Jonesie started to say something but his voice was gone. Just not there.

  He tried to suck in breath to cry out, but air did not flow through his mouth and into his lungs. Instead he felt a sudden, searing pain, like a cut, like a knife was drawn across his throat from ear to ear.

  “Jonesie!” Jamilla screamed as Jonesie fell to the ground, facedown.

  His mouth gulped helplessly at the air. He tried to touch his throat but his arms didn’t move.

  Jamilla had jumped down from the wagon. Jonesie could see a misty, distant, distorted image of her above him. A face, mouth wide, all the way open, screaming silently.

  And behind her a shape. It was transparent but not invisible. A huge hand with one finger extended. That finger reached through his body. He couldn’t feel it.

  And then he couldn’t feel anything.

  Jamilla’s scream brought Eduardo and Turbo from the adjacent fields. They came at a run from different directions, but Jamilla hardly noticed them at first. She stared and screamed and screamed....”

  And then she spun away and started running. Turbo caught her in his arms. He had to lift her up off the ground to get her to stop running.

  “What is it? Is it zekes?”

  Zekes were the carnivorous worms that inhabited many of the fields and had to be bribed with payments of blue bats and junk fish.

  Jamilla went still. Turbo was there, and now so was Eduardo. They were her friends, her coworkers.

  Jamilla steeled herself to try to explain what had just happened. But before she could gain control of her raw voice, Eduardo said, “What is that?”

  Jamilla felt Turbo crane to see past her. He set her down. She no longer felt like running. Or screaming. Turbo left her and walked the ten steps to join Eduardo.

  “What is that thing?” Turbo asked. “Is that what scared you, Jammy?”

  “Looks like some kind of weird fish or something.”

  “Big. And weird,” Turbo repeated. “I worked a couple of days filling in with Quinn and I never saw anything like that.”

  “Like a fish with, like, armor. But what’s it doing here in the middle of a choke field?”

  Jamilla did not dare to come any closer. But her voice was her own again.

  “It’s Jonesie,” she said.

Fear, Chapter 4