Then shouting.

“Why are we doing this?” I hear it again. “Why . . . Why . . .” Other words lost in distance, behind the barriers of walls.

They’re arguing more and more lately. I get to my feet, crouching in the playhouse. I wait until I hear the sound of an engine roaring away down the street.

I duck through the playhouse door. Thin stripes of the Murrays’ backyard flicker as I dart along the fence: grass, siding, arborvitae, pavement. I jump over the fence slats into the front yard, into a patch of overgrown shrubs and sour-smelling weeds. Through their leaves, I catch the white blur of Anders’s car peeling away.

At the end of the street, he turns left.

He’s not heading toward home. He’s heading downtown.

I grab my bike from its hiding spot behind 751’s garbage cans.

By the time the white car screeches to a stop on Main Street, just across from the music studio, I’m waiting in the intersecting alley.

The world is thin here. The whole town is thin; the woods all around Greenwood are binding it together like a black wire net. And there’s a spot, underground, right through the door Anders entered, where it’s barely held together. Where something dark and quick could push forward and slip straight out of its world into ours.

I climb off the bike. If I stay here, in the alley beside the corroded trash bins, I’m out of sight of the street. But I can see the dark things. They’re trying to hide, but I can spot them, hunched behind corners, pressed against walls. Shadows where there is no one to cast shadows. Nobody’s shadow would look like that anyway.

Warped. Bony. Bent almost like branches.

They are waiting.

I can feel them.

And they can feel me pushing back.

Anders

I shove the stenciled glass door. Nancy’s Needles. HOMETOWN INSURANCE. Underground Music Studio. The names flash and swing in front of me. I yank open the metal door, thunder down the steps, and charge across the central room. A kid with a stack of piano books in his lap looks up from the corduroy couch as I fly past.

I pound on Flynn’s door. Loud enough that I’m sure he can hear, no matter what noise is trapped on the other side.

A second later the door opens. Flynn blinks out at me. His eyebrows rise.

“Hey, Anders,” he says. “You okay?”

“Not really. Can I talk to you?”

“Sure.” Flynn pauses. Over his shoulder I can see a girl about ten years old perched on the folding chair, miniature acoustic guitar across her lap. Her feet swing a few inches from the floor. “We were almost done here.” Flynn turns toward the girl. “What do you think, Jamie? You want to do that Little Mermaid piece one more time? Anders could listen to you. Give you some feedback. He’s pretty good.”

Jamie glances at me. I’m clenching the door frame with one hand. One of my legs is vibrating with impatience.