Heart of a Hobo, sampling of novel

The drug was far milder than the previous. Once in the arms of deep slumber, Bo was slowly released into a more normal state of sleep. He could hear in his dazed stupor, the echoing distant wheezing of Egg’s breathing and the rustling arbutus, creeping along the trellis against the side of the house.
Then the sound became more pronounced. The distant, vague echo of dreaming had taken a shapeless light tapping against the wall, constant, steady yet dissimulated then louder and sharp, as sleep was forfeited to dim wakefulness. His eyelids were too heavy to open, but he felt Egg jerk violently. It took Bo several minutes to focus clearly and when his tumbling mind caught sight of Egg sitting up in bed, he was unmotivated to move his dull, heavy body. Egg was trembling in fear as the noise drew closer and more pronounced.
As Bo slowly rose, weighted and distant, Egg screamed loudly. He screamed until his throat and lungs were raw from exertion. Bo turned his head towards the window where Egg’s frantic eyes transfixed in fear, centered on the silhouette. He caught a fleeting look of a shadowed face, a face that began to move, twitching as it lost purchase against the windowsill, then let out a soft moan more in the form of a plea for some unknown clemency, as the figure fell backward, gliding in mid-air until they heard a nauseating thump on the ground below.
A few moments were an eternity filled with the frenetic footfall of someone bolting up the staircase.
Rance was suddenly on the bed holding the sobbing boy who repeated brokenly. “Out the window, out the window, Rance.”
Rance released Egg who began to scream again. He went to the open window. Below a prone dark figure lying immobile on his back, moaned again, lowing in harmony with the sound of the cool night breeze.
Rance returned to the bed and caught Egg up then placed a steadied arm around Bo’s waist, and maneuvered them down the half-lit staircase where grandmother was anxiously waiting holding a beleaguered Cat to her side and Casey in her other arm, straddling her hip. Cat was crying her dazed eyes wide and apprehensive, whereas Casey bellowed indignantly from being so rudely awakened from peaceful slumber.
Rance set Bo and Egg on the settee and said hollowly with a vague hint of trepidation. “Stay with the kids. We have a prowler.” He unlocked the usually open door and stood on the porch, his body momentarily blocking the broken halo of living room light, strung with shaded gaps of trellis lattice from the side of the house, a quilted light floating over the silhouette, still and resolute as Rance furtively moved onward, with muted steps in the clotted night. The figure was dormant, his head clothed in darkness, still and moribund with the exception of the ragged, surfeited breathing that rattled from an unknown place in his punctured lungs. Then his head flashed red then nocturnal again in steady procession. George Miller had arrived in the squad car and another was bolting towards him.