Kelan closed his eyes tight and held them shut as long as he could stand it. But when he opened one—it was always safer opening one, because if there really was a demon there, he was certain he could shut one faster than two—it was still there. The demon was still there.
Only, this wasn’t a demon. What it was he couldn’t figure.
He opened his other eye.
The boy in front of him seemed the same age, give or take, but there was something about his look that made Kelan wonder. His gray mackinaw was old and ratty, just like the coats those kids from way back used to wear. Kids from way back, in those grainy black-and-white movies from the 19-whatevers. A dirty brown cap didn’t sit quite right, with woolly flaps that drooped past his ears. His scarf was thick like a snake. His corduroy pants were wet, as if he’d been rolling in the snow. They had a tear in the right knee. The kid’s boots were big ugly rubbers with buckles, and when he took a step forward, they made this awful sloshing sound.
He had deep, dark eyes. Scratches on his face. He looked older than he was. Looked like he could use a good meal.
He stepped closer still, and Kelan stepped back. The kid’s mittens (Mittens, Kelan thought, how lame is that) dangled from his coat sleeves, secured with sewn ribbons. His sled, a stubby wood toboggan with a chipped stripe of red paint across its middle, lagged behind him. The thing looked like it had been built about a hundred years ago. Maybe even before TV.
“Who are you?” Kelan said.
The kid blinked at him. Just the right eye. The left didn’t move. It looked like a marble made of wood. Ugly wood.
“Well?” Kelan said. “You can talk, can’t you? Got a name?”
Again, the blink. That dead eye was starting to freak Kelan out. “Jeeze, you—”
Kelan jumped. The kid did speak … inside his head.
I’m Bobby. You’re Kelan, aren’t you.
Kelan was stupefied. He tried to see if those lips moved, even a little. He’d seen ventriloquists, of course, but he could always tell. This was so weird. And that eye—
The boy turned about and took a long gaze down the slope. Does your ma know?
Kelan swallowed. He wondered how the boy knew his name, how he knew that his mother would kill him if she knew where he was. He feared the worst.
Everything’s aces, the kid told him, reading his mind. She don’t need to know.
Kelan brightened.
The kid set himself upon his toboggan, flat on his belly.
“Hey!” Kelan cried. “What are you doing? You won’t make it on that!”
But he did.