Now
GIDEON FOUND BETH with Simon in the second-floor library, the two of them standing at a table hunched over Simon’s wide-open Lalaland book. Beth held up a finger when he stopped at the open doorway, a give me a minute gesture, because it appeared she and the giant were deep into something.
And then something hard and heavy thumped against the side of the house. Everyone jumped. Beth said, “Meet me in the kitchen in five minutes.”
Gideon heard hammer blows as he descended the stairs. In the living room, he found Sheriff Meeks in his wheelchair, with Natalie rewrapping his bandages. One of his stitches had opened during his walk to the porch earlier with his gun.
Again, something smashed against the outside of the house.
“Birds,” Natalie said, finishing up on Grover and helping him to lean back.
Sheriff Meeks offered Gideon one of his hydrocodone pills, but Gideon declined in favor of a clear head. The pain he would deal with. The hammering was coming from the other side of the house. Gideon passed through the kitchen, ducked into the hallway, and stopped at the parlor door, where his mother leaned in the doorway watching the coma patients, sipping from a glass of bourbon, face panicked, hands shaking.
“How’s Sully?” Gideon asked.
Maxine said, “Same. Restless.”
Gideon looked over her head into the room. Archie had boarded up those windows. Something smashed into the house outside the parlor and everyone in the room jumped, except the four on the beds. Lauren Betts’s father about came out of his chair. Tammy Shimp started crying as she held her daughter’s hand. “And Dad?”
She nodded toward the dining room. “Refusing to eat the candy bar I gave him. He’s gonna go into insulin shock if he’s not careful.”
Gideon kissed the top of his mother’s head and hurried down the hall to the dining room. Archie sat in a chair at the head of the table, slumped over, head in between his knees, blood sugar no doubt plummeting. It looked like he had one more window to board up.
“Need help?” Gideon asked.
“No,” said Archie. He looked woozy and pale. The Twix bar rested unopened on the middle of the table. “I’m fine.”
Gideon rounded the table. “You’re not fine. What’s your blood sugar?”
“I dunno …”
“Then check it, Dad. Jesus.” Gideon rummaged through the drawer of the china cabinet, where Archie kept most of his diabetic equipment, close to where they most often ate. He pulled out the machine and testing strips and said, “Eat the candy bar.”
“I’m—”
“Eat the goddamn candy bar,” Gideon yelled. Archie looked up, but didn’t reach for it, so Gideon opened it for him and held it out. “Don’t make me shove it in there.”
Archie’s hands were trembling. He grabbed it, took a bite, and then another, closing his eyes as he chewed. Gideon found what he needed from the drawer, and while he’d never checked his father’s blood, he’d seen it done enough to do it in his sleep. He pricked one of Archie’s fingers and his father barely batted an eye. He squeezed a drop of blood out onto the strip and put it on the handheld machine and waited as Archie got the candy bar down, bite by bite.
Just then, something flew into the window, shattering one of the panes of glass. They both jumped. Natalie had mentioned birds a minute ago, and in his mind, he’d wondered what kind of birds would do that, but now he saw that this one was black and blue and big-beaked, and while not as large as the bird they’d seen Beth shoot out by the tunnel earlier in the morning, it resembled it. Enough for him to know where the thing had come from. And from the movement Gideon saw outside between the trees, they weren’t alone.
A tall figure emerged from the shadows. A man with long hair and thick arms and broad shoulders. He made eye contact with Gideon and started slowly walking toward the house, toward the window with the broken glass, the final window that needed to be closed off by plywood. Archie’s machine went off. His blood sugar read 83.
Gideon lifted the sheet of thick plywood learning against the table and held it up against the window. He had heard something jangling on the approaching man outside. Please tell me those weren’t horseshoes hanging from his waistline. He knew they had been, but first things first. Right shoulder on fire, Gideon grabbed the hammer and a handful of nails from the table, holding several in his teeth. He moved the plywood, braced it in place with his body, yanked a nail from his lips and started hammering. Outside he heard heavy footsteps on the floorboards of their wraparound porch. He heard the horseshoes jangling against each other as he moved. Gideon hammered at the nail but the plywood slipped.
“Put your weight into the board,” said Archie, slowly gaining life inside his chair. “You can hammer …”
“I got it.” Gideon held the nail with his left hand and hammered with his right. One good hit plunged it halfway through, and then two more clean ones burrowed it the rest of the way in, and behind him Gideon heard his father say “Good job.”
Even as that big bastard with the horseshoes paced the porch directly outside.
He hammered the two lower corners and more nails between for good measure. By the time he turned around, Archie had filled a needle with insulin and was sticking it into his gut. Archie took a big breath and let it out, and told Gideon, “Thank you.”
Gideon nodded and was about to leave the room when something stopped him. The thing that had been poisoning him since the day his little brother went down to the tunnel and came out injured. The little brother who’d been born with the eyes of an angel. Who walked at six months. Who’d been potty trained by two years. Whose dimples when he smiled—and he was always smiling—got pinched by every woman who ever passed him. Who, by kindergarten, was already reading at a fifth-grade level. Who was sketching anatomically correct human beings instead of the stick figures every other child his age drew. Who turned heads, even at age four, when he entered the grocery store or church or gymnasium because it was, for whatever reason, impossible not to look at him. Who—and this was what it really came down to—like Beth, was afraid of absolutely nothing, especially that tunnel. Whose presence had always made Gideon wonder if maybe Sully wasn’t meant to be born that same night as Beth instead of him, with his deformed lip and cautious nature. If maybe Sully were the one meant to be Beth’s pretend twin. Like the two of them had been destined to do something together but his lack of whatever had made that impossible. And without any preamble, Gideon, with his back to his father, said, “It wasn’t my fault. I told Sully the rules. I told him to stay in the goddamn house, Dad.” He breathed heavily, felt his blood pressure rise as something thumped into the side of the house. “And all Mom wants is to dance!”
“Gideon …”
“We were playing hide-and-seek. The only rule was to stay in the house.”
“Gideon, turn around.”
He faced his father, who was standing now, shirt untucked from having pulled it out for the needle injection. “Sully was supposed to be hiding. I heard the front door open. I gave him a minute, thinking maybe he was hiding on the porch. But I remembered he’d been asking all day to go to the tunnel. To play In-One-Out-One. I went out. He wasn’t on the porch, so I started toward the tunnel.” Gideon wiped his eyes. “He was fast. He was little, but he was so damn fast, and I … I was Giddy-Up Gideon. As fast as I went, I couldn’t catch him. Chased him all the way down the slope, into the gully. I hated that tunnel, and he knew that. But he’d been down there so often he could have navigated the ravine blindfolded, Dad. He wasn’t only not scared of it, he was …”
“He was drawn to it, yes, I know … He always was.”
“He stopped before going in the south entrance. Waited for me. I thought I was having a heart attack I was breathing so heavy. He waved. Yelled, Hey, Gideon. Go to the other end. Go around. In-One-Out-One. I told him no. I said, let’s go back to the house. We’re not supposed to be here. He said … he said …”
“Gideon, what?”
“He said, Maybe you’re not supposed to be here, but I am. And then he said, I think I can make it through, all the way through.” Gideon could see his face now, could hear his confident little kid voice clear as day: I think I can win the game, Gideon … He felt chill bumps break out across his skin. “Like Connie Brine. And Bret Jones. That’s what he said, Dad.”
“Those two disappeared, Gideon.” Archie took a step forward. “They were never seen or heard from again.”
“I know. He said, I got a story to tell.”
Archie choked up. “He always had a story to tell. The imagination on that boy …”
“Dad, what was it?”
Archie gently tapped his forehead like he did when he was thinking. “I don’t know yet.”
“And then he ran in.”
“And you ran in after him.”
“Yeah,” said Gideon. “Of course I did. And that’s when the earthquake struck.”