picking up with the purpose-driven enthusiasm of a boy unwrapping presents on Christmas morning.
When they had finished, Ayden took Link's hand and allowed Link to lead him away. Midway between the train table and the door, he stopped. His smile faded, replaced by a troubling darkness. "No! I not!" he said defiantly. He glanced up at Link. Then he turned and scowled at the empty room. He extended his index finger, and said, "You go way! I not yike you!"
At first, Link assumed Ayden was speaking to one of the toys. Ayden had always treated his toys more like acquaintances than objects, so such behavior was rather common. But this time Ayden wasn't talking to the trains or any other toy for that matter. As far as Link could tell, Ayden wasn't talking to anything at all. He glowered in the direction of what appeared to be an empty, white plaster wall.
"Ayden, who are you talking to? Is it an imaginary friend?"
Scrunching his face in the same way he did when he was forced to eat vegetables, Ayden said, "He not my fwiend." With a sense of finality, Ayden turned his back on whomever he'd spoken with and pulled Link to the front door. Mrs. Greta had watched the whole thing as she waited there with a plate of cookies and muffins. Link's face reddened from embarrassment. "Sorry about that," he said.
"About what, dear?"
"You know...my little brother has got quite an imagination." Link tried to laugh it off, but his abrupt chuckle sounded forced and insincere, even to him.
Mrs. Greta briefly appeared to process the situation then quickly recovered and said, "Don't be silly. All boys his age do that sort of thing."
And even though she continued to smile, Link could have sworn he detected a tinge of sadness that now tugged at the corners of her eyes.
4
A Cut, a Noise, an Omen
Even Link had to admit that for some unknown reason the thawed corndogs and side of cheesy macaroni had tasted delicious. Once Ayden had eaten his fill, Link began clearing off the table. Ayden brought his dish to the sink and dumped it in. With a pleased look of satisfaction, he sat down on the kitchen floor and played with a pair of plastic superheroes.
Link observed the soapy water push away all the unwanted food from the dinner plates. He wished the rain were somehow capable of doing the same thing for him. Inside, Link felt muddled, caked with dirt from his troublesome day at school. He needed a new start. Not just a redo but a new beginning, a life that was different in every way.
Growling noises emanated from the floor as Ayden pretended an action figure and a plastic dinosaur were locked in mortal combat. He smashed the action figure against the broad side of the plastic dinosaur and roared.
As Link finished rinsing off the dishes, a searing pain shot through his fingertip. He yanked his hand out of the soapy water to reveal blood pooling at the tip of his middle finger.
He reached for a dish towel to stop the bleeding and heard a loud crash that sounded as though it had come from the living room. He looked down to where Ayden had been only moments before. No longer animated by the child's fingers and overactive imagination, the toys sat motionless, abandoned on the kitchen floor. The dinosaur's legs jutted out at awkward angles near the base of the refrigerator.
A voice, shadowy and distant, almost inaudible, tickled the edges of Link's ear. Was it his brother? He strained to listen more carefully. As he did, he heard not one voice but many. But as hard as he tried, he couldn't make out what the voices were saying.
"Ayden!" Link called. When no reply came, he felt a rush of panic. Ayden was not the type to wander. The throbbing in Link's finger increased with the pounding of his pulse. Disoriented, his responses felt slow and confused.
"Where are you?" Link yelled. Panic clutched his heart. On impulse, he ran into the living room. "Ayden! Ayden! Where are you, Bug?" More voices, foreign and unfamiliar crashed into his ears and ricocheted through his mind. They swirled around briefly then turned into laughter, cruel and taunting. It was the laughter that made Link's insides jump to the back of his throat. He had heard this laughter before. It belonged to the little girl from his nightmares.
Still unable to find Ayden, Link ran to his father's study. The room was dark. No matter how hard he tried, Link couldn't focus. His head was all fogged up with a crazy mix of fear and adrenaline. The voices and laughter combined to conjure awful pictures in his head and pull him away from his search. Not just the vague images of memory or dreams, these images felt like they were actually happening. Though they felt real, they weren't clear. Like the voices, they were fuzzy and distant. Link fought through his panic and tried to picture Bug's hand on his arm, waking him up again like he had this morning. Where was he?
Aware of his need to focus, Link rubbed his eyes. He squinted. Then he opened his eyes as wide as they would go. With only the dim, reflected glow of the light from the hallway, he scratched blindly along the wall in an attempt to locate the light switch. Finding nothing, he made his way into the room and grabbed hold of the tiny, bronze lamp that his dad kept on top of the desk. He fumbled along the cord in search of the plastic switch. Seconds later, the room erupted into a steady light that pulled his surroundings back into focus. As it did, the laughter stopped. In that instant, everything went silent.
Link plugged one of his ears with his finger. Nothing. Had he gone deaf? He stamped up and down on the ground. Still nothing. He hummed a bar of his favorite song just to hear his own voice, but the room remained hollow, drenched in an overwhelming silence.
Then, from somewhere deep in the silence, Link heard heavy breathing. It was followed by a muffled whimper and appeared to be coming from behind his father's large, oak writing table. He shoved the leather chair out of the way and hurried to the other side. Next to the oversized claw feet of the desk, pressed flat against the back wall, was his little brother. Link's heart leapt in his chest.
Ayden had balled himself up near the plug and was clutching his knees tightly against his chest. There was terror etched into his face as he rocked back and forth in a slow, deliberate motion as if in rhythm to a song that only he could hear. Though physically unharmed, he was visibly shaken and wouldn't even look at Link.
"Ayden, what happened? What is it?"
Ignoring him, Ayden continued to rock back and forth. Link gently scooped his quivering brother into his arms and hugged him tightly, but Ayden refused to hug him back, preferring instead to remain in the safety of his protective ball.
Concerned by his brother's failure to respond, Link set him down on the soft carpet. He searched Ayden's vacant stare for some glimmer of recognition.
With a mounting dread, Link asked again, "Ayden, what happened? What's wrong, little buddy? It's me, Link. Remember? Your brother?"
Ayden continued to silently rock.
Link picked him up once again. This time he carried him back to the living room and set him down on the fluffy, oversized cushions of the couch. For the first time, he noticed that the TV was on. The invisible audience squealed with laughter as a man's sudden slip caused a long series of improbable events that ended with a large birthday cake being dropped on the head of a grumpy child.
Link replayed everything in his mind. Had the laughter come from the television? It was possible. That would explain why it was so hard to hear.
He switched the channel to one of Ayden's favorite cartoons. When he turned away to resume his search for whatever had made the big crash, he felt Ayden latch onto his arm with a tight, vice-like grip usually reserved for happy things such as chocolate cookies and their mother's cinnamon bread crumb cake. Not this time. There was no joy in his eyes now, only fear.
"I not do it," Ayden said. "I not! I not! I not!"
"Didn't do what, Ayden? What are you talking about? Did you drop something? I heard a loud crash. Was that you?"
It was useless. Even for Link, who understood him better than anyone, Ayden's limited vocabulary made him hard to understand at the best of times. Link knew he'd have to find the source of the mysterious noise himself, but he didn't
want to leave his brother alone.
"I'll be right over here," Link tried to reassure him, as he separated his arm from Ayden's grip. "I need to see what happened." He switched on the lights in the bathroom and opened a drawer. He removed a small bandage, unwrapped it, and discarded the leftover paper. He lifted his injured finger, only to stare at it in bewilderment. Where was the blood? He flipped his hand over to examine the back side but was unable to find a cut of any sort. Even the washcloth he had used to stop the bleeding revealed no evidence of blood. What was going on?
Link called to his brother, "You okay?" No response. He peeked back into the living room and saw Ayden curled up on the couch, watching TV.
Link took this as a positive sign and returned to his father's study. Finding nothing strange, he crossed the room and switched off the small desk lamp. A thorough investigation of the main floor turned up nothing, but Link could not quite believe that he had imagined everything.
Still uneasy but with nowhere else to look, Link nestled up to his brother and tried to think of anything that might account for such a loud noise. Before long, he had unknowingly diverted his attention to his more mundane problems such as surviving another day at Shady Oaks Academy or, as he decided to call it, the hellacious vortex of evil.
"Hey, Bug, let's go put on your pajamas and then watch that