I wasn’t hurt that bad, but Grandma rushed me home and shut me up in my bedroom anyway. No one was allowed to come and see me, not even Murphy. I figured she would be pretty pissed off about that, but there wasn’t much I could do about it. Eventually this guy named Dr. Thompson showed up to check on me. At least Grandma said he was a doctor, or he used to be, anyhow. Dr. Thompson poked and prodded at me and shined a flashlight in my eyes.

“He’ll be fine,” said Dr. Thompson. “Just a headache. Keep him in bed the rest of the day, but try not to let him fall asleep for a while, if you can.”

When he left the room, I asked Grandma why that lady had tried to kill me.

“Not everyone is a friend of the Farm,” she said. “Not everybody is on our side of things.”

“You mean like all the people at the Clock Without Hands?”

Grandma nodded. “I mean those people precisely.”

“But I didn’t see that lady there the night we snuck in.”

“That’s because she used to be one of us, and she still keeps some of our ways. Her daughter was very sick, and she brought her to Jeremiah. But there was nothing anybody could do for the poor girl, not at that point. Her daughter died, and she blamed your uncle for it. Poor misguided woman.”

Grandma left it at that. My head throbbed, and it was hard for me to keep things straight. It was like my whole life was just a tumble down a huge hill, things just happening and happening without me having any control over them at all.

“I just still can’t believe that the Hobo was real,” I said.

“Yes, honey,” she said. “It would appear that he was real indeed.”

To be honest, the thought of it made me want to vomit, and I nearly did, right there in bed. The idea of him looking in on me at night, sneaking around the house, hiding in my closet. This man, so obsessed with me, haunting my whole childhood. Following me. God, it was awful. Being watched like that, spied on. What all had he seen? What did he know about me? I felt, I don’t know, defiled in some way. Like I needed to shower and scrub his eyes off of me.

But the Hobo was dead now, and he’d saved my life.

I still don’t know how I feel about that.

There was a commotion outside, dogs barking, people hollering. I went to the window to look out.

The Urquharts stood in the driveway. They were dirtier, more ragged than before, and they looked angry. The mom’s face was all red, and it was obvious she’d been crying.