Page 14 of Splintered
Deep breaths. Evan wouldn’t meet his gaze. He stared at the carpet like he wanted the ground to open, to swallow him whole. His rattling breaths echoed, the only sound in the house. Even the refrigerator and the hum of the heater were quiet.
“Do you ever… hear things?” Evan whispered. “Like… thoughts? That you don’t know where they came from?”
“What?”
“Sometimes…” Evan swallowed. Grimaced again. “Sometimes, I get these thoughts. They just appear. Like someone else thought them. Or like someone whispered in my ear.”
“You’re hearing voices?” On the scale of one tofucking shit, that ranked right up there with outright blind panic. Adrenaline flooded his veins again, his muscles. His heart pounded as his mind spun with scenario after scenario, each possibility and imagining worse than the next. “What do these voices say? Are they telling you things? Commanding you to do things? Are they—”
“Stop,” Evan growled. “Stop, Ben. It’s not like that. And this is why I didn’t want to tell you.”
“What? Why?”
“Because I knew you’d freak out.”
“Of course I’m freaking out! This is serious, Evan! Of course I’m going to freak out when someone I love says they’re hearing voices. I watched you have a seizure!”
“It might not have been a seizure.”
“I hope it was a seizure because anything else the paramedics said sounded far worse.” Ben’s voice shook. He sniffed, stared at the fireplace. Tried to count to ten. He didn’t get past three. “Evan,please. Explain this to me. So I don’t freak out even more than I already am.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Try.”
“It’s like a humming in the background. A buzz that won’t go away. There’s this… I don’t know if it’s a whisper, or it’s just static. But I can’t stop hearing it. It’s everywhere.”
“Does it say anything?”
“Sometimes I think it does,” Evan whispered.
“Like what?”
Evan shook his head. Changed the subject. “I wear earbuds because music or radio or podcasts or whatever helps keep it pushed back. Like I can’t hear it if there’s something else I’m listening to.”
Ben took it all in, turning the information over and around and upside down, looking at it from every angle. How long? When had it started? He had even more questions than before. “So you got a referral for your hallucinations?”
Evan winced. “Don’t call it that. That sounds terrible.”
“What do you want me to call it then?”
“I don’t know. But not that. Just, not that.”
“Ignoring the issue—”
“Ben, please,” Evan snapped. “Please. Let me handle this, okay?”
Something snapped inside Ben, something deep, something that had been wound too tightly and had been holding him together. “You’ve been handling itsowell on your own so far! Not telling me anything at all! Keep it up! I’m sure they have good doctors in New York.” He stood and headed for the stairs.
“I didn’t want you to worry.” Evan’s plaintive voice followed him. “I wanted to—”
He didn’t hear the rest of whatever Evan said after the bedroom door slammed shut.
* * *
Chapter Five
Saturday morning,and the smell of bacon and toast.
