Chapter 2

A month after the move, a shelf in the garage collapsed. It happened in the middle of the night, a loud crash that woke the whole house. Dad went down to check, grumbling about cheap particle board.

The next morning, I saw the damage. A heavy-duty metal shelf, overloaded with old paint cans and tools, had buckled. Everything had come crashing down right on top of the corner where the boxes from the move were stored. The cardboard box labeled 'Misc.' was crushed flat.

"Damn it," Dad said, kicking at a bent piece of metal. "Well, I guess that' s one way to get me to clean out the garage."

He didn't even check to see what was broken inside the box. He just swept up the splintered wood of the little altar table, an almost sorrowful look on his face, but he didn't say anything. The porcelain offering bowl was in pieces. The wooden box was gone, probably buried somewhere in the mess. Nobody looked for it. We were too busy. Life was moving forward.

Two weeks later, my uncle Bob died.

He was Dad' s younger brother, a solid, dependable man who ran his own construction business. He wasn' t a reckless person. He was the guy you called when you needed real advice.

The police said it was a single-car accident. He was driving home late from a job site on a clear, dry night. His truck went straight off a curve in the road and hit a massive oak tree. There were no skid marks. It was as if he never even tried to turn.

A witness, a truck driver who had been a ways behind him, told the police something strange. He said my uncle' s truck just swerved suddenly, violently, as if he was trying to avoid something right in front of him. But the road was empty. The trucker also said that just before the crash, he saw the interior light of my uncle' s cab flash on. He swore he saw my uncle turned, yelling at the passenger seat. But he was alone in the truck.

At the funeral, Dad was a wreck. He couldn' t make sense of it.

"He knew that road like the back of his hand, Alex," he kept saying to me, his voice hollow. "He drove it every day for fifteen years. How does this happen?"

I didn' t have an answer. None of us did. It was a tragedy, a horrible, senseless accident. That' s what we told ourselves.

The night after the funeral, I got sick. It started with a headache, then chills that shook my whole body. By morning, I was burning up with a fever of 104. Mom gave me medicine, but it didn' t do anything. I was in and out of consciousness, and when I was awake, I wasn' t making any sense.

Mom told me later that I was talking, but not to them. I was arguing with someone.

"No, it' s not mine," I' d muttered, thrashing in the sweat-soaked sheets. "I didn' t take it. Leave me alone."

My parents took me to the doctor, then to the emergency room. They ran tests. Blood work, scans, everything. They found nothing. No infection, no virus, nothing physically wrong with me. But the fever wouldn' t break. I was wasting away in a hospital bed, my eyes wide and terrified, staring at something in the corner of the room that no one else could see.

On the third day, my mom reached her breaking point. She was sitting by my bed, her face pale with exhaustion and fear. Dad was on the phone, arguing with a nurse about running more tests.

Mom looked at me, at my chattering teeth and delirious eyes, and then she looked at my dad.

"This isn' t normal, David," she said, her voice trembling but firm. "The doctors don' t know. This is something else."

Dad hung up the phone. "What are you saying, Sarah?"

"I' m saying we need to try something else," she said, her gaze unwavering. "Someone told me about a woman, out past the old quarry. They say she… she helps with things like this."

Dad stared at her, his pragmatic, sensible world crumbling around him. He looked from his desperate wife to his dying son. He was a man who believed in logic and reason, but logic and reason had failed. He was cornered.

"Fine," he breathed, the word a surrender. "Fine. We' ll go."