Shadow Jumper

Beth hates the person who allowed the dog to reach such a bad state. They see a name tag with “Rex” and a phone number on it. The driver tells them that the replacement bus is an hour away. Beth asks Jack if they can just walk to his aunt’s house from where they are. They wade through the countryside in the dark. They hear creepy noises and Jack grows increasingly anxious.

When they arrive at Auntie Lil’s house, Beth is weirded out by the massive collection of garden gnomes. Auntie Lil is short and round, unlike her tall, thin brother Tom. Jack confesses that his mom does not know where his dad is. Beth gives Lil her home number, and Lil calls both Pete and Maeve. Beth is very pale and quiet, and Jack wonders why. She tells him that she just realized she left her rucksack on the bus. He tells her that they can go to the station tomorrow and get it; she insists on going back immediately. Beth looks for the phone book so that she can call the bus station. When no one answers, she is furious. Jack tells her they can look for it tomorrow.

As he tries to fall asleep on Lil’s couch, Jack wonders what in the bag is so important. He decides he needs to learn Beth’s secret.

Jack dreams of shadow jumping. As he starts falling in the dream, something awakens him. He discovers that it is before 7 am, and Beth is waiting impatiently to drag him to the bus station. He questions her again about her bag but she just tells him that it has personal things in it.

Auntie Lil makes breakfast and interrogates them about why they showed up unexpectedly. Lil is surprised to hear that Jack thinks his dad is missing. Tom did not tell anyone, including Lil, where he was or where he was working. Lil says that he did not want to return to his old job at Bioscience Discoveries after that “terrible business.” She produces a newspaper clipping that shows Tom winning a research prize. His work on liver disease helped show how the concepts of liver regeneration could be used as anti-aging aids. The company director, Richard Blackstone, praised Tom for his work.

Jack thinks that Blackstone looks like a toad. Lil explains that two years after Tom won the prize, he suddenly decided to leave his company and Jack’s parents moved. The siblings did not keep in touch for months and Lil never got to learn why Tom left. Lil speculates that he was involved in an experiment that went badly. Lil tells Jack that his mom is coming to pick him up on Saturday. Beth asks if they can head to the bus station.

Jack applies his special cream and worries about the status of his skin. Jack and Beth join Lil in her little car, where Jack suddenly remembers that Lil is a terrible driver. At the station, she gives Jack some money and suggests they go see a movie. Beth is very jumpy and runs into the station as soon as they arrive. Jack follows Beth into the station, where a woman who resembles his neighbor, Mrs. Roberts, walks past him. As he heads to the Lost Property room, Jack can’t shake the feeling that he is being watched. Beth is ecstatic to be reunited with her bag, but furious that the man who hands it back to her doesn’t handle it carefully. He remarks that it is very heavy. Jack still wonders what she’s keeping in there.

They head to a café, and Jack reminds Beth that he needs to sit away from the window. Beth won’t put her rucksack down. She asks the server behind the counter about Bioscience Discoveries. The server tells her that they should speak to Ted Harris, a former employee who usually stops by the café in the morning.

Ted arrives pushing a yellow cart laden with assorted brushes. Both Beth and Jack are overwhelmed by Ted’s unkempt appearance and unwashed smell. They buy him a coffee and a bun so that he will talk to them. He tells them that scientists at Bioscience Discoveries conduct unsavory experiments and have spies everywhere. He says that Blackstone has let power go to his head and the newspapers will offer more explanations. The waitress tells them that Ted was a cleaner for the company. Beth decides that they should head to the library to go through newspaper archives.

As they are leaving, Beth’s rucksack knocks over a vase, causing it to shatter. Jack asks her what’s in her bag to make it so heavy. She deliberates and then decides to tell him. She opens her bag, pulling out two large wooden boxes that each have a brass plaque on them.

Jack doesn’t comprehend the large pile of greyish dust inside the boxes. Beth tells him it’s her parents’ ashes. Jack is mildly alarmed and confused. He can’t believe that she carries her parents’ remains with her everywhere. He doesn’t know what to say. They agree not to keep secrets from each other. Beth tells him she will someday figure out where the right place is to scatter the ashes.

Jack thinks more about the notion that spies are everywhere. He wonders if his next-door neighbor Mrs. Roberts could be a spy. He wonders if anything that Ted told them will help him find his dad.

As they leave the cafe, Jack again notices a stooped figure who resembles Mrs. Roberts. Jack tells Beth he will meet her at the library. He follows the stooped figure into an alley but feels weird about chasing after an old lady. He decides that learning if she is a stalker is more important. Jack tries to stay in the shadows as he follows her. She disappears behind a pair of gates, and Jack tries to guess which gate she entered. He checks out the fence and is disappointed that it’s not just another roof he can leap over. He uses his roof-jumping techniques to scale the fence, then climbs a tree. He grabs a branch, but it breaks and he hits the ground. Jack peers into the house and sees an older hunched woman with grey hair. He assumes that this is Mrs. Roberts because he feels she is the only woman who could possibly look like that.

Jack returns to the library, but, despite their agreement, he is not honest with Beth about where he went or why he was pursuing an old woman.

Jack tries to stop feeling paranoid. He greets the librarian, whom he last saw during his visit over the Christmas holiday. Jack spent a lot of time at the library playing video games because it was too bright to play outside. He asks the librarian for help locating something in a newspaper. Once he is set up, he looks up Bioscience Discoveries in the newspaper archives. So many articles appear that after 10 minutes, Jack and Beth are ready to give up.

They locate an article from 1999 describing the “child experimentation horror” at the Bioscience labs. A former employee acted as an informant to the press and described Dr. Tom Phillips’s anti-aging experiments on infants, children, and animals. One of the side effects of these experiments is massive blisters similar to those that Jack has. He does not want to believe that his dad could be involved in something like this.

They look for more articles and learn that Dr. Phillips left Bioscience in December 1999. Blackstone was surprised by Tom’s departure from the company and said that it had nothing to do with the claims of unethical treatment of children and animals, but that Tom wished to spend more time with his family.

Jack wonders what to make of these new developments. He thinks that the allegations described in the newspaper are worse than what Auntie Lil told them. He wonders if his dad could actually have carried out these experiments on children and animals. He considers what he actually knows about his dad, and he decides that his dad was primarily mysterious and grumpy. He’s not sure if his dad is even a good person. Beth tries to placate Jack by saying that the police never found solid evidence that his dad was conducting experiments on children. They wonder why he left so suddenly. Jack thinks that his dad running away is the sign of a guilty conscience.