Текст книги "The Knife of Never Letting Go"

Автор книги: Patrick Ness

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

We get ourselves outta the swamp and head back towards town and the world feels all black and grey no matter what the sun is saying. Even Manchee barely says nothing as we make our way back up thru the fields. My Noise churns and bubbles like a stew on the boil till finally I have to stop for a minute to calm myself down a little.

There’s just no such thing as silence. Not here, not nowhere. Not when yer asleep, not when yer by yerself, never.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think to myself with my eyes closed. I am twelve years and twelve months old. I live in Prentisstown on New World. I will be a man in one month’s time exactly.

It’s a trick Ben taught me to help settle my Noise. You close yer eyes and as clearly and calmly as you can you tell yerself who you are, cuz that’s what gets lost in all that Noise.

I am Todd Hewitt.

“Todd Hewitt,” Manchee murmurs to himself beside me.

I take a deep breath and open my eyes.

That’s who I am. I’m Todd Hewitt.

We walk on up away from the swamp and the river, up the slope of the wild fields to the small ridge at the south of town where the school used to be for the brief and useless time it existed. Before I was born, boys were taught by their ma at home and then when there were only boys and men left, we just got sat down in front of vids and learning modules till Mayor Prentiss outlawed such things as “detrimental to the discipline of our minds”.

Mayor Prentiss, see, has a Point of View.

And so for almost half a stupid year, all the boys were gathered up by sad-faced Mr Royal and plonked out here in an out-building away from the main Noise of the town. Not that it helped. It’s nearly impossible to teach anything in a classroom full of boys’ Noise and completely impossible to give out any sort of test. You cheat even if you don’t mean to and everybody means to.

And then one day Mayor Prentiss decided to burn all the books, every single one of them, even the ones in men’s homes, cuz apparently books were detrimental as well and Mr Royal, a soft man who made himself a hard man by drinking whisky in the classroom, gave up and took a gun and put an end to himself and that was it for my classroom teaching.

Ben taught me the rest at home. Mechanics and food prep and clothes repair and farming basics and things like that. Also a lot of survival stuff like hunting and which fruits you can eat and how to follow the moons for direkshuns and how to use a knife and a gun and snakebite remedies and how to calm yer Noise as best you can.

He tried to teach me reading and writing, too, but Mayor Prentiss caught wind of it in my Noise one morning and locked Ben up for a week and that was the end of my book-learning and what with all that other stuff to learn and all the working on the farm that still has to be done every day and all the just plain surviving, I never ended up reading too good.

Don’t matter. Ain’t nobody in Prentisstown ever gonna write a book.

Manchee and me get past the school building and up on the little ridge and look north and there’s the town in question. Not that there’s all that much left of it no more. One shop, used to be two. One pub, used to be two. One clinic, one jail, one non-working petrol stayshun, one big house for the Mayor, one police stayshun. The Church. One short bit of road running thru the centre, paved back in the day, never upkept since, goes to gravel right quick. All the houses and such are out and about, outskirts like, farms, meant to be farms, some still are, some stand empty, some stand worse than empty.

And that’s all there is of Prentisstown. Populayshun 147 and falling, falling, falling. 146 men and one almost-man.

Ben says there used to be other settlements scattered around New World, that all the ships landed about the same time, ten years or so before I was born, but that when the war started with the spacks, when the spacks released the germs and all the other settlements were wiped out, that Prentisstown was nearly wiped out, too, that it only survived cuz of Mayor Prentiss’s army skills and that even tho Mayor Prentiss is a nightmare coming and going, we at least owe him that, that cuz of him we survive alone on a whole big empty womanless world that ain’t got nothing good to say for itself, in a town of 146 men that dies a little more with every day that passes.

Cuz some men can’t take it, can they? They off themselves like Mr Royal or some of them just plain disappear, like Mr Gault, our old neighbour who used to do the other sheep farm, or Mr Michael, our second best carpenter, or Mr Van Wijk, who vanished the same day his son became a man. It’s not so uncommon. If yer whole world is one Noisy town with no future, sometimes you just have to leave even if there ain’t nowhere else to go.

Cuz as me the almost-man looks up into that town, I can hear the 146 men who remain. I can hear every ruddy last one of them. Their Noise washes down the hill like a flood let loose right at me, like a fire, like a monster the size of the sky come to get you cuz there’s nowhere to run.

Here’s what it’s like. Here’s what every minute of every day of my stupid, stinking life in this stupid, stinking town is like. Never mind plugging yer ears, it don’t help at all:

And them’s just the words, the voices talking and moaning and singing and crying. There’s pictures, too, pictures that come to yer mind in a rush, no matter how much you don’t want ’em, pictures of memories and fantasies and secrets and plans and lies, lies, lies. Cuz you can lie in the Noise, even when everyone knows what yer thinking, you can bury stuff under other stuff, you can hide it in plain sight, you just don’t think it clearly or you convince yerself that the opposite of what yer hiding is true and then who’s going to be able to pick out from the flood what’s real water and what’s not going to get you wet?

Men lie, and they lie to theirselves worst of all.

In a for instance, I’ve never seen a woman nor a Spackle in the flesh, obviously. I’ve seen ’em both in vids, of course, before they were outlawed, and I see them all the time in the Noise of men cuz what else do men think about except sex and enemies? But the spacks are bigger and meaner looking in the Noise than in the vids, ain’t they? And Noise women have lighter hair and bigger chests and wear less clothes and are a lot freer with their affecshuns than in the vids, too. So the thing to remember, the thing that’s most important of all that I might say in this here telling of things is that Noise ain’t truth, Noise is what men want to be true, and there’s a difference twixt those two things so big that it could ruddy well kill you if you don’t watch out.

“Home, Todd?” Manchee barks a bit louder down by my leg cuz that’s how you gotta talk in the Noise.

“Yeah, we’re going,” I say. We live on the other side, to the north-east, and we’re going to have to go thru the town to get there so here it comes, as fast as I can get thru it.

First up is Mr Phelps’s store. It’s dying, the store is, like the rest of the town and Mr Phelps spends all his time despairing. Even when yer buying stuff from him and he’s polite as can be, the despair of him seeps at you like pus from a cut. Ending, says his Noise, Ending, it’s all ending and Rags and rags and rags and My Julie, my dear, dear Julie who was his wife and who don’t wear no clothes at all in Mr Phelps’s Noise.

“Hiya, Todd,” he calls as Manchee and I hurry by.

“Hiya, Mr Phelps.”

“Beautiful day, ain’t she?”

“She sure is that, Mr Phelps.”

“Beaut!” barks Manchee and Mr Phelps laughs but his Noise just keeps saying Ending and Julie and rags and pictures of what he misses about his wife and what she used to do as if it’s sposed to be unique or something.

I don’t think anything particular in my Noise for Mr Phelps, just my usual stuff you can’t help. Tho I must admit I find myself thinking it all a little bit louder to cover up thoughts about the hole I found in the swamp, to block it out behind louder Noise.

Don’t know why I should do this, don’t know why I should hide it.

But I’m hiding it.

Manchee and me carry on walking pretty fast cuz next is the petrol stayshun and Mr Hammar. The petrol stayshun don’t work no more cuz the fission generator that made the petrol went kerflooey last year and just sits there beside the petrol stayshun like a hulking ugly hurt toe and no one’d live next to it except Mr Hammar and Mr Hammar’s much worse than Mr Phelps cuz he’ll aim his Noise right at you.

And it’s ugly Noise, angry Noise, pictures of yerself in ways that you don’t want pictures of yerself, violent pictures and bloody pictures and all you can do is make yer own Noise as loud as you can and try to sweep up Mr Phelps’s Noise in it, too, and send it right back to Mr Hammar. Apples and Ending and fist over hand and Ben and Julie and Beaut, Todd? and the generator is flickering and rags and shut up, just shut up and Look at me, boy.

And I turn my head anyway even tho I don’t want to but sometimes you get caught off guard and so I turn my head and there’s Mr Hammar in his window, looking right at me and One month, he thinks, and there’s a picture from his Noise and it involves me standing on my own but somehow even more alone than that and I don’t know what it means or if it’s real or if it’s a purposeful lie and so I think about a hammer going into Mr Hammar’s head over and over and he just smiles from his window.

The road curves round the petrol stayshun past the clinic, which is Dr Baldwin and all the crying and moaning men do to doctors when nothing’s really wrong with ’em. Today it’s Mr Fox complaining about how he can’t breathe which would be a pitiable thing if he didn’t smoke so much. And then, as you pass the clinic, God Almighty, you get the bloody bloody pub which even at this hour of the day is just a howl of Noise because what they do there is turn the music up so loud it’s meant to drown out Noise but that only works partway and so you get loud music and loud Noise and worse, drunk Noise, which comes at you like a mallet. Shouts and howls and weeping from men whose faces never change and just horrorpilashuns of the past and all the women that used to be. A whole lot about the women that used to be but nothing that makes any sense, cuz drunk Noise is like a drunk man: blurry and boring and dangerous.

It gets hard to walk around the centre of town, hard to think about the next step cuz so much Noise is weighing on yer shoulders. I honestly don’t know how men do it, I don’t know how I’m going to do it when I become a man ’less something changes on the day that I don’t know about.

The road bears up past the pub and to the right, going by the police stayshun and the jail, all one place and in use more than you might think for a town so small. The sheriff is Mr Prentiss Jr who’s barely two years older than me and only been a man for a short while but who took to his job right well and quick and in his cell is whoever Mayor Prentiss has told Mr Prentiss Jr to make an example of this week. Right now it’s Mr Turner who didn’t hand over enough of his corn yield to “the good use of the whole town”, which just means he didn’t give no free corn to Mr Prentiss and his men.

So you’ve gone thru the town with yer dog and you got all this Noise behind you, Mr Phelps and Mr Hammar and Dr Baldwin and Mr Fox and the extra extra Noise from the pub and Mr Prentiss Jr’s Noise and Mr Turner’s moaning Noise and yer still not done with the Noise of the town cuz here comes the Church.

The Church is why we’re all here on New World in the first place, of course, and pretty much every Sunday you can hear Aaron preaching about why we left behind the corrupshun and sin of Old World and about how we’d aimed to start a new life of purity and brotherhood in a whole new Eden.

That worked out well, huh?

People still go to church tho, mainly cuz they have to, even tho the Mayor hisself hardly ever bothers, leaving the rest of us to listen to Aaron preach about how we’re the only thing each of us have out here, us men together, and how all of us have gotta bind ourselves in a single community.

How if one of us falls, we all fall.

He says that one a lot.

Manchee and me are quiet as possible going past the front door of the Church. Praying Noise comes from inside, it’s got a special feel to it, a special purply sick feel like men are bleeding it out, even tho it’s always the same stuff but the purply blood just keeps on coming. Help us, save us, forgive us, help us, save us, forgive us, get us outta here, please, God, please, God, please, God, tho as far as I know no one’s never heard no Noise back from this God fella.

Aaron’s in there, too, back from his walk and preaching over the prayers. I can hear his voice, not just his Noise, and it’s all sacrifice this and scripture that and blessings here and sainthood there and he’s going on at such a rattle his Noise is like grey fire behind him and you can’t pick out anything in it and he might be up to something, mightn’t he? The sermon might be covering for something and I’m beginning to wonder if I know what that something is.

And then I hear Young Todd? in his Noise and I say, “Hurry up, Manchee,” and we scoot our way along right quick.

The last thing you pass as you crest the hill of Prentisstown is the Mayor’s House which is the weirdest and hardest Noise of all cuz Mayor Prentiss–

Well, Mayor Prentiss is different.

His Noise is awful clear and I mean awful in the awful way. He believes, see, that order can be brought to Noise. He believes that Noise can be sorted out, that if you could harness it somehow, you could put it to use. And when you walk by the Mayor’s House, you can hear him, hear him and the men closest to him, his deputies and things, and they’re always doing these thought exercises, these counting things and imagining perfect shapes and saying orderly chants like I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME whatever that’s sposed to mean and it’s like he’s moulding a little army into shape, like he’s preparing himself for something, like he’s forging some kind of Noise weapon.

It feels like a threat. It feels like the world changing and leaving you behind.

1 2 3 4 4 3 2 1 I AM THE CIRCLE AND THE CIRCLE IS ME 1 2 3 4 4 3 2 1 IF ONE OF US FALLS WE ALL FALL

I will be a man soon and men do not run in fear but I give Manchee a little push and we walk even a little faster than before, giving the Mayor’s House as wide a curve as possible till we’re past it and on the gravel path that heads on towards our house.

After a while, the town disappears behind us and the Noise starts to get a little bit quieter (tho it never never stops) and we can both breathe a bit easier.

Manchee barks, “Noise, Todd.”

“Yesiree,” I say.

“Quiet in the swamp, Todd,” Manchee says. “Quiet, quiet, quiet.”

“Yes,” I say and then I think and I hurry and say, “Shut up, Manchee,” and I smack him on his rump and he says, “Ow, Todd?” but I’m looking back towards the town but there’s no stopping Noise once it’s out, is there? And if it was something you could see, moving thru the air, I wonder if you could see the hole in the Noise floating right outta me, right outta my thoughts from where I was protecting it and it’s such a small bit of Noise and it’d be easy to miss in the great roar of everything else but there it goes, there it goes, there it goes, heading right back towards the world of men.

“And just where do you think you’ve been?” Cillian says as soon as Manchee and I come into view off the path. He’s lying down on the ground, deep into our little fission generator, the one outside the front of the house, fixing whatever’s gone wrong with it this month. His arms are covered in grease and his face is covered in annoyance and his Noise is buzzy like mad bees and I can already feel myself getting angry and I haven’t even properly got home yet.

“I was in the swamp getting apples for Ben,” I say.

“There’s work to be done and boys are off playing.” He looks back into the generator. Something makes a clunk inside and he says, “Dammit!”

“I said I wasn’t playing, if you’d ever listen!” I say but it’s more like a shout. “Ben wanted apples so I was getting him some ruddy apples!”

“Uh-huh,” Cillian says, looking back at me. “And where might these apples be then?”

And of course I’m not holding any apples, am I? I don’t even remember dropping the bag I’d started to fill but of course I must have when–

“When what?” Cillian says.

“Quit listening so close,” I say.

He sighs his Cillian sigh and here we go: “It’s not like we ask you to do so much around here, Todd” – which is a lie – “but we can’t keep this farm running by ourselves” – which is true – “and even if you ever finish all yer chores, which you don’t” – another lie, they work me like a slave – “we’d still be playing a catch-up to nothing, now wouldn’t we?” – and this is true, too. The town can’t grow no more, it can only shrink, and help ain’t coming.

“Pay attenshun when I talk to you,” Cillian says.

“Tenshun!” Manchee barks.

“Shut up,” I say.

“Don’t talk to yer dog that way,” Cillian says.

I wasn’t talking to my dog, I think, loud and clear enough to hear.

Cillian glares at me and I glare back and this is how it always is, our Noise throbbing with red and hassle and irritashun. It’s never been so good with Cillian, not never, Ben’s always been the kind one, Cillian’s always been the other one, but it’s got worse as the day approaches when I’ll finally be a man and won’t have to listen to any more of his crap.

Cillian closes his eyes and breathes loudly once thru his nose. “Todd–” he starts, his voice a bit lower.

“Where’s Ben?” I say.

His face hardens a little more. “Lambing starts in a week, Todd.”

All I do to this is say again, “Where’s Ben?”

“You get the sheep fed and into their paddocks and then I want you to fix the gate to the east field once and for all, Todd Hewitt. I have asked you at least twice before now.”

I lean back on my heels. “‘Well, how was your trip to the swamp, Todd?’” I say, making my voice go all sarcastic. “‘Well, it was fine and dandy there, Cillian, thank you for asking.’ ‘Didja see anything interesting out there in the swamp, Todd?’ ‘Well, funny you should ask, Cillian, cuz I sure did see something interesting which might explain this here cut on my lip that you ain’t asked about but I guess it’ll have to just wait till the sheep are fed and I fix the goddam fence!’”

“Watch yer mouth,” Cillian says. “I don’t have time for yer games. Go do the sheep.”

I clench up my fists and make a sound that sounds like “awwghgh” which tells Cillian that I just can’t put up with his non-reason not for one second longer.

“Come on, Manchee,” I say.

“The sheep, Todd,” Cillian calls as I start walking away. “The sheep first.”

“Yeah, I’ll do the ruddy sheep,” I mutter to myself. I’m walking away faster now, my blood jumping and Manchee’s getting excited from the roar of my Noise. “Sheep!” he barks. “Sheep, sheep, Todd! Sheep, sheep, quiet, Todd! Quiet, quiet in swamp, Todd!”

“Shut up, Manchee,” I say.

“What was that?” Cillian says and there’s something in his voice that makes us both turn around. He’s sitting up by the generator now, his full attenshun on us, his Noise coming right at us like a laser.

“Quiet, Cillian,” Manchee barks.

“What does he mean ‘quiet’?” Cillian’s eyes and Noise are searching me all over.

“What do you care?” I turn again. “I got ruddy sheep to feed.”

“Todd, wait,” he calls after us but then something starts beeping on the generator and he says “Dammit!” again and has to go back to it tho I can feel all kinds of asking marks in his Noise following me, getting fainter as I head out to our fields.

Blast him, blast him and all, I think, in more or less those words and worse as I stomp across our farm. We live about a kilometre north-east of town and we do sheep on one half of the farm and wheat on the other. Wheat’s harder, so Ben and Cillian do most of that. Since I was old enough to be taller than the sheep, that’s who I’ve taken care of. Me, that is, not me and Manchee, tho another one of the false lying excuses why he was given to me was that I could teach him up as a sheep dog which for obvious reasons – by which I mean his complete stupidity – hasn’t worked out to plan.

Feeding and watering and shearing and lambing and even castrating and even butchering, I do all these things. We’re one of three meat and wool providers for the town, used to be one of five, soon be one of two because Mr Marjoribanks oughta be dying from his drink problem any day now. We’ll fold his flock into ours. I should say I’ll fold his flock into ours, like I did when Mr Gault disappeared two winters ago, and they’ll be new ones to butcher, new ones to castrate, new ones to shear, new ones to put in pens with ewes at the right times, and will I get a thank you? No, I will not.

I am Todd Hewitt, I think, the day just keeping on not making my Noise any quieter. I am almost a man.

“Sheep!” say the sheep when I pass their field without stopping. “Sheep!” they say, watching me go. “Sheep! Sheep!”

“Sheep!” barks Manchee.

“Sheep!” say the sheep back.

Sheep got even less to say than dogs do.

I’ve been listening out for Ben’s Noise over the farm and I’ve tracked him down to one corner of one of the wheat fields. Planting’s done, harvest is months away, so there’s not so much to do with the wheat at the minute, just make sure all the generators and the fission tractor and the electric threshers are ready to start working. You’d think this would mean I’d get a little help with the sheep but you would be wrong.

Ben’s Noise is humming a little tune out near one of the irrigashun spouts so I take a turn and head across the field towards him. His Noise ain’t nothing like Cillian’s. It’s calmer and clearer and tho you can’t see Noise, if Cillian’s always seems reddish, then Ben’s seems blue or sometimes green. They’re different men from each other, different as fire and water, Ben and Cillian, my more or less parents.

Story is, my ma was friends with Ben before they left for New World, that they were both members of the Church when the offer of leaving and starting up a settlement was made. Ma convinced Pa and Ben convinced Cillian and when the ships landed and the settlement started, it was my ma and pa who raised sheep on the next farm over from Ben and Cillian growing wheat and it was all friendly and nice and the sun never set and men and women sang songs together and lived and loved and never got sick and never never died.

That’s the story from the Noise anyway so who knows what it was actually like before? Cuz then of course I was born and everything changed. The spacks released their woman-killing germ and that was it for my ma and then the war started and was won and that was it for pretty much the rest of New World. And there’s me, just a baby, not knowing nothing bout nothing, and of course I’m not the only baby, there’re loads of us, and suddenly only half a town of men to take care of all us babies and boys. So a lot of us died and I was counted among the lucky cuz it was only natural for Ben and Cillian to take me in and feed me and raise me and teach me and generally make it possible for me to go on being alive.

And so I’m kinda like their son. Well, more than “kinda like” but less than actually being so. Ben says Cillian only fights with me all the time cuz he cares about me so much but if that’s true I say it’s a funny way to show it, a way that don’t seem much like caring at all, if you ask me.

But Ben’s a different kind of man than Cillian, a kind kind of man that makes him not normal in Prentisstown. 145 of the men in this town, even the newly made ones just past their birthdays, even Cillian tho to a lesser degree, they see me at best as something to ignore and at worst as something to hit and so I spend most of my days figuring out ways to be ignored so as I won’t get hit.

’Cept for Ben, who I can’t describe much further without seeming soft and stupid and like a boy, so I won’t, just to say that I never knew my pa, but if you woke up one day and had a choice of picking one from a selecshun, if someone said, here, then, boy, pick who you want, then Ben wouldn’t be the worst choice you could make that morning.

He’s whistling as we approach and tho I can’t see him yet and he can’t see me, he changes the tune as he senses me coming to a song I reckernize, Early one mo-o-rning, just as the sun was ri-i-sing, which he says was a favourite of my ma’s but which I think is really just a favourite of his since he’s whistled and sang it for me since I can remember. My blood is still storming away from Cillian but I immediately start to feel a little calmer.

Even tho it is a song for babies, I know, shut up.

“Ben!” Manchee barks and goes running around the irrigashun set-up.

“Hello, Manchee,” I hear as I round the corner and see Ben scratching Manchee twixt the ears. Manchee’s eyes are closed and his leg is thumping on the ground with pleasure and tho Ben can certainly tell from my Noise that I’ve been fighting with Cillian again, he don’t say nothing but, “Hello, Todd.”

“Hi, Ben.” I look at the ground, kicking a stone.

And Ben’s Noise is saying Apples and Cillian and Yer getting so big and Cillian again and itch in the crack of my arm and apples and dinner and Gosh, it’s warm out and it’s all so smooth and non-grasping it’s like laying down in a brook on a hot day.

“You calming down there, Todd?” he finally says. “Reminding yerself who you are?”

“Yeah,” I say, “just, why does he have to come at me like that? Why can’t he just say hello? Not even a greeting, it’s all ‘I know you done something wrong and I’m gonna keep at you till I find out what it is.’”

“That’s just his way, Todd. You know that.”

“So you keep saying.” I pick a blade of young wheat and stick the end in my mouth, not quite looking at him.

“Left the apples at the house, didja?”

I look at him. I chew on the wheat. He knows I didn’t. He can tell.

“And there’s a reason,” he says, still scratching Manchee. “There’s a reason which ain’t coming clear.” He’s trying to read my Noise, see what truth he can sift from it, which most men think is a good enough excuse for starting a fight, but I don’t mind with Ben. He cocks his head and stops scratching Manchee. “Aaron?”

“Yeah, I saw Aaron.”

“He did that to yer lip?”

“Yeah.”

“That sunuvahoor.” He frowns and steps forward. “I just might have to have words with that man.”

“Don’t,” I say. “Don’t. It’ll just be more trouble and it don’t hurt that much.”

He takes my chin into his fingers and lifts my head so he can see the cut. “That sunuvahoor,” he says again, quietly. He touches the cut with his fingers and I flinch away.

“It’s nothing,” I say.

“You stay away from that man, Todd Hewitt.”

“Oh, like I went running to the swamp hoping to run into him?”

“He ain’t right.”

“Well, holy crap, thanks for that bit of info, Ben,” I say and then I catch a bit of his Noise that says One month and it’s a new thing, a whole new bit of something that he quickly covers up with other Noise.

“What’s going on, Ben?” I say. “What’s going on with my birthday?”

He smiles and for a second it’s not an entirely true smile, for a second it’s a worried smile, but after that it’s a smile true enough. “It’s a surprise,” he says, “so don’t go looking.”

Even tho I’m nearly a man and even tho I’m nearly getting on up to his height now, he still bends down a little so his face is level with mine, not too close to be uncomfortable, just close enough so that it’s safe and I look away a little bit. And even tho it’s Ben, even tho I trust Ben more than anyone else in this crappy little town, even tho it’s Ben who saved my life and who I know would do it again, I still find myself reluctant to open up my Noise about what happened in the swamp, mainly cuz I can start to feel it pressing on my chest again whenever the thought gets near.

“Todd?” Ben says, looking at me closely.

“Quiet,” Manchee barks softly. “Quiet in swamp.”

Ben looks at Manchee, then back at me, his eyes going all soft and asking and full of concern. “What’s he talking about, Todd?”

I sigh. “We saw something,” I say. “Out there in the swamp. Well, we didn’t see it, it hid, but it was like a rip in the Noise, like a tear–”

I stop talking cuz he’s stopped listening to my voice. I’ve opened up my Noise for him and am remembering it as truthfully as I can and he’s looking at me something fierce and from way behind me I can hear Cillian coming and he’s calling “Ben?” and “Todd?” and there’s concern in his voice and in his Noise and Ben’s is starting to buzz a little, too, and I just keep thinking as truthfully as I can about the hole we found in the Noise but quietly, too, quietly, quietly, so as to keep the town from hearing if I can and here comes Cillian still and Ben’s just looking at me and looking at me till finally I have to ask.

“Is it spacks?” I say. “Is it the Spackle? Are they back?”

“Ben?” Cillian’s yelling it now as he’s coming across the fields.

“Are we in danger?” I ask Ben. “Will there be another war?”

But all Ben says is, “Oh, my God,” real quiet like, and then he says it again, “Oh, my God,” and then, without even moving or looking away, he says, “We have to get you outta here. We have to get you outta here right now.”