The Running Man

by Bauer, Michael Gerard

• ISBN13: 9780061455087
• ISBN10: 0061455083
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2008-01-01
• Publisher: Harperteen

Summary

There had always been the Running Man-always that phantom form somewhere in the distance, always shuffling relentlessly closer . . .For a long time, fourteen-year-old Joseph has wondered about old Tom Leyton, his reclusive next-door neighbor. Gossip and rumors suggest that something terrible happened to Tom in the past.Then Joseph is asked to draw Tom for a school art project, and that means Joseph has the opportunity to uncover the truth about this man who passes his days tending silkworms and keeping dark secrets.As Joseph learns more and more about Tom's world, he is forced to confront his own fears. Is there some connection between Joseph's dreams and his feelings about his father, who seems to have abandoned the family? And why does he continue to have nightmares about the Running Man-the disheveled figure who wanders aimlessly through town?

Excerpts

The Running Man

Chapter One

Joseph fixed his eyes on the coffin and thought of silkworms. Before him, the honey-colored casket lay still and silent like a cocoon, and for a moment he was in another time, another place. He fought to hold the image in his mind, but each ripple of sound—a murmured voice, the clearing of a throat, or the sharp echo of a shoe knocking clumsily against a hard wooden kneeler—reminded him of where he was, and then the sickly ache of regret and loss lurched inside him once more. It's my fault, Joseph thought, the words stabbing at his heart.

Behind him, the whirring of an organ crept into the open spaces of St. Jude's Church and hovered like sorrow in the air. He had been to funerals in the past, but it was different when you sat in the front pew. Before he had been just one in a crowd of restless schoolboys lining a street for someone whose face he would later struggle to recall. Now he was at the center of it all, and it encircled and held him like an unwelcome and unyielding embrace.

He lowered his head and his mother's hand settled gently on his knee. Joseph laid his hand on hers and forced a weak smile to his lips. Then he gazed again at the coffin, closed his eyes, and let the darkness fold around him.

Why had it happened? If he could somehow go back to a recognizable starting point and trace each moment through till he finally arrived again at this place, this seat, on this day, would some meaning or reason become clear to him? But what had started it all? It seemed impossible to know the precise moment when something began. Endings were a much easier proposition. Endings were clear-cut. When something ended, there were obvious signs. Things stopped. People left. Someone died. Beginnings were like shadows and mist, melting and smudging into everything around them.

As he struggled to grasp a starting point, Joseph again found himself thinking of silkworms. He did that a lot lately. He couldn't help himself. Sometimes he didn't even know why they came into his mind: he couldn't see the connection between those simple creatures and what was happening around him. But this time he did see it. Trying to unravel the tangled threads of the past was like unwinding the silk from a silkworm cocoon.

To spin the silk you had to pinch the loose outside threads of the cocoon between your thumb and fore-finger and carefully pull them to one end. Then as the hard body of the cocoon dangled from those threads, a gentle shake would cause the silk to break away, until only one strand remained. If you jiggled the cocoon from that thread, it would twirl and unravel as it fell.

That is what Joseph searched for now: one fragile thread that would lead him forward. As he concentrated hard to bring his thoughts into focus, they began to sharpen and separate until, out of all the images, only the strongest remained. Among them were the faces of three men—three men who had never met and yet whose separate lives had become entwined with Joseph's in ways that he had never imagined possible.

He saw his father's face the last time he had looked on it: bewildered, hurt, and angry. Then he saw Tom Leyton's face, silent as stone, hidden deep within the shadows of his room. And finally he saw the face of the Running Man, his eyes burning with a desperate fire. There had always been the Running Man—always that phantom form somewhere in the distance, always shuffling relentlessly closer.

As Joseph stared again at the coffin, the last loose threads of memory began to fall away one by one until a single image remained. It was the same image that he saw every night from his bedroom window. It was his neighbors' old wooden house—the Leytons' house—that perched high on its black timber stumps like some long-legged creature waiting in the shadows.

The Running Man. Copyright © by Michael Bauer. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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Excerpted from The Running Man by Michael Gerard Bauer
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.