“Sure.” Fox gathered up scraps, trash, began to cart them out the back, across the narrow yard to the Dumpster the Larsons had rented for the duration of the remodel.

He glanced toward the adjoining yard and the sound of kids playing. And the armload he carried thumped and bounced on the ground as his body went numb.

The little boys played with trucks and shovels and pails in a bright blue sandbox. But it wasn’t filled with sand. Blood covered their bare arms as they pushed their Tonka trucks through the muck inside the box. He stumbled back as the boys made engine sounds, as red lapped over the bright blue sides and dripped onto the green grass.

On the fence between the yards, where hydrangeas headed up toward bloom, crouched a boy that wasn’t a boy. It bared its teeth in a grin as Fox backed toward the house.

“Dad! Dad!”

The tone, the breathless fear had Brian rushing outside. “What? What is it?”

“Don’t you-can’t you see?” But even as he said it, as he pointed, something inside Fox knew. It wasn’t real.

“What?” Firmly now, Brian took his son’s shoulders. “What do you see?”

The boy that wasn’t a boy danced along the top of the chain-link fence while flames spurted up below and burned the hydrangeas to cinders.

“I have to go. I have to go see Cal and Gage. Right now, Dad. I have to-”

“Go.” Brian released his hold on Fox, stepped back. He didn’t question. “Go.”

He all but flew through the house and out again, up the sidewalk to the Square. The town no longer looked as it usually did to him. In his mind’s eye Fox could see it as it had been that horrible week in July seven years before.

Fire and blood, he remembered, thinking of the dream.

He burst into the Bowl-a-Rama where the summer afternoon leagues were in full swing. The thunder of balls, the crash of pins pounded in his head as he ran straight to the front desk where Cal worked.