We had no time to ask him what in the heck he meant.

  I felt in my heart that a day would come when nothing could ever surprise me again. But what Tanaka did after uttering those strange words made my jaw drop and threw our thoughts into chaos.

  He turned his back to us, walked up to the railing, and swung himself over the side into the ocean below.

  By the time we ran after him and looked down into the watery depths, he was gone, swallowed by the sea. A crystalline swath of splash marked his point of entrance.

  Tanaka had jumped into the ocean for no reason.

  With a sick heart I watched and waited, but he did not resurface.

  I'll never forget the look of perfect sadness that graced Miyoko's face in the days after Tanaka jumped ship. Nothing could console her, and even though I had my own father turning into a hideous beast, I felt more sorry for her. She cried, and she drooped, and she wished the world to end. I felt guilty for having asked about the okisaru in the first place.

  The night before we reached the coast of Japan, we had a little chat, and a faint sliver of hope seemed to swell within her once more.

  “I've decided that my father is not dead, and not crazy,” she said, breaking my thoughts away from the churning waters disappearing below us as the boat sped toward land. The fading sun sliced through the water, creating strange hues of all colors.

  We'd already been through all of this. Not one of us could come up with even the slightest hint of an explanation for Tanaka's inexplicable dive into the biggest bathtub this side of Mars. Not one explanation—except for the saddest one of all. That he'd finally lost his last remnant of brain and went berserk, jumping to a very unpleasant—and very wet—death.

  “Miyoko,” I said, “I don't even know what to say anymore. As much as it makes me want to puke, I think that we need to face the truth. How could your dad have possibly survived? No person could swim that far—it's impossible.”

  It sounded harsh, but every person on the ship had already had this conversation with Miyoko. Unless Tanaka had become personal friends with the captain of a nuclear submarine lately, there was just no way he was alive.

  “You don't understand my father,” she continued. “Because he does not speak your language very well, and because he is a bit zany sometimes, you think him irrational—a man of bad judgment. But let me tell you something.”

  She turned from the railing of the ship and faced me, her finger pointing right between my eyes, like the last gunslinger of the Old West.

  “Not once in his entire life did my father make an unfounded or foolish decision. He was—is—the most intelligent and rational person I have ever known. I'm ashamed that I doubted him so much up until now.” She dropped her hand and turned back toward the ocean. “As crazy as it seems, as unexplainable as it seems, I know that my father knew what he was doing. I know that he is alive.”

  “Well,” I said, “whatever he is, dead or alive, swimming the backstroke or camping inside of a whale, I think he's better off than my dad.”

  And with that, I hurried off, pretending I had something to attend to.

  Three hours later, Captain Tinkles came running around the yacht, screaming with glee.

  “Ahoy, maties, dudes, and chicks! Land straight ahead! Land!”

  That word, land, was like the sound of a trickling stream to a man lost in the desert. My heart lifted out of the heavy gloom of recent days, and before I knew it, I was singing. I was actually singing. It was a terrible song, with made-up lyrics and completely out of tune, but it was beautiful all the same.

  As one, we scrambled to the front of the ship and leaned over the railing, staring with all of our might to catch sight of dirt, stone, and trees. Mom, Rusty, Joseph, Miyoko, Rayna, members of the crew. We were suddenly like kindergartners at the zoo, looking at the rhinoceros take a poop.

  “I see a building!” yelled Joseph, as he twirled away from the railing, doing some bizarre dance while snapping his fingers.

  “I see it, too!” said Miyoko, having lost all sense of her earlier mood. “There's another one—and I think I see some mountains behind them!”

  Even Rayna, Miss Serious herself, made some goofy comment about wanting to squish mud between her toes, which made my stomach turn when I pictured it.

  The faint horizon of buildings, mountains, and trees solidified as we stared, and before long, we knew we were almost there. No Christmas morning has ever felt this good, I thought, seeing solid land once again after so many weeks of bobbing on liquid.

  The captain adjusted our course, and we headed for a long pier that jutted out hundreds of feet into a large bay, with several ships docked along its length. The day had been cloudy, wet, and cold, so there was no sign of activity anywhere along the wooden structure.

  As we approached, I looked up. The skies had grown increasingly gloomy the closer we got to land, and it wasn't always explained by clouds. We'd discussed it several times, but no one had been able to explain it. But there was something wrong with the sky above us—it was becoming hazy and dark, even at midday when there were no clouds. But I couldn't see anything right then because of the storm.

  “Oh, baby,” Rusty said, snapping me out of my thoughts. “I'm gonna get down on my knees and lick the first patch of dirt I see.”

  “I thought Rayna's idea was disgusting, but you got her beat,” I replied.

  “All I want is a bed,” Mom said, “A real bed, in an actual structure that doesn't move up and down.”

  Of course, through all of this, the thoughts of Dad and Tanaka lingered in the backs of our minds like body odor in a movie theater, but we allowed ourselves a moment of reverie.

  The dock grew larger as we approached, and it became evident that not only was there little activity, the place looked like it had been completely deserted, as if a massive hurricane were approaching. No matter where we looked, we could see no sign of a living person.

  Except one.

  A lone figure, stooped and withered, stood on the very end of the dock. He was leaning on a wooden cane, looking in our direction. His demeanor left little doubt that he was waiting for us, inexplicably expecting us.

  My first thought was that maybe the person was Geezer, having fulfilled his duty to gather the remaining members of the Alliance—waiting to proudly tell us of his success. But as we slowed in anticipation of docking, I got a better look at him, and it was definitely not Geezer.

  The man was ancient, the wear and tear of decades evident in his face and hands. He was dressed in tattered gray clothes, and the knobby cane he leaned on matched the look of the knuckles on his hands, arthritic and knotted. His face was almost featureless, lost in a sea of wrinkles and age spots. His hatless head revealed only slight remnants of what used to be hair—now only wispy trails of stringy cotton. He made no move as our massive ship pulled alongside the dock, directly next to where he stood.

  He was in the same position twenty minutes later when Joseph, Miyoko, and I walked down the portable walkway from the yacht to the wooden platform of the dock. By then we had assumed he was a strange man who just wanted to spend his last days staring at the ocean—maybe waiting for his lost love to return from a tragic voyage.

  We walked past him, intent on finding some local help to take care of the business of docking, unloading our luggage and supplies, and the like. We were only three or four feet beyond him when he spoke, stopping us with his words.

  “Jimmy Fincher, we must talk.”

  His voice matched his age, a scratchy sound that struggled from his throat, like a radio station losing its signal. But his words were as powerful as thunder leading a storm.

  “I am here to save your father.”

  His last phrase had all the power of a brick wall, halting us with his cruel promise. It took a moment to formulate a response, but I was the first to speak from our group.

  “My dad? How would you know anything about my dad?”

  The old man twisted his frail body, moving his cane inch by inch, turning ever so slowly to face us. It was as if an ancient oak tree had finally tired of its resting place.

  “My boy,” he said, “your father is in the grasp of a fate you would not wish upon your fiercest foe. Your father is becoming.”

  “What do you mean, old one?” asked Miyoko.

  “He is becoming. Soon there will be no return, and he will be one of them—no trace of his former self, fully in the service of beings so terrifying that your very bones will turn to mush just seeing them.” He coughed, a hacking, wet explosion of noise. “Once the Shadow Ka call you one of their own, there is no escape to be spoken of.”

  The icy chill of his words seemed to freeze my heart.

  “What did you mean when you said you had come to save my dad?” I asked.

  “I meant what I said, boy. Only I know how to reverse this horror in which he is entrenched.”

  “And how do you know how to save him?” asked Joseph. “He's practically a full-blown Shadow Ka right now.”

  “How do I know?” He shifted even more weight onto his cane, the strain of it making an audible groan. If the pause that followed was for dramatic effect, it was completely unnecessary.

  “Because I am one.”

  The man refused to speak any more, and handed over a slip of paper with Japanese writing scribbled all over it, presumably an address. We were instructed to meet him there that evening, after we'd settled in from our long voyage. I protested, frantic to find out what he was talking about, but he was insistent, waving his gnarled hands in definite refusal. Then he began a journey of his own, an arduous walk down the long wooden pier. We watched him for several minutes, in awe of his mysterious words.

  Joseph then shouted to the man, an eruption in the silence.

  “So, who are you anyway? Do you have a name?”

  The old man halted his steps, and turned his withered head back in our direction. He answered in a scratchy whisper of a voice, only five words long, and at first my mind refused to believe I'd heard him correctly. But there was no mistaking what he'd said, and there was no way it could be a coincidence.

  Sometimes, the entire world can change with a few vibrations of the vocal chords—just three or four spoken words. How many people have had their lives come crashing down around them with only a short sentence? “You have cancer,” or, “He didn't make it,” or, “You're fired.” The answer that slipped through the old man's lips impacted me in every way as if someone had just taken an elephant and dropped him on my head, or reached inside of me and ripped my lungs out. His answer crumpled every hope he had offered with a vicious squeeze.

  “What … did you say?” Joseph asked, his trembling voice reflecting the fear of what he knew he'd just heard.

  The ancient man took a breath, shifted his body with a wince, and then looked up with yellowed eyes.

  “I said my name is Custer Bleak.”

  With that, he turned and resumed his exodus to the shore.

  “How can we go? How can we not go?”

  Joseph argued with my mom, who could barely stand when she'd heard the news that we'd met a man claiming to be Raspy, my fiercest enemy. It made no sense, since we'd seen him months ago already in the middle of his evolution into a full-blown Shadow Ka, and now he looked human—withered to the point of death, but human.

  “What do you mean, Joseph?” she pled. “How can we willingly go to a place where that monster of a man has invited us? I don't care if you think he's not the same—I don't care if he's spouting off some nonsense about being ‘healed’ from the Shadow Ka. We meet enough danger as is without seeking it out ourselves.”

  My whole world was spinning. We'd spent a couple of hours in a dazed trance, unloading our belongings, finding a hotel, moving Dad with a blanket over him to hide his hideous state of being. His skin grew blacker by the hour, now, and the budding wings on his back were taking definite shape. It sickened me to look at my own father, and hope was draining from an already empty tank.

  And just when a glimmer of a chance had sparked before us, the name Custer Bleak had come back to haunt us. Now Mom and Joseph were having a heated debate on whether or not we should keep our appointment with Raspy, or Custer, or whoever he was.

  “Listen,” Joseph said softly, trying to calm my mother. “Listen to me. Your husband is on the verge of being the same kind of monster you just talked about. We should do anything, I mean anything, no matter how dangerous or how remote, to save him. If this guy is really Custer, then he has somehow ceased to be a Shadow Ka. I mean, how could he hide it?”

  My mom could only shrug, not knowing what to say. She was just frightened for her family, for her husband—she was completely overwhelmed. I could see it in her eyes. Joseph continued.

  “And if he's not Custer, or Raspy, or whatever we're calling him, then we have nothing to fear at all. Why he would make up such a thing, I don't have a clue. But my point is this: we have to go there tonight and see what that old coot has to say. We have no choice.”

  Mom began to cry.

  “Come on, Mom,” I said. “It'll be just fine. You keep forgetting that I have a few things up my sleeve. That old crusty guy won't be able to hurt me.” I looked over at Joseph. “To be safe, maybe I should go alone.”

  Joseph shook his head like three hornets had just flown through his ears for some brain pie. “No way, boy, don't even think it. You and I are going, and that's that. I don't care if I have to hold your hand the whole time so the Shield will protect me—I'm going.”

  And so it was settled. Rusty and I had a good talk, and even he agreed that Mom needed somebody to be with her, so he decided to not put up a fuss this time and stay. Of course, Rayna, Hood, and Miyoko were riled up to no end when they were told to stay, but we finally convinced them that more people would only complicate things.

  It was decided that everyone would put their heads together and have another brainstorming session on finding the Northless Point while we went to our meeting.

  Thirty minutes later, after a quick bite of Japanese fast-food (in which I swore I saw something wiggle just as I put it in my mouth), Joseph and I set off for our meeting with the very old man.

  The air was cold and wet, and before long our clothes were damp and uncomfortable, even though it wasn't raining. We walked along a ways until we came to a busy intersection, and a long line of yellow taxis waited for our beck and call, like a giant metallic worm waiting to eat its next victim. Joseph being the adult and all, I let him figure out how to communicate with the taxi man, and soon we were zipping down the slick streets toward our destination.

  Bright neon signs zoomed past as the Japanese man decided he wanted to impress the Americans with his uncanny driving abilities. Horns blared and incomprehensible insults from pedestrians seeped through the glass of the windows. Joseph looked over at me and we both burst out laughing at the same time.

  “Hamburger French Fry, neh?” the driver said from in front.

  In the back, we exchanged puzzled glances.

  “Uh, what's that?” Joseph asked.

  “Coca Cola hot dog,” he replied. “Harry Potter Britney Spears, neh?”

  We weren't quite sure what he was talking about, so we stayed quiet and tried our darnedest to stifle our giggles. We failed something awful, and I'm sure the driver went home to tell his wife that the rude Americans didn't appreciate his amazing abilities with the English language.

  After a few minutes of torturous efforts not to laugh, we arrived.

  Joseph paid the driver, and we stepped out of the vehicle, telling him to wait for us. As the car idled, we turned and stared at the place in front of us. Joseph instinctively looked down at the piece of paper containing the address for our meeting. Of course, it was in Japanese, so we had no idea what it said. Miyoko had just told us it was an address and that the Taxi driver should know where it was located.

  “Are we at the right place?” I asked.

  “I guess so,” Joseph said. “But I sure didn't expect this. We must not have been paying much attention during the drive.”

  We were standing in what appeared to be a large parking lot, empty of cars or anything else except for the taxi and the enormous object in front of us.

  It was an airplane.

  It looked for all the world like Air Force One, that massive plane the President flies in, but I looked, and there were no words anywhere to be seen on the aircraft. It was beige, and very big—but nothing else to distinguish it or make it unique. A door was open on the side closest to us, with a large, portable staircase leading to it from the ground. The intent was clear. We were supposed to get on that plane.

  “What do you think, Jimmy?” Joseph asked.

  “What's there to think? Let's start climbing.”

  We walked the thirty or forty feet over to the plane, and as we did so, it became clear just how big the thing was. It towered over us, until it seemed it was the only thing we could see in all directions. When we made it to the foot of the staircase, I looked up. I remembered an old movie about an escalator that went to Heaven. It had seemed shorter than the steep mountain of stairs I was about to ascend.

  I went first, with Joseph right behind me, step by step. The Shield could protect both of us, but Joseph had to be careful not to get too far away from me. Holding his hand would have actually been a good and safe idea, but neither one of us was going to be the first to suggest it, so it never materialized.

  The steps were steep and hard, and we were only halfway when my calves began to ache. Step after step we climbed. I took a moment and peeked over the edge, and for a second I thought the plane had taken off with us attached. I couldn't believe how far away the ground was.

  We made it to the open door, each trying to hide our heavy breathing from the other. I was going to say something, but realized it would give away how winded I was, so I just nodded my head, indicating I was going in. I stepped through the door into the plane.