Malachi was right, of course. Whatever the Jabberwock was, it “lived” in Fearsome Hollow. Charlie remembered the mist and almost shuddered. The Jabberwock was hidden in that mist. Or maybe the Jabberwock was the mist.
“This isn’t just about Abner’s house, and all the other houses that have aged a hundred years overnight,” Sam said. “It’s about Abner. Where is he?”
“We could look under every rock in Nowhere County and not find him,” Malachi said. “He’s not here anymore.”
“Then where is he?” Sam’s voice was close to a strangled sob.
“The witch warned us,” Charlie said. “When she gave us the rocks, she said that when she got back to Gideon after spending the night in the woods, her family’s house was bare — all the houses were — no furniture, no food, no possessions, nothing in them, but—”
“—her family was still there, still in Gideon … somewhere,” Sam finished for her.
“For a while,” Malachi said. “Her father left the rocks for her for three days. Maybe from inside Gideon looking out there was a mirage around it, like out there on the county line. Remember when Liam tossed those rocks on J-Day, how they bounced right through it to the other side? I bet that’s what the witch’s father was doing — throwing rocks through a mirage.”
“For three days, but after that it ‘took them’ — whatever ‘took them’ means,” Sam said.
Charlie knew what it meant. So did Sam, whose voice was huskier than usual when she answered her own question. “It means ‘vanished.’ Like Abner.”
Charlie had a sudden, crazy thought. She knew it had grown out of what had happened in her kitchen this morning — what she thought had happened — but she voiced it anyway. “You don’t suppose that … there are people in Nowhere County right now who came looking for somebody and found … nothing but empty houses — all the people vanished?”
“We have bigger fish to fry than wasting time wondering what people outside the Jabberwock are doing,” Malachi said. “If the Jabberwock ‘took’ the people in Gideon, and Abner, then by logical progression it will—”
“Take all of us eventually just like it took them,” Sam completed his thought.
“Only there are a whole lot more of us,” Charlie said. “Nowhere County’s way bigger than Gideon.”
“You think it took the sky then, too?” Sam said.
“The sky?”
“Well, the stars anyway.”
“You’ve been talking to Pete," Malachi said and Sam nodded. "The stars in the night sky. They're … wrong. And the uniformity. Weather, temperature. It's artificial."
Charlie knew without asking what he was talking about, had wondered about it herself — no clouds, and every morning it was sixty-five degrees when she got up and eighty at noon. Every day. But she had blown it off. Malachi didn’t miss much.
“And time,” Sam said.
“You think so, too, huh?” Malachi noticed Charlie’s confusion, that she wasn’t privy to the understanding that had passed between him and Sam. “It’s not something definitive, something you can quantify. It’s not like looking at a sky without constellations and the stars don’t twinkle, or temperature as predictable as a thermostat. But time is passing … too fast. And it’s getting faster every day.”
“Too fast …?”
“It doesn’t take a whole hour for an hour to pass. And the clocks are synced to … Jabberwock time … so you don’t notice.”
“Then how do you know?”
“I’ve spent weeks, months of my life an hour at a time walking guard duty. Your body learns to measure, knows when your replacement will arrive. Now it’s off somehow, all wrong. Minutes, hours … maybe even days are passing here faster than they are” — he made an all-encompassing gesture that indicated the rest of the known universe — “out there.”
“It’s definitive.” Sam’s voice was soft. “Rusty has an hourglass. It came with a chemistry set, I think. I don’t remember. He brought it to me a couple of days ago and said he’d watched the sand drain out of one glass into the other and it was off, wrong. So we sat, watched it together. When the clock on the wall said an hour had passed, there was still sand in the glass. Another sixteen minutes’ worth.”
Charlie felt an awful chill settle into her bones.
“Abner’s house had … aged,” she said. “The Jabberwock controls … time?”
“Not just Abner’s house,” Malachi said. “I’ve seen others.”
“I have, too.” Sam and Malachi traveled the back roads into the mountains and had seen what Charlie hadn’t.
“If the Jabberwock is not just a phenomenon but a being with a will, then it has a purpose. There’s a reason it’s here.” Malachi sounded like he knew what that reason was, or thought he did.
“What is it?” Charlie asked. “What’s the reason?”
Malachi didn’t say anything, then dodged the question altogether with, “Maybe somebody at tonight’s meeting knows.”
That was something else they needed to talk about — the meeting Deputy Sheriff Liam Montgomery had coaxed the county’s founder, Sebastian Nower, into setting up tonight.
“We’re going to have to dump on everybody else tonight what we suspect,” Charlie said, looked at the other two and amended, “what we have figured out — that people are vanishing. Maybe if everybody in the whole county puts their heads together, we could—”
“You get to deliver the bad news,” Sam said to Malachi. “Less likely somebody will decide to shoot the messenger if it’s you.”
There was a sudden commotion outside the door and Roscoe Tungate rushed in without knocking. His eyes were wild, his voice trembled.
“Harry’s gone!”
“Gone?” Charlie knew she sounded like a parrot. She also knew what he meant without having to ask and the knowing of it made her sick to her stomach.
“Gone! You got to help me find him, please. Pleeease, help me.”
He sounded like he was about to cry.
“I knew it when it happened. Me’n Harry … we’re connected. We’re … it’s a thing, we know if there’s something bad … I felt it when it hit Harry. The cold! And he hollered, ‘No!’ And now I can’t … get through to him. I ain’t never had to try to communicate with Harry. It was just there, you know. But I been trying and … I hear that sound, not loud, but I hear it. That … static.”
“Have you gone to his house to try to find him?” Sam asked.
“No. I come here first.” Tears began to run down his cheeks.
Roscoe lived on Burnt Stump Road on the south side of Callahan Mountain and Harry lived in Solomon Hollow on the north side. The Middle of Nowhere was the opposite direction, but Roscoe’d come here first. Clearly, he was afraid of what he would find at Harry’s and didn’t want to go alone.
“I’ll help you look for him,” Malachi said, getting to his feet.
Roscoe nodded, relieved, but didn’t say anything. Maybe he couldn’t. He just turned and strode purposefully out of the room.
Malachi spoke quietly, maybe just to himself. “Picking us off, one by one. And eventually …”
Charlie thought of Gideon, looked from Sam to Malachi, and fear passed among them as real as the chill Charlie’d felt breathing out of Abner’s front door.
“I’ll be back in time for the meeting,” Malachi told her and Sam, and then he was gone.