Page 100

“Let’s play,” the little boy said.

I blinked and looked at him, feeling a chill run up my spine for the first time. I tried to take a step back.

The boy’s hand rested on my back, light, careful, like Grandpa’s hand after Daddy yelled. Like he was trying to calm me.

Then he shoved me.

I fell through the glowing door of lights.

The world went soft and warm, colors swirling around me like bath water. I floated for a moment, weightless, happy. Then the whispers grew sharp, and the warmth turned cold, and I couldn’t breathe⁠—

I jolted awake, finding myself in the hospital bed, and sucked in air, reminding myself that the beige walls, the half-bathroom door, and the dim lights were supposed to be a safe space.

Had that been a dream?

My heart still pounded as if I’d been running for my life.

The shadow lingered in the corner of the room, waiting.

The day passed in a blur of meals I didn’t eat and questions I couldn’t answer. I knew vaguely that I was a teen again, and the dream of my youth, though haunting, felt as if it could have been real. When I found myself sitting in front of the doctor, the one with no face, whose features I couldn’t seem to hold in my memory, his questions made me fear he could see inside my head.

“Tell me what happened when you were three. Your parents found you on the floor unconscious.”

“I don’t remember,” I answered instinctively, wishing the nurse Micah were there with me. But we were alone in an office the size of most people’s closets, lights bright overhead, leaving no room for shadows, yet somehow, they lingered.

“You said nothing for a few days. Barely ate. Then one day, you were fine.”

I stared at the blank wall behind him.

I didn’t remember. I refused to remember. It hurt to try.

Why?

A shadow crept up the wall behind the doctor’s chair, watching. Reminding me.

I’d given up the memory. Strange how that was all I remembered now, the act of forgetting. Even the dream couldn’t bridge the gap of what happened after I fell into the glowing doorway.

“Do you remember anything about Jason Sanchez today?” the doctor prodded.

“Who?” Then I recalled he’d asked me about him last night. “The boy from my school? I don’t think I know him.”

“You weren’t close?”

I shook my head, feeling as if something were missing, but finding another void, like the closet memory. I didn’t share that with the doctor. “Can I call my grandparents now?”

“I have a specialist arriving soon. I’d like you to sit down with him.”

I stared at him, again trying to define his face, but getting nothing. It was unnerving, not being able to read his expressions.

“I’ll be right back,” The doctor rose and stepped out of the room, leaving the door slightly ajar. The office felt smaller without his presence. Colder.

The shadow on the wall behind the doctor’s chair slid up, pooling on the ceiling like spilled ink, or a watercolor splotch spreading outward. I pressed myself back into my chair, my breath catching, my heart pounding. I wasn’t certain if what I was seeing was actually there, or some nightmare brought on by the meds they’d given me the day before.

It leaned over me. A wash of cold air and darkness that made my skin crawl.

They want you, it whispered. They know you’ve been beyond.

What did that mean?