Scenes from the Secret History (The Secret History of the World) by F. Paul Wilson

sparkled with excitement.  Cute kid, but a little wild man.  Jack liked him except when he attached himself and followed him around like a dog.  Somehow he always chose times when Jack felt like being alone.
    “That’s cool, Code.”  Jack looked around.  Not an adult in sight.  “Your folks know you’re out here?”
    “No, but it’s okay.”
    “Yeah?  You mean, if I go back and ask your mom and dad if it’s all right for you to be cruising the streets, they’ll say it’s fine with them?”
    Cody looked down.  “Well…”
    Jack put on a stern look.  “You gonna go or am I gonna have to take you back?”
    “I’m goin’!”
    He turned his bike around and pedaled a wobbly path back toward Jefferson.  Jack watched him a little, then continued on to the Connells’.
    Weezy’s brother Eddie had asked him over to play, Berzerk , the new game his father had bought him for his Atari 5200.  The game was simple and so fun when you could trick the robots into walking into walls or shooting each other, but so nerve racking when that deadly smiley face came bouncing through.
    But no videogames today.  He’d played enough during the rains.  This morning he was going to drag Eddie off the couch and into the sunlight. No easy task, considering Eddie’s weight and resistance to any activity that involved moving more than his thumbs. 
    As Jack glided past the unlidded garbage cans at the curb – Wednesday and Saturday were garbage days in Johnson – he noticed a couple of familiar items from Weezy’s room in the nearer container.  He stopped for a closer look and saw copies of Fortean Times and Fate .  Weezy treasured those weird paranormal magazines.  Why was she throwing them out?  
    Maybe she was in a cleaning mood.  She had all sorts of moods lately.  Spin the dial and see who appeared.
    Or maybe she didn’t even know.  Her parents were always on her case for not being like other teenage girls.  Had they simply gone in and started tossing stuff?  That wasn’t right. 
    He spotted a half-folded photo, an aerial shot of the Pinelands, the million acres of woods beyond the town’s eastern edge.  He recognized the scene: an excavation of the mound where just last month he and Weezy had found a corpse and a mysterious little pyramid. 
    The sight of it released a flood of memories… most of them bad.  He’d blocked them out, but now they were back.  The dead man was not simply dead, he'd been murdered – ritually murdered – and his discovery had triggered other deaths, all seemingly of natural causes, but all weirdly connected.  Then Jack had learned the cause, and it hadn’t been natural at all.  But he couldn’t talk about it because he had no proof and everyone – even Weezy – would think he was crazy.
    And the pyramid…shiny, black, embossed with strange glyphs… Weezy had fallen in love with it, memorizing every detail of the symbols on its sides and the weird grid inside the box that had held it.  It had turned out to be older that it seemed – much older than anything man-made should be.
    Then it had disappeared.
    And Weezy hadn’t been quite the same since.  Jack had felt the loss too – such a neat artifact – but not like Weezy.  She’d taken it like the loss of her best friend.  But more than that, she was convinced it had been stolen and was sure she knew the culprit… all without a shred of proof.  
    So he couldn’t believe she’d throw away this photo.
    He snagged it from the can and stuck it in his back pocket as he hopped up the front steps and knocked on the door.
    “Door’s open,” he heard a man’s voice call from inside.
    As Jack stepped in, Mr. Connell poked his crewcut head around a corner and grinned.  “Eddie said you’d be coming.  He’s in the family room.”
    “Is Weezy here?”
    “Yeah.  Hey, Weez!”
    “What?”  Her voice floated from upstairs.
    “Jack’s here!”
    Weezy appeared at the top of the stairway in her customary