BOOM! The jackrabbit cautiously hopped toward the barn, instinctively seeking shelter. It saw a giant dark square opening and moved quickly inside to get relief from the cold rain. The smell of hay and dust filled its nostrils. But there was something else–a sick, pungent odor the jackrabbit had never smelled. As it hopped around in the darkness, feeling for a soft place to lie down, something lightly flapped in the air nearby. A quick, whispering flitter. The unknown sound caused its heartbeat to pound in its long ears.

BOOM! The flash illuminated the inside of the old barn, and a long grayish-white body on a large pile of hay. The jackrabbit instinctively leaped into the air with fright, kicking its hind legs to flee even before it again touched the ground. It was too late.

It didn’t have another second to think. Its body felt the crushing sensation of life coming to an end in that old abandoned barn that Haverhill and its countryside had forgotten all those years.

“Don’t tell me about reality.
Don’t tell me about how the world
is supposed to work...I don’t care.”

The boy on the back porch

CHAPTER ONE

A Very Special Gift

HAVERHILL NEVER HAD MUCH excitement to speak of. Sure, every fall the Harvest Home Festival was celebrated in the nearby town of Leon. (Reverend Landreth earned bragging rights for the rest of the year by growing the heaviest pumpkin, even though some folks accused him of sneaking several bricks inside it at the weigh-in.) The weather’s about the same as anywhere else, plus the odd tornado or two. Years ago a traveling carnival came through, but it never amounted to anything. The local high school football team, the Losing Lions, had a winless streak that brought some publicity, even if it was bad. And the crowning of the Watermelon Queen during Leon’s Summer Jubilee provided interesting gossip for the town matriarchs.

But from a child’s point of view, in the sparse community of Haverhill nothing exciting ever really happened…until that one afternoon Benjamin Biggs’s grandfather showed up at the door holding a cardboard box.

The four-year-old was playing in his sandbox in the backyard, the sun warming his baby-blonde hair. Benjamin liked living in the country. He had a love for all animals (well, except snakes), and his house was in the perfect spot to see them. Wild animals of every kind popped up all over the place. He once thought he saw a fox and skunk playing on the country road in front of his house.

Benjamin was free to roam without the worry of cars zooming along the road. He did, however, miss having friends living close by, as they did when the Biggs family lived in the city. Not a single neighbor was within a short walk. But his father couldn’t pass up buying the house that his father had built years ago.