Monster Chapter Nine

Each of us bears his own Hell. —Virgil

Nick ran toward the arena, weaving between pickup trucks and trailers to remain out of sight. He didn’t want to be around when Jimmy’s parents found their boy. Let them wonder who had yelled their son’s name. Let Jimmy tell them about the strange kid who’d pulled him to the ground. Nick didn’t want to explain. Not right then.

Ninety minutes.

He threw a look over his shoulder. No one followed.

Slowing his pace, he blended into the crowd. He started toward the bleachers, then remembered the hot dogs. It felt like hours since he’d gone for food, but it had only been thirty minutes. He returned to the concession stand. His hot dogs were gone, probably found and thrown away. He bought four more using his own money and returned to the stands. When Mom looked at him questioningly, he was ready with his lie.

“Stomach problems,” he said. “And there was a big ol’ line at the porta-potties.”

He could feel her eyes on him as he passed out the hot dogs, but she said nothing else. His little sisters ate and watched the rodeo. Nick watched the stands.

Ninety minutes.

The symbols could be changed. He knew that for sure now.

But his efforts had only purchased another ninety minutes for Little Cowboy. Death had not been robbed, only delayed for the smallest of slivers. Why? What the hell was going on here?

Across the arena, Nick spied Jimmy darting into the bleachers. The boy ran to where he’d been sitting earlier; his father and mother followed. Big Cowboy held a cardboard tray of Pepsis, and Mom carried a paper sack. Probably burgers.

Nick looked down the row. Mom caught him staring at her and smiled. He smiled back. Her timer had fifty-five years remaining. Little Beth had seventy-four.

Jane licked mustard from her fingers, then wiped them on her pants. Jane with the deep brown eyes and sly smile.

She spied him looking at her. “Nick!” she said. “Do your trick!” She looked around, and for a moment, Nick was confused. His sister picked up a ketchup packet and placed her hands behind her. In another moment, both hands were in front of her, closed into fists.

“Which hand?”

Ah. That trick.

Nick looked at the symbols above Jane’s head. Jane had played this game about a month ago while hiding Nick’s house key in one of her hands. She asked Nick to tell him which hand it was in, and he became interested in how a group of symbols farther back in the rift had acted when Jane put the key in her fist. He didn’t understand the exact pattern—there was a group of about thirty of them clustered together—but he noticed that when Jane picked her right hand, three of the symbols changed to read ДФД. When she picked the left hand, the symbols changed to ДФФ.

Nick glanced at Jimmy. He and his family were still there. He looked back to Jane’s symbols.

“Right,” he said, and Jane squealed.

“Again!”

She put her hands behind her back again.

“Right again.” He smiled. “You can’t fool me.”

“How do you do it?” His sister whined. “Again!”

He missed once on purpose, just so his mother didn’t start to wonder, then mussed his sister’s hair and put an arm around her. She curled close to him and took another bite of her hot dog.

His face was right next to her rift. He was too close to see anything but knew what the timer read. Her number was high—over twenty-one million seconds. But seconds are fleeting. Short, harsh, and gone all too fast. Ticking away, minute after minute, hour after hour.

Twenty-one million seconds was eight months. Nick had figured the date a dozen times. On May 14th of the next year, at 11:18 in the morning, his little sister Jane would die.

There was no question in his mind—no decision to be made.

Nick would follow Jimmy for the next ninety minutes.

He would follow Jimmy and try again.