After standing there for a few seconds, the rider calmly pulled off the black helmet. His face was even with the middle of the window, and he stood very close to it, so we got a pretty good look at him, in spite of the fact that the only source of light was coming from behind him, from the bullet bike headlights.

  The man was Japanese, with black hair hanging down to his shoulders. He had a bandanna tied around his neck, and one on each arm around his biceps. The bandannas were red, but everything else he wore was black. He had a narrow face, and when he suddenly smiled, we saw that he had white, but very crooked, teeth. I had not seen such a nasty-looking man since I last laid eyes on Raspy.

  But nothing was as bad as this new man's eyes. They were as black as the rips I had seen in the Black Curtain. And I don't just mean in the normal sense. There were no whites of his eyes. From end to end, top to bottom, the man's eyes were pitch black. And as he stared at us with those hideous, dark orbs, fear rippled up and down my body.

  And then, he spoke.

  “My name is Kenji.”

  His voice was gurgled, like he had something in his throat that he either needed to spit or swallow. He had a heavy Japanese accent. He glanced backward, arm raised to indicate his fellow bikers, and then he turned back to face us again.

  “We are the Bosu Zoku, here to end your hopeless quest against the Stompers. It's over, Jimmy Fincher.”

  I remembered what it had been like stuck in that tree back in Georgia, that day when all of my adventures first started. I suddenly wished I were back in that tree, looking down on old Mayor Duck. Compared to this new Kenji guy, Duck didn't seem so bad after all.

  Dad was the first to speak up after those downright impolite words from this Kenji character.

  “If you know who we are, then we know who you are. We thought that all of you pathetic Shadow Ka wannabes were gone, but we were wrong, I guess. But look here, Mister Kenji, you can do what you want, but you must be awfully misinformed. There's nothing you can do to hurt any of us. My boy here is the most powerful person in the world!”

  It had just started to sound good until Dad threw in that last part. Not only was it corny, but pretty hard to swallow, especially for me.

  Kenji continued his crooked smile and swiveled around to look at his bikers. When he turned back to us, his smile had faded completely.

  “Oh, my. Oh, my. I'm so very frightened. Please, have mercy on all of us.”

  Mr. Kenji was a genuine smart aleck.

  He turned around and strode back to his bike. From somewhere on the machine he pulled out a big, black stick before heading back to our window. The four of us remained huddled together, waiting and wondering.

  Kenji used the stick to break out all of the remaining glass attached to the sides of the window. Then he put his hands along the bottom ledge, one still holding onto the stick, heaved himself up and swung his legs over. The next thing we knew, we had a strange Japanese man standing in the room with us.

  “Let me guess,” he said with his gurgly voice, “you have received the First Gift. This is no surprise to any of us. So, what is it?”

  For some reason, his question really shocked me. I couldn't decide where he was coming from. If he really didn't know, why would he expose himself by asking us, admitting his lack of knowledge? And would he really expect us to tell him the truth? If he did know, what purpose would it serve to lie about it? It just seemed like a weird question.

  Dad decided to ignore him.

  “Okay, kids, stand up here, and let's all hold hands. Helen, you take Jimmy's left hand. Rusty, take his right hand. I'll keep a hand on your shoulders, Jimmy. Let's just ignore this freak and walk out of here and go to a police station.”

  We did as Dad said. Walking to the hotel door, we surely looked as ridiculous as we felt.

  Kenji's next words halted us, ending our lame effort to ignore him.

  “Don't you want to know what my little black stick is?”

  We couldn't help but stop and look back at him. Strange how curiosity works. We all wanted to know what that black stick was.

  Kenji stepped in front of us, and then threw the stick onto the center of the floor. It didn't bounce, or roll, or fall over. It was like the stick had been a knife, and he had thrown the sharp edge into the straw floor. But it didn't have a sharp edge. It just landed on end, upright, with the other end sticking straight up toward the ceiling. And it didn't even shake or anything. It just landed, and stood there, perfectly still.

  Our curiosity roused, we got a better look at it. It appeared to be polished, black glass, about two inches in diameter and two feet long. And we had no idea as to what its purpose could be.

  “Now,” Kenji said, “I know all about your silly Shield.”

  He took out a coin from his pocket and heaved it at my head. I didn't even flinch. It bounced off of thin air a few inches in front of me, and flew off into a corner.

  Kenji smiled.

  “However, your understanding of it is so primitive. You simply have no idea, little boy, but the Givers are not as perfect as you think. They forgot one little thing about The Shield. Granted, it's subtle, but it makes no difference. The results of their slight will be disastrous for all of you.

  “This black stick is called the Sounding Rod, and I promise you, you will not like it. Only you, Jimmy, can set it off—we'll grant you that—but there is no doubt whatsoever that you will. I know you'll try not to, but you will nonetheless—because you don't know how to do it, and therefore cannot prevent yourself from doing it. Ironic, eh? Now, take care, and oh, Jimmy?”

  I said nothing.

  “Whatever you do, don't look at the sun.” He laughed. “We'll be there when you set off the Sounding Rod. We will be following you.”

  Kenji turned around, climbed out of the window, and rejoined his merry group of men he liked to call the Bosu Zoku. With a roar of engines and bright swords of crisscrossing light from the head beams, they all drove off into the dark.

  The black stick, unfortunately, stayed with us, not moving from the middle of the floor.

  Too bad not a one of us had the slightest clue what this Sounding Rod was.

  Actually, we would soon wish we had never found out.

  With Kenji and his bikers gone, we didn't know what to do. Nothing about the strange black cylinder made any sense. In the complete silence left in the wake of the Bosu Zoku, the Sounding Rod just stood there on the floor, sticking straight up, looking like nothing but a very tall and skinny drinking glass.

  Rusty spoke in a tremulous voice. “Dad, what's going on? I thought the Giver girl said that we would be safe for a while, that the Black Curtain was blocked.”

  Rusty was on the verge of crying, which was so rare that it just about made me want to cry too. This made me think. It'd been a long time since I had last cried. I was getting used to always being on the edge of danger and being scared out of my wits.

  “It's alright, son,” Dad assured him. “Those guys are nothing worth worrying about. Let's not all forget that Jimmy here has a little thing called The Shield, and there ain't nothing in the world that can get to us.”

  Mom chimed in, “But he said that the Givers forgot something, something that would make The Shield falter.”

  “Yeah, but he was just trying to scare us, I'm sure.” Dad sounded about as confident as if he had just said the moon would start wearing undies tomorrow.

  “Actually,” he amended, “I should've seen this coming.”

  “What do ya mean?” asked Rusty.

  “I think those people may have a Shadow Ka as their leader. I've tried to ignore it, but now I'm pretty sure I've seen that same black stuff in the sky recently.”

  “What black substance?” This time it was Mom who asked.

  “When I rescued Jimmy in Utah, I was able to find him because I've learned to sense this black haze-like substance that lingers in the air around and above the Shadow Ka and their followers when they're in our world. I have no idea what it is—I think it doesn't really have anything to do with the Blackness or the Black Curtain. That's what I used to think.

  “The point is, I've noticed it in the air above Kushiro recently, and I guess I passed it off as the misty weather here, thinking it was just part of the clouds. But now I'm pretty certain that it was the stigma of the Shadow Ka. I think Kenji may be one. Or worse, all of them.”

  We were all quiet for a minute or two, slowly letting it sink in that things weren't as rosy as they had seemed when we'd gone to bed earlier. I finally broke the silence.

  “Well, whatever,” I said. “Question is, what in the world are we gonna do now?”

  “I don't know,” Dad said. “Get some sleep?”

  “Are you crazy?” Rusty asked. “How on earth could we sleep after all this?”

  “Well, I don't know. Would you rather go to another hotel or what? We have to do something, and we can't survive if we don't sleep, now can we?”

  “I vote for another hotel,” I said, not wanting to be in that room for another second.

  Rusty and Mom both agreed.

  “Fine, fine. Get your things together.”

  No one hesitated for a second. We were in a place of nightmares come true now, and we all wanted to be gone from it, even if it only meant some more peace of mind.

  Ten minutes later, we were packed and ready to go. My new Braves hat was firmly in place on my head.

  Dad opened the door, and Mom went through first. Rusty went next, and I followed him into the hallway. Dad closed the door as he brought up the rear. After the door closed, we all suddenly remembered the Sounding Rod.

  “Well,” Mom said, “I guess we can quit worrying about that ghastly thing.”

  “Yeah, let's go.” Dad mumbled.

  We started off down the hall. I glanced back at the door, and stopped dead in my tracks.

  Everyone sensed my sudden fear, and looked back with me. As possible as the impossible had become in our lives, we all stared in shock.

  Along the crack on the hinged side of the door, a glossy black liquid was seeping out of the room and into the hallway, floating in the air, accumulating into a pool of goop right there in the hallway. It looked just like those videos you see of the astronauts on the space shuttle when they're playing around with their drinks, and letting little blobs of liquid float around as they try to catch it in their mouths.

  It kept seeping through the crack, until it had all finally come out, and there was a big glob of floating black liquid, shimmering in the air. Then it started to stretch out, and as it did, it seemed to solidify, until before long, we were all staring at the same black glass stick we had seen in our hotel room, defying gravity, hovering without making a peep. What had been a wobbly, floating liquid had now turned back into the Sounding Rod.

  Dad had had enough.

  He lunged for the Rod, and grabbed at it with his hands. It let him get his hands around it, but then it squirted out in a burst of black liquid, and reformed a few feet down the hall from him. Then Dad swung a suitcase at it, splattering it like a water balloon all over the hallway wall. It slammed against the wall like a glassful of ink, making a huge mess of black goo all over the wallpaper. That sudden sheet of blackness sent chills up and down our spines, because it looked way too familiar.

  But after just a couple of seconds, it pooled back together, stretched out, and once again formed the long cylinder of the Sounding Rod, floating in the air, all calm and nice-like.

  Its intent was obvious. That menacing little bugger was going to follow us through thick and thin.

  Literally.

  We made our way down to the hotel lobby, and sure enough, the Sounding Rod followed us the entire way. I began to wonder what other people were going to think when they saw this strange object flying behind us like some kind of UFO. It was late, and there were only a couple of people down in the lobby, but they didn't seem to notice the Rod at all. We were certain they looked in its direction, but they didn't even bat an eye. It seemed crazy, but the only explanation was that they couldn't see it. And then came the real shocker.

  There was a huge mirror in the lobby, one of those fancy kinds with a golden frame. As we walked in front of it, we all took a look by habit, and there was no black rod to be seen. I glanced over at the Sounding Rod, making sure it was still there. It floated about four feet from my head. I looked back into the mirror. Nothing.

  Not that it was anything new in our life, but this Sounding Rod thing was one strange puppy.

  Dad checked us out of the hotel, surprised that the ruckus of the Bosu Zoku had not set off a major panic alarm. People either hadn't noticed or were too afraid to get involved when a motorcycle gang was the culprit. We left the hotel hoping to never see it again and caught a taxi to the train station. We were soon on our way to another town.

  Dad figured that we might as well start our journey to look for the book and leave the town of Kushiro behind. He told us all to try our best to sleep on the train, because we'd be on it for about three hours. We were heading for a city called Kitami.

  As we settled in for the long ride, Dad opened up and told us some things about the past to give us a better understanding of what we were undertaking. We'd bombarded him with questions ever since we'd escaped The Blackness, but Dad had always avoided them or put them off. It reminded me of my great-uncle Grady, who fought in the Pacific during World War Two. Reflecting on the war brought back such horrible memories for him, he didn't like talking about it too much. Dad seemed to be the same way about his past with the Union of Knights and his search for the key in Japan a decade earlier.

  The entire time my dad spoke, I felt like I didn't even blink I was so involved with what he told us. Some of it I had heard before, but it was fascinating all the same.

  The man I knew as Raspy was actually named Custer Bleak. Years and years ago, he started a group that was known throughout town simply as a gentleman's club, a place to mingle, play pool, and talk about politics. It was called the Union of Knights, and unfortunately, my grandpa was mixed up in it. Until the day I die, I'll be convinced that his intentions were pure, and that he never meant the group to turn into the horrible thing it eventually became.

  We would never know when the Union became corrupt, and turned into the manipulated tool of the Shadow Ka. It may have been that way from the very beginning for some of its members. The Shadow Ka were the army of dark creatures that served as the minions of a terrible enemy called the Stompers.

  The Ka were supposedly sent for the sole purpose of preparing the way for these Stompers to come and wreak their havoc. None of us yet knew exactly what that meant, or what they were doing for these “preparations.” All I knew or cared about was that the Ka were scary, whether in their human form here in our world, or in their true form in the Blackness—black, beastly, massive, winged creatures, with a piercing scream of anger constantly coming from their throats. To the eyes they seemed like a shadow, but with the substance of a living being.

  These Shadow Ka had come to this world and taken over most of the members of the Union of Knights. Whenever and however it happened, we now knew that the entire purpose of the Ka-controlled Union was to stop the master plan of another group, a mysterious people that constantly seemed to avoid explaining themselves.

  The Givers.

  There was still so much to learn about them. The only thing that was certain was that they were trying to help in the battle against the Ka and the Stompers.

  I'd met two of them, assuming there were more than two. The old man, the one I called Farmer, and the little girl, the one who'd opened up one last Ripping in the Black Curtain to get us back to Earth after I'd blocked the Curtain with The Shield. I would never forget the violent mayhem of that blocking—we'd barely survived.

  The Blackness was the glue that held it all together, a strange portal between worlds, a marble pathway stretching forever through an inky lake, leading to barrels of iron rings that served as gateways to individual worlds. It was these countless worlds that the Stompers had been spending the ages of time destroying. Our good friend, Joseph, had seen what the Stompers left behind, and it chilled me to the bone. I remembered his description of a sea of beds in a world of gray, holding, as if asleep, those left in the wake of whatever it was that the Stompers did in their quest of destruction.

  So much still to learn, so much still to fear. But our part in the battle had irrevocably begun, and my family was smack dab in the middle.

  Grandpa had left the Union of Knights, refusing to make my dad get involved at Raspy's request. For this, Grandpa lost his life. To save ours, Dad agreed to go to Japan almost ten years ago in order to find a key that would open a special Door that lay in the woods near my home in Georgia. This Door was placed there by the Givers, behind which was the powerful gift that had ended up as mine. According to Farmer, it was all part of a plan to find a person worthy and capable of taking on the weighty responsibility of leading the eventual battle against the Stompers, when they came to inflict their path of annihilation.

  I would end up with that Gift, but that story has been told. The story of my dad in Japan has not, and I would hear much of it for the first time as we rode on that swift and sleek train through the mountains and rivers of Japan.

  The Union of Knights realized years ago that their victory would be quick and absolute if they put a stop to whatever awaited under the Door, which they had finally found in the woods of Georgia. Therefore, Raspy knew they needed the key to open it, which according to legends and myths put into place by the Givers, was in Japan.

  My dad, because of his knowledge of the Japanese language, and because of his many skills and high intellect, was chosen to go. He wanted to refuse, but had no choice. The Union of Knights had become very powerful in our hometown of Duluth, and Raspy threatened our family directly if Dad would not go.

  So, Dad went.

  He had nothing to go on, no clues where to start. His trip was financed by Raspy and his dirty money, and Dad stayed in Tokyo for several weeks, spending his days searching the many books and maps of the largest library in all of Japan. He looked for anything and everything that would give him the slightest clue.