He left the room without another word. Miyoko followed him.

  “What in the heck just happened?” Rusty asked.

  I then told the story of the okisaru to those who had not been there—about the giant monkey we'd met while searching for Hood weeks ago.

  “And that's all I can really tell you,” I said after relating the details. “I don't understand it any better than you do. A huge monkey reached over, touched Tanaka in the forehead, then vanished into the trees. That's it.”

  “And you say these okisaru are some kind of ancient legend?” Joseph asked.

  “Yeah, I guess. Tanaka said something about them being wise and powerful or something. But after it touched him on the forehead, Tanaka didn't say a word. Not a word.”

  Everyone was silent for a while, trying to picture a ten-foot-tall monkey.

  “This is too much for me; I'm going to sit with your dad,” Mom said. I could tell she was on the edge of losing her composure, tears welling up in her eyes.

  “Okay, Mom,” I said.

  “You guys figure out what we're going to do,” she said as she walked to the open door. “I … think it would be best to find a doctor. But I also know that Jimmy has important things to accomplish.”

  She walked back to me and put her hand on my head, lightly tousling my hair.

  “Jimmy, ultimately this is your decision. I promise I'll support whatever it is you decide.”

  “Mom, don't talk like that. You're scaring me.”

  “I'm serious, Jimmy.” She knelt down beside me, looking into my eyes. “Listen to me. We all know the heavy burden that is on your shoulders. Dad would not want you to put that to the side for him.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “Deep inside of me I know that we must continue on and find the Third Gift.”

  She stood, and tried to smile. “I'll be with Dad.” She hurried out of the room before the tears really started to flow.

  It was now me, Rayna, Hood, and Joseph.

  “What do we do?” I asked them.

  “Your mom is right, Jimmy,” Joseph said. “It's your choice. Although I must admit it's a little strange to take orders from a guy for whom I used to change stinky diapers.”

  I winced. “Please, Joseph, don't conjure up that image in my head. All I need is a picture of you handling a wet-wipe.”

  “I think we should do what we decided before your father became ill,” Rayna said.

  Joseph and I looked at her.

  “You mean the IDL?” Joseph asked. “Head for the International Date Line, follow it across half the world until we find some tower that may not even exist, leaving Jimmy's father in bed, perhaps dying of some otherworldly disease? Do all of this on some bizarre notion I got while reading a note we found in a bottle in the middle of the ocean that is forty years old? This is what you think we should do?”

  Rayna nodded, calm and collected.

  “I agree,” Joseph said with a smile.

  They looked at me.

  I knew that what I said next was of such importance that, no matter how cliché or ridiculous it sounded, could forever change the course of our lives and the entire world. I had no misgivings or naïve hopes about my dad and what we could do for him. The odds of a normal doctor helping him were slim, even if we could possibly spare the time to find one.

  That was the problem. There was just no time. In the span of one month, we'd seen the Shadow Ka go from mostly human to mostly not human. Things were in fast forward, happening way quicker than I ever would've thought back when I blocked the Black Curtain.

  For all we knew, the Curtain was no longer blocked at all. And Mom was right about what Dad would want us to do. We had no choice, really, so making one was much easier than it seemed.

  I stood up.

  “Let's do this thing,” I said, slapping Joseph on the side of his bald, shiny head. “We're heading for the IDL.”

  Our journey took weeks.

  If I hated the ocean before, it now became something that ate at my insides like a sickness. I longed for the sight of land so much that I had to force myself not to think about it. It got to the point where I felt like I was hypnotizing myself, almost pretending that I was inside a cartoon or virtual reality world—convincing myself that we were not actually surrounded by endless miles of nothing but blue-green water.

  I don't know how good ole Christopher Columbus could stand it.

  Dad continued to sleep, quiet in his coma.

  Mom figured out how to feed him, although it took a good hour to do it every time. Her patience was astounding, as she forced his body to take on reflexes that even sleep could not ignore. It was a messy, tiring process. But Mom did not complain, and Dad continued to live.

  The scratches on Dad's arm healed, leaving obvious scars that continued to nag at my brain, trying to pull some memory or thought out of its dark recesses. I knew that the pattern of the slightly raised scar tissue meant something, but it eluded me every time I sat and strained my thoughts trying to figure it out.

  Boredom was the only thing worse than the ocean. Or maybe it was the boredom itself that made me despise the ocean. Either way, we were reaching the very edge of our tolerances. I think we were all about to go insane.

  There's not much of those days that is worth recalling.

  But there were two occurrences that would end up meaning very much indeed.

  And despite the weeks and weeks of travel, in one of those quirky things of life, both things happened on the same day.

  It was late, and the others had gone to sleep. Rayna was in the Mess Hall with me, both of us eating a light snack, tired but with no desire to sleep. There'd been something I had wanted to ask Rayna for quite some time, so I decided to lead up to it by making some conversation about other things first.

  “How can this ship possibly have so much food?” I asked after a few minutes of silence.

  “I don't know, it's very big,” Rayna said, studying her yogurt. “It's made for twenty times our number, so it has plenty of food.” She looked up at me. “I guess I've never really thought about it.”

  “It seems like the food would go bad or something.” I yawned. “But I ain't complaining, trust me.”

  There were another few moments of silence.

  “It's also weird how Joseph got the money to afford this boat,” I said. “I know for a fact that bald-headed monkey is not rich. And I remember he said something about it making sense some day. I'd kind of forgotten about that until now.”

  “You worry about it too much, Jimmy. Eat your chips.”

  After a few more minutes of meaningless talk about the weather getting warmer and warmer as we headed south along the IDL, I asked the question.

  “Rayna, will you look at a picture for me?”

  She eyeballed me with a look of certain disapproval. She knew what I meant.

  “You know. With your gift.”

  I pulled out a picture my mom had, a five-by-ten of me in fifth grade. I pushed it over to Rayna.

  “Jimmy, you know this is not something I use lightly.”

  “Please, Rayna. I need something, something that can give me hope. Please?”

  “Knowing your future is not a good thing. What if you see yourself being killed tomorrow? What would you do?”

  Her question gave me shivers. “I …”

  “Jimmy, I use my gift for assistance, to guide us when it is possible. I do not use it for cheap fortune telling.”

  “Okay, then. How about a compromise?”

  “What is it?” she asked, hinting that she did not like my tone.

  “Well, you are the only one who can truly manipulate a picture into telling the absolute, for-sure future. But when you have touched it with your gift, others can see … you know … alternate possibilities of the future. Right?”

  She nodded, still making sure I knew she disapproved of where I was leading her.

  “If I could just see different versions of the future, and if just one of those was something good and positive, it would give me hope. Right now, the last few days … I feel like giving up, that we are chasing an impossible thing. Will you please do this for me?”

  “No,” she said, rather curtly.

  “Then why did you do it to those pictures that Hood had, when I first met him?”

  “I did not give the Hooded One permission to take those pictures.”

  “Oh, come on, Rayna! Please?” Then, I resorted to that last desperate plea of a kid, which I still was, although sometimes I had to remind myself of that fact. “Pretty please?” I said.

  She stared at me, thinking. A minute passed. Just as I was about to make my final request before giving up, Rayna picked up the picture.

  “Leave for five minutes, then come back. I will let you look at it for one minute. Then, we tear it up and throw it overboard.”

  “But—”

  All she did was raise her eyebrows, and I knew I was pushing my luck.

  “Okay,” I said. I left the Mess Hall and went up onto the deck to wait it out.

  I thought it would be the longest five minutes of my life, until I saw Tanaka on the deck of the ship.

  I'd completely forgotten that Tanaka was taking his turn at watch, sitting alone on a lawn chair, searching the skies for winged gray people.

  “Ah, Jimmy-san! You come to visit me, neh? I told you—I will not tuck you in any more! Go back to bed.” His unearthly roar of a laugh pierced the air, and I was glad, for at least a brief moment, that there was no one within hundreds of miles to hear it.

  “You are such a comedian, Tanaka.”

  Almost everything I said to him was sarcastic, but I loved that guy like a favorite uncle. He had returned to his normal self after the strange night when the mention of the okisaru had unsettled him so much. And he would not speak of it, either.

  “So,” I said, “anything interesting out here?”

  “No, not much to talk about, I'm glad to say. Why are you awake, my friend?”

  “Can't sleep. Rayna and I are just shooting the breeze down there, eating junk food. Well, I was eating junk—Rayna was eating yogurt.”

  “Yogurt? Yogurt! That stuff is like eating melted feet!”

  He got me. Despite everything, I laughed out loud for several seconds.

  “Good one,” I said after bringing myself under control.

  After that we were silent for a moment. The night air was moist, and the ocean was still, the only sound the soft lapping of the water against the side of the boat. Sure that five minutes had passed, I was anxious to get back to Rayna and headed toward the door that led downstairs.

  “Gee, thanks for long visit,” said Tanaka.

  “Sorry, I told Rayna I'd only be a minute. I … just wanted to say hi to you, that's all. See ya.”

  “Yes, my boy. Good night. If big flying monsters come, I'll let you know, neh?”

  “Yeah, sounds good.”

  I headed downstairs to see my future.

  Rayna sat at the table, her hands folded and resting on top of my picture. She did not look at me when I walked into the room.

  “Did you do it?” I asked.

  “Yes, I did.” She rose, and walked toward the door. “If I were you, I would not look at it. Nothing good will come of it. If you see something hopeful, you will fear that it may never happen. If you see something dreadful, you will fear that it will. There is nothing to gain from this.”

  “What did you see?”

  “Once its magic began, I looked away. I do not wish to see your future, Jimmy. The choice is yours to make, but I would not.” She narrowed her eyes and brought up a finger. “But please remember. If you do look at it, nothing is certain. I can sometimes see the absolute future with enough effort, but what you will see are only possibilities. Do you understand?”

  I nodded.

  “Good night. If you see something frightful, please don't come crying to me. Let your mother console you.”

  And with that, she left, closing the door behind her.

  The entire time she'd spoken, I'd kept a solemn face, trying to convey the feeling that I was considering her words with great care, contemplating what I should do. But I knew all the while that I was going to look at the picture. How could I not?

  I walked around the table and sat in the chair beside the photograph. I purposefully averted my eyes until I was ready to look. After taking a deep breath, I pulled the photo over until it was right in front of me, just inches away from my eyes. And then, with a thousand pounds of TNT exploding in my chest, I looked.

  I stared at the photo for ten to fifteen minutes.

  Only two images appeared.

  In both of them, I was dead.

  The first image was one I had seen before, although very briefly, in the house by the river in Japan, where I first met the Hooded One. Countless pictures had been hung on the walls, Hood's strange way of welcoming me to that house that Rayna had foreseen being near the place I fell into the river. Rayna had touched each of those pictures with her gift, and I saw a particular image in each one of them.

  I saw the same thing in this new picture on the table.

  It was me, dead, or at best, in a deep sleep, lying on a bed of stone, with nothing but gray surrounding my body. My skin was pale and lifeless. It reminded me of an ancient photograph, in black and white, of a dead soldier from the Civil War I had once seen in a history textbook. It sent shivers from head to toe, and I closed my eyes once or twice, squeezing them tight, hoping that the picture would soon change into something else, something more positive.

  About the third time I did this, a new image awaited when I opened my eyes.

  This one was even stranger, although no less frightening.

  The view was from thirty or forty feet above the ground, looking down on a large, coffin-shaped enclosure of clear glass. Within the glass structure was a soft bed with a person on top of it, asleep or dead. The person was me, looking just as blank and pale as in the other image. I wore a dark suit, and didn't look much older at all.

  For a few seconds I could do nothing but stare at myself, almost expecting to see movement—an eye twitch, a yawn, rolling over onto my side. But of course, it was a photo, and nothing moved. Then I noticed everything else in the picture.

  Completely surrounding the glass encasement were a group of soldiers, standing at the ready, machine guns raised in defense. They were dressed in green military issue, but with no distinctive flags or emblems proclaiming whom they represented. The soldiers and the glass wherein I was laying all sat atop a rectangular pyramid of steps, at least fifty feet high. The bottom-most step was surrounded in barbed wire and heavy fencing material.

  Outside of this barrier were people—lots of people—going all the way to the very edge of the picture. They were just standing there, looking upward at the soldiers and me. Some of them were holding flowers and ribbons.

  It made no sense, but it put a lump in my heart.

  After a minute or two, the picture faded back into its original form—my school picture. I waited for something to change again, but nothing happened.

  The heavy feeling of dread that filled me was almost unbearable. What did it mean? Were those two pictures the only possible future before me? Surely there was something else, some far better outlook. Despite the heavy, vile feeling inside of me, I could not truly believe that no matter what I did, I would end up dead—be it in a world of gray dreariness or camped inside some glass coffin.

  There had to be something else. There had to be.

  Perhaps it was all a vain wish, a way for my brain and heart to deceive me so that I would continue on in the fight. But I surprised even myself when I stood up and threw the picture into the trash can. A renewed sense of determination filled me. I would not let some dumb photograph ruin my life or make me give up.

  I convinced myself that the picture had just neglected to show all the possibilities. I would avoid both of them, and we would somehow win this bizarre battle against an unknown and so far unseen enemy called the Stompers. I wasn't sure where it came from, but I was filled with strength, and decided to go chat with Tanaka until I felt tired.

  I went upstairs and found him snoring loud enough to wake the fish at the bottom of the ocean.

  I woke Tanaka up and reminded him of his important duty as watch guard, and then went to my room, just as Rayna was sneaking back into the Mess Hall and retrieving the picture I'd left behind. She would not tell me about it for a very long time to come, but the photo had transformed into a third prophetic image—one that was even worse than the two I had seen.

  I am standing in a field of grass, the most brilliant green I have ever seen, like thin slivers of emerald reaching for the heavens. The sky is radiant and blue above me, unbroken by even the slightest wisp of cloud. The air is warm and still. There is no sound.

  I look around, and what I find is very surprising to me.

  To my left, about fifty yards away, there is a wooden chair, just like the ones my family has around our kitchen table. Sitting in the chair is Mom, hands in her lap, looking in my direction with a big smile on her face. I begin to wave but then I see that her eyes are not focused on me, but on something in the distance.

  I look in that direction, behind me.

  There is another chair, just like Mom's, about the same distance from me. Dad is sitting in this one, looking over at Mom, the same smile on his face. Their smiles do not comfort me, they scare me—there is something not right about them, like the clowns at a cheap carnival. It's creepy.

  I call to both of them but they do not answer.

  Then their expressions change from eerie cheer to utter horror. They look up to the sky. I follow their gaze.

  Two balls of fire are hurtling from the sky, trails of flame marking their path. It doesn't take long to realize they are heading for my mom and dad, both on a direct course to obliterate them in a fiery instant of brief pain.

  I yell for them to run, but it's as if I'm not there. They ignore me, they ignore their own instincts, they ignore each other. They just sit and wait for certain death.