Cillian comes running up but before he says anything to us, Ben cuts him off and says, “Don’t think it!”

Ben turns to me. “Don’t you think it neither. You cover it up with yer Noise. You hide it. You hide it as best you can.” And he’s grabbing my shoulders as he’s saying it and squeezing tight enough to make my blood jump even more than it already is.

“What’s going on?” I say.

“Did you walk home thru town?” Cillian asks.

“Course I walked home thru town,” I snap. “What other effing way is there to get home?”

Cillian’s face tightens up but it’s not with being pissed off at me snapping, it’s tightening up with fear, fear I can hear loud as a shout in his Noise. They don’t yell at me for “effing” neither, which makes it all somehow worse. Manchee’s barking his head off by this point, “Cillian! Quiet! Effing! Todd!” but nobody’s bothering to tell him to shut up.

Cillian looks at Ben. “We’re gonna have to do it now.”

“I know,” Ben says.

“What’s going on?” I say again, all loud like. “Do what now?” I twist away from Ben and stand looking at them both.

Ben and Cillian take another look at each other and then back at me. “You have to leave Prentisstown,” Ben says.

My eyeballs go back and forth twixt theirs but they’re not letting nothing go in their Noise ’cept general worry. “What do you mean I have to leave Prentisstown?” I say. “There ain’t nowhere else on New World but Prentisstown.”

They take yet another look at each other.

“Stop doing that!” I say.

“Come on,” Cillian says. “We’ve already got yer bag packed.”

“How can you already have my bag packed?”

Cillian says to Ben, “We probably don’t have much time.”

And Ben says to Cillian, “He can go down by the river.”

And Cillian says to Ben, “You know what this means.”

And Ben says to Cillian, “It doesn’t change the plan.”

“WHAT THE EFF IS GOING ON?” I roar, but I don’t say “eff”, now do I? Cuz it seems the situashun calls for something a little stronger. “WHAT EFFING PLAN?”

But they’re still not getting mad.

Ben lowers his voice and I can see him try to get his Noise into some kinda order and he says to me, “It’s very, very important you keep what happened in the swamp outta yer Noise as best you can.”

“Why? Are the spacks coming back to kill us?”

“Don’t think about it!” Cillian snaps. “Cover it up, keep it deep and quiet, till yer so far outta town no one can hear you. Now, come on!”

And he takes off back towards the house, running, actually running.

“Come on, Todd,” Ben says.

“Not till someone explains something.”

“You’ll get an explanashun,” Ben says, taking me by the arm and pulling me along. “You’ll get more than you ever wanted.” And there’s so much sadness to him when he says it that I don’t say nothing more, just follow along running back to the house, Manchee barking his head off behind us.

By the time we make it back to the house, I’m expecting–

I don’t know what I’m expecting. An army of Spackle coming outta the woods. A line-up of Mayor Prentiss’s men with guns at the ready. The whole house burning down. I don’t know. Ben and Cillian’s Noise ain’t making much sense, my own thoughts are boiling over like a volcano, and Manchee won’t stop barking, so who can tell anything in all this racket?

But there’s no one there. The house, our house, is just as it was, quiet and farm-like. Cillian busts in the back door, goes into the prayer room which we never use, and starts pulling boards up from the floor. Ben goes to the pantry and starts throwing dried foods and fruit into a cloth sack, then he goes to the toilet and takes out a small medipak and throws that in, too.

I just stand there like a doofus wondering just what in the effing blazes is going on.

I know what yer thinking: how can I not know if all day, every day I’m hearing every thought of the two men who run my house? That’s the thing, tho. Noise is noise. It’s crash and clatter and it usually adds up to one big mash of sound and thought and picture and half the time it’s impossible to make any sense of it at all. Men’s minds are messy places and Noise is like the active, breathing face of that mess. It’s what’s true and what’s believed and what’s imagined and what’s fantasized and it says one thing and a completely opposite thing at the same time and even tho the truth is definitely in there, how can you tell what’s true and what’s not when yer getting everything?

The Noise is a man unfiltered, and without a filter, a man is just chaos walking.

“I ain’t leaving,” I say, as they keep doing their stuff. They don’t pay me no mind. “I ain’t leaving,” I say again, as Ben steps past me into the prayer room to help Cillian lift up boards. They find what they’re looking for and Cillian lifts out a rucksack, an old one I thought I’d lost. Ben opens the top and takes a quick peek thru and I can see some clothes of mine and something that looks like–

“Is that a book?” I say. “You were sposed to burn those ages ago.”

But they’re ignoring me and the air has just stopped right there as Ben takes it outta the rucksack and he and Cillian look at it and I see that it’s not quite a book, more a journal type thing with a nice leather cover and when Ben thumbs thru it, the pages are cream-coloured and filled with handwriting.

Ben closes it like it’s an important thing and he wraps it inside a plastic bag to protect it and puts it in the rucksack.

They both turn to me.

“I ain’t going nowhere,” I say.

And there’s a knock on the front door.

For a second, nobody says nothing, everyone just freezes. Manchee’s got so many things he wants to bark that nothing comes out for a minute till he finally barks “Door!” but Cillian grabs him by the collar with one hand and by the maul with the other, shutting him up. We all look up at each other, wondering what to do next.

There’s another knock and then a voice comes thru the walls, “I know yer in there.”

“Damn and blast,” Ben says.

“Davy bloody Prentiss,” Cillian says.

That’s Mr Prentiss Jr. The man of the law.

“Do you not think I can hear yer Noise?” Mr Prentiss Jr says thru the door. “Benison Moore. Cillian Boyd.” The voice makes a little pause. “Todd Hewitt.”

“Well, so much for hiding,” I say, crossing my arms, still a little annoyed at it all.

Cillian and Ben look at each other again, then Cillian lets go of Manchee, says “Stay here” to both of us and heads for the door. Ben shoves the sack of food into the rucksack and ties it shut. He hands it to me. “Put this on,” he whispers.

I don’t take it at first but he gestures with a serious look so I take it and put it on. It weighs a ton.

We hear Cillian open the front door. “What do you want, Davy?”

“That’s Sheriff Prentiss to you, Cillian.”

“We’re in the middle of lunch, Davy,” Cillian says. “Come back later.”

“I don’t think I will. I think I need to have a word with young Todd.”

Ben looks at me, worry in his Noise.

“Todd’s got farmwork,” Cillian says. “He’s just leaving out the back. I can hear him go.”

And these are instructions for me and Ben, ain’t they? But I ruddy well want to hear what’s going on and I ignore Ben’s hand on my shoulder trying to pull me towards the back door.

“You take me for a fool, Cillian?” Mr Prentiss Jr says.

“Do you really want an answer to that, Davy?”

“I can hear his Noise not twenty feet behind you. Ben’s, too.” We hear a shift in the mood. “I just want to talk to him. He ain’t in no trouble.”

“Why you got a rifle then, Davy?” Cillian asks and Ben squeezes my shoulder, probably without even thinking.

Mr Prentiss Jr’s voice and Noise both change again. “Bring him out, Cillian. You know why I’m here. Seems like a funny little word floated outta yer boy into town all innocent-like and we just want to see what it’s all about, that’s all.”

“‘We’?” Cillian says.

“His Honour the Mayor would like a word with young Todd.” Mr Prentiss Jr raises his voice. “Y’all come out now, you hear? Ain’t no trouble going on. Just a friendly chat.”

Ben nods his head at the back door all firm like and there ain’t no arguing with him this time. We start stepping towards it slowly, but Manchee’s kept his trap shut for just about as long as he can bear and barks, “Todd?”

“Y’all ain’t thinking about sneaking out the back way, are ya?” Mr Prentiss Jr calls. “Outta my way, Cillian.”

“Get off my property, Davy,” Cillian says.

“I ain’t telling you twice.”

“I believe you’ve already told me about three times, Davy, so if yer threatening, it ain’t working.”

There’s a pause but the Noise from them both gets louder and Ben and I know what’s coming next and suddenly everything’s moving fast and we hear a loud thump, followed quick by another two, and me and Ben and Manchee are running to the kitchen but when we get there, it’s over. Mr Prentiss Jr is on the floor, holding his mouth, blood already coming from it. Cillian’s got Mr Prentiss Jr’s rifle in his hands and is pointing it at Mr Prentiss Jr.

“I said get off my property, Davy,” he says.

Mr Prentiss Jr looks at him, then looks at us, still holding his bloody mouth. Like I say, he ain’t barely two years older than me, barely able to even get a sentence out without his voice breaking, but he’s had his birthday to be a man so there he is, our sheriff.

The blood from his mouth is getting on the little brown hairs he calls a moustache and everyone else calls nothing.

“You know this answers the asking, doncha?” He spits some blood and a tooth onto our floor. “You know this ain’t the end.” He looks right at my eye. “You found something, dincha, boy?”

Cillian aims the rifle at his head. “Out,” he says.

“We got plans for you, boy.” Mr Prentiss Jr smiles bloodily at me and gets to his feet. “The boy who’s last. One more month, ain’t it?”

I look to Cillian but all he does is cock the rifle loudly, getting his point across.

Mr Prentiss Jr looks back at us, spits again, and says, “Be seeing you,” trying to sound tough but his voice squeaks and he takes off as fast he can back to the town.

Cillian slams the door behind him. “Todd’s gotta go now. Back thru the swamp.”

“I know,” Ben says. “I was hoping–”

“Me, too,” Cillian says.

“Whoa, whoa,” I say, “I ain’t going back to the swamp. There’s Spackle there!”

“Keep yer thoughts quiet,” Cillian says. “That’s more important than you know.”

“Well, since I don’t know nothing, that ain’t hard,” I say. “I ain’t going nowhere till someone tells me what’s going on!”

“Todd–” Ben starts.

“They’ll be coming back, Todd,” Cillian says. “Davy Prentiss will come back and he won’t be alone and we won’t be able to protect you from all of them at once.”

“But–”

“No arguing!” Cillian says.

“Come on, Todd,” Ben says. “Manchee’s gonna have to go with you.”

“Oh, man, this just gets better,” I say.

“Todd,” Cillian says and I look at him and he’s changed a little. There’s something new in his Noise, a sadness, a sadness like grief. “Todd,” he says again, then suddenly he grabs me and hugs me to him as hard as he can. It’s too rough and I bash my cut lip on his collar and say “Ow!” and push him away.

“You may hate us for this, Todd,” he says, “but try to believe it’s only cuz we love you, all right?”

“No,” I say, “it’s not all right. It’s not all right at all.”

But Cillian’s not listening, as usual. He stands up and says to Ben, “Go, run, I’ll hold ’em off as long as possible.”

“I’ll come back a different way,” Ben says, “see if I can throw ’em off the trail.”

They clasp hands for a long minute, then Ben looks at me, says “Come on” and as he’s dragging me outta the room to get to the back door, I see Cillian pick up the rifle again and he glances up at me and catches my eye and there’s a look to him, a look written all over him and his Noise that this is a bigger goodbye than it even seems, that this is it, the last time he ever expects to see me and I open my mouth to say something but then the door closes on him and he’s gone.