Page 33 of Safe in Shadow
“Nyx! James? Are you actually James? What do you know about this town? I think it’s haunted!” She was babbling, rushing past him to the bathroom, turning the shower to full hot so that steam began to billow within seconds. She waited impatiently by the mirror, her eyes widening when she saw Nyx struggle to grow into anything but a shadowy smudge, hovering near the floor. “Oh, geez. Are you okay?”
No, he thought, and couldn’t bring himself into shape to write on the mirror.
“Oh, no!” Grace sank to her knees, hands outstretched, then back at her sides, and then outstretched again, molding the air around him as if trying to rub his shoulders and hold him together.
It helped. Just knowing she was there helped.
“You don’t have to talk yet. Not that we talk. Listen. I went to the library to look up the history of this place. I knew some of it, but I wanted to find out about the original owners and who lived here before it became any sort of hospital or institution. I read about the Cameron family. Do you... Does that ring any bells? James and Cynthia?”
The pain hit him so hard that he felt his form implode, a shower of shadowy mist ripping from his chest as Grace backed away and screamed, scooting on her bottom, then scrambling on her knees.
Cynthia.
Pale face. Pink cheeks. Dark curls.
Evil. Evil. Evil.
Faces spun in a spiral, Cynthia. James. Him.
He hadn’t seen or recalled his own face for so long. He wasn’t the handsome one. That was James.
Dear, wonderful James!
Evil.
The three images smashed together and vanished, leaving a cold hollow in his mind.
He knew one thing now.
Pieces of himself rejoined, stretched, and grew into a spidery silhouette of a man, all spindles and joints, something grotesque, judging by Grace’s horrified scream. His hand slammed against the mirror, making a gruesome handprint that took up most of the glass. Grace let out a whimper.
He composed himself—or at least his hands. One finger scrawled, his writing sloppy and jagged this time.
Not James.
Brother.
GRACE COWERED AGAINSTthe bathroom door. If her knees had worked, she would have stood, ripped open the door, and escaped at the sight of what Nyx had become.
Then he wrote, and the fear began to ebb.
“Your brother was James?” she whispered, voice small and unable to get any bigger around the knot of terror in her throat. “I have a brother. He’s a character, but he’s all right. I’m sorry... I’m sorry about James.”
The form that was still Nyx, not James, was shrinking. It was wavery and blurry on the edges, but what did she expect? The guy had been a blob, then shards of shadow, an explosion of darkness that quivered and dragged itself back together like something out of a horror movie.
She didn’t know what to say that wouldn’t cause him pain, because to her mind, what she had just seen was pain and misery taking form. “Do you want to talk about him?”
A long, scrawlingNoappeared in the fog.
“That’s okay. We can talk when you’re ready. Hey, can you talk-talk? Without the mirror? I mean, have you ever tried it with a human?”
WHY WERE HIS MEMORIESso fractured?
Yes, he’d spoken once. Whispered often. To one human. Tried with another. One heard, one couldn’t.
James. James couldn’t hear him.
Cynthia could.
