{"product_id":"sleepwalk-isbn-9780553288346","title":"Sleepwalk","description":"\u003cb\u003eA terrifying new novel by the author of \u003ci\u003eDarkness \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eShadows\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorrego, New Mexico. A peaceful little desert town. Except for one thing. Somebody here hates teenagers.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHates them. These troublemakers, these rebels, have to be controlled.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSilenced. Forever.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNow he has discovered an insidious way to strike back at them. In their sleep. In their waking hours. Anytime. He is a madman with terrifying powers. And soon, he will draw Borrego's children beyond the brink of night. . . .\u003cb\u003eJohn Saul\u003c\/b\u003e’s\u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003efirst novel, \u003ci\u003eSuffer the Children\u003c\/i\u003e, was an immediate million-copy bestseller. His other bestselling suspense novels include \u003ci\u003ePerfect Nightmare\u003c\/i\u003e,\u003ci\u003e Black Creek Crossing\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Presence.\u003c\/i\u003e He is also the author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times \u003c\/i\u003ebestselling serial thriller \u003ci\u003eThe Blackstone Chronicles\u003c\/i\u003e, initially published in six installments but now available in one complete volume. Saul divides his time between Seattle and Hawaii.Prologue\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The woman stood at the blackboard at the front of her classroom, watching her students work on the problem she had laid out a few minutes earlier. Though her eyes flicked constantly over the class, her mind wasn’t registering the images her eyes were feeding to it.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The heat of the day was building, which was good.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The hotter the sun beating down on the roof, the less the joints in her fingers and toes, her hands, her feet—even her arms and legs now—hurt her.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e That was some consolation, though not much. At least, although the winter’s cold threatened to make her totally immobile, she still had the summers to look forward to—the dry, desert summers, when the heat would soak into her bones and give her some tiny measure of relief, a slight easing of the pain her disease brought with it, a pain that grew each month, along with the ugly deformities of her misshapen joints.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She was supposed to be better now. The doctor had promised her the new treatment would work. \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e No, that wasn’t actually true, she reminded herself. He’d said he hoped it would work; he hadn’t promised her anything\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She gritted her teeth, and denied herself even the brief solace of a sigh as a sharp pain shot up from her left ring finger.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Her instinct was to rub the painful finger, but that would only make her right hand hurt more, and already she was barely able to hold the chalk as she carried on her class.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Against her will, her eyes traveled to the clock.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Ten more minutes and the noon bell would ring. Another day of summer school would be over.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She could make it.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e In the fourth row of the classroom the boy stared once more at the problem he’d copied onto the paper on his desk, and quickly computed the solution in his mind. It was right, he was certain, but even if it wasn’t, he didn’t care.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He put his pencil down and let his gaze wander to the window, where the heat was making the mesa shimmer in the distance.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e That was where he should be today—hiking up on top of the mesa or in the cool of the canyon, swimming in one of the deep holes the river had cut from the canyon’s floor, working the anger out of his system with physical exercise. He’d had another fight with his father that morning, and the last thing he’d wanted to do was go from the oppressiveness of his home to that of the school.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Perhaps he should just get up and walk out.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He tried to put the tempting thought out of his mind.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He had agreed to go to school this summer, and he would.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e But it would be the last summer.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Indeed, these few weeks of school might be the last ever.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He looked up at the clock and sucked in his breath.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Nine more minutes.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Then, as he watched the second hand jerk slowly around the face of the clock, he had a sudden feeling he was not the only one concerned with the time.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He glanced instinctively at the teacher.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As if feeling his glance, her eyes shifted from the clock and met his for a moment, and he thought he saw the beginning of a smile on her lips.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Then she winced slightly and, as if ashamed that he’d seen her pain, she turned away.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The boy wondered why she kept teaching. He knew—everyone knew—how much the arthritis hurt her, how much it crippled her in the winter. Even now he could remember the day, the previous January, when the temperature had been well below zero and he’d seen her sitting in her car in the parking lot. He’d watched her for a few minutes, unable to see her face clearly through the moisture that had built up on the windshield, but still somehow able to sense her reluctance to step out of the warmth of the automobile into the bitter morning chill.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Finally he’d approached the car and asked her if she was all right.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She’d nodded, then opened the door.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Slowly, painfully, she’d eased her legs to the ground, and finally, carefully, stood up, a gasp erupting from her lips as she battled the pain.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He offered to help her, but she’d shaken her head.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He’d turned away and hurried into the school building, but when he was inside he’d turned back and watched her through the glass doors.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She’d moved slowly, every step clearly an agony, her face down in an attempt to hide her pain.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e But she’d kept moving, kept walking, not even hesitating when she came to the steps and had to pull herself slowly upward, gripping the iron railing with her gnarled left hand as her right hand clenched against the pain.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She wouldn’t give up.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She’d never give up.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She’d keep teaching, and keep browbeating her students to do better and work harder, until the day she died.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The boy smiled slightly as he remembered the last time he’d been subjected to one of her tongue-lashings. She’d called him in after school and flung a homework assignment at him, her eyes fixing accusingly on his as she announced that she was considering failing him.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He’d studied the homework and discovered two mistakes, which he didn’t think was so bad. When he’d voiced that opinion, her eyes had only mocked him: two mistakes might be fine for most of the class; from him she expected more. Much more. He was smarter than the rest of them, and the work shouldn’t have been a challenge.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He’d squirmed, but she’d kept on: if he wasn’t going to try in high school, how was he going to get through college, where there would be a lot of people smarter than he?\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e That was when he’d told her he wasn’t going to college. Even now he wished he hadn’t.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Glaring at him, her fist had smashed down on the desk with a force that should have caused her to scream with agony. But he had been the one who flinched at the blow, and she had smiled in triumph.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “If I can do that,” she’d said, “then you can damn well go to college.”\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e He hated to think what she would say, at the beginning of his senior year, when she found out he was thinking of dropping out of high school.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e But there were other things he wanted to do, things he didn’t want to put off.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The teacher glanced surreptitiously at the clock once more. Just two more minutes. She could go home and sit in her back yard, ignoring the shade of the cottonwood trees to bask in the sun, letting the full heat of the afternoon penetrate the pain as she worked on her lesson plans and graded the examinations she’d given the class that morning.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She began straightening up the clutter on her desk.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She frowned slightly as a strange odor filled her nostrils. For a moment she couldn’t quite identify it, but then realized what it was.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e It was a malodorous scent, like a garbage dump on a hot day.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She sniffed at the air uncertainly, her frown deepening. The dump had been closed years ago, replaced by a treatment plant.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She looked up to see if anyone else had noticed the odor.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A flash of pain shot through her head.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She winced, but as quickly as the pain had come, it faded.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She shook her head, as if to shake off the last of the pain, then looked out at the class.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A red glow seemed to hang over the room.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She could see faces—faces she knew belonged to her students—but tinged with the red aura, seen dimly through a wall of pain, they all looked strange to her.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Nor could she put names to the faces.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The knife inside her head began to twist again.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Just a twinge at first, but building quickly until her skull seemed to throb with the pain.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The reddish glow in the room deepened, and the odor in her nostrils turned rank.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e A loud humming began in her ears.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The aching in her head increased, and turned now into a sharp stabbing. She took a step backward, as if to escape the pain, but it seemed to pursue her.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The hum in her ears built to a screech, and the redness in the room began to flash with bolts of green and blue.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e And then, as panic built within her, she saw a great hand spread out above her, its fingers reaching toward her, grasping at her.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e She screamed.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The boy looked up as the piercing scream shattered the quiet of the room. For a split second he wasn’t certain where it had come from, but then he saw the teacher.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Her eyes were wide with either pain or terror—he wasn’t certain which—and her mouth twisted into an anguished grimace as the last of the scream died on her lips.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Her arms rose up as if to ward off some unseen thing that was attacking her, and then she staggered backward, struck the wall and seemed to freeze for a moment.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e As he watched, she screamed once more and sank to the floor.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Her arms flailed at the air for a few seconds, then she wrapped them around her body, drawing her knees up to her chest as she rolled helplessly on the worn wooden planks.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The boy rose from his seat and dashed to the front of the room, kneeling down beside her. But as he reached out to touch her, she screamed yet again and scrabbled away, only to collapse a second later, sobbing uncontrollably.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e When the ambulance took her away, she was still sobbing, still screaming.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The boy watched the ambulance leave, but even after it had disappeared into the distance, the sobs and screams lingered on, echoing in his memory.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Perhaps the other students who were in the classroom might forget the agony they’d heard and seen that day.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e The boy never would.\u003cbr\u003e  ","brand":"Bantam","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302676779237,"sku":"NP9780553288346","price":8.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780553288346.jpg?v=1767736760","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/sleepwalk-isbn-9780553288346","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}