For once, I'll be honest: before being rudely interrupted by a speeding truck, I had been thinking a lot about my mother while walking home from city hall, and many of those thoughts had been less than flattering. Even now, as I sat waiting for her on my hospital bed with the worst headache I'd ever had, I still felt prepared to get very angry if it meant finally getting the truth out of her. These feelings were suddenly gone, however, as soon as the door was flung open.

Mom looked exhausted, as if she had just been woken up from a very rough night's sleep. Her breathing was ragged and heavy, like she had just ran up several flights of stairs without stopping. Her face was an unnatural shade of white. As soon as her terrified eyes found mine she froze, as if unable to believe what she was seeing, then both her hands flew to her mouth.

She tried to say something, but most of it was lost as her voice immediately broke. All she managed to get out was a single word:

"Baby..."

Before I could say or do anything to react, she had thrown herself onto the bed and was pulling as much of me as she could into her lap, squeezing me tight. She was crying; I could feel tears running into my shirt.

"Mom... hi...", I murmured, slowly hugging her back.

No sooner had I done so when three other people entered the room, apparently left in the dust when Mom rushed in. Mimmie and Minnie were two of them, both looking puffy-eyed and tearful, and they were clinging tightly to a man standing between. I was happy to see them, but it was the man they were flanking that caught more of my attention. He was a tall, lanky sort of person, with black hair that was dishevelled and curly, and a slightly unshaven face that looked strangely young on a full grown man. Under normal circumstances I could have described him as looking like an oversized teenager, except right now, he looked even more worn out than Mom did.

"Dad...?", I whispered.

He smiled, lighting up his weary eyes, and gently messed up my hair with his hand.

"Feeling okay, bud?", he asked quietly, "It's good to finally see you awake."

I stared at him over Mom's shoulder, astounded to see him standing there.

"How… when did you get here...?", I asked.

"I started up the car as soon as I heard you'd been hit," he replied. "Got here at about one last night.

He sat down next to Mom and started patting her softly on the back.

"Let him breathe, Cindy, he's gonna be alright."

Mom sniffled and loosened her grip on me, but didn't completely let me go. Mimmie and Minnie both crawled up on either side of me and hugged one of my arms.

The commotion that followed, I think you could probably imagine it. Both of them asked me if I was really alright, as if they didn't think the doctors were trustworthy and needed confirmation straight from me. They both told me firmly, Mom a little bit violently, to never go wandering around in front of trucks again, lest they have to re-endure the terrible scare they'd just gone through. I wanted to tell them that's not what had happened; I had been walking down a dirt road where trucks were never a problem, but I swallowed that back and let them have their say. I know said before that the last thing I wanted was to get fussed over, but I gave my family some slack. Thankfully, before my frustration could be reignited again, Dad spoke up.

"Ninten," he said, "I understand you're confused about all this, but we'll try and explain everything we know."

"Just tell us everything you remember, from the beginning." said Mom, who had regained most of her composure, "What happened after you left the house this morning?"

To this day, I can't remember a time before or since when three simple sentences had made me feel more relieved.

At first, I was on the fence about sparing them the scarier details about my day to keep them from getting worried, at the risk of them not getting the full story. Once I had begun speaking, however, I found it quite hard for me to stop. I told them everything - how I found the canary, how I'd been attacked by zombies and then inexplicably fended them off, how I'd gotten my thunder stolen by Goodman, and how I'd accidentally totaled a truck with nothing but my bare hands. I could tell from the looks on their faces that most of this wasn't too much of a surprise to them, though Mom did look quite mortified when I told her about the zombies.

"... And then the next thing I know, I'm waking up in this room with the mother of all headaches, and they tell me I'm fine!", I finished, my voice rising. I had worked myself up so much during my ramble there was a knot in my throat. "Fine! Like nothing had even happened! I just... just..."

I slumped forward, panting from my outburst, then felt a comforting hand rub my back. I put my fingers back against my sore head and shut my eyes, waiting for them to reply. They were silent, however, and remained so even when the pain had subsided and I looked back up at them.

Mom was wearing a very grave expression, as if the truck actually had killed me and she was staring down at my corpse. Dad was running a hand through his hair and letting out his breath in a slow puff, as if he'd been waiting for this conversation his entire life but was still unprepared for it. Finally, after another moment's pause, he and Mom shared a look.

"Well... ?", he said.

Mom buried her face into her hands. She wasn't crying anymore, but she sounded horribly defeated when she spoke.

"Go ahead, Andy."

Dad took a moment to stroke her short red hair, then looked up at me.

"Ninten..." he began, sounding uncertain about his choice of words, "What you just had to go through... we're sorry. And I... I'm sure you've guessed by now, but neither of us have been entirely truthful with you about certain things. In the grand scheme of things, we both agreed it was for the better, but I guess that doesn't really matter now."

He heaved a heavy yawn, then continued.

"We have a... well, quite a long story to tell you, since this has to go all the way back to the beginning to make sense."

"Can't you just tell me now?" I blurted.

"Tell you what?"

"Why didn't the truck kill me? I mean, I'm sure the story is cool and all, but that's all I really care to know about right now."

"If we just told you without giving you any background on it, you wouldn't believe-"

"Dad," I cut him off, "My lamp is out to kill me, my neighbors are getting dragged off by armies of the undead, and I'm pretty sure there are birds pulling a Doolittle on me. There's not a lot I won't believe at this point."

Dad smirked slightly.

"Okay, that was a bad way to put it... If we told you now, right off the bat with no explanation, then you would just be more confused than you already are. And I can tell you've about reached your limit in that regard."

Well, he's definitely right about that, I thought with a sigh.

"Alright," I said, "I'm listening."

Dad took a deep breath.

"Eighty years ago," he began, "When Podunk was a relatively new place of settlement, things were still pretty much like how they are now: slow, quiet, and primarily populated with complete idiots."

In spite of myself, I felt the corner of my mouth twitch. Dad and I tended to agree on stuff like that.

"But, if there ever were two decent people to come out of it, it was your great grandfather and your great grandmother. I never met them, obviously, but I've talked to people and read in the newspapers. Maria was young and beautiful, a worship singer at the church, and could make friends with anyone who came her way. George, meanwhile, was strapping and respectable, an editor-in-chief of the Mother's Day Times, and could make even the slowest news day into something worth reading. And when they were married; well, I for one have never been much a fan of big weddings-"

Mom's miserable expression faded slightly at this, as she rolled her eyes up to the ceiling in an amused sort of way.

"... but I wish I could have been there; I heard literally every person in town who could still walk showed up. Imagine it, the entire population Podunk under one roof..."

None of this was news to me, but I allowed him to talk about it anyway. Dad had told us the same stories time and time again; how his grandparents had been popular, how they had touched the lives of everyone they met, how nobody seemed able to resist enjoying their company, and while it would have been annoying to hear twice, much less every other time he visited us, it actually meant quite a lot to me. My father was the only person I knew who seemed to be aware of the fact that my great grandparents actually used to have an identity before being becoming just "That couple who disappeared."

"Then, just a few weeks after your grandma was born," Dad continued, "Right when things looked as if they couldn't get more perfect... Well, we both know what happened then."

I raised up my fingers and snapped them, imitating an act of disappearance.

"Poof."

"Yep," Dad said, repeating the gesture, "Poof."

He paused for a moment, rubbing at the one his tired eyes, then continued.

"The thing is," he said, "There's quite a bit more to that story almost nobody knows nor cares to know about. You see, ten days before your great grandparents disappeared, something very peculiar happened on Mount Itoi."

Itoi was the craggy old mountain that could be seen on the western horizon from anywhere in Podunk.

"During what was otherwise a sunny afternoon, the mountain was suddenly engulfed in an ash-black cloud, like something you'd expect to see during a thunderstorm. Nobody knew where it came from, or even what it was, but many people believed that it somehow wasn't natural; like somebody had deliberately conjured it up to hide the mountain from view. Even more people began to consider this when strange things started to happen all around the mountain's proximity: animals started going crazy, objects started moving around as if controlled by a troublesome ghost, and strange-looking people nobody recognized were seen wandering around in places you go when you don't want to be seen.

"Not long after this, two high schoolers who had been spelunking near the mountain were both reported missing. They were supposed to be back home after only a day and a half, but they ended up being gone for over a week. When they finally came walking back from that mountain, smiling and excited to tell their panicking families all the things they'd done, neither of them had any memory of the extra days that had passed. They both seemed completely convinced that they had traveled there, spent exactly one night sleeping in a cabin, and then returned home without finding anything unusual worth talking about.

"This ended up reaching the attention of George, who had been documenting the strange events in the newspaper. He decided, I suppose, that it was finally time to take matters into his own hands. So, he climbed right up to the top of that mountain, (He never was that wise in the face of danger, Grandpa George) then came running back into town two days later. He'd found something, everybody knew it from the way that he carried himself. He had, they say, the unmistakable air of a journalist who had just found front-page material. People were up late that evening talking about him, speculating if his new scoop would be even better than the one where he made a buffoon out of the president, and waiting excitedly for him to fling open his door and go hurrying off to the presses."

"Of course, Grandpa George never did get that story to the presses, because that very night, both he and Maria vanished without a trace. Everyone spread out and searched for them, not just the police, but everybody in town who had the time to spare. Everybody loved George and Maria, after all. After a month, the mountain cloud had cleared and the strange activity had stopped, and they still hadn't found any leads. After three months, the searches began to die down and people were beginning to lose hope. After six, your grandma was finally adopted by the couple that had agreed to take care of her. Then, after a full year had passed and there were still no clues whatsoever indicating their whereabouts, George and Maria Foster were officially declared dead in absentia."

Dad paused his story there, looking pensively at the opposite wall. He tucked his thin arms around Minnie, who had climbed quietly into his lap while he had been talking, and patted her on the head before continuing

"For most people, that's how the story ends, with a funeral and two empty graves. When the original residents of Podunk grew old and decided the story needed to be passed on, nearly all of them stopped there, not wanting their sad, simple mystery ruined by the events that happened afterwards. And I'm sorry to say that's the version we've always told you; the clean version, I guess you could call it."

"So what really happened?", I asked.

Dad sighed.

"What really happened," he said, sounding unusually bitter for himself. "Was this: Two years after your great grandparents vanished, a white-haired, frail-looking man came staggering into town, weakened from several days of travel. Nobody recognized him at first, until they saw him approach the Fosters' old house, which hadn't been touched in ages. It was impossible, maybe, but closer examination proved it was true; after a year of being legally dead, George had returned to his home in Podunk. And he was alone."

"Those who had known him described him as being 'no longer George'. He locked himself in his dusty old house as soon as he reached it, and wouldn't allow anyone in, not even his closest friends. For months, he would spend all his days and nights shut up in there, only leaving when needed to go get food for himself. He wasn't writing for the paper anymore; his position as editor-in-chief had been replaced long ago and he made no effort to reclaim it. When people approached him, he wouldn't speak or give any reply to their questions, acting almost exactly as if he'd gone both deaf and mute. The only thing that would get any sort of response out of him was a mention of Maria; if asked where she was, he would violently lash out at whoever had asked, shouting and throwing objects around in a fit of child-like rage."

"He'd gone nuts, basically?", I said.

"Basically," Dad agreed.

I took this new piece of information in, turned it over once or twice in my head, and then decided I had nothing more to say about it.

"There was a lot of talk", Dad continued, "About what was to be done about your grandma. On the one hand, her father was clearly unstable and could potentially be dangerous to her if set off. On the other, some argued that he wasn't beyond help, and thought that maybe spending time with her might help bring him back to his former self. In the end, it was decided she would be allowed routine visits, but only under careful precaution and supervision.

"Your grandma was four when she met her birth father for the first time since he returned. Everyone was half expecting him to explode at the very sight of her, but in fact, quite opposite happened. He started speaking to her, calmly, almost as if no time had passed between them at all. He never got angry with her or showed signs of violence, and even though he was still quiet and withdrawn, he still treated her almost like any father would. Some felt it was speaking too soon, but slowly and surely, it seemed as though he was turning back into his former self. Some of his friends even managed to get a few questions answered, though, the answers he gave only ended up raising more questions. When they asked what he was doing shut up in his house, his reply was simply 'studying'. And when they asked what he thought about his time with your grandma, his reply was, quote, 'It reminds me of them.' Don't ask, Nin, to this day nobody knows who or what he was referring to.

"Now, as time went on, your grandma was gradually allowed more and more time with him as his mental health improved. By the time she turned seven, he was considered safe enough for her to spend time alone with him. Still, nothing bad happened, and for a while, many people were convinced he was on his way to recovery. He still wouldn't tell anyone where he'd been or what he'd done when he disappeared, but he hadn't suffered any recent breakdowns and could now hold a basic conversation with his friends.

"However, it wasn't long after this that your grandma first began to... Well, for lack of a better word, she began to do things that made her foster parents very concerned. It started when she overheard the two them talking about the town election that was coming up. She told them that she knew what the voting results were going to be. When asked how she knew, she simply said that she'd had a dream about. Not much of a concern at first, a lot of little kids are weird like that, but her guesses ended up being creepily accurate. Not only were the results exactly how she guessed they'd be, but she was even able to predict that the winner would be caught with his fly down during his speech.

"These visions of the future she was having gradually became more and more frequent. Soon, she wasn't just dreaming about stuff going on in the future anymore; she was also starting to have dreams about things that were happening in the past. She could recite the names of all the canaries her parents used to own, even the ones that had died before she was born.

"These dreams puzzled everybody, especially the doctors who were called in to check on her, but there didn't seem to be any real harm in them. Despite her weird visions, she still went through life with the same friendly, sunny disposition that her mother had, and was a lot of friends at school. A few too many, actually, but I'll get back to that later. What happened next is more important.

"One morning, when the time had come for her to pay a visit to her father, she, for some reason, suddenly didn't want to go. They asked her why, wondering if maybe he had hurt her, but she promised that he hadn't. But she hadn't had another one of her dreams either; she just knew, somehow, that this one particular day was not a day to be around George.

"It's a good thing they listened, because that very day, after nearly everybody was absolutely sure that he would make a full recovery, George had another breakdown. Five people ended up getting injured in the struggle to subdue him, and it would have been worse had the police not gotten there in time. Nobody knows what set him off, but from that day forward, he was considered too dangerous to be a part of the community. He was carted off to an insane asylum, kicking and screaming all the way, and that's where he spent the rest of his days. He was still utterly mad by the time your grandma got married, and about a year after that, he was found dead on the floor of his room. Wasted away, they said, could hardly feed himself or get any sleep. After being given another, much lonelier funeral, he was buried on the summit of Mt. Itoi, forever remembered as a broken man."

"And... Maria?", I asked, knowing exactly what the answer was going to be.

"She never returned," he replied.

It was quiet for a long time after that. Dad's expression was gloomy as he rested his chin on Minnie's head. She had fallen asleep in his lap. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mom reach out to squeeze his hand.

"Should I...?" she began.

"No, it's okay," he said, pulling himself from his stupor. After clearing his throat a bit, he turned back to me.

"So, you wanted to know why you were able to stop the truck, then?"

I'd nearly forgotten about it while listening to his story, but upon being reminded, my curiosity erupted twice of what it was before. I nodded vigorously, but stopped when it made my head throb again.

"Well," Dad began, once again sounding tentative about the words he chose, "Truth be told, son, a lot of the details are hard to make out, but I will tell you what I know.

"You remember how I said that your grandma began seeing visions of the past and future the more time she spent with George?"

"Yeah, can she still do that?" I asked abruptly, "'Cause I had no idea that-"

"As far as I know, yes, but that's beside the point. Now, as I said before, despite the fact that she had an estranged nutcase for a father, she was still quite the social butterfly back in her day. Growing up, she was seldom seen going anywhere without a few other girls and boys by her side. Her visions probably had something to do with; after all, who wouldn't want to be friends with somebody who might end up predicting if, say, you and your crush will ever get married?

"As time went on, however, that ability of hers must have somehow started rubbing off. Many of her friends, especially the ones who had been with her the longest, began to develop unexplainable powers as well. Some of them could move things without needing to touch them. Others said they could hear what other people were thinking just by standing close enough to them. A few of them could even heal minor injuries and sicknesses with just a touch of their fingers."

He paused, giving me the opportunity to speak. When I did, I found my mouth was very dry from hanging open so long.

"And they… they did all of this stuff... with their minds?"

"Don't be so surprised, bud," Dad said with a chuckle, "After all, we know more solid information about dust clouds billions of lightyears away than we do about the six inches of gray matter sitting inside our heads."

I stared at him, trying to absorb all this. All of those things, those crazy mind abilities he listed, they sounded strangely familiar...

"So... in a hypothetical situation where one of those people were in mortal danger," I said very slowly, "Would they be able to... protect themselves?"

"Oh, yes," Dad said casually.

"Even in the event of, say... getting hit by a speeding truck?"

"Well, I certainly wouldn't put it past them."

I searched my dumbfounded brain. There was a word for this, I knew I could remember it if my head didn't hurt so much...

"So I'm... I'm psychic?", I stammered, "Like Professor X?"

Dad smiled

"Yep, just like him," he said.