Kelan sat for a spell. The hill egged him on, and while he reconsidered his plans, he recalled the words of warning he had heard last August. Eric had taken him downtown for ice cream (not because his brother wanted to, but because Mom had told him to) and while they sat on the steps of the variety store lapping it up, old man Krieger, perhaps the oldest living creature on the planet, waddled past and began his daily two-hour trek across the street to the Post Office. Bony as death, the man trembled like a leaf in an autumn breeze. But the moment those droopy old ears heard what Eric was going on about—this very hill, the Run—he spun around like a top and made his way back in two short licks of Kelan’s vanilla.
“You boys take heed,” Krieger croaked, rapping his walking stick on the boiling sidewalk. “You don’t go near that thing. Mind me now.”
Kelan felt the ice cream thicken in his throat. “Why not?”
The old man’s piercing eyes narrowed in the midday sun. He grumbled something, and then stabbed a crooked finger at Kelan. And what the man said next sent a chill down Kelan’s spine, that even now felt as cold as ice.
“The Run’s alive,” the old-timer said, his lips taut and thin. He smelled like olives. His liver-spotted skin, baked in the wisdom of ninety-six summers, seemed perfectly lifeless. “It’s a monster, and if you don’t steer clear, it’ll eat you alive. It’ll swallow you whole.”
A week later, Norm Garbula, a miner at Tilsen laid off that same morning, struck Krieger with his half-ton just after the old man picked up his mail. There were flyers and bills everywhere, but no sign of the walking stick. They buried Krieger the following Saturday, Kelan’s birthday, the same day he found the walking stick behind the Post Office. It was too weird by half.
Krieger aside, Kelan had heard the stories (in Key Corners, all you ever heard were stories), and this one had stirred him like no other. One kid perished in the 1930s, another fell prey to the ’40s, and two more were lost in ’55. The ’60s came and went, but legend spoke of the Run’s last meal in the winter of 1971. They never did find that black kid, and in fact, in over a century of running the Run, not a single person had slain the beast. Not one.
But Kelan Lisk was going to change all that. He would rewrite the history book, and the world would sit up and take notice. For the most part, he enjoyed his anonymity, but there were times when he felt lost among the throng. He had heard someone on TV talking about their fifteen minutes of fame, and he knew his wasn’t going to fall into his lap. He’d have to reach out and grab it.
It was time. Kelan rose and stepped to the edge of the Run. It glistened in the moonlight, teasing like candy under glass. Though not the longest slope in the park, it was surely the most perilous. A razor-straight runway, it had no bumps, no dips, no nothing, to slow its prey. At the bottom, those gutsy enough—or just plain stupid enough—to see it through met a heart-stopping six-foot leap across Potter’s Creek. Even at minus-forty, the swift rapids rarely froze, and even when they did, it was suicide to walk on them. Should the impossible happen and one actually make it across, the only way back was to inch along a narrow timber crosstie that was probably as old as Krieger. And probably as rotten.
At the water’s edge, nailed to the oak, was a faded white sign stroked in chipped black paint:
NO SLED NG NO TOB GINING
EX REEMLY DANG RUS
Kelan saw tracks where earlier in the day, other kids had taken the slope. All had either wiped out or had stuck out their boots to stop themselves in time. Most of them had made it halfway before fear or common sense had kicked in, but at least one foolhardy soul had come within five feet of the rising jump before reality had slapped him in the face. Indeed, one of the many games played on the Run was to see who could come closest without going over … a kind of twisted version of The Price Is Right.
Hadn’t anyone made it? Ever? Surely the stories were wrong. At least, incomplete. Only two winters past on a blustery Sunday in January, a kid in sixth grade nearly soared into Run history. Using one of those plastic Krazy Karpets (his second mistake, Kelan thought, the wind in his face being the first), he’d been that close. Six inches from slaying that mythical beast called The Other Side. The kid had been pulled from the water just as the current sucked him under, but the thing was, he had almost made it. Everyone who had seen it, and most who hadn’t, talked about it for weeks. Some still did. Even Arnie had said it was cool.
Given the right conditions—no wind, no Arnie Kovacs, a snowboard of lightning—it could be done.
But Mom didn’t think so.
Kelan understood her concern (and wasn’t that an ordeal whenever the subject was breached), but as always, it was his brother who had made the deepest impact. In fact, Eric had nearly made him abandon the idea just last week. Lying in their bunks, Kelan had voiced his desire again, and Eric, tired of the obsession, took it upon himself to give him the straight goods on drowning victims. Kelan hadn’t slept for two nights afterwards, and now there it was again, his brother’s terrifying whispers reaching from the dark.
It’s scary stuff, Kay, real scary stuff. At first they don’t find your body, but after a few weeks it’s usually some old fisherman who tears into you with this really sharp hook. If you’re Really Lucky, the hook just tears off some skin. If you’re just Regular Lucky, they hook your gut and tear out your stomach. If you’re Not So Lucky, like you, they hook your face and rip out your eye. That’s when the big hungry pikes come, Kay. They can smell the blood.
Kelan backed off from the edge. He nearly screamed as a sudden gust sliced through the calm, making the oak sway and reach. A branch struck the ground, startling him, and as he started to run, the nylon leash of his snowboard slipped from his hand. The board slid forward and began its descent without him, and he gushed in relief as he caught the rear binding with his left boot just in time.
The hair on his neck stiffened. Something lingered in the stilled night like curious ghosts who have no place to go.
“W-who’s there?”
Silence from the woods.
“Arnie?”
Please God, let it be Arnie.
“This isn’t funny, Kov—”
His words died sharply, as if the limbs of the oak had reached out and snatched them from the night. His chest pounded, and as he took up his snowboard and held it for dear life, how he wished he could hear that comforting snore of his brother. Even Eric’s faceless whispers were far better than this crippling silence.
Kelan bolted. The snowboard slipped from his grasp and he tripped over it, the rope strangling his boots. He tumbled into the snow and nearly choked on a mouthful. Scrambling, he freed his tangled legs and got to his feet. He scarcely made ten yards before he stopped cold.
White Lightning. He had to go back.
As if an icy hand had snared him by the throat, a haunting voice crept inside his mind. It seemed vaguely familiar, like a fleeting bad dream; it hung there, teasing him. Drawing him.
Do you really want to go, kiddo?
Kelan shook his head, just the once, unaware he had done so.
And when he turned, barely able to breathe, he saw it wasn’t a dream.