Andrew Klavan - The long way home

I must've been going even faster than I thought. The police never caught up with me again. I ran and ran and ran through a broken pattern of yards and streets and alleys.

I ran until I ran out of houses. I ran until I reached the edge of town.

And then I kept running.

Murder There were clouds blowing by in the dark overhead, but there were great swaths of open sky. A half-moon shone, lighting my way, and I had stars enough to guide me.

I jogged down lonely country roads. When I heard cars coming, I ducked off behind the surrounding trees or dodged into an isolated driveway and hid behind a parked car.

Sometimes I heard sirens in the distance. Those were the cops, I guessed, still hunting for me. But that was back toward town, back toward Whitney. Out here, it was just me and the passing cars.

The farther I got from the little city, the easier it was to keep off the roads completely. I cut across flat farm fields harvested to the nub. I tried to lose myself in high brown grass and high brown stalks of gathered corn. Sometimes there were forests, and I'd slide in between the trees. But I couldn't go too deeply into the woods. At night, with no flashlight, it was just too dark in there, too easy to lose my way.

Once, in the middle of a great, broad space, with a vast sky of stars wheeling above me and the clouds sailing by overhead like big ships headed for faraway lands, I looked off into the distance and saw the fearful red and blue flashers of two cruisers passing on the state highway. They were heading east, toward Spring Hill. I guess it hadn't been too hard for them to figure out I was going home. I knew now they would be waiting for me, searching for me, the minute I arrived.

But I kept on. Getting tired now. My legs feeling like lead. Sometimes my head hung down and my eyes closed, as if I could sleep and walk at the same time. I was thirsty and hungry too.

I couldn't keep going. I needed a place to rest. Some00- where secluded, somewhere safe. I considered a barn I found, but the farmhouse was too close. I could see the lights in the windows, hear the voices of the people talking inside. It felt dangerous. Someone could spot me or hear me moving. Someone could come out and surprise me while I slept.

Tired as I was, I forced myself to move on.

I was about two miles away from Spring Hill when I saw the church. It was an old one, but I'd never seen it before. It stood on a stretch of open grass, pressed close to a cluster of hickory and pine trees. In the moonlight, its white clapboards showed gray streaks where the paint had worn away. It had red cedar on the pitched roof and gray shingles at the top of the steeple. At first, as I approached, I thought it might be abandoned. But as I got closer, I saw the sermon sign and it was up-to-date. The preacher was going to give a sermon next Sunday called "Be Not Afraid." It sounded like good advice. I wished I could take it.

I tried the front door. Locked. But it was only a padlock, looped through a hasp. The hasp was screwed into the wood of the jamb. The wood looked old and soft. As soon as I pulled at the door, the hasp started to tear away. I pulled harder, making the hasp rattle. The screws started to come out. Every time I yanked at the door, the hasp got looser. Finally, there was a ripping noise and a rattle of screws. The hasp came off and the door swung open.

I went into the church and pulled the door closed behind me.

There was a deep quiet inside, but it was surprisingly bright. The windows were tall and the moon shone through on one side, painting the place silver with deep gray shadows. There wasn't much to see. No decorations or anything. Just pews and a pulpit and an altar with a cross hanging on the wall behind it. And words above the cross: "Put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground."

That sounded like good advice too.

I made my way carefully down the side aisle, moving slowly, reaching out in front of me so I wouldn't bump into anything. I found a door near the pulpit and went through. There was a small changing room. There was a narrow corridor lined with hanging robes. I pushed between the robes until I made out a door standing open at the end. A bathroom.

I turned on the light in there. Found the sink. I ran the faucet and filled my hands with water and brought it to my mouth and gulped it down. I did it again and again. I never wanted to stop. I felt energy rising inside me as the water filled me.

When I was done, I turned the lights off again. I didn't want anyone passing by to wonder who was inside. I made my way back down the corridor, out of the changing room, back through the door behind the pulpit. I picked a pew for myself, a pew under a window with the moonlight falling directly onto it. I sat on it heavily. Then, exhausted, I lay down on my side, my shoulder against the hard wood.

It was cold-cold and damp too. I turned up my collar. I put my hands under my cheek and pulled my arms in tight against me. After a while, with my chin tucked into my fleece, I felt warmer, warm enough to get some sleep anyway.

But I didn't sleep. Not right away. As exhausted as I was, my mind wouldn't stop working. Images kept flashing at me. The man with the knife in the library bathroom. The thugs who nearly hustled me into their car. The police cruisers racing after me on the lonely street. The gunshot that struck so close to me in the alley that it turned my guts to water with fear.

The flashbacks wouldn't stop coming, and with every one my heart raced faster. After a while, tired as I was, I knew I would not be able to sleep. Still lying on the pew, I reached inside my fleece and found the papers I'd stuffed into the inner pocket: the news stories I'd printed out in the library. I drew them out into the moonlight.

I held the pages up in front of my face, angling them so the silver moonlight played over them and I could read the words. I shuffled through them until I found the headline I wanted: "Local Teen Found Stabbed to Death."

That was Alex. Alex Hauser. We'd known each other since kindergarten and for years we did just about everything together, even studied karate together for a while. Then, when Alex and I were both sixteen, Alex's dad and mom got divorced and his dad moved away to another town.

It hit Alex hard. He'd hear his mom crying in her room all the time and he didn't know how to help her. They didn't have as much money as they used to either. Alex had to move to a different neighborhood and start going to a different school. He and I couldn't hang out together the way we used to. Alex started going around with a lot of not-so-nice friends and doing stuff he shouldn't have been doing. Drinking, stealing, fighting, stuff like that.

While all this was going on, according to my friend Josh, Alex also started hanging out with Beth Summers. Beth was one of the nicest girls I'd ever met, really sweet- natured and always interested in people and kind to them. I guess it's kind of obvious I liked her a lot myself. She and Alex were both working down on Main Street at Blender-Benders for the summer and they started walking home together. Anyway, according to Josh, as Alex started changing, Beth stopped liking him so much and stopped hanging out with him. Later, when the school year got started, I saw my chance and I asked Beth if she'd go out with me sometime and she said yes.

This is all stuff I can remember. Stuff that happened before this weird yearlong darkness came over my brain.

I also remember what happened the night Alex was murdered. I was in the mall parking lot outside my karate studio after a lesson. I was just tossing my bag into the back of my car-my mom's car, really, but I was driving it. Alex and a couple of his not-so-nice friends came up to me. I guess Alex had heard about me asking Beth out. Even though he wasn't seeing Beth anymore, he was pretty angry. At first, it almost looked like he and his pals were going to start a fight with me. But Alex had second thoughts and he kept things cool.