Minor Prophets

Jimmy Cajoleas

ALSO BY JIMMY CAJOLEAS

The Good Demon

PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Cajoleas, Jimmy, author.

Title: Minor prophets / by Jimmy Cajoleas.

Description: New York, NY : Amulet Books, an imprint of Abrams, 2019. | Summary: After their mother’s death, Lee and his sister escape their horrible stepfather by fleeing to their grandmother’s farm, where Lee hopes to discover the truth behind his haunting visions.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019010422 | ISBN 9781419739040 (hardback) | eISBN 978-1-68335-642-4

Subjects: | CYAC: Visions—Fiction. | Cults—Fiction. | Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Family life—Fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.1.C265 Mi 2019 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

Book design by Siobhán Gallagher

Published in 2019 by Amulet Books, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

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“With Dreams upon my bed thou scarest me &
affrightest me with Visions”

—William Blake

The night Mom died I had a vision.

I was half drowsing in my bed, my headphones cranked, watching the ceiling fan swirl. It was probably four in the morning, and I couldn’t sleep. I could never sleep. I’d read until two thirty, when my eyes had started burning, and I’d shut all the lights off, turned the music up, and prayed for a sleep miracle, but that miracle just wasn’t coming. I was in the middle of that kind of gray state between waking and dreaming, and I got this strange feeling like I was being watched, like I wasn’t alone in the room anymore.

I looked toward my window.

A man’s face was there, grizzled and wild-eyed, staring into my bedroom. It was like I was paralyzed, like I couldn’t move at all, not even to scream. Because I knew this man, and I knew he wasn’t real, that he only came in my visions. I called him the Hobo, and when I saw him he was always watching me, his eyes bloodshot, his beard ragged, his face pressed against the glass, like any moment he would smash his face through and come for me. He was a bad omen, a promise of awful things to come.