What had happened? What was going on in his head? What horror awaited his wakening?

  I stood up and realized Miyoko was standing right next to me.

  “Jimmy,” she said, “this is horrible, just horrible. What is wrong with your father?”

  Her voice quivered with emotion, like this was her dad, not mine. I couldn't help but be amazed that she would feel so much for someone she hardly knew. But then I had a second thought, remembering that we'd all been together on the ship for over a month now, and had truly become an extended family. A bizarre, freak show family, but a family nonetheless.

  “I don't have a clue, Miyoko.” I crouched back down and touched Dad's forehead. It was warm, and his chest continued to rise and fall in a steady pattern. Again, I stood.

  “He seems totally okay, like he's asleep. I can't come up with any guess at what they've done to him, although I'm worried it has something to do with that sleepy feeling we all got when they came the first time.”

  Miyoko noticed something and knelt down beside my dad, grabbing his arm.

  “Look,” she said.

  She had pulled back the sleeve of his shirt, exposing his entire forearm. A small gasp escaped me.

  His skin was covered with small cuts and scrapes, just healing.

  “What in the—” I bent down and pulled back the sleeve on his other arm. His skin was clear on that one.

  “This just keeps getting weirder,” I said, and then pointed down at his arm. “Look, I bet it was done by the claws of one of the Ka. Why would they do that? Why would they possibly do that?”

  Miyoko just shook her head, deep in thought.

  It was at that moment that something began to bother me greatly. It was a strange silence. There was the intimidating sound of the waves of the ocean crashing against the boat, and the patter of rain on the deck, but something was missing.

  Voices. I was so used to people talking and visiting and shouting and kidding around while on the boat. I had never been on the deck and had everything so quiet. Where was everybody?

  “Miyoko,” I said, “what in the world is everyone doing? Why haven't they come up yet? And why didn't they try to do anything when the Ka lifted the ship? I haven't seen anyone besides Dad since this whole thing began.”

  A chilling worry gnawed at me, and I ran for the closest door down to the common areas.

  “Stay here with my dad,” I said as I opened the door.

  The stairs were as dark as a cloudy eclipse.

  The only sounds as I descended the stairs and entered the hallway were the rapid thumps of my feet on the wood. The stillness of the air, the dark, the quiet—it was all beginning to creep me out. Something was terribly wrong.

  I found the light switch and flipped it. The blast of light took me back, but a few seconds of squinting took care of it, and my eyes adjusted. I ran over to the door to the Mess Hall, and opened it. The squeaking hinges broke the silence with a grating whisper. The room was dark, and empty.

  I went to my parents’ room and opened the door. There was something on the bed, a long lump under the blankets. I flipped on the light. The shape did not move. I took a step closer and saw that it was my mom, lying down, her back to me.

  She was fast asleep.

  It didn't take a genius to understand that the odds of sleeping through a beast-powered flight in a boat were astronomical. Especially Mom. She woke up if a neighbor down the street let one fly when they rolled over in bed.

  I shook her gently, with no effect. Her breathing was heavy and regular, and she made no sign of waking up.

  I ran to my room, and stumbled over Rusty on the floor. He was near the same spot I had last seen him, right after we'd seen Dad's face in the window, when I left the room to go upstairs. A quick check revealed that he was also asleep, not even having made it back to his bed.

  With a heightened sense of panic, I ran throughout the rest of the ship, from room to room, even going to the crew's quarters. There was only one possibility considering what I already knew, added to the fact that no one had come up to the decks during all the commotion. So it was no surprise when I checked each room, each bed, and saw what I saw.

  Everyone was in a deep sleep. From Captain Tinkles to Hood, from Joseph to the guy who made the meals (whose name always escaped me), from Rayna to Tanaka.

  All of them.

  They were breathing corpses.

  I yelled for Miyoko, and her pounding footsteps soon announced her arrival.

  “What? What is it?” she asked.

  I met her in the hallway.

  “Everyone is asleep, just like Dad upstairs.”

  “What?”

  Why is it that when a person hears something that is unusual or frightening, they always ask, “What?” They hear you just fine, but feel they must ask that universal word which means, “I don't like what I just heard so maybe if I say this it will all go away and he will tell me that he was just testing to make sure my ears work and that actually everything is just fine and let's go get some dinner.”

  “Everyone down here is asleep,” I said. “All of them, like they just can't be bothered to wake up and see what all the fuss upstairs is about.” I let out a heavy sigh. “They all look just like my dad—dead to the world, but breathing. Heck, Joseph is even snoring.”

  Miyoko looked like it was too much to handle.

  “I just don't get it,” she said. “What is happening?”

  I needed to act or I would go crazy.

  “Come on, let's wake them up.” I headed toward the Mess Hall.

  “What are you going to do?” Miyoko asked.

  “Get a bucket of water.”

  We decided to try Rusty first, because I didn't want Mom to be awake and worried about her son. We took the bucket, water slopping over the sides, and stepped into his room. I pulled and pushed on his shoulder until he finally slumped over onto his back, a small grunt escaping as he became still.

  With a look at Miyoko, as if to say, “Here goes nothing,” I tipped the bucket and poured its entire contents onto Rusty's face.

  As it splashed down and covered his face, spreading and spilling to the floor, he looked like a diver breaking the surface after a long underwater swim. He gasped and sat up, disoriented and dazed, as if he'd been summoned from the deepest sleep of his life. Before he completely came to his senses, while still in that no man's land between sleep and waking, he said the strangest thing.

  “It looks just like me! It's my face!”

  Rusty stood, groggy and wet, and came back to his full senses.

  “What … what's going on?” he asked.

  “You've been asleep while I saved your hide from flying Shadow Ka,” I said.

  “What?” he replied (at no surprise to me).

  “Come on, there's no time to explain it all right now. We've gotta wake up everybody else. You've all been sleeping, this whole time.”

  “But—”

  “Just come on!”

  We ran out into the hallway and back to the Mess Hall. Miyoko filled the bucket while I gave Rusty the shortest version possible of what had just happened.

  “Those Shadow Ka came back and chained themselves to the ship and flew us into the air. They also did something weird to Dad and you guys, made you fall asleep or something. I'm worried Dad is worse, because he fell in the ocean and didn't wake up like you.”

  Miyoko finished filling the bucket and made for the door.

  “Do you remember anything?” I continued. “What happened after I went upstairs?”

  “I … I don't know,” he said. “I kind of remember getting really tired, but it's all fuzzy. And I know I had a weird dream, but I've already forgotten it.”

  We went to Dad's and Mom's room first. The door was slightly ajar.

  “You said something about your face when you were waking up,” I said as I pushed open the door and stepped through.

  “I don't remember,” he said, his eyes unfocused and lost.

  Mom was on the bed, the slightest hint of a snore coming from her nose. Miyoko tipped the bucket and poured about half of the water onto Mom's face. She bolted to a sitting position, spitting water.

  “The Stompers!” she yelled.

  Her words almost made me fall down.

  “Mom! Mom! Wake up, it's me and Rusty!”

  She rubbed the water out of her eyes and looked at me, then at Rusty and Miyoko.

  “Was I asleep?” she asked.

  “Mom,” I said, “what about the Stompers? You just said something about them—did you have a dream about the Stompers? Mom?”

  Dazed, she shook her head then put it in her hands, and began to sob.

  I gently shook her shoulder. “Mom, talk to me.”

  “I had the most horrible dream, Jimmy. I … I can't remember anything … except that it was just awful.”

  “The Stompers, Mom, you said something about the Stompers. Try to remember.”

  “It's blank, completely blank.”

  Dejected, I turned to Rusty. “Stay with Mom; Miyoko and I will go and wake everyone else.”

  As we left the room, I couldn't help but feel that some major calamity was approaching.

  Joseph was next in the splashed-by-water bucket brigade, followed by Rayna, Tanaka, and the members of the crew. No one else repeated any strange words or phrases when they awoke, although they had to shake away the deep slumber, and they all remembered having strange dreams.

  I saved Hood for last, because I didn't feel comfortable dumping a bucket of water on his covered head. I asked Rayna if it was okay.

  “Let me take care of the Hooded One,” she said, and went in alone. A few minutes later, they joined us in the Mess Hall, Hood somehow looking even droopier than usual. He sat in a chair, and remained silent. Well, he was always silent, but he sat very still and offered no painted words.

  I asked Joseph to go upstairs with me onto the deck of the ship and deal with Dad. I knew that somehow Dad was different—that a bucket of water wasn't going to do a thing to him. He'd been in the freezing ocean without waking up, for crying out loud. And those cuts …

  The cuts. I stopped short just before I reached the door to the hallway and asked everyone to show me their arms.

  With raised eyebrows, everyone did as I asked, and pulled or rolled up their sleeves. Hood made a gesture to do so but hesitated, then refused.

  I looked at Joseph's forearms. There were odd-looking, dangly hairs randomly placed along his arms, a couple of freckles, and even a pimple that looked like something out of a carnival freak show. But no scratches.

  I examined Mom's arms next. Then Rusty. Then Tanaka, Rayna, Captain Tinkles and the other crew members. No scratches. Hood shied away when I approached him.

  “Hood, what's the deal? Let me see your arm.”

  He shook his head, somehow showing a sense of embarrassment through the rough covering of his robe.

  Rayna walked over and leaned in toward my ear.

  “Jimmy,” she said, “Please. You do not want …” She paused. “You are not ready to see the arm of the Hooded One. Please, do not push him.”

  Nodding, ignoring the intense curiosity that sprung up in my head, I looked at Hood and tried to appear patient and understanding.

  “Well,” I said, “What about your arms, Hood? Do they have scratches on them?”

  He shook his head. He was okay in that regard, but I just couldn't help wondering what was up with this guy. I thought about the time we found him deep in the woods after we'd been to the Pointing Finger, and I had seen him in the distance—robeless, eerily pale, and hunched. Rayna and Miyoko had told me to wait while they went to him and clothed him once again in his robe. Raspy had stolen it to fool us into leading him to the Givers’ book.

  Rayna had said something similar then, something about how I should not see him yet. I knew he had other clothes on beneath the robe, so it wasn't like they were protecting his modesty. Was it his identity, his true identity they were trying to conceal? Could he perhaps be someone that I had known earlier in my life? I made a note in my head to grill Rayna or Miyoko about it later.

  “Jimmy-san,” Tanaka asked, “why you go crazy and ask to see our arms?”

  “I'm not crazy, Tanaka.” I pointed upward, indicating the place where my dad lay. “Dad is up there, sleeping like a dead man, and he's been dragged through cold water and dropped and flown through the air, and he's showing no signs of waking up. I think something is wrong with him, more than the weirdness of you guys all sleeping like you were. Anyway, he has small cuts all over his right forearm.”

  “Small cuts?” Rayna said. “On one arm only?”

  I thought for a second to make sure. “Yeah, just the right one. Does that mean anything?”

  She shook her head.

  “Jimmy,” Joseph said, “what in the world were you talking about, saying your dad had been dragged through water and all that? What happened up there?”

  “Come on, I'll tell you up there. Miyoko, why don't you stay down here and tell these guys what happened, too.”

  “All right,” she said. “I just hope they believe me.”

  “Are you serious? How could anything surprise us anymore?” I grabbed Joseph's arm. “Let's go.”

  After everything that had happened so far that day, I half-expected Dad to be gone when we walked out onto the deck. But he was there, on his back, motionless, like a fallen soldier left for the vultures. It surprised me how relieved I felt when we could see that his chest still rose and fell with regularity. Obviously, my confidence that he was okay was weakening.

  “My goodness,” Joseph said, then ran to his side.

  He grabbed Dad's cheeks and pinched them, then lightly slapped them. “Come on, old boy, wake up! J.M.! Wake up, man! Can you hear me?”

  Frustrated, Joseph gently laid Dad's head back down and let go.

  “Jimmy, what have we gotten ourselves into?” He looked at me, pain in his eyes.

  “I don't know,” I said, barely above a whisper. For the first time that day, I wanted to fall down and bawl my eyes out.

  “We should try the water on him, too,” Joseph said. “I'll go get it.”

  As he left and went down into the cabin area, I picked up Dad's arm and looked at the scratches again. With more time to look, I realized that I had missed something earlier. The cuts were not quite as random as I had thought. There was something … regular about them. They didn't quite form a word, but there was some definite shape or reason to their arrangement—almost like a string of several letter ‘O's intertwined. Something lingered on the edges of my mind, like trying to remember the name of a friend from an old neighborhood—it was somewhere in the old memory bank, but just didn't feel like coming out yet.

  The scratches meant something. What was it? It was beginning to drive me bonkers.

  Joseph ran up behind me, water sloshing out of the bucket as he came, making hard splattering sounds, like a drunk and his spittoon in an old western.

  “Watch out,” he said.

  I stood back and watched as Joseph poured the water onto Dad's face.

  Nothing. Not a flinch or a twitch. The only movement was the hair on his head and eyebrows as the cold water washed over him.

  Joseph knelt down again, ignoring the wetness of the deck, and brought his ear down until it hovered just above Dad's nose and mouth. Joseph's eyes were looking in my direction, and then he closed them, concentrating.

  “I can definitely hear him breathing, although it seems so faint and shallow.” He brought his head back up and looked down at Dad. “I hate to do this, but let's try one more thing.”

  Joseph put his hand on Dad's arm, grabbed some skin, and pinched it with all of his might. No response.

  Something was seriously wrong with my father.

  That night we all sat around the table, miserable in our attempt to be normal. We'd put Dad in his bed, and he lay there now, covered and silent. His breathing continued to be normal, but he would not respond in any way to our efforts to wake him. We'd finally given up.

  Miyoko had done a great job of catching up everyone on our adventures in the ocean and in the air. It seemed impossible that they could have slept through the whole thing, but no one remembered much at all. Only Rusty recalled anything relating to the attack—the haunted vision of Dad's face in the window.

  “What do we do?” asked Rayna. “Perhaps we should head for land, get a doctor for your father.”

  “Yes,” Tanaka said. “Yes. We go now, get doctor for your papa.” He stood up from his chair and walked over to me. “Jimmy-san. You, me, we become best friends, neh?”

  I nodded, but couldn't say anything. He continued.

  “What is dear to you is dear to me. If I, if Tanaka-san,” he put his hand on his chest, “could replace himself with your papa, I would do it. I swear to the okisaru I would do it.”

  “Thank you, Tanaka. I mean it. Thanks.”

  Tanaka's face changed a bit, his eyes looking beyond me, a look of confused contemplation washing over him. He stared, unmoving.

  “Tanaka?” I said, worried the old man had finally gone over the edge.

  He blinked, shook his head, and ran his fingers through his greasy hair. He pulled at his eyebrows, scratched his nose. His eyes focused once again on mine, but he said nothing.

  “Tanaka?” I asked again. “What's wrong with you?”

  “Uh … uh. Wrong? No … no, nothing is wrong, my friend.” He slowly shook his head back and forth as he stumbled back to his chair and plopped down into it.

  Miyoko got up and ran to him, kneeling down and putting her hand on his knee.

  “Father, what is wrong?”

  Tanaka still had a dazed look, his forehead wrinkled and eyes squinted as he continued to ponder whatever thoughts had overtaken him as he spoke to me.

  “I … don't know what to say. When I mentioned the okisaru, something … “

  He patted Miyoko on the shoulder, then stood and headed for the door.

  “I am sorry, my friends. I must rest.”