Somewhere above, he would find the remains of the giant, the Terrible Miracle, the Demon, the Thing beyond all Things called Mr. Hands.

He thought of those years when he’d been a child, afraid of the dark, afraid of the shadows cast by the tree branches and leaves against his window at night, terrified of the scratching noise those branches had made when the wind came up ever so softly and pressed them against the glass, causing them to move back and forth, back and forth, back and forth let me in, let me in, I’m coming for you, always here, I’m coming for you scritchscritchscritch…

Always he’d cry out for Mommy or Daddy, and always one—or more often than not—both of them would come running into his room, holding him, soothing him, stroking his hair and gently rocking him back and forth, whispering there, there, shhh, c’mon, hon, it’s all right, there’s no such thing as monsters, it’s all right, there, there….

God, how wrong they had been. So much love in their hearts, such good intentions, but so fucking wrong…

It occurred to him—not for the first time since he’d began this journey, this climb—that maybe he was doing this as much for his long-gone family as he was for himself.

He concentrated everything he had to become ultrasensitive to the mountain, feeling it more gently than before, though he was shaking badly. He kept inching upward. With each shift to a newer, higher position, he felt a deeper tenderness toward the mountain. He caught part of a rock with his left hand and started to pull, but could not rise. He let go of his right hand and grabbed onto the wrist of his left, the fingers of his left hand shuddering and popping with the weight.

“You won’t stop me,” he hissed upward, knowing the creature could hear him.

He got one toe into the cliff but that was all he could do. He looked up and held on. The mountain was giving him nothing. It no longer sent back any pressure against his body, no longer returned his tender embraces. Something he had come to rely on had been taken away from him by the thing that waited somewhere above.

So much of life had been denied him because of what it had done.

“I won’t stop. I won’t. Hear me? I don’t…care if it…kills me...”

He was just barely hanging on.

He concentrated all of his strength into the fingers of his left hand, but they were dying on him.

He didn’t know how much longer he could hold on…

3

She came awake around five-thirty in the morning when her bladder announced to her in no uncertain terms that she’d had too much Pepsi with the pizza they made for dinner. She pulled herself up—careful not to jostle the child beside her—and sat on the edge of the sofa. Her side hurt like hell from where the gun and holster had been pressing into it while she slept and her head was screaming for codeine.