Perennial Read Online Free PDF Page A

lead them in the wrong direction.
    Think and breathe, Alix. Don’t react. Just think. Handle
it on your own. You’re safe here. Nobody is in the house, and Dad should be
home soon. Besides, you know where the emergency gun is if you ever need it .
    I retrieve my phone from the floor and lay it beside me. No
new texts. Good. Next I focus my attention on my tablet, where the two-year-old
“What Happened to William?” blog post awaits me. Somebody obviously has my
phone number and is tracking everything I do on my computer, meaning I won’t
use our wireless network or this tablet again, but the blog-post page has
already loaded, so I might as well read the entire thing. After all, my
guardian angel–stalker knows I’ve accessed it.
    The post is from an obscure, short-lived, and quite
anonymous blog called Vagabond’s Warrior . I say short-lived, because
“What Happened to William?” is the only post on the site. The blog has no page
links and no mention of an author for the lone post.
    This is what I read:
    W HAT H APPENED TO W ILLIAM?
    William Weed was no saint. He had serious problems. We all
know that. But William is dead now, and there’s nothing we can do to bring him
back. The official story is William committed suicide in his own bedroom by
firing a bullet through his brain—he was another addict who took the easy way
out—but anybody who knew him knows that scenario is highly unlikely.
    William wasn’t suicidal. He was trying to break Perennial’s
hold on him. But Perennial won. William knew Oval City better than anybody,
even Face. In the end, that’s what killed him. William knew too much and got
too close. Rumor is he had something big on Face, something to do with Aruna’s
disappearance.
    Anybody reading this needs to know that somebody murdered
William Weed. What happened at 1326 Maple Grove in Beaconsfield that night
wasn’t suicide. It was murder. Problem is places like Beaconsfield don’t want
murders on their hands. Best to make it a suicide, then. That’s easier to
explain and accept.
    Bottom line: the Beaconsfield orchard of goodness and
perfection lost an imperfect apple, and that suits the citizens of Beaconsfield
just fine.
    Somebody needs to dig Perennial out of the ground and expose
it. Only then will the truth emerge. Only then can William and others find
peace. I wish I could do the digging, but that’s impossible due to
circumstances beyond my control.
    His photograph appears below the last sentence, the caption
“We miss you, William” centered below the photo in a tiny font. He looks about
eighteen, shirtless in black cargo shorts and sporting two full sleeves of
colorful, fresh-looking tattoos. I squint in an attempt to detect a theme to
his body art, but the picture is too small and not of the greatest quality.
Although he’s wearing sunglasses and a backwards black baseball cap, I can tell
from his high cheekbones and muscular body that William had no trouble finding
dates. I’d always pictured drug addicts as scrawny and weak, so I figure this
photo must be from before he developed his habit.
    Despite all the initial fear, a surprising calmness washes
over me as I experience further connections to Dream Guy. Words like “Oval
City” and “Face” dart through my mind, smaller pieces of a larger puzzle I
can’t seem to pull away from. As crazy as it sounds to my structured and
analytical mind, I sense that Dream Guy was perhaps William Weed or a type of
spirit energy of his making contact with me.
    Two years ago something violent and awful happened in one of
the five bedrooms in this house. As much as I’d like to push it all away, last
night’s experience with Dream Guy seems to make more sense by the minute. I’m
deeply connected to real danger for the first time in my life, but I’m now
convinced that I possess some sort of psychic ability that can help people. Of
course, I’m basing all of this on one dream I had less than twenty-four hours
ago. This could