The Shibboleth

Text copyright © 2014 by John Hornor Jacobs

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Jacobs, John Hornor.

The Shibboleth / by John Hornor Jacobs.

pages cm. — (The twelve-fingered boy trilogy)

Summary: As Shreve Cannon's ability to absorb the memories of others has

him teetering on the edge of insanity, he returns to the custody of the state of

Arkansas, this time in a mental institution, but he must collect himself and find

Jack, the Twelve-Fingered Boy, if he is to stop an unspeakable evil that is stirring

in Baltimore.

ISBN 978–0–7613–9008–4 (trade hard cover : alk. paper)

ISBN 978–1–4677–2405–0 (eBook)

[1. Psychiatric hospitals—Fiction. 2. Supernatural—Fiction. 3. Ability—Fiction.

4. Memory—Fiction. 5. Bullies—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.J152427Shi 2014

[Fic]—dc23
 
2013009535

Manufactured in the United States of America

1 – BP – 12/31/13

eISBN: 978-1-4677-2405-0 (pdf)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-3997-9 (ePub)
eISBN: 978-1-4677-3998-6 (mobi)

FOR LISA, MY SISTER WHO HAS YET TO READ ANY OF MY NOVELS WHICH EXPLAINS
WHY SHE CONTINUES TO ACT LIKE I'M NOT TOTALLY AWESOME

“We are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively …”
—Bill Hicks

“I am large, I contain multitudes.”
—Walt Whitman, “Song of Myself”

–into the brilliant sun-wrecked air and the parking lot between the cars of teachers and the older students, the world stinking of diesel and the fumes of buses where my moms waits in our smoldering station wagon, cigarette smoke curling around her perm and looking at me sadly, still in her uniform, name tag, and apron as coach williams places me like some block of wood or dumb inert thing in the backseat where it is warm and the vibrations of the car soothe me even though she's talking

–shit I can't be taking off work every time you got yourself a goddamned sniffle she says but her tone's not angry just tired and weary and bloodshot as her eyes

she leans into the backseat as she drives and touches my cheek, my forehead, with a terribly cold hand as I watch the trees pass overhead in the sliver of sky visible from where I lie and says my lord I could feel your fever before I even touched you, shree, turning back to the wheel and ashing her smoke out the cracked window

I can hear it, feel it, without even opening my burning eyelids when the car enters the holly pines trailer park and the sensation of pulling into our trailer hits home like a dropped piece of bologna slapping on the floor. I let myself spill out of the car and walk like an untethered balloon into the trailer and back to my room and onto the bed into darkness where I shiver and pass in and out of consciousness like some sort of ghost until her cold hands return, pulling off my shoes, tugging off my jeans, holding a cup of water to my mouth

–my sick little man she says, cold hand on my cheek, as she lies down, arm thrown wide over me and snuggling down into my comforter, closing her eyes, facing me, and I raise one trembling and hot feverish hand looking into her white face, lined with care and eroded by the tides of alcohol and place my palm on her cheek, feather-light. I stay still—so still—so she'll stay here with me, sleeping, sleeping and quiet, moms and her sick little man who'll never ever let her go, never let this moment end never let it–

Once upon a time Casimir was safe, part of an everyday rhythm to a song I knew by heart, every phrase familiar, every verse comforting. But that's all gone. The world spun into uncertainty.

Jack is with Quincrux now, and I'm stuck here, alone. Waiting. Wondering.

Watching for Riders.

The television displays thirty frames of video in a single second. Each image hits your eyes in a wave of light, incredibly fast, like breakers scraping at a rocky shore, and your brain cannot interpret the light as a still image before the next wave crashes on the beach and the next, giving you the illusion of motion. This is called the persistence of vision.

What Warden Kay Anderson is concerned with is just five frames. Just a fraction of a second, a part that your brain would barely even notice.

She turns in her chair and fiddles with the controls of the VCR on the pushcart. On the outside, there are HD TVs and
PS3s and DVD players. On the inside, there's a cart with a wobbly wheel, stenciled with the words
Property of the Pulaski County Juvenile Detention Center Audio/Visual Department
. We're not quite in the twenty-first century yet.