When I came to my senses, all the calm and peace I had felt earlier left as quick as it had come. I was scared to death all over again. What was I going to do when I got off the plane? How was I supposed to know who this Joseph character was? What if he wasn't there at all? Dad had said he was a bit unusual—what if he was psycho or something? How long had it been since my dad had seen this guy? Question after question, but no answers yet.

  The plane landed—without crashing thank goodness—and it was time to get off. Gripping my bag like my life depended on it, I slowly made my way down the aisle with the rest of the impatient folks, walked down the thing that connects the plane to the terminal building, and stepped into the Salt Lake airport.

  There was a mass of airport chairs, people, kids, strollers, wheelchairs, luggage, newspapers, security guards, huge windows—definitely an airport. But as soon as I stepped off that plane, my eyes focused on the strangest person I might've ever seen.

  Twenty feet away stood a man, tall as a tree, with not a hair on his head. His skin looked pale, and he had very distinct features—sharp, blue eyes, a somewhat-pointed nose, ears that stuck out like they were trying to escape, and a ragged jaw-line. His chin was rounded, and he had a big dimple right under his lips. His neck was long, but muscular, and the rest of his body was bulky, not completely hidden by the clothes he wore—if his horrendous outfit could be classified as clothes. Puke-green T-shirt that was just a little too small, red jeans that barely made it to his ankles, no socks, and orange flip-flops. As strange as he appeared, something about this man was eerily comforting and reassuring.

  I had no doubt as to whom I was looking at.

  Joseph.

  “Hello, Jimmy.”

  His voice was whispery and soft, almost hard to hear. It seemed downright eerie.

  “Hey. I guess you're the guy my dad was talking about—Joseph,” I replied.

  “Yes, I am. I reckon your dad thinks I can save you from the Union of Knights, but I've got my doubts about that one. Well, now,” he said, seeing my look of puzzlement, “you haven't got a clue what's going on, do you?”

  If I had thought this guy strange from his looks, it was all more than confirmed after thirty seconds of talking to him. Union of Knights? This guy wasn't chopping with a full hatchet.

  “Actually, sir, I don't. Dad told me very little before he got me on that plane. Something about the past, and him getting out of something bad, but that's it.” I had the sudden thought that I was trusting this guy too soon, making too many assumptions.

  He lightly touched my arm, and suggested that we get out of the airport and go somewhere else. Alarms went off in my head.

  “Well, I don't know. I, uh, don't even know you. I don't know if I should just go running around with a stranger. Uh … let me call my dad.” My voice shook.

  “No, no, no—that's impossible. THEY might be at your house, waiting to answer the phone. No, it's time to take every possible precaution. But I can understand your hesitancy. I will prove my loyalty to you and your dad if you'll just follow me to my car. It's in a lighted area right next to the doors to the ticketing area.” He gave me a smile, and it was pretty genuine. “Okey-dokey-smokey?”

  I hate it when people say that.

  “All right. I'll at least do that much.” Like I had anything else to do. What would I do, go rent a car and get me a hotel room? He turned and started walking, and I followed.

  We passed a million people, all looking like they were in some world of a hurry. I don't know what it is about airports, but I love walking around in them. Maybe it's because I think airplanes are so cool, and I like to look at weirdos. It can't seem possible, but every time I've been in an airport, my family and I seemed to be the only normal ones in the whole place.

  We were heading past a food court, making our way to the escalators, when Joseph spoke again.

  “Jimmy, you hungry? Want a burger or something?”

  I was starving, having missed the lovely airplane food. But I felt anxious to find out what Joseph's “proof” was. “No,” I said, “Let's go ahead and go to your car.”

  The car fit the person. It was an old VW Bug, with the worst paint job I'd ever seen—an assortment of grays, blues, and white, all patched together in little haphazard shapes. I couldn't tell if it was deliberate or if the previous paint jobs were showing through the current one.

  Joseph popped open the trunk, which was in the front—a thing I've never understood about those cars—and pulled out a couple of big books. At first I couldn't tell what they were, but when he put them in front of me, I could see that they were photo albums. He wanted to show me pictures of himself to prove he was safe?

  I wasn't ready for what the albums contained.

  There must have been a million pictures inside, and they were all of Joseph—with all the people that were a part of my life. There was a picture of him at our dinner table, laughing with my mom. A picture of him in a three-legged race with my mom as his partner. A picture of him wrestling with Rusty in our living room. A picture of him putting up Christmas lights on our house. A picture of Joseph in front of the Duluth City Hall, with Mayor Duck—that one made me a little nervous. A picture of Joseph throwing a football in the front yard of my house—the house I had lived in since the day I was born.

  A picture of Joseph reading a book to a small boy in his lap.

  The boy was me.

  “You see, Jimmy, I think it's pretty fair to say that you can trust me. I reckon you can trust me a lot more than you think.” Joseph had put on a very serious face, and his eyes bore into me like a hot iron.

  “Yeah, I guess so. Well … how come I don't remember you at all? I mean, if you were so close to our family, how come I've never even heard of you?”

  Joseph winked at me, and said, “All in good time, Jimmy.”

  As I relented, got in the car, and drove off with him, a thought popped in my head with a force that almost made me jump out of my seat.

  In all those pictures, not a single one had my dad in it.

  We drove for quite some time, in complete silence, heading toward a big shadowy horizon that I figured were mountains. I'd never seen mountains before, at least not the rocky kind, and actually looked forward to seeing them the next day when it was light outside. Joseph pulled off at an exit that said something about ski resorts, and we were soon climbing a steep, curvy road. I finally broke the silence with the question that had been burning in my mind.

  “Joseph, why wasn't my dad in any of those pictures you showed me?”

  He hesitated, and I knew something was fishy about the whole thing.

  “You're very observant, Jimmy,” he said, and I thought it was pretty dumb to call it observant—it seemed obvious. He continued, “That's a long story. I'll catch you up later on the whole mess. But not here. Man, I didn't think about that. I promise I could've brought others that did have your dad in them.”

  I was fed up.

  “C'mon, I'm sick of you and my dad telling me to wait, that I'll soon know everything. Just tell me. How did you know my family?”

  “I grew up in Duluth, that's how. Your grandfather and my father were … close. They were part of a group that started something called the Union of Knights. I know it sounds like some dumb fantasy novel, but it isn't anything like that. That's just a name they pulled out of the air, and I guess they thought it was pretty cool. Kind of stupid, huh?”

  “Yeah,” was my only reply, trying to relay the point that I wanted him to continue.

  “Anyway, this … club … was something quite extraordinary. It wasn't like the Boy Scouts or the Lion's Club, it was …” he trailed off, looking into his rear-view mirror like someone was following us. I looked back over my shoulder and saw a car about 50 yards behind us, gaining speed. My nerves jumped in alarm.

  But the car caught up with us quickly and just passed on by. Man, I thought, aren't they in a hurry.

  “You were saying?” I prodded.

  “Yeah, uh …” Beads of sweat covered his brow, and his eyes showed traces of fear. “Yeah, anyway, this club I was telling you about. Like I said, it was quite a unique gathering of people. Every last one of them was crazy—so crazy as to scare the willies out of the bravest soul. You won't believe it, Jimmy. They were just plain and simply insane. I'll admit they found something pretty incredible after all their searching, but they're still psychotic. And that's why they are the scariest people I've ever come across. I hate to have to be the one to tell you about your ancestry like this, but like you said, it's time to quit beating around the bush.”

  He pulled off onto a little dirt road, and we drove up a very steep incline until we stopped in a small driveway of what looked like some kind of old log cabin. There wasn't a light in sight but for the headlights of the car. The woods surrounding the cabin seemed like walls of wood, shutting us in from the rest of the world. I suddenly felt claustrophobic.

  “We're here!” Joseph said, a little too cheerfully for the circumstances.

  “Where's here?” I asked.

  “We're in Alta Canyon, at a cabin that I bought about ten years ago—a place that I felt like I could come and hide from … the world every once in a while.”

  “I thought Utah was supposed to be a place where they wouldn't suspect us? What if they come here looking for us?” I wondered why it seemed like I was the smarter of the two sitting in that car.

  “Nonsense. It's not like those people are that smart, Jimmy. You think they're the mafia or something? Now come on.” I had the feeling he didn't believe his own words.

  He jumped out of the car, leaving it running, and walked up to some kind of electrical box. A couple of switches later and we had some outside lights on, making everything seem a little safer.

  Joseph returned and turned off the car. With a little apprehension, I got out of the car as well. I still wasn't too sure about this guy. I clutched my bag, and waited to follow him into the cabin. I heard a twig break somewhere out in the woods, and the skin on the back of my neck shot straight up.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked, embarrassed at how scared my voice sounded.

  “Yeah. Here, open that door and go inside. I already unlocked it.” He pointed to a door halfway in the shadows, on the left side of the cabin. I didn't recall him unlocking it.

  The door opened easily. I stepped inside and looked around. All I could see were faint shadows, the only light being that which spilled in from outside. I groped along the wall for a light switch, but only found a nice splinter that made me wince in pain. So I stood and waited, either for Joseph or for my eyes to adjust. Without warning, the outside lights turned off. I gasped, and crouched down onto my knees.

  Ten seconds of silence followed—an eternity.

  Then the air rocked with the sudden sound of an explosion so loud that it made my eardrums feel like they had shattered. Acting on some kind of instinct, I threw myself flat onto the floor, waiting for the whole cabin to come collapsing down on top of me. But then I realized it was from outside—was it a shotgun blast? Dynamite? I didn't know enough about any of that stuff to make an educated guess. But something bad had just happened.

  A few seconds later, someone stumbled through the doorway and crashed onto the floor, not more than three feet away from me.

  “Jimmy …”

  It was Joseph, struggling to even speak.

  “Jimmy …”

  He pulled something out from under him—a flashlight, and flicked it on.

  I stared.

  He was covered in blood—his face, his neck, his clothes. I couldn't tell where the wound was, or if there was even a single wound at all. He just looked like he had jumped in a river of red paint. Who had done this to him?

  “Jimmy … he's still out there … listen to me.” He could barely get the words out. “Remember these three words. Old … Willow's … Trunk. That's where it is. And trust no one, Jimmy, no one but your father. Even I don't know who's on whose side. Old Willow's Trunk. DO … NOT … FORGET … IT! The … key …”

  His voice faded into death with one last gasp.

  Joseph, the man who was supposed to take care of me, the only bead of hope in a string of fear and despair, the one who was going to finally answer all my questions, was gone.

  And I was alone, in a cabin, not knowing what was beyond the door, waiting out there in the darkness.

  Scared to death, I picked up the flashlight and turned it off. I figured if someone were still out there, I didn't want to let them know exactly where I was. Let us both be in darkness—at least then we're on even terms.

  I scooted over to the wall directly beside the front door, and waited for a few minutes. I couldn't hear a sound coming from anywhere, except for normal nighttime sounds like crickets and hooting owls. Had the person run off? What had happened? Joseph looked like someone had set off a bomb right under his nose, but I didn't think the noise had been loud enough to be anything like that. I concluded that someone must have used a shotgun or something. So where was he, or she, now?

  No, Joseph had said “he,” I thought. That meant that they had interacted at least briefly before the gun was shot. The way Joseph had said “he's still out there”—something about his tone made it sound like Joseph had known the man.

  After a few minutes of running through these thoughts in my head, I decided to take a peek outside. My confidence was building that the man had done his business and taken off. But why would he have left me there?

  I peeked around the edge of the door, crouched on my hands and knees.

  Nothing but shadows, caused by the faint moonlight.

  I decided that this guy might just be sitting there, waiting for me to get relaxed, so that he could jump me. If that were the case, then he must want me alive, I thought, because if he had a shotgun, it didn't really matter what state I was in.

  I had to do something.

  I groped around the floor, looking for a hard object. A few feet from the door was a bookshelf, and I grabbed a nice big book. I looked around the cabin, and spotted a window in the middle of the back wall. Holding the book like a Frisbee, I swung it as hard as I could toward the window, and the book was true to my aim. The crashing sound as it broke through the window and into the woods was like a freight train compared to the silence that had preceded it.

  Hoping that the bad guy was dumb enough to think that I was dumb enough to jump out of a window without knowing what lay below, I waited a couple of seconds and then took off out the front door. I had the flashlight in my hands, turned off, but nothing else. I didn't look to the left or right, I just ran straight ahead.

  Straight ahead into a massive body, causing me to fall right back down onto the ground.

  My head hit a rock, and everything went black.

  My plan hadn't worked too well.

  When I woke up, I was lying on the floor, with morning sunshine coming through a nearby window. I could tell that I wasn't in the cabin anymore, but rather in what looked like a motel or something. The stuff that had happened the night before came rushing back into my brain, and I went into a panic. I jumped up and looked at the bed in the room, and sure enough there was someone sleeping there, snoring like a stuffy-nosed pig. It had to be the truck of a man that I had run into last night, guessing from the size of the gigantic lump under the covers.

  Not in the mood to hang out with the fella, I slowly crept toward the door. But one of my legs didn't want to cooperate, and I looked down and saw that it was chained to the dresser handle. Dang it, I thought, what in all get out is going on here?

  “Now, now, there little buddy, you ain't got no plans on leaving do ya?”

  The deep voice came from the whale under the sheets, and I couldn't do a thing but look his way. His big head poked out of the covers, and he grinned right at me. My heart froze in fear—not for the first time in the last little while.

  “Sir, I'm real scared and I don't have any idea what's going on here. Please just let me go and I swear on my scrawny little life I won't rat on anybody or anything I've seen. I swear, sir—please, let me go.”

  The man threw off the covers and slowly rolled up into a sitting position. I almost gasped out loud—the man was so hairy he looked like Big Foot. Hair was everywhere—all over his enormous body. I couldn't help but have the odd thought right then that the man should shave that nasty stuff off if he ever went to the pool, or somebody'd think the gorillas were loose and shoot him with a tranquilizer.

  “Sonny boy, you can just sit yourself down and relax. I ain't nobody you should be scared of. If it weren't for me, you'd be deader than Abraham Lincoln.” He gave me another grin, and continued on when I just stared. “Jimmy, I'm Joe. I know your daddy sent you looking for me, so relax, you've found me.”

  I stared some more, shocked at his words. Ten seconds before I would've thought it impossible, but I was now more confused. If this was Joseph, then who was—

  “What're you talking about?” I asked.

  “Jimmy, that man who picked you up, he was after you, son. I was late for the airport because he or some other fool slit my tires so as they could be there to snatch you up. I took a taxi and got there just in time to follow you up to that stupid cabin. And, of course, shot that one fool dead. So, like I said, you'd be dead as dirt if it weren't for me. Any questions?”

  What was I supposed to say to that?

  “Well … how do I know you ain't the bad guy and the one you killed really was Joseph? He sure didn't seem like a bad guy to me.” I was stammering now.

  “I risked my life to save you.”

  He said it so matter-of-fact like, with a grimness to his face that kind of took me aback. I didn't know what to think, because the man who had picked me up from the airport sure didn't seem like he was out to do me harm, and all I knew of this fella was that he had killed at least one person in his life now. And those pictures I had seen—how could I argue with those? So, I did the smartest thing a little runt like myself knew how—I decided I'd play along, no matter what the truth. Joe, or no Joe, this mess of hair sitting on the bed was going to be my buddy for a while, until I knew more about the crazy road my life had suddenly decided to take a drive on. All that mattered now was finding out what all this was about, and how I could get back home.