“BYRON!” JAKE SHOUTED.
He flew out of the attic, then stopped short.
The journal.
Jake raced back to the trunk and flipped it open again. He dug his hand to the bottom, yanked on the secret-compartment door, and reached in.
Still there.
He shoved it into his back pocket and bolted downstairs.
“Who said you could give that uniform away, Byron?”
Byron was making faces in the living room mirror. “Is this a good nineteenth-century look?”
“It’s from the Civil War! Your great-great-great grandfather wore it!”
“Whoa, hold on, Jake. You think he did. No one knows for sure. Mom says it might have belonged to him. She doesn’t even know his name.”
“You had no right!”
“Says who?”
Me.
It’s valuable to me.
It connects me. To a place where you’ll never go.
To a time I should have been born in.
To a fight. A real one. Bigger than this idiotic argument. Bigger than you or me.
It connects me to a part of myself.
The words formed clearly in Jake’s mind. But he didn’t say a word.
Byron wouldn’t understand.
And Byron was unimportant now.
Only the uniform mattered. The uniform and the cap and the dagger.
Without them, nothing mattered.
Nothing but the present. And that wasn’t enough. He had to find the stuff and bring it back. Jake bolted.
“Hey, where are you going?” Byron demanded. “I don’t know.” He let the door slam behind him.
HONNNNNK!
Jake’s bike skidded to a stop. His rear tire fanned out, sending up a spray of water.
A red pickup swerved across his path, missing him by inches.
The driver’s angry rant was swallowed up by the din of the downpour.
Jake caught his breath, wiping the water from his brow.
The rain had been sudden. It had started when Jake was biking by the Cranfield Mall. Now it was falling so fiercely he could barely see.
Why am I doing this?
No way would Gideon Kozaar be filming in this weather.
Time to cut bait, Jake.
Across the intersection was a steep wooded hill, the southern end of the Menoquan Woods that jutted into Hobson’s Corner.
The route home was a long ride around the woods.
The shorter way was straight through. Up and over the hill, through the trees. Muddy but direct. Dangerous, too. Blocked off by a rusted metal fence with NO TRESPASSING signs. No one ever went there, as far as Jake knew.
But the fence had a hole. And Jake was wet. And tired.
He looked up through squinted eyes.
No lightning. It would be safe.
Jake turned his bike toward the hill and began pedaling.
His treads dug in. The soil was wet but packed.
He stood. Pushed.
At the top, the bike slipped. Jake tried to right it. The tires gave out from under him.
Gritting his teeth, he hurtled over the handlebars.
And landed with a thud.
He jumped to his feet, picked up the bike, and looked back down the hill.
Uh-uh. Too slippery.
KAAAA-BOOM!
Great. Now it decides to thunder.
No lightning yet.
He pedaled over the top of the hill. Further into the woods.
The path meandered. Split. Split again.
The rain weighed down his eyelashes. The trees melded together in his vision.
Left here. Right. Right.
He was guessing now. Nothing was familiar.
The path petered out, then stopped.
KAAAA-BOOM!
The sky flashed a dull white.
That was close.
Jake let his bike stop. He wiped his brow.
Fog billowed around the pines. To his left and right, the ground seemed to be sloping upward.
The valley.
South of Hobson’s Corner, the woods led to a wide valley between two low-lying mountain ranges.
Wrong way, you fool.
Or was it?
He looked for the mountain silhouettes, but the distance was swallowed up in the gathering darkness.
No.
Not all of it.
To his left. A bright patch. The outline of a building.
Shelter.
Jake ran with his bike, tripping over roots, pushing aside branches.
A clearing became visible. Just beyond it, a small hill.
And halfway up the hill, a run-down, wood-shingled hut. Lopsided and windowless. Standing on four stout wooden corner posts.
Jake ditched his bike at the clearing’s edge and ran to the hut. The door was secured by a huge rusted padlock. The windows were boarded up.
He slid under the hut, in the space formed by the posts.
The ground was cold but dry. A salamander skittered away, vanishing under a rock.
Jake pulled back his hair. Rivulets of water cascaded down his neck.
Another boom sounded. Loud. Close. Shaking the ground. But this time Jake saw no flash of light.
Weird.
He lay on his stomach and gazed back into the clearing.
A ring of tall pines surrounded the area.
Tall dead pines.
SSSSNNNNNNNNNAPP!
A flash.
An explosion.
A falling tree.
And a shuddering shock wave of heat that seemed to rip across the ground, traveling through the moisture, searing the soil.
Electricity.
It was Jake’s last thought before he blacked out.