Chapter 11
The Shadows of DeGraff

“How . . . how do you know all this?” Noah asked at last.

The wind hissed and howled through the crevices of Fort Scout. Outside, a few snowflakes swept across the sky. On the window frame, P-Dog stood on his haunches, his stare shifting between Noah and Sam.

Sam leaned in close to Noah. “Get this. One night in the Secret Zoo, two doctors, a man and a woman, were working late. Sometime after midnight, they went for a walk. The entire City of Species was asleep—lights were out, and the city gateways were at a standstill. The sky was cloudless and crowded with stars. At some point, the doctors strolled into Sector Eighteen, a sector for lions, and guess who they came across.”

“DeGraff?”

Sam nodded. “They couldn’t see much of him in the darkness—just the circular brim of his hat and the long folds of his trench coat. He was standing just outside a cave, his back to the bright moon, his arms reaching out to the sky. At his feet, an enormous animal lay covered in his shadow. A sasquatch, either sleeping or dead.

“The doctors ducked behind some bushes and watched. DeGraff continued to stand with his arms raised to the stars, his fingers splayed. A minute passed. Then another. The sasquatch began to move. It rolled away, but DeGraff followed it, his arms still lifted, the moonlight still at his back. His shadow continued to blanket the sasquatch.

“The sasquatch went into a spasm, kicking and punching at nothing. For a moment, it became perfectly still. Then it hoisted itself to its feet, rising high above DeGraff to stare down on him.”

Sam paused, leaving Noah to explore the image on his own. In his mind’s eye, Noah saw the sasquatch towering above the Shadowist, moonlight glinting on its fangs. He saw its chest heaving up and down in greedy, shallow gasps. He saw its stare locked on DeGraff.

Sam continued. “Then the sasquatch simply turned away and entered the cave. Just like that. There was no confrontation, no communication, nothing. The sasquatch just left.

“That was when one of the doctors moved, snapping a branch. DeGraff jerked at the sound, spotted them in the bushes, then fled across Sector Eighteen, disappearing within seconds.”

Noah peered out at his dark neighborhood. Now everything about it was creepy: the trees, the peaks of shadowy rooftops, the spaces beneath backyard decks, the sheds and winterized pools. DeGraff could be anywhere, hiding in anything. How could they possibly stop him from getting inside the Secret Zoo? A place with a thousand points of entry—how could that be guarded?

Noah shivered, but not from the cold.

Sam continued. “The doctors ran into the City of Species and went straight to Security. Security sent hundreds of police-monkeys into Sector Eighteen and alerted the guards on the Outside. A guard in the Clarksville Zoo spotted him. And get this—the guard said that whenever DeGraff moved into a shadow, a deep one, he immediately appeared on its opposite side. It was like he could portal across them.”

“That’s . . .” Noah thought about it. “That’s impossible.” Then he remembered what Ella had said about the man she’d seen standing in the shadows of Richie’s house on the night they first discovered the Secret Zoo. She’d said that he had dissolved into the shadows.

“Once on the Outside, it took only seconds for DeGraff to escape the Clarksville Zoo. Like this”—Sam snapped his fingers—“he was gone.”

Noah waited to comprehend what had been said. “What about the sasquatch?” he asked at last. “What happened to it?”

Sam pulled his stare away from Noah. “It became.”

When Noah realized that Sam wasn’t going to add anything else, he prompted. “It became what?”

Sam looked at Noah again. In a heavy voice, he said, “Something else. Something . . . different. Somehow DeGraff’s shadow . . . the magic inside it . . . somehow it poisoned the sasquatch.”

Noah didn’t like where this was going. He stayed silent and waited for Sam to go on.

“Shortly after DeGraff escaped, police-monkeys captured the sasquatch in the caves of Sector Eighteen. They locked it up in the City of Species. Right away, everyone could tell something was wrong with it. It was stronger and angrier than any sasquatch the Society had ever seen. And there was something in its eyes. An emptiness . . . or a deadness, maybe.

“The Secret Society built a containment area inside Sector Thirty-seven that became known as CA-Thirty-seven. It was a large area, the size of a park, maybe, with thick perimeter walls. Over the next year, the sasquatch continued to change. It became taller, wider, stronger. Its hair grew long and fell out in patches. It sprouted fangs and claws. It was constantly in a rage and killed anything it could find—birds, snakes, bugs, whatever. It slept in the mud, tossing and turning and kicking its feet, no doubt plagued by nightmares.

“Incredibly, the world around it began to change. CA-Thirty-seven started to die. Grass wilted, waters muddied, and trees dropped their leaves. Somehow, just by its existence, the sasquatch was murdering the land. I know it sounds crazy, but DeGraff . . . it was like he was spreading his darkness through the sasquatch. DeGraff’s wickedness . . . it’s like a disease.

“In the end, the sasquatch became a monster—a real monster with full allegiance to DeGraff. And DeGraff didn’t just get to that one sasquatch. In the months that he was inside our borders, he got to them all. And for DeGraff, that’s only the beginning. He doesn’t only want control over the sasquatches—he wants control over all the animals in the Secret Zoo.”

Noah shuddered at the thought.

“Think of how the sasquatches have changed, and imagine what the other animals would be like. Think of a lion, a rhinoceros, an elephant. They’d become monsters of unimaginable strength. Think of what millions could do. Not just to our world . . . but to yours.”

Noah did imagine it. And the ideas and images that formed in his head were terrifying.

Sam said, “This has been his plan from the very beginning—from the moment he stood on Mr. Jackson’s porch telling stories of Bhanu. DeGraff wants an army of monsters to storm the earth.”

Noah could feel his heart racing. Some things were beginning to make sense: Mr. Darby’s stories; the Secret Society’s concern about opening the Dark Lands to rescue Megan; the talk of the entire world being in jeopardy; and the urgent need to keep DeGraff out of the Secret Zoo. How could this be real? How could this be happening?

Noah suddenly felt very much alone. He scooped P-Dog up from the window and cradled him in his lap. P-Dog tipped his head to one side, then the other, his nose twitching. He stood on his haunches, sniffed at Noah’s chin, then touched Noah’s chest with a paw. The remarkable animal seemed to understand Noah’s hurt—seemed, in fact, to want to share it, so that Noah wouldn’t have to bear it alone.

Sam said, “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. This stuff upsets me, and you need to get back inside.”

Realizing Sam was right, Noah put down P-Dog and went to the ladder. He took a few steps down and stopped. “What happened to the sasquatch in CA-Thirty-seven?”

Sam directed his stare to a meaningless spot in the yard and became very still. While searching for an answer, he seemed to have stumbled across a memory, and now he was wandering there. Noah would have given anything to see what Sam was seeing—to live as Sam in a part of his history.

“Sam?”

Noah’s voice pulled the Descender back to reality. “Yeah?”

“The sasquatch . . . the one in CA-Thirty-seven. What did you guys do to it?”

Without another thought, Sam said, “We killed it. Just like we’re going to kill every last one of them.”

In the deep shadows of Fort Scout, Sam suddenly looked sinister: his eyes hidden in his bangs, his torso cloaked in his leather jacket.

“Go inside,” the Descender commanded. “Go to bed.”

This time, Noah obeyed without question. He fled down the ladder as fast as he could.