JOE PRACTICALLY HAD to be held down to be kept from leaping out of the van as we passed the White Castle.

I steered back to our original route, but we didn’t get very far. A man, covered from head to toe in mud, staggered out of the bushes and into the middle of the road.

I swerved and hit the brakes.

“Hey,” I yelled out the window. “You need some help?”

He ignored me and staggered up the lawn of a house whose windows-like all the others we’d seen-were flickering blue from TV and computer displays.

“Yo,” yelled Willy, climbing out of the van after him. “You okay?”

The man must have heard him-unless he was deaf or had mud in his ears-but he just walked up to the house and right smack into the closed front door. After a minute or two, the door opened, and we caught a glimpse of a pregnant woman as he pushed his way through and disappeared inside.

“Rough day at work, I guess,” said Dana.

“Maybe he’s an alligator wrestler,” suggested Joe.

“Alligators don’t live this far north, stupid,” said Emma. “But clearly he was coming from someplace muddy.”

“The closest body of water is two point one miles south-southeast of here,” said Dana, clicking away on a computer in the back of the minivan. “That roughly lines up with the direction he was coming from.”

“Step on it, driver!” said Willy.

“Hey, I’m in charge around here,” I said and added, “as should be obvious to a bunch of people who depend on my imagination for their very existence.”

“Sorry, your highness,” said Joe, returning the flurry of food wrappers, soda cans, and sneakers that had nailed him earlier.

We’d just turned onto County Road 23 when Emma suddenly shrieked like a banshee.

A dog had run into the street just feet away from our car.

I BRAKED SO hard that everybody in the backseats ended up in the front seats.