ray intellect on Sims, I was feeling like I was the prime suspect.
“Listen, Dad, I’m really sorry. I’m, like, the worst son ever. I didn’t mean to—”
“No, no, no,” said my father, holding up his hand as he drove. “I can see what happened. I’m not sure you did exactly the right thing, but I can see you didn’t do anything actually wrong—not as far as I can tell anyway.”
I was quiet then, thinking about everything that had gone on. The Passat cruised down a tree-shaded lane of houses. It was Sunday quiet out there, the lawns and sidewalks empty, no one in sight. The afternoon sun shone through the late-winter branches, sending patches of light and shadow over the windshield.
“How could it happen?” I said after a while. “How could Jennifer’s hallucination come true?”
My father shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Do you think . . . ?”
I couldn’t find a way to put it into words, so after a minute my dad glanced at me. “Do I think what?”
“Well, do you think Jennifer might be some kind of, like, prophet or something?”
“A prophet?” He repeated the word as if he’d never heard it before. “What do you mean?”
“Well, there are prophets in the Bible, right? People who had visions about what was going to happen . . .”
My dad gave an unhappy sort of laugh. “Well . . . I think the prophets in the Bible were just very wise people who knew how to listen to God in their hearts and who understood that actions have consequences.”
“But the prophets did have visions, didn’t they?”
“Yes, some of them.”
“So, I mean, isn’t it possible that Jennifer could be somebody like that? I mean, maybe her mom is taking her to the doctor and giving her medicine and whatever, and really she’s fine—she’s just seeing visions of things that haven’t happened yet.”
I watched my father as he thought this over. The corner of his mouth turned up in a smile as he drove, but it was a very sad smile, I thought.
“Listen, Sam,” he said finally. “Jennifer is a sick girl. She has a mental disorder and she’s having hallucinations. How those hallucinations managed to get you to that barn just as Harry Mac was being murdered—well, that I don’t know, but . . .”
He stopped. I thought there was something he wanted to say, but now he was the one who couldn’t figure out what words to use.
“But what?” I said.
“Aw, Sam . . . ,” my father said with a sigh. “I’ve devoted my life to my faith, so you know what I believe. I believe there are powers beyond the ones we see, but . . .”
“But what?”
“Well, the world is not a magical place, that’s all. The things that happen are pretty predictable, and they can usually be explained in ordinary terms. People do bad things and bad things happen that we can’t control. People hurt each other. They get sick. They grow old and . . .” He shrugged.
And die, I thought. Like Mr. Boling.
My dad glanced at me and I looked away—because he looked so sad. I guess he was. I guess that’s why he sounded so sad.
“Well, then . . . how do you explain what happened?” I asked him now. “How do you explain that Jennifer had a hallucination about a coffin with someone alive inside it—and then I went off to that place and there was a box with Harry Mac alive inside it, just like she saw? And what about her telling me that something terrible was going to happen on Sunday—and then it did?”
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “I can’t explain it. Maybe it was just some kind of coincidence or . . . something. I don’t know.” He brought the Passat to a stop at a stop sign. He stayed there a second in order to turn and face me. “What I do know is that Jennifer needs medical help. She’s not a prophet, Sam. She has a disease, that’s all. Those are hallucinations she’s having. Not visions.”
I wanted to argue with him, but I decided against it. He looked like he wanted to stop talking about it now.
I wished I could’ve stopped talking about it too. But there was no way. When we got home, I had to tell the whole story all over again to John, who was kind of annoyed about my running out of church like that without telling him. Then that night, when my mom got home from the Bolings’ house, I had to tell it to her. She practically went through the ceiling like a bottle rocket.
Then the next day in school, Monday, everyone wanted to know about it. Zoe asked me about it on the way to history class. Mark and Nathan and Justin made a big deal about it in the cafeteria, pulling kids over to their table and getting me to tell them the story even if they already knew the details. At night, a radio station even called the house for an interview, but Dad wouldn’t let them talk to me.
More news came out the next day. We heard how Jeff Winger and Ed P. had both been charged with killing Harry Mac and a whole lot of other stuff too, like stealing cars. I guess that meant my dad was right and Harry Mac had been killed because he was talking to the police about what Jeff was doing. A couple of days later we heard that both guys had gotten lawyers. They were going to be tried as adults and faced long sentences in prison, maybe even life.
I only got a little news about Jennifer. Mark didn’t want to talk about it much. He told me his sister had been put in the secure ward at St. Agnes Hospital because she was so upset. He said they were waiting for the antischizophrenia medicine to kick in. Then they hoped she would calm down and they could put her with the rest of the patients.
It wasn’t until the end of the week that things started to quiet down a little bit. And by Friday people were finally talking about something else—namely, the big tra
ck meet against Empire and Cole. In fact, people were so excited about it, I went the whole day without anyone asking me a single question about Jeff or Harry or Ed. I was glad about that. Really glad. I thought maybe the whole thing was over. In fact, that night after dinner, I went on my computer and sent a message to Joe:
ME: Well, I guess that’s the end of it.
JOE: Guess so.
ME: I even got my bandage off. I almost look normal.
JOE: That’d be a first.
ME: I’m really glad it’s over. It’s been awful.
JOE: Well, like you said, it’s over now.
Just then, my cell phone rang. I didn’t recognize the number on the readout. I picked it up.
“Sam Hopkins, Sam Hopkins,” a voice whispered to me breathlessly.
“Jennifer?” I said. My heart began speeding up. What now?
“I have to tell you what’s going to happen next,” Jennifer said.
“Next?” I said—or tried to say through my dry throat. “What do you mean? Jennifer, where are you? Did you run away again?”
“I can’t run away. I can’t, Sam Hopkins. They locked me up. They locked me up in the demon castle.”
The demon castle? I thought. “The hospital?” I said. “St. Agnes?”
“They gave me medicine so I wouldn’t hear, so I couldn’t see. But I can hear, Sam. I can see. I see with my eyes. Through the lies. I see who dies.”
“Jennifer,” I said. “You’re not making any sense.”
“I see what’s going to happen, Sam.”
I licked my dry lips. I tried to remember what my dad said. She was just sick. She was just having hallucinations.
But I remembered Harry Mac in the box too, like a man in a coffin, just as Jennifer had said.
“What do you see, Jennifer?” I asked her. “What do you see is going to happen?”
There was a long pause. And then suddenly—and this was just really terrifying—suddenly Jennifer whispered very quietly:
“So many dead, Sam! So many dead!”
PART FOUR
BUSTER
JENNIFER SLEPT AND DREAMED AND WOKE AND SLEPT again. The demons had her locked away. Locked in their demon castle. She could hear them. Invisible. Gathering. Whispering. Planning . . .
Now we’re free.
Now she can’t stop us.
Now Sam Hopkins can’t stop us.
We can do what we want.
We can kill.
We can kill them all.
She lay curled on the bed in her room. She tried to stay awake to listen. She tried to stand. She tried to go to the door, to catch them out, the way she sometimes did at home. But here in the castle, the wizards had given her a potion. It made her sleepy. The sleepiness made the whispering demons sound far away. She had to listen very hard to hear them. But she could still make out their words.
Tomorrow.
Tomorrow, we’ll kill them all.
Tomorrow, they’ll see our power.
Don’t tell Sam.
“Have to tell Sam,” Jennifer murmured into the mattress. But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t get off the bed. She couldn’t even keep her eyes open . . .
Her eyes came open wide suddenly. She had been asleep again. Lost in a terrible dream. Blood-soaked death. Bodies everywhere.
She rolled over onto her back. She stared up at the ceiling. She listened.
Nothing.
The whispers had stopped.
Quickly, Jennifer sat up. She shifted her legs over the side of the bed, sat gripping the edge of the mattress with her fingers. The drowsiness still sat heavily on her. She stretched her eyes wide. She shook away the sleep. She looked around.
She was in a new room. Not the room they’d put her in at first, when the police had caught her, when they’d carried her away from her magical friend and brought her back to the demon hospital. They had locked her up then. And given her their potions that made her sleep so she couldn’t stop sleeping.
“We’re going to give you medicine to make you feel better,” said Dr. Demon Fletcher with the nice-face rice cakes. “We’re going to make the demon whisperers go away. Don’t you want that?”
Jennifer did. She wanted it so much, more than anything.
All that was days ago now—she wasn’t sure how many. She wasn’t sure when they had taken her out of the locked room and brought her here. She sat on the edge of the bed and looked around. Her new room was small but pleasant. There was the bed and a desk and a chair. There was a notebook on the desk and a marker for her to write with. There was a small calendar. It was Friday.
Friday, Jennifer thought—and shivered. Now she knew.
This room was not as homey as her room at home, but it felt safer somehow. There weren’t all the animals and posters and princesses staring with eyes to see who lies, to see who dies . . .
And Jennifer noticed something else too. It was quiet here. Very quiet. The whispering had stopped. Maybe, she thought—hardly daring to hope—maybe the medicine had worked.
Jennifer stood up in the weird silence. It was hard to stand because the drowsiness sat on her shoulders like a stone gargoyle. It made her feel like a gargirl, heavy as stone.
There was a small window on the wall behind her. She moved to it, unsteady on her heavy gargirl legs. She pressed her face close to the glass, staring out.
It was dark. It was night. But there was a spotlight on and she could make out some things in its glow. She could see the courtyard of the hospital, one story below her. Grass. Paths. Benches. A tall tree in the middle. The hospital walls rising on every side of it in shadow. Dark walls like the dark battlements of a demon castle.
Did they think they were fooling her when they called it a hospital?
Jennifer scanned the courtyard. No one there except . . .
Except every time she looked in one direction, she caught a motion out of the corner of her eye in the other direction. But when she turned to look in that direction . . . nothing. No one.
Because they were moving in secret. That’s why. That’s why there were no whispers. They were keeping quiet. So she wouldn’t hear, wouldn’t see.
Jennifer turned. She had to blink a few times because the gargoyle sleepiness was hanging on her eyelids, trying to force them closed, just as the gargoyle was sitting on her gargirl shoulders, trying to drive her back down onto the bed.
All the same, pushing her heavy stone legs forward, she went to the door. She tried the knob. Was she locked in here too?
No! The doorknob turned. The door opened.
Jennifer stepped out into a hallway. Almost at once, a lady was there, walking toward her. The sight of the lady startled Jennifer and suddenly she felt less sleepy, more awake.
The lady had a brown face. She wore white clothes. Was she an angel? No, just a lady. She smiled.
“Hi, Jennifer,” she said. “How are you?”
Jennifer tried to smile, but her face felt stony too. Who was this white-brown angel lady? What did she want?
“Are you hungry?” the woman asked.
Jennifer realized that in fact she was hungry. She nodded.
The angel lady smiled. “It’s past dinnertime now, but I figured you might want something to eat when you woke up so I saved you a little something. Go into the common room and I’ll bring it to you there.”
She pointed down the hall at a door. Jennifer tried to smile again, did better this time. She was feeling more awake. She moved in the direction the woman pointed.
She listened carefully as she walked down the now-empty hall. There were no whispers. No noises. Maybe the demons had gone away as Dr. Fletcher said they would. As she walked, she turned her head, turned it quickly, this way and that, trying to spot them, trying to see if they were hiding in the shadows, bad-ohs in the shadows, but no, there was no one. Maybe it was safe here. Maybe the medicine had made them go away. Maybe . . .
She reached the broad doorway into the common room. And stopped. And stood stock-still,
gaping in horror.
Her dream had come true and death was everywhere. Bodies were everywhere, all over the common room. Murdered corpses, their flesh ripped by bullet wounds. They lay on the chairs, their blood staining the upholstery. They lay sprawled on the floor in red puddles of blood. Everywhere Jennifer looked . . . the dead, the dead!
She drew back, moving her hand to her mouth, about to scream, when all at once . . .
“Here we go!”
Startled, Jennifer let out a little cry and turned to see . . .
Just the angel lady, coming toward her with a tray. A sandwich. A glass of juice. A cookie. On a tray. Angel smiling.
“Go on in,” she said, nodding toward the common room.
Jennifer looked again. She let out her breath in a long sigh.
Everything was fine now. The dead were gone. The blood was gone. The common room was empty. Big comfortable chairs. Two sofas. A television set on the wall. Everything was normal except . . .
Except the clock. The round clock high on the wall. The hands of the clock were spinning, spinning quickly. Hours going by. Days.
Tomorrow, Jennifer thought. Tomorrow.
“Go on in,” said the lady again.
Jennifer stepped through the door into the common room. Everything was normal now, but she could smell gun smoke. She could smell blood. She could smell death.
“I’ll just put this right over here,” the woman said.
We’re going to kill them all, whispered a demon suddenly in Jennifer’s ear.
Jennifer put her hands on her ears to close out the whisper—but then quickly took them away again because she didn’t want the angel lady to see.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow.