“How do we know?” Zak retorted. Tash could be frustrating. “We weren’t there. I didn’t tell you my whole dream last night,” he confessed. “When I saw-When I saw mom, she also asked me something.
She asked, ‘Why did you leave us behind?’ Tash, it was like we abandoned them!”
“Stop it, Zak! We didn’t abandon them. They were killed by the Empire. The whole planet was. And as much we hate it, we have to accept that Morn and Dad are gone. They’re not coming back.”
But they did come back. That night. As soon as Zak drifted off to sleep.
Zak again found himself in his bed in his room on Alderaan. He turned his head, and looking out the window, he saw the darkness of space, dotted with stars.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
He heard the sound of someone rapping at the transparisteel window.
Zak tried to sit up but couldn’t. A great weight pressed down on his chest, pinning him in place.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
A pale figure floated into the window’s view. It was his mother again. Behind her another figure floated: his father, his short hair bobbing in the vacuum of space. Their dead skin hung from their lifeless bones, but their mouths moved in a slow, haunting drawl.
“Zak, why did you leave us behind?”
“I didn’t,” he said hoarsely, “I thought you were dead!”
“You left us behind!”
Tap! Tap!
Their arms banged against the windowpane until it shattered inward with a crash.
The two ghostly images floated through the opening. Zak struggled to rise, but he was paralyzed. As they approached, Zak’s nostrils filled with the smell of slowly decaying flesh. The corpses’ skin was wrinkled and cracked from exposure to the icy cold of space. Their eyes were no more than black holes in their skulls.
“Mom,” he whispered. “Dad. I’m sorry…”
“Come with us, Zak,” his father moaned. “Zak, come with us.” The horrible image of his father bent close to him, whispering, “Come with us!”
Zak woke with a start. The image of his dead parents vanished. “It was a dream,” he said quickly to himself. His window wasn’t broken. There was nothing there. “It was only a dream.”
Crash! Zak almost screamed as something banged against his window again.
CHAPTER 4
Zak waited. There were no more crashes.
He finally took a deep breath, and trying to be brave, went over to the transparisteel window and peeked out. There were no monsters or zombies outside. Instead, Zak saw Kairn and a group of boys getting ready to hurl some more stones at his window.
Finally letting his breath out, Zak pressed a button and the automatic window unsealed, letting in the cool night air. He leaned out.
Kairn waved and laughed when he saw Zak. “Sorry about that. I figured you’d want to come with us.”
“Where?” Zak asked.
“Some friends and I are having a little midnight adventure. Into the graveyard,” Kairn said. “Care to join us`? Unless, of course, you’re too scared?”
Zak couldn’t resist a taunt like that. “Wait there. I’m right behind you. “
Throwing on some clothes, Zak tiptoed out of his room. He went quietly past the rooms of Tash and Uncle Hoole. At the end of the hall, he froze. There was Deevee, sitting in a chair at the top of the stairs.
“The bionic baby-sitter,” Zak muttered. “Looks like this will be one short trip.”
But as he crept closer, Zak realized that Deevee had shut himself down for the night. He would not power up unless someone came in range of his sensor field, activating his systems. The field only reached a half meter out from the droid’s metal body, but Zak still had no desire to get caught by the sarcastic droid while trying to sneak out.
Better not risk it, he thought. There was always the window.
Zak’s room was two levels up from the ground, but the building was covered in elaborate, ghoulish carvings. He started down, using the heads, arms, and claws of the carved monsters as a weird ladder. He stuck his hand into the roaring jaw of a six-legged beast and quietly called down to Kairn, “What are these carvings?”
“Just more legends,” Kairn said, holding out his arms, ready to catch Zak. “The statues are supposed to frighten away evil spirits. If you ask me, they make better handholds.”
On the ground, Kairn introduced Zak to a small group of Necropolitans, all about his age.
“So this is the offworlder that shoved you, huh?” one of them said to Kairn. “He doesn’t look so brave to me.”
“Yeah,” teased another. “I bet he’s an easy scare.”
Zak was annoyed. “Are you joking? After the last planet I was on, this place is like a vacation.”