The thing threw itself against the door.

It had moved up the staircase that quickly.

I lifted myself up and clumsily hopped on one foot toward the window.

I collapsed in front of it and fumbled with the latch.

I looked behind me because it was suddenly so quiet.

Beyond my trail of blood the door was bulging forward.

And then the thing started shrieking again.

I opened the window, balancing on my left leg, and crawled onto the ledge, blood splattering everywhere.

I remember not caring as I let myself fall.

It wouldn’t be a long drop. It would be escape. It would be peace.

I landed on the lawn. I didn’t feel anything. All the pain was concentrated in my right leg.

I lifted myself up and I began limping toward the Range Rover.

I slid into the driver’s seat and I started the ignition.

(When asked, I answered that I did not know—nor can I supply a reason now—why I hadn’t gone to a neighbor after the attack.)

Moaning to myself, I put the car in reverse and pressed on the accelerator with my left foot.

Once I had backed out of the driveway and was stationary in the middle of Elsinore Lane, I saw the cream-colored 450 SL.

It had turned the corner of Bedford and was now a block away.

Watching it glide closer I saw someone in the driver’s seat: grim-faced, determined, recognizable.

As if he had been sequenced into my dreams, it was Clayton who was driving the car.

When I saw Clayton’s face I let go of the steering wheel and the Range Rover, still in reverse, spun backward and then halfway around so that it was blocking Elsinore.

I tried to regain control of the car as the 450 SL kept moving forward.

It was speeding up.

I braced myself as it slammed into the passenger side of the Range Rover.

The collision pushed the SUV over a curb and into the oak tree that stood in the middle of the Bishops’ front yard, with such force that the windshield exploded.

Everything started falling away from me.

The 450 SL extracted itself from the wreckage and backed away into the middle of Elsinore Lane. The Mercedes was not damaged.

It was daylight, I noticed as I began losing consciousness.

Clayton stepped out of the car and started walking toward me.

His face was a red and indistinct moon.

He was wearing the same clothes he’d worn when I saw him that Halloween day in my office at the college, including the sweater with the eagle on it. The sweater I had once owned when I was his age.

Steam was curling from the Range Rover’s crumpled hood.

I couldn’t move. My entire body was throbbing with pain. My leg was soaked with blood. It kept gushing through the bite marks in my jeans.

“What do you want?” I started to scream.

The Range Rover kept shuddering because my foot was locked against the accelerator.

The boy was floating closer, moving steadily toward me, relaxed.

Through my tears I began to make out his features more clearly.

“Who are you?” I was screaming as I sobbed. “What do you want?”

Behind him I could see the house melting away.

He was now standing by my window.

He was staring at me so starkly it was as if he were sightless.

I tried positioning myself so I could open the door, but I was trapped.

“Who are you?” I kept screaming.

I stopped asking that question as his hands reached out to me.

That was when I realized there was someone else who was more important.

“Robby,” I started moaning. “Robby . . .”

Because Clayton was—and had always been—someone I had known.

He was somebody who had always known me.

He was somebody who had always known us.

Because Clayton and I were always the same person.

The writer whispered, Go to sleep.

Clayton and the writer whispered, Disappear here.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 10

30. the awakening

I regained consciousness in a hospital room at Midland Memorial the day after the first surgery to save my leg was completed. The operation had lasted five hours. I had been sleeping for more than twenty-four hours.

When I woke up Jayne was standing over me. Her face was swollen.

My first thought: I am alive.

The relief was short-lived when I saw the two police officers in the room.

My second thought: Robby.

I realized that they had been waiting for me to wake up.

I was asked, “Bret . . . do you know where Robby is?”

The room was cold and empty and I felt something humming beneath the fake calm. There was a horrible insistence to the question that was barely restrained.