“Nooo,” he screamed again, and cowered toward the needle, backing through the railing that surrounded it. Although the jogger was immaterial, he fell back like he had tripped on something, and phased into the base of the monolith, disappearing altogether. The park fell silent around us. Connor hurried over.

“That could have gone better,” he said, looking around with caution on his face.

“Better how?”

“We could have not failed completely,” he said with optimism.

“That’s not terribly mentor-y,” I said, turning to head back down the stairs. “I’m going to . . .”

I was interrupted by something akin to the screech of Godzilla coming from behind Connor. I looked at Cleopatra’s Needle. It took me a moment to identify the sound, but then it struck me—the sound of wrenching metal, coming from the pedestal at the base of the monolith. Not one, but all four of the bronze crabs were pulling free from their moorings, the sound becoming overpowering and painful to listen to. Connor covered his ears.

I shoved the blaster into my coat pocket, threw back the other side of my coat, and pulled out my retractable bat. I thumbed the switch and the bat jumped to full size.

Connor was still facing me, clutching his ears, stunned by the sound.

Not sure of what the hell they were or what to call them, I screamed over the sound of the crabs tearing free. “Umm . . . mecha-crabs behind you . . .”

Connor narrowed his eyes at me as he tried to figure out what I was saying, but seeing the bat in my hand was enough to get him to turn and face our foes.

The crabs hit the ground with an immensely solid clang.

“What was it you said?” I asked. “Nine hundred pounds of bronze? That makes each of the crabs roughly two hundred pounds!”

I looked at the thinness of my hollow bat and collapsed it back down, resheathing it.

“I say we err on the side of actually living and run,” I said. “Not that I’m ordering you.”

“No, that’s an order I can take,” Connor said, and ran for the stairs. “C’mon!”

The tiny legs of the bronze crabs clacked across the cobblestones while their claws snapped like sharp, tiny vises. That was all I needed to get running.

Connor was already down the steps and turning south along the path. I skipped the steps entirely and jumped straight to the ground in two bounds, catching up to him.

Even with my eyes somewhat adjusted to the light, it was tough following Connor through the darkness. The path led under a footbridge, the sound of rapid crab claws echoing against the tunnel walls. On this side of the bridge the path began to wind in and out of trees and my pace slowed a little as I fought to keep from losing an eye to low-hanging branches.

“Don’t slow down, kid,” Connor yelled, and then I heard him begin a low litany of “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit . . .”

I wanted to go faster, but all I could think of was a jagged branch skewering my eyeball or that, like in some movie cliché, I’d trip on an unearthed root that would be my undoing. I shielded my eyes, picked my feet up high, and ran faster. Off to either side of the path, I noticed thousands of tiny lights flickering off in the trees like I was running past a Fourth of July display.

“What the hell are those?” I shouted.

Connor slowed a little as he looked, but he didn’t slow much.

“Beats me, kid. Probably one of the million reasons I hate fucking being in the park at night.”

For a short while they brightened, and I swore I could see a city among them, one much different from Manhattan. It looked part Blade Runner, mixed with a dash of Tolkien, both gorgeous and terrifying to see out here in the middle of the night. I was determined not to fall and returned my eyes to the path. The lights faded away and the darkness of the woods returned. The sight of the speck that was Connor receding up ahead urged me to sprint even harder.

I caught up with him as he came to a stop, wrapped his arms around a tree, and shimmied up it.

I had no idea why Connor had opted to climb a tree at this point in our escape. Surely the crabs could wait around the base until he tried to come down. I congratulated myself for keeping moving and staying on the ground.

Until I saw nothing but lake spread out before me.

19

“Dive in, kid,” Connor shouted from up in the tree.

I dove.

As the ice-cold water nearly sent my body into shock, I propelled myself underwater and out across the lake. When I surfaced, I twisted myself around and looked back to shore. The crabs had left Connor alone up in the tree, having preferred to continue after me as the grounded target. All four charged into the water, clicking their claws as they came. I was thrilled, however, to see that, despite chasing me into the lake, the one thing the vicious little crabs couldn’t do was float. They used their back legs to try to propel themselves as a regular crab would, but the weight of their bronze bodies dragged them to the bottom of the lake. As long I kept myself floating at the surface, I should be fine. I watched as each of them sank into the mud of the lake bed below, their claws frantically clicking toward the surface.

I swam back to shore. When I crawled back onto dry land, Connor was just coming down from his tree. I slowly peeled off my coat. It weighed a ton.

“Son of a bitch,” I said, trying to wring it out as best I could. “What the hell just happened?”

I looked at Connor, but his concentration was mostly focused on the lake behind me.

“Kolb,” he said, “just possessed those things. And here he comes again . . .”

I stood there soaking wet, shivering, and turned myself around. Beneath the water, a faint white light started to form, growing like a searchlight rising to the surface. The water bubbled like it was a giant stew pot of WTF, and out of it rose glowing bubbles full of swirling mist, some as large as basketballs. With an alarming pop, the mist broke free and swirled together until I recognized a distinct shape forming. It was the jogger, gasping for air and clawing his way toward the shore. He still acted like he was human and that breathing was an issue for him.

The jogger pulled himself up onto shore and collapsed. His dark wreath of hair was wet, hanging down on one side at least half a foot from a bad comb-over. Everything else on him was wet, too—running shorts, track shoes, and his “Sherlock Ohms” T-shirt. He lay there, sputtering and catching his breath.

“Why is he wet?” I whispered to Connor. “He’s dead. Doesn’t that mean he’s immaterial?”

Connor shook his head.

“I don’t think he understands that he’s dead,” he said. “Mr. Kolb here thinks he’s alive so his spirit is reacting somewhat accordingly. He expected to get wet being in a lake, therefore he’s wet. Didn’t they teach you anything as a F.O.G.gie yet?”

“I am too alive,” the jogger said, forcing himself up onto his knees, “and it’s Doctor Kolb to you. I didn’t go to MIT just for the parties, I’ll have you know.”

He snickered at what he must have thought was some great private joke, then stood up. With care, he scooped the hanging section of his comb-over back onto the top of his head and arranged it. It was a futile attempt at best, looking nothing more than someone with a wet cat sitting up there, but he looked happy with it.

“Sorry, about that, Dr. Kolb,” I said. Politeness was the cornerstone of the D.E.A.’s training manual Deadside Manner . . . or what I had read of it, anyway.

His initial fear from when we had first seen him tonight seemed to be gone, replaced with fascination. He turned away from us and looked down into the water.

“Astounding,” he said. “Did you catch all that? The way my body broke down on a molecular level, and reconstituted itself by manifesting within those four statues?”