Faces in the Fire by Hines Page A

you would always be moving forward.”
    â€œYeah.”
    Todd unfolded his legs again and pushed his chair away from the desk, out onto the open floor so he was facing Kurt. “You know much about sharks, Kurt?”
    Kurt shrugged.
    â€œI guess I don’t either. But I heard a story once, and it’s always stuck with me. Sharks, you see, are one of the few animals that can’t move backward. Incapable. Other fish, other animals of just about any kind—even amoebas—can reverse their direction. But a shark always has to move forward to stay alive.”
    â€œOkay.” Kurt wasn’t sure where this was going.
    â€œSo that says to me it’s sometimes healthy to move backward, to see your past. That’s something you’ve been unable to do, even after our several sessions together, but it’s something you have to do. We need something to help you move backward before you can really start to move forward again. You’re human, Kurt. You’re not a shark.”
    Kurt thought about the fire, thought about the heavy stash of bills strapped to his midsection, thought about the pain in his body starting to fade as he walked away from the scene of destruction.
    â€œDon’t be so sure,” he whispered to Todd.
    64.
    Ten miles down the road, Kurt was feeling better. Like the sky above, his head was clear. Sharp. Fresh. He could hold on to that sharpness, lose himself in the blur of miles streaking by, clear his life of everything that had happened in the last day.
    After dropping this load in Chicago, he’d deadhead it back here—at this very moment, he was within an hour of the small town where he normally hid—and get to work on new projects for Macy. For the show she’d lined up for him.
    There would be no catfish sculpture, of course. He’d have to abandon that. In some odd way, the catfish (shark?) was what had opened up the door between his world and the ghost world. He was sure of it. And now that the shoes were gone—not just gone, but destroyed—he could return to the life he’d had before, such as it was. When he made it home, he was going to pull out that silk dress, start working on the hands reaching for a face. That was the kind of thing Macy would want, anyway.
    But those thoughts were instantly pushed away by a terrifyingly familiar image. The catfish, bathed in orange, filled every corner of his mind with equal parts brilliance and violence.
    Shocked, Kurt tried to push the image away, but it would not leave. Even more terrifying, he heard a burst of static,
followed by the voice of the ghost inside the shoes.
    â€œYou can’t hide anymore, Kurt.”
    The voice was loud, painful, felt as if it were inside his head.
    â€œYou have to see. To understand.”
    â€œTo see what?” He tried to concentrate on the voice. Was it Jonas again? It didn’t sound like that voice, but it was familiar nonetheless. Eerily familiar.
    â€œTo see everything. Look in your mirrors.”
    Kurt did as instructed, and saw the headlights of another rig—another Peterbilt like the one he was driving—coming up fast. Terror raked his stomach with dull claws.
    Jonas again? Had to be. Okay, so Jonas wasn’t in the truck with him this time. He was in a truck behind him, intent on . . . something. That was impossible.
    Okay, so impossible was something of a relative term in the world of Kurt Marlowe, Amazing Amnesia Boy. After all, following his head injury, he’d been able to communicate with the ghosts trapped in the clothing of dead people. He’d even spoken to one sitting in his front seat not so very long ago this morning. But this was even breaking all the rules of that world. The shoes had been destroyed in the garbage truck several miles behind.
    He bit his lip. Had he really thought that would work? Deep down he had known it wouldn’t. He’d thrown the shoes down a canyon just a few hours earlier, and