Page 53 of Lion's Share
Chapter Sixteen
The knock came at exactly a quarter after five, just as Ben had promised. I’d been roaming around the living room for the past ten minutes, unable to sit still after I’d closed the pet store a few minutes early and raced home. Between my worry over Dr. Rosenthal’s arrival and what the federal team’s plans to enter the forest tonight could mean, my nerves might as well have been made of exposed electrical wire.
And when I opened the door, the look on Ben’s face told me he was just as stressed out as I was.
But at least he wasn’t so distracted that he forgot to give me a hug. I held on to him for a moment, needing the reassuring pressure of his body against mine, needing to feel how close he was and how things seemed so much better when he was around.
Eventually, though, I had to end the embrace, just so I could get us some water from the kitchen and then lead him over to the sofa so we could sit down and do our best to get down to business.
Just as I was lowering myself to the couch, a wave of dizziness hit me, and I sort of dropped those last couple of inches, reaching for the arm of the sofa to steady myself. The room seemed to shimmer around the edges, and suddenly I wasn’t hearing Ben’s voice anymore. Instead, a different voice echoed in my mind — familiar, but somehow not quite right.
….can’t sleep. Every night the same dream. Shadows moving through the trees, getting closer and closer. And that sound, like the wind but wrong, like it’s coming from somewhere else entirely….
The voice faded, and I blinked hard, my blurred vision clearing to reveal a very worried Ben staring at me.
“Sidney! What’s the matter?”
“I….” I pressed my fingers to my temples, doing what I could to center myself even though nothing around me seemed quite real. “Someone was thinking about dreams. Nightmares about shadows in the forest.”
His hazel eyes widened, and he reached over to take my hand. “Whose thoughts?”
“I don’t know. It wasn’t like with Agent Morse, where I could tell it was her voice. This was different. It felt a lot farther away.” I looked up at him, my thoughts racing in all directions, none of them good. “What if it’s not just me?” I asked then, a new fear running through me. “What if the electromagnetic disturbances are affecting other people, too?”
He was quiet for a long moment, appearing to process my words. “That would actually make sense,” he said at length. “Marjorie’s readings showed the pulses radiating outward from the forest. If they’re strong enough to affect electronics, they could definitely be influencing brain chemistry, too.”
Another wave hit me, this one stronger. Multiple voices this time, overlapping and confused.
…woke up and all the clocks were wrong again, but I swear I could hear music playing from somewhere that doesn’t exist…
…Harpo won’t come inside after dark anymore. Just sits on the porch, staring at the woods like he’s watching something…
…told Andy about the headaches, but he says it’s just stress. How do you explain stress that comes with pictures in your head of places you’ve never been?
I sucked in a breath and tightened my grasp on Ben’s hand, using the physical contact to anchor myself. His skin was warm, and the faint calluses on his fingers reminded me he was real, that he was right there with me, and it was going to be okay.
Or at least, I sure hoped it would.
“There are more,” I told him. “A lot more. People are having strange dreams, their pets are acting weird, and some are even getting flashes of images like I am.”
“Jesus.” His fingers tightened on mine. “If the federal team learns that the electromagnetic anomalies are causing widespread psychic phenomena….”
“They’ll want to study everyone,” I said, my voice faint, sounding as if it had emerged from a stranger’s throat. “They’ll turn all of Silver Hollow into some kind of huge laboratory.”
We sat in silence for a moment, the weight of the terrible situation pressing down on us. Then I felt it — a familiar presence at the edge of my consciousness, cold and hungry and wrong.
“It’s here,” I whispered.
“What’s here?”
I let go of his hand and stood up slowly, then moved toward the window that faced the forest. “The shadow stalker. The one that got away.”
Through the glass, I could see hazy late afternoon shadows starting to lengthen under the cloudy sky. Most of them looked normal, cast by trees and fence posts and the big detached garage on the east side of the house, a garage I still couldn’t park in because it was crowded with my mother’s and grandmother’s stuff. But one shadow, darker than the rest, seemed to move independently of any physical object.
“There,” I said, and pointed. “By the big oak tree.”
Ben came up behind me, doing his best to follow my gaze. “I don’t see anything.”
“You have to look at it indirectly. Like trying to see a faint star.” I watched as the shadow-thing shifted position, always staying just outside the direct line of sight. “It’s been watching the house.”
