The usual place was a dock at the end of a scraggly path that led from the rear door of the Roost into the woods. We called it the “Old Dock” not just because it was old — it was, and the wood was all kind of soft, like it was just getting ready to set in for some serious rotting — but also because we figured it must have been the original dock, back when the Roost was a house and real people lived in it with kids and cats and dogs and maybe a parakeet or hamsters. Maybe a Guinea Pig. Or a real pig, because I guess some people keep those as pets. Or maybe an exotic pet, like a python maybe, or an otter.

But I digress.

A lot of people don’t know that in World War II a special division of the army specialized in training otters for covert operations on inland lakes. Most people don’t know that because most people also don’t know about the fleet of U-boats the Nazis dropped by parachute into Lake Ontario to harass U.S. shipping, or the long hunt for the last sub, captained by Otto Van Schalasslingberg, whose great-great-grand-uncle was actually the Archduke of Prussia, and whose great-great-great-grandniece on his sister’s side was the first contestant to win American Idol.[Keep? His exaggerations fade later — add them back in?]

But I digress again.

So we met at the Old Dock. No U-boats in sight. Of course, they wouldn’t be. Because they’re submarines.

Together, we retraced our steps — well, our steps, then our tire tracks from when we rode the ATV — back to the clearing where we saved Ingrid from the dogman, then back through the woods to the clearing and the cliff.

We headed for the edge to get a look at the ATV, see if there was a path down to it. Just before we got there, though, we heard them.

Voices.We dropped and alligator-crawled up the edge. Except Louis. Louis crab-crawled.

Something in the voices was familiar. I couldn’t place them — but I knew that I knew them, or had known them at some unknowable point in time.

I scooched just a little bit closer, and peeked.

OK, so the time I knew them from was knowable, because I would have bet a million dollars that I’d left them both sleeping back in Chippewa Cabin.

Mom and Dad.

Out for a romantic walk? Disgusting, but probably. They still got that way. But I couldn’t for the life of me figure what I’d done for Allah[Mention of Allah OK? Try to keep] to be so mad at me that He’d send them for their romantic walk down that particular shore to that exact place where they were standing, about ten feet from the tail end of the ATV sticking up from the lake. I tried to tell myself they hadn’t seen it, but since they were standing there looking right at it, chances were they had.

Ben peeked too. Whispered “Holy shit” — but whispered, so Mom and Dad didn’t react. Louis peeked. Said the word that starts with “f” and ends with “k” and isn’t “flintlock.[Implied cursing]”

That one they heard. Louis had never mastered the whole whispering thing.

Mom turned and looked up at us — but I’m pretty sure we ducked out of sight before she saw us. It was just the top of our heads sticking out anyhow, and it was dark. In fact, I ducked only mostly out of sight, once I realized she couldn’t see me.

Dad started turning, but got his head kind of in profile, then stopped.

He was looking out over the lake. But he wasn’t looking with the naked eye — he had some sort of goggles on, attached to something kind of like one of those World War I aviator helmets. Except the goggles kind of protruded — like little telescopes. Like some kind of steampunk night vision goggles.[Need to produce these again later]

“Sarah.” That’s my Mom’s name. He put his hand on her arm, pointed with the other one. Mom’s eyes kind of lingered on us for a second, then she looked out over the lake in the direction Dad was pointing.

She pulled something out of the pocket of the windbreaker she was wearing. She gave it a flip, and it kind of unfolded with a snap into something like those opera glasses you see in old movies or shows about posh people doing classy things — thick lenses kind of like the goggles Dad was wearing, only on kind of a handle.

She held them up to her eyes.

Whatever air was in her lungs must have decided it had to be outside her lungs, she gasped so loud.

I tried to see what they were seeing.

All I could see was a kind of a ripple maybe twenty yards out. Nothing to gasp home about.

She said something that sounded like “your feet.” Only she said it like Dad’s feet were really terrifying.

Dad said “Can’t be your feet.” That’s what it sounded like. Mom’s feet also sounded pretty terrifying.

Spoiler alert: they were saying “ifrit.” And yeah — turns out to be pretty terrifying.

I was still trying to figure out why my parents’ feet had them so spooked when my Dad shouted, put out an arm and moved my Mom behind him. I couldn’t see why. Then I could.

The ripples were moving toward him.

Captain Otto was my first thought.

Then Dad did something I never would have imagined a middle aged proctologist doing. And Mom did something I never expected a steely-hearted black belt in Tae Kwon Do to do.

Did I mention my Mom is a black belt in Tae Kwon Do? Yeah. What can I say. I had to get my cool genes from somewhere.

She stepped back away from the water. Dad - Dad walked out into it. Towards Captain Otto’s U-boat or whatever was coming towards him. He started saying something — it started with Arabic, and I’m pretty sure he recited Surat al-Fatiha, the first chapter of the Qur’an (which is only seven lines long), but then he went on, and I think some of it was something like Urdu, maybe, or maybe something else. I couldn’t hear. And that was before the Implantation — before I could understand all those languages.

Forget I mentioned that.

So Dad talked out at the water, and the ripples stopped, and then kind of went crazy, little waves then bigger waves that pretty massive waves bubbling and boiling and crashing against each other — but all in a circle the same size as those original ripples, like there was some kind of micro-weather system trapped in a Sue Storm-style invisible force bubble.

Then the ripples started…geesh, you’re going to think I’m crazy, at least at this point — but trust me. By the time we’re in Chapter Twenty[Mention of a chapter] this is going to be like the least crazy thing you’ll have heard.

The ripples started screaming.

Dad hollered something I heard clearly — “Bismillahi!” That’s “In the name of God!” in Arabic, something we say a lot. Usually before walking through a door or eating a taco or starting in on a killer test.

Never saw it shouted at a force-field trapped micro-weather system before. The world is full of wonders.

The waves went all cyclone — spinning around and around for a few seconds, maybe ten, maybe twenty. And then —

Then kind of misted away.

I’d kind of been hoping for an explosion. Maybe a water funnel that’d shoot up to the clouds. Maybe with lighting shooting out of it. Yeah — lightning shooting out of it.

Instead there was kind of an “oof” — like someone just got slammed in the gut by a soccer ball. And the spinning bubbling waves turned like that — and here I snap my fingers — into fog.

And a wind came, blew the fog away.

On the shore, Dad went down on his knees, then his hands, gasping like he’d just run the Boston marathon.

Mom knelt down beside him, rubbed his back, then kind of held him, saying something we couldn’t hear.

OK. I know we’d been spying on them for awhile. It was a weird time to get a conscience. But I suddenly felt like I was watching something I shouldn’t be, something private between them.

Kind of embarrassing. But kind of sweet. A guy likes to know his parents are into each other.

I tapped Ben. Ben tapped Louis. Louis — minor miracle — nodded. Quietly.

We scooched back away from the cliff. Waited. After a while, you could hear Dad grunting the way he sometimes did when getting out of his easy chair at the end of a Daredevil marathon. Footsteps, and the quiet voices of the people who brought me into this world, slowly faded as they went off down the shore.

After awhile I peeked again. Mom and Dad were just taking the path up and away from the shore. I was wondering if they’d parked the car up there, or walked.

If they drove, they’d be back in the cabin in a few minutes.

Which thought made my heart kind of explode into my throat while simultaneously forming heart arms that wrapped around my throat and started squeezing and shaking me and screaming like a mandrake. Which is a root. That screams. Look it up.

If they got back to the cabin and checked on their beloved firstborn, I, being that firstborn and not being in the cabin, was in trouble.

“We need to truck.”

Ben nodded. Louis opened his mouth to ask “what truck” — I know that’s what he was going to ask — but before he could I added “get back. We have to get back.”

Then I was up and running like the freaking wind. With another freaking wind at its back. And wings on its feet. On a souped up Segway. With rocket engines.

I was that fast.

Made it back. Got under the covers. Heard the cabin door open and close. Heard ten or eleven “shushes,” then the door to my room opening. Felt the adoring gazes of the man and woman whose genes had given me my silky hair and rakish good looks.

Heard the door close.

Didn’t sleep for a very, very long time.