Kaz's story is coming to a close. He's finally home but the challenges he faces now may seem far more difficult than those he's faced before. Because now, he has to pretend all of it ever happened…

Ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present to you, the final book in this trilogy…

The Files of Kazdan Kalinkas

Book Three: Shadow of a Boy

Chapter One: This Time Will Be Better

"He's finally made it; he's back in his own bed tonight. His family and friends don't know where he's been. They're thinkin' his mind isn't right…"

"I like cars." I said, more to myself than to anyone but I think my mom heard me up in the front because she giggled a little bit.

I was finally out of the hospital. Two days before New Year's Eve and I was sitting in the backseat of my Dad's car on my way home. Abby had given me a big hug and wished me luck as I'd left the hospital. It felt good to be wearing jeans and tennis shoes and a long sleeved shirt. And the scarf Tom had given me. I hadn't let it out of my sight.

"I like the highway." I muttered, leaning my forehead against the window and staring out at the scenery flashing by, "I love all of this." I drank it all in.

This was my world, this was where I belonged.

Everything was so…surreal and yet so familiar and wonderful. I wondered if this is what it felt like to people who'd almost died and had made it back alive. Being absent from your home for almost a year makes you appreciate things you'd hardly blink an eye at before.

The snow, for one thing. I couldn't help but stare at it and watch as the sunlight reflected off its surface in diamond-like sparkles. Or the way the trees looked against the clear, winter-blue sky; so sharp and crisp, like the hard pen lines of a drawing. Or…how my dad was constantly looking at me with the review mirror. I pretended not to notice. How could I blame him? Maybe he was worried I was just going to go "poof" and vanish again.

There was a tiny part of me that was terrified of not focusing on the world around me. Almost as if I didn't, then it would dissolve away around me and I'd find that it had been nothing but a dream and I was still in the UnderWorld. The idea sent pangs of terror lancing through my chest and I glared fiercely out the window at the white line on the side of the highway.

The terror faded. I sat back against the seat with a heavy sigh and curled my fingers around the seatbelt drawn across my chest. Mom turned around and looked back at me. I forced a smile and she turned away. The smile dropped. I let my gaze wander out the window again. We were pulling onto the off ramp and dropping speed as we neared the stop sign.

Almost…almost home…

Straight, and then past two streets, right, straight, past that old Victorian style house, another right, and we were on the street were our house was. I pressed my face against the glass, trying to see the house.

"Kaz, you're smudging my windows." Dad said but there was a smile in his voice. We turned, pulled into the driveway. The car was barely stopped before I exploded out the back and was racing around to the front door. I grabbed the handle and found it locked. Impatient, I ran back down the steps and hopped in place, waiting for my parents to walk from the driveway to the door. Mom laughed at me. Dad put the key in the lock and turned it. Then he nudged the door open.

I blew past him and erupted into the living room of our house. I kicked off my tennis shoes and jumped onto the couch. I rolled off and put my face in the floor. Then I leapt up and ran through the kitchen, touching every cabinet door before barreling up the stairs like a mad man. Then I turned around and ran all the way back down, letting my fingertips trace the banister. Then I was back up on the landing again.

I spun down the hall and opened the door to my parents' bedroom, throwing myself onto their bed and smiling to myself. Then I shot up and ran down the hall to my bathroom; I stuck my head in the room and looked back and forth, grinning. Then I withdrew and spun to face the door opposite me.

My room.

I nearly kicked the door down. I ran into the room, screeched to a halt, turned on my heel, and ran from the room again, slamming the door behind me.

My joy had turned to fear.

He was in there. He was watching.

I had completely forgotten about what sort of décor was hanging in my room.

The posters had scared me senseless for a moment. I eased the door open and peered into the room again. It was still there, hanging innocently on the wall. A shiver ran down my spine, making me suddenly aware of the scar that had etched itself on my chest and through my back.

I couldn't go in there. Not alone. Not like this.

I closed the door, feeling constricted, like my insides were all tangled up. Coward, the closed door seemed to mock me, Coward, you can't ever come back here. Coward, you can't let it go. Coward because you want to be this way.

"I'm not a coward!" I hissed and opened the door again. I stalked across the room and stopped at the wall opposite the door. I reached up, grabbed the edge of a poster, and tore it down off the wall, throwing it aside so that it drifted to the floor.

But there were more of them.

I felt their accusing eyes on me.

I wheeled around and started knocking down action figures and ripping posters off walls. The only thing that remained untouched was the H'earring plushie sitting on top of my desk.

"Kaz!" I faced the door and saw my mom standing there with a shocked expression, "What are you doing!?"

"I…" I straightened up and looked around at the mess I'd caused and realized what it must have looked like. It probably looked like I had gone crazy and just started tearing things off the walls, "I just…I couldn't…the things that I…" I started playing with the ends of my scarf, "It was them…they…with Chaotic…" I didn't know what to say. There was no way for me to explain this sort of behavior away.

Maybe it was better if I didn't. Maybe it would be better to let people think what they wanted to think.

"Oh Kaz…" The next thing I knew, I was in my mother's arms and she was hugging me and she was crying. I couldn't figure out why she was crying. I was home, shouldn't she be happy? I heard her talking as she stroked my shortened hair that had been cut at the hospital but still hung out of its usual spikes,

"Why did it have to be you?" She pulled me closer and all I could do was hang there stupidly, trying to figure out why she was crying, "You never hurt anyone and now it's like you've got all this anger bottled up inside you! You're different and I don't like it but I'm so happy you're home that I'm wondering if it's terrible that I feel this way! Why did it have to be you!? Why you!?"

"I…asked that a lot too…" My voice sounded scratchy, even to myself, and I cleared my throat, "I kept wondering what I'd done…to deserve what he'd done to me. I asked myself…what I had done to…betray his trust the way he…betrayed mine."

I wasn't sure if she heard me or not. I'm still not sure if she heard me. Sometimes I hope she did. Most of the time, I hope she didn't.

I pushed everything I'd torn down into a corner of my room and pretended it wasn't there.

Then I went downstairs and pretended to have a normal dinner as though nothing had ever happened. It was harder than I thought it would be because I kept muttering about how awesome the food was and in the end I ate way too much. But I didn't care. It was my mom's home cooking. It was like the best food in the world to me right then.

After that, I had to go to bed because apparently I was going to go back to school soon. I argued back that I had gotten enough sleep in the hospital and school wasn't until after New Years but my parents were being very…parent-ish and wouldn't take any back talk.

So I trudged up stairs, changed into my pajamas (changing clothes suddenly seemed like a wonderful thing), and crawled under the covers of the bottom bunk of my bed. For a while, I just sat staring into the darkness of my room, the light from the street lamps outside a glowing orange-yellow that I could barley see as my room didn't face the street.

Eventually, my eyes grew heavy and I let sleep take over…

I didn't stay asleep long.

A nightmare grabbed me and pulled me into madness.

The Coliseum of the UnderWorld loomed up around me, the Creatures filling its stand all chanting and shouting. Their voices blended together into a wordless roar that buzzed in my ears.

I stood off to the side, against one wall of the Coliseum, once again in the IRA. Across the arena floor from me was Varris. His skin was cracked and burnt and pieces of it flaked off, his third eyes was a bulge of oozing pus and dead skin, and the smell coming off him was of rank, dead, rotting meat.

"You didn't do it well enough the first time." I heard Chaor's voice but I didn't see him, "Kill him again."

"I won't." I said and suddenly I was in the throne room, on my knees before the UnderWorld Ruler.

"Then you will kill him." He pointed over my shoulder and I looked around to see Gespaden standing there.

"I won't!" I cried and scene changed again. And again. And again. Every time I refused to kill one of my victims, the scene would change. I went through every Creature I had ever killed and then it started all over again.

The fear and the agony and the hatred and suffering swelled up inside me and I woke up, covered in sweat, crying. Tears streaked down my face in the darkness, my chest ached, my limbs shook.

I slid out of bed and stumbled towards the door, a blanket wrapped around my shoulders. I found my way out into the hall and down the stairs into the living room. The rest of the house was quiet. A car drove past in the night and the sound of its engine quickly faded away. I sat down on the couch, quested around a bit, and finally found the remote. I turned the television on and sat back, my knees drawn up to my chest.

I stared at the screen without really seeing what was playing. The sick, empty feeling that had been possessing me trickled away as I focused on the colors and the light coming from the TV.

Somewhere between the end of some random sitcom and a prepaid commercial, I zoned out completely and lost track of whatever was going on.

But I didn't fall asleep.

"Kazdan!" Strong hands grabbed my shoulders and I screamed, throwing my weight back and pulling myself from their grip. But in my haste to get away, I'd forgotten where I was and went tumbling over the back of the couch to slam into the floor on the other side. My eyes focused on the ceiling and I blinked several times. I hadn't been asleep, just zoned out enough not to pay attention to anything.

"Kaz, are you alright!?" My dad reached down his hand and I grabbed it, using it help me up.

"Uh…yeah…just…what happened?"

"You were just sitting there on the couch with this vacant look on your face," My dad explained, "So I asked you what was wrong but you didn't respond. I got worried and, well…" He gestured as though summarizing what had just happened.

"Oh." Was all I could say. I ran a hand through my hair, "I'm…gonna go get changed. Where's mom?"

"She went to the store." He glanced at me as I headed towards the stairs, "Are you sure you're going to be okay?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah, I'll be fine." I said and I went up to the second floor, rubbing my thumb up and down the center of my chest as I went. I could feel the scar underneath the fabric of my pajamas.

What a load of crap.

I pushed my door open and then shut it behind me. Looking around my room, gave me a rush of mixed feelings; warmth for returning home, relief for escaping for good, sorrow for all the time I had missed, and nostalgia for all the happiness that had happened here before.

Things would be a lot different now.

I quickly changed clothes and wound the scarf around my neck before leaving the room. I bounded down the stairs and into the kitchen, drawn by the smell of cooking food. Dad was mixing something around on the stove and I peered around his arm curiously.

"It's an omelet." He said, noticing me, "Did you want one?"

"Yeah, sure." I moved back and sat down at the table. Dad gave me a strange look, "What?"

"You never liked omelets…" He pointed out in a low voice. I looked away from him, speaking instead to the table.

"I kinda learned to not be so picky about what I'm eating. I never knew when I was going to get to eat again."

"Sorry." He said quickly and went back to his work. The silence in the room thickened the air but I didn't move, just sat staring at the tabletop blankly. What could I say? What was I supposed to say in this sort of situation?

"You looking forward to school?" My dad asked.

"Uh, yeah. Um, what's exactly…going on with that? I am going to be held back a year?"

"No, no, no." Dad chuckled, his back to me as he turned his omelet over, "You're still a Sophomore but you will have a lot of work to catch up on; you'll probably have to stay after school."

"That's okay. How'd you get that to work out, anyway?"

Dad actually gave a full blown laugh this time, "Your mother's a lawyer for a reason, Kaz. And she's an even nastier alpha female."

I couldn't help but laugh at that. My mom was a lot of fun but when it came to getting what she wanted she was one of the best no-nonsense lawyers in town. Of course, being a small town that it was, there weren't many people who needed a lawyer. But we got along okay.

Dad set a steaming plate down in front of me and I inhaled deeply with a smile, "Mmmmm, smells good!" I stuck my fork in and started eating. It was like one of H'earring's pathetic excuses for breakfast only five times better. I had to be honest with myself, H'earring was no cook.

"Good enough?" Dad asked me, sitting across the table from me and digging into his own omelet.

"The best." I answered past a mouthful.

More silence, but at least this one was filled with clinking forks and we were mostly focused on our food.

"Kaz, I wanted to ask you something and I hope you won't get angry about it."

"Hm?" I don't think what my dad had said completely registered at the time, I was too focused on the food in front of me.

"Why did you tear down all your Chaotic things?"

I nearly dropped my fork but managed to hang onto it. Mom might not expect me to answer but my dad certainly would.

I searched for a legitimate response that followed along with the story I'd fabricated but I got nothing so I just said, "I don't wanna talk about it." And stood up and walked out of the room.

I was sitting in my room, on my laptop, making some changes to some things online, when I heard the car pull in the driveway. I stepped out of the room and started down the stairs when I heard my parents talking in low voices. A shiver of guilt ran through me that it was wrong to eavesdrop but I shook it off and slipped down the stairs as quietly as possible. They were in the kitchen. I pressed my back against the wall and listened.

"—wasn't asleep but he wasn't exactly awake." I heard my dad say. I figured he was talking about how he'd found me this morning.

"I didn't even notice he was sitting there. I didn't even notice that the television was on." My mom answered, "What's so wrong with him spending the night on the couch, Nathan?"

"Mari, he wasn't even sleeping. He was sitting there staring at the television screen and when I tried to wake him up he screamed and tried to get away."

"Nathan, can you really blame him? He went through a rough time, it'll take a while for him to adjust again."

"Then why did he shove all his Chaotic merchandise into a corner?" There was a hot fear in my dad's voice. I couldn't tell if he was angry, or sad, or scared, "He's always been so careful with all of it and I thought for sure it was what would make him the happiest when he got home. Now he's torn it all down and is acting like he's scared of it."

"Do you think…something's wrong?"

"I don't know, Mari. I'm just worried about him."

My stomach twisted itself into knots and I moved silently back up the stairs. I shouldn't have listened.

But then again, there were a lot of things I shouldn't have done.

But it was too late to take them back now.

I shut the door to my room and fell onto my bed with a sigh. My limbs felt heavy but I wasn't tired. I stared across the room at the window that was closed against winter's chill. In two days it would be a new year.

A new time.

A time where I could start over.

If only the past would leave me alone,

I rolled onto my stomach and put my pillow on top of my head, wondering if there was ever going to be a time when people would forget about how I had disappeared.

Song: "This Time Will Be Better" by Andy Lange

My gosh, this chapter went from happy to depressing in a heartbeat. Well, that seems to be the theme of The Files. All the same…

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of SoB. Whoa…hm…I guess I shouldn't…abbreviate that…

Ahem. Let's try this again.

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of the third and final book in The Files of Kazdan Kalinkas. This one, while it may not be quite as action packed as the first two, will certainly shed some light on what's bee going this whole time. This is gonna be crazy.

Also keep an eye out for Chaotic Overdrive. If it's not posted today then it will certainly be posted tomorrow!

As always, thanks for reading and for waiting for this update! And for all your wonderful reviews! Hoo-rah!