After a few minutes of some pretty intense thinking, I decided that the beast would have come to eat me if it really wanted to, and that there was really no other choice but to follow the paint and see where it led.

  Everything seemed to be overloading my poor fourteen-year-old brain, and I even wondered if maybe I'd just imagined it all. I walked over to where the beast had been, and sure enough, there were many signs that a big hairy monster had just been sitting there—broken branches, flattened leaves on the ground, the smell of Rusty's bedroom.

  Shuddering at the memory of the hairy hand, I collected my wits and went back to the sign.

  Courage seeped in, knowing that for the moment The Shield was with me.

  I headed off in the direction of the paint, which went into some thick trees, along a narrow worn path littered with roots going in every direction. It was really growing dark outside, so I just knew I'd trip and break my neck before too long. I sure wished I had a flashlight or something.

  Out of habit, I reached up to turn my Braves hat around backward, when I realized that once again, I had lost it. I couldn't remember when, or how, but it was gone. It was probably in the mad, rushing wind outside of the train. I knew it was a silly thing now that my life had become so important and serious, but I felt like crying nonetheless. Wearing a Braves hat was like wearing my arms. I couldn't help but think how hard it must be to find one of those in Japan. Then I told myself to quit whining, and moved on.

  As I went deeper into the woods, it got even darker, and I could barely see. The trees were thick with age, and massive branches were coming off in every direction, intertwining and crossing over and doubling back so that it looked like above and all around me were walls and ceilings of logs. It was the thickest, eeriest woods I'd ever been in. The trees were covered in all kinds of moss and dust. I'm no forest expert, but it had to be one of the oldest forests in the world. It reminded me of something out of Lord of the Rings, and I half expected an orc to jump out and bite me at any second.

  I kept going, walking slowly, watching out for the big roots and low hanging branches. Some of the roots were so big, I had to actually climb over them.

  As I made my way, I noticed how quiet the forest was. I could hear every little sound I made, echoing off the massive canopy of branches above me. The darkness, the silence, and the gnarled, ancient trees were getting me downright spooked.

  After a while of clambering, tripping, walking, and crawling, I began to notice that a good deal of time must have passed. It wasn't just hard to see, it was sliding toward pitch black. The sun must've set, and I was in the middle of the creepiest place I could think of, following a trail of paint I couldn't even see anymore. But there was something ahead of me, barely noticeable, but definite. It was a faint source of light.

  I kept going, listening to my own breath, the only sound in the whole forest. The light began to grow, and I got excited and nervous to see what it was. I tripped on a root and fell face first into a patch of dirt, and let out a startled yelp. The little sound I made was a boom in the silence, and the dust that I kicked up made me sneeze, which was even louder.

  Then I heard something whistle past in the air above me, close enough that I could've grabbed it. It sounded like someone had shot an arrow, but it just kept going. I caught a glimpse of it before it disappeared behind some trees, and it really did look like an arrow. Could somebody have just shot an arrow at me? I'd seen some weird stuff, but I couldn't imagine that a Robin Hood wannabe was hunting me in this old forest.

  Then I remembered the Sounding Rod. It could've been the Rod that made the noise, but it didn't make sense that it suddenly wanted to shoot through the air like that.

  Now really starting to get panicky and scared, I quickened my pace down the path and headed toward the light. Somewhere up ahead I heard the sound of shattering glass. I stopped, and listened.

  Nothing. A whistling arrow, and now broken glass. Then silence. The hairs on the back of my neck were starting to do little dances I was so spooked.

  After a few seconds the silence was broken. Somewhere in the distance I heard dogs barking. Lots of dogs. I was positive I'd not heard them earlier. Now the sounds of several dogs yapping away were coming from different directions. Not close enough to worry about any of them running after me like a renegade Lassie, but it was still weird that they all started barking at the same time.

  I crept forward, toward the light, and soon came to a place where I could see the edge of the woods, and beyond it was an open area, where the light was coming from. I tiptoed toward the edge of the line of trees, wondering over and over about the arrow-thing and the breaking glass. As I approached the clearing, I stooped down and kind of shuffled my way off of the path and behind a big tree. And then, I got a good look at what was in the clearing.

  There were wooden posts scattered here and there around a big yard, and they all held burning oil lamps at the top, flickering in a light breeze. In the middle of the yard was a house. A huge house. A mansion. It reminded me of the mansion I was taken to after Mayor Duck found me in the tree so long ago. The house was still, dark, and quiet, with no signs of life.

  No. On the upper floor, to the right of me, there was one window with a light on. I stared at it, trying to get a glimpse of what was inside. I gasped and shrank back when a shadow suddenly passed by the window, gone as soon as it had come.

  Someone was inside.

  I glanced back at the path, and there it was. Puddles of white paint. I crept over to get a better look. The splotches and pools of paint continued along the path, out of the woods, and into the yard. My gaze followed the direction of the white trail, and it led right to the front door. I knew it was deliberate, and that I was supposed to follow it.

  I stepped out into the open.

  Another movement above me made me jump, and then I noticed it was the Sounding Rod.

  The cone was open, pointing at me, the small light in the middle barely visible. But there was no sound. Nothing. I tried to figure out whether or not The Shield was active, but couldn't tell for sure. Something did feel kind of not quite right, so I had to assume that it was not working, and that the Rod had gone off again.

  But where was the sound?

  Shaking my head, I decided to move on and find the owner of the paint.

  My heart racing, I approached the door, wondering to myself what in the heck I was doing and since when did I have these kinds of guts. As I crossed the lawn, I could see that many of the windows of the house were broken.

  As I got closer to the house and the front porch, I noticed that there was a huge white X painted on the door, with writing underneath. The flickering lamps made it look scary and foreboding, and not that easy to read. But I could just make it out, and if I had any doubt as to the purpose of the paint trail, it vanished.

  It was written in the same eerie handwriting as on the sign by the river.

  Jimmy, come inside

  I didn't hesitate. I followed the advice of a sign written by Godzilla for all I knew, and walked toward the second mansion I had ever been so close to.

  As I did, I wondered how in the world this person could have possibly known that I would've jumped off of a train and a bridge and end up right here, right now.

  The distant barking of the dogs continued as I stepped toward the door. The wooden porch creaked loudly, and the eerie lettering painted on the door loomed in front of me, inviting me to enter. So, I did.

  I turned the handle, almost expecting it to be locked, but it opened easily, and I pushed the door inward, anxious to see what awaited me inside. But the house was very dark, and I couldn't see anything. The weight and circumstance of everything suddenly filled me—the train, my family, the wooshing sound, the broken glass, the Sounding Rod, the light in the upstairs room, the barking of the dogs, the white paint. My heart tight with caution, I stepped into the darkness.

  My eyes quickly adjusted to the faint light coming from the flames out in the yard, and I could barely make out a staircase opposite the door, leading up to the second floor. The room was up there, the room with the light and the moving figure. Someone was waiting for me. And somehow, they not only knew who I was, but knew that I would jump off of a train in the middle of Japan and float down a river and end up at this very spot.

  I glanced to my left and right, but it was just too dark. There was a heavy silence in the house, the kind that is so quiet it seems to have its own type of noise, a deafening stillness. In other words, I was getting creeped out.

  I started to climb the stairs, wincing at the sudden noise of my shoes on the wood. My footsteps seemed to boom through the house, and the creaking of the stairs only made it worse. Oh well, whoever or whatever was up there was expecting me anyway.

  Step by step, I made my way to the top, and then turned toward the right, where I knew the lighted room was located. At the end of the hallway, I spotted the light coming from underneath a closed door. It was bright enough to help me see what was in the hallway, and the creepiness got worse.

  All along the walls, hung randomly with no rhyme or reason, were dozens of picture frames, covering almost every inch of the hall. Some were big, some were tiny, and they were very disorganized. At first, the pictures themselves were very hard to make out. I leaned toward one of the bigger ones, and strained my eyes, urging them to work in the faint light. The picture started to take on a form, and I could see shadowy outlines of people, and then the background, which looked like trees and a building.

  I reached out and grabbed the edge of the picture, and then tilted it toward the lighted door, hoping to make out more of the details. It worked. I gasped, sucking in air like a commercial vacuum cleaner, and let go of the picture. It slipped from the nail and crashed to the floor, shattering the glass protecting the picture with a sonic boom. I backed away in disbelief, slamming into the opposite wall. A cascading onslaught of picture frames crashed to the ground all around me, glass breaking everywhere, filling the air with terrible noise.

  I looked toward the door at the end of the hallway and saw a shadow quickly flitter past the light coming from underneath. Dread suddenly filled me, and I no longer wanted to go anywhere near that room. I turned to run back down the stairs, feet crunching on glass, when I felt more than heard the door whip open behind me, creating a stir in the dead air of the hallway. I couldn't help but stop in my tracks.

  There was no other sound, no voice, no movement after the door opened. I turned and looked back. Filling the doorway was the dark shadow of a man.

  With the light coming from behind him, I couldn't make out his face. There was something odd about his head.

  I took a couple of steps backward, scared to death by this new appearance. My hand felt along the wall as I crept toward the stairs, knocking down a few more pictures along the way. And then my hand came across a plastic square, with a strange protrusion in the middle. Only in my present state at the time would my mind have interpreted it that way. It was just a stinking light switch.

  When it dawned on me what it was, instinct took over.

  I flipped the switch.

  At first the light blinded me, and I convinced myself that my first impression of the figure in the doorway was somehow due to a trick caused by the sudden switch from darkness to light. But my eyes adjusted in a matter of seconds, and there was no trick.

  The man, assuming it was a man, did not move at all. He was dressed in some kind of robe, covering him from head to toe. Literally. The robe had a hood, and it was the biggest hood I'd ever seen. Not only did it cover his head, it drooped down in front of his face so much that all you could see was the material of the robe, which was made of a rough, scratchy cloth that was the color of fresh dirt. The robe itself hung all the way to the floor, so that I couldn't make out his feet either. From head to toe, all I could see of this person was an old robe.

  Except for one hand.

  The robed figure was holding a hula-hoop. Clasped in his thin, pale, white hand, extending from his hand to the floor and then back again, was a perfectly circular ring, made out of a bright red material, about an inch thick, with the hoop itself about three feet in diameter. He leaned on the red ring, as if he needed it for support. It didn't bend from his weight.

  I was looking at a faceless man in a robe, gripping a red hula-hoop as though his life depended on it.

  Sudden thoughts of Geezer shot through my head, and I gasped out loud for the third time that night, this time with realization.

  Standing before me was the one Geezer had ranted about on the train.

  The Hooded One.

  Neither of us moved. A glint of light reflected off the broken glass on the ground, catching my eye. I glanced down, and once again spotted the picture that had given me such fits. Now, with the light from the room, it was much more visible. It had not been an illusion. I quickly scanned the rest of the pictures scattered across the floor, then the ones still hanging on the wall. Still not recovered from the shock of what had been in the picture, I now could only gape in even more disbelief.

  Every frame, every single one, from large to small, had the exact same picture—a photograph.

  I looked over at The Hooded One. He did not move, still leaning on the red ring.

  My eyes shifted back to the pictures, and focused on the largest one, lying on the floor.

  It was in black and white. It was an aerial view of a dark, gray room with four beds lined up, all in a row, evenly spaced apart from right to left in the picture. On those beds lay four people, one for each bed. The people were asleep.

  Or dead.

  Mom. Dad. Rusty. Me.

  As I stared, the picture suddenly changed, right before my eyes. The beds were still there, but now the bodies were covered with a rough, gray cloth—the familiar lumps of the head and feet the only things identifying the same sizes of the bodies of my family. Then, just seconds later, the picture, all of the pictures, changed again.

  They all became the family photo that hung above our fireplace back in Georgia.

  I continued to stare, but they did not change again.

  Movement made me pull my head up, looking back to the robed person down the hall.

  The Hooded One was slowly walking toward me.

  As he moved, taking small steps, the floor creaked under his weight. He used the red hula-hoop as a cane, leaning on it and moving it forward with each step. The whole world was quiet, the only sound that of the creaking boards and crunching glass beneath his feet. I couldn't move.

  Closer and closer he came. The drooping hood of his robe swayed back and forth with each step, but never revealed the face behind the coarse cloth. He reached several of the pictures that had fallen to the ground, now all showing my family portrait, and paid them no heed. The crunch of the glass as he stepped on them was loud and disturbing.

  Still, I could not move. For some reason, I wasn't afraid. All I could think about was Geezer, back on the train. He had to be some kind of messenger. There was just no way I could've bumped into him twice in one month on opposite ends of the world. Both times, he had given me warnings, or told me to take heed. I suddenly felt certain that Geezer was on my side, despite his complete lack of skill in delivering a message.

  The Hooded One, moving steadily closer, was a friend. He was on my side. I knew it.

  He stopped two feet in front of me. The entire house was now silent except for the soft sigh of the wind coming through the broken windows.

  I could hear him breathing, a faint intake of breath that sounded above the trespassing wind. He was alive, at least, not some robed zombie.

  The silence stretched on, neither of us moving, both of us staring—if he actually had eyes to stare with and could see though his robe.

  He made the first move. His right arm lifted the red ring from the ground, slowly, like he wanted to make sure I knew he wasn't a threat. He lifted and lifted until the ring rose above his head. He brought his left arm up as well, revealing his left hand for the first time, which was as pale and thin as the right one. He grasped the ring with his left hand, holding the hula-hoop directly over his head with both hands tightly gripping the red tubing.

  He stepped closer.

  Our bodies were almost touching now, and I still didn't move. My breathing was shallow, my heart racing in anticipation, wondering what he was doing.

  He leaned forward. I looked up. He held the ring in such a way that it was now directly above both of us, encasing us in its circumference.

  The thought entered my mind that the ring he held in his hands was most certainly not a hula-hoop.

  It was then that he let go, and the ring began to fall.

  As it fell, with me and The Hooded One in its center, the air around us shimmered and erupted into a million red lines, shooting and swirling in all directions, enveloping us like a swarm of long, skinny snakes. The hallway around us melded into the red lines, until the lines were all we could see. I began to panic as my senses told me that I was floating, and the lines spun my mind until I was sure I was going to throw up.

  The house was gone, the pictures were gone. There was nothing but red and the faint image of The Hooded One. My stomach was in my throat. I jerked my hands to the sides, trying to make the madly spinning lines stop. Now they were no longer lines. They were red flashes.

  I looked down, even though direction had begun to lose its meaning.

  At my feet, I saw green. It was grass.

  Color began to shoot up my legs, making the redness fade. I looked up. The red swirling was still there. I looked back down. From my feet to my waist, there were no red lines, only the color of my pants, the green grass, and the bottom of the rough robe in front of me. Then I saw the red ring, ascending up toward our heads. As it floated upward, the surroundings changed with its movement. As the ring rose, it was pulling reality with it, the redness disappearing in its path. I saw hands clasped to the ring.