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The avenging de car, barbecued the wrong guy So they can make mistakes They can confuse identities The kid felt terrible about it and fro to God for another chance Forto piss off the dark real heavy A shadow hts in the street My eyes closed

Open again Darker Had tiure of a man

No, just the tree outside the

Another shadow, next to it Another, a forest of shapes Moving, slowly Was I dreaht in front of ht in the center of it, two burning coals floating right there, inches away

I flung ht, ain There was still a lone shadow on the far wall, which was in fact just a tree backlit from the front yard I walked over to it, reached out, and touched it The shadow didn’t react That was good

My watch: 11:43 PM

I pounded up the stairs and burst into A her She was on the bed with the laptop, legs crossed under her, a handful of what looked like Cheetos frozen halfway to her ht my breath and said, "How can you eat those and type on your coe shit everywhere?"

"Uh, I"

"Coonna happen But I want to be on the ground floor and near an exit"

"Why?"

In case we have to run screa out of this place

"And put some shoes on Just in case"

11:52 PM

The television was back to regularly scheduled prograe of somebody who doesn’t watch a lot of TV No movie channels I turned it off and turned to A a thu And I do ?"

"Sure" I stalked around the walls of the roo, at least

As long as you don’t bring up your brother

"You said yesterday that, like, uys is true So--there are sos that I’ve read that, you know"

"What do they say, A And that Jiuys were into"

"If that were true, would I ad a compulsion with ht? In Las Vegas?"

"Yeah"

"And John says he didn’t die in an accident, the way the papers said"

"What did John say?"

"He said a littleate hiht I would ask you"

"What are you willing to believe, Aels and deods, all that?"

"Sure"

"Okay So, if they exist, then to theht? Like way lower on the ladder Now the trick is that a higher being can study and understand the things under it, but not vice versa We put the virus under the microscope A virus can’t do the sas that exist above us hu and complex that they can’t fit inside your brain, we’d be no erht?"

11:58 PM

"Okay"

"I mean, not without special tools"

"Okay"

"John and I have those tools But just because we can see these things, these odd and weird and horrible things, it don’tabout the Jis, he had unusual hobbies He built model monsters But he knew some people, too, didn’t he? Weird people? You knoho I’uy with the Jamaican accent?"

She said, "Yeah, I think we talked about that, didn’t we? He was houy and I heard he, like, exploded I alondered about that Do you think Ji, too?"