Page 59 of Marked By Shadows

“You’re so hot right now,” I told him.

He gave me a self-deprecating smile. “Don’t distract me with sex if you want to talk about spooky stuff.”

I sighed. “I hate spooky stuff, but can’t bury it under the rug forever. Might as well get it out already.”

He reached out to grasp my hand. “Tell me what you saw? You don’t normally see stuff, but I know you did.”

I sucked in air and closed my eyes as though that could somehow stop the memory. “Something,” I admitted. “A mash of people maybe? Like a wall of writhing flesh with faces melted into it? A nightmare? Hell, I’ve never had nightmares like that, not in all the years of being tormented by the noises at night.” And that had been after I’d seen shadows in the woods. I could recall them for the few seconds before I’d come face to face with that monster. Had those been real too? “Shadows in the woods too, before.”

“And when you stopped the car? Did you see Joe in the road?”

“Not at first. I saw the shadow at first. Rushing across the road. Then I saw Joe. But I had already stopped. You reacted before I did. You saw him first?”

“Coming up off the side of the road, yes, not lying in it.”

“So you saw movement too.”

Alex nodded and seemed to think about that for a minute. He got up and refilled my coffee cup, turning off the pot before he made his way back. His silence was unnerving. Silence was one of those things I’d learned to spend a lot of time analyzing. Ours wasn’t normally a tense silence, more one filled with thought. This one was a gauge of what he wanted to say versus what he thought.

“Don’t temper yourself on my account,” I told him. “I know I sound crazy too. But I lost sound,” I finally said, adding to the stretch of thoughts I knew were running around his head. “It happened the first time when I was on that trail two years ago. Everything vanishes. I can feel my heart pounding, but can’t hear anything. Just the pounding in my ears. That happened this time too. Didn’t come back until I was on the ground.”

Alex looked at me now. “So you didn’t hear me calling you?”

“No. Didn’t know you were behind me at all.”

He gripped my hand, squeezing it hard.

“Alex talk to me. What did you see? Was it like what you saw when you were in the hospital?”

“Yes and no? In the hospital, those things were smaller, less defined, and limited to one person. This other thing… Honestly, it’s hard to explain. In the road, that thing that was a mash? What did I see? Death. No other way to describe it. Saw it once before, overseas. Large, solid, defined, yet not. Thought I was seeing things. Too much heat and sand. Saw it wandering an open-air market. There were so many dead that day, on the other side, but I guess it’s all the same. Dead is dead. And the death I’ve seen didn’t wander around in a black cloak with a sickle in his grasp. More liked a bloated monstrosity devouring souls…”

I gasped at him because that was exactly what I’d seen and it still made me sick to think of it. I had to work to breathe, counting careful numbers and staring at my sewing machine because every time I closed my eyes, I saw it again.

“Lots of mythology around Death, with a capital D,” I said after a few minutes of getting control of myself. What did that mean for the afterlife if there was one?

“Omens and stuff, yeah,” Alex agreed. “My brother has a lot of random occult books at his place. Plus you have a ton in the shop. I’ve been reading as much as I can. Trying to find answers to things no one really knows for sure, I guess?”

“What about Joe?” I asked. “That shadow? He’s not dead. You said he was breathing.”

“Physically not dead,” Alex clarified. “I think that thing, Death, or whatever it was, was chasing Joe’s soul. Or spirit. Whatever.” He waved his hand. “I guess the terms don’t matter much. It formed out of the darkness, coming up off the side of the road and lunging toward Joe’s spirit. But yes, Joe is alive. Breathing.” He sat in silence for another minute, then added, “Empty. In the psych ward, I met a couple guys like that. Empty. Like they were just shells of people instead of actual people. I didn’t understand why. Thought maybe it was the meds that made them so lifeless. I know they were guys who attempted suicide and were considered to have failed. But maybe that’s not right? Maybe they didn’t fail, but killed what was inside instead of the physical part?” He shivered.

“Wow,” I whispered. “That’s heavy.” And terrifying.

Alex let out a long breath. “Yeah. A lot in my head today.”

I guess that made two of us. “If that thing was Death…”

“It’s not always like that,” Alex said quietly. “I’ve seen people just vanish after they die. The spirit or whatever. Fuck. It’s crazy to think back at all the things I’ve seen and realize it was not as simple as I first thought. Then there’s the ghosts that linger. Why didn’t Death, if that was what it was, come for them? Why do they stay?”

“Unresolved things, maybe? Why did it come for Joe if he’s still alive? Why did it look so monstrous? Is Death really so awful?”

“Some death,” Alex said. “As I said, I’ve only seen it once before. The people who died were from a suicide bomber. A couple dozen, I think. They triggered it in an outdoor shopping plaza. Lots of innocents. Women and children, and a handful of soldiers they thought weren’t on their side. Senseless death, a lot of it. Maybe that’s the key?”

“That would mean there would be more than Byrony out there in those woods,” I said, thinking about the mash of faces. “Or does it travel long distances to gather random people? We don’t know why she died. Are we sure she’s dead? Or maybe she’s like Joe.” Stripped of her soul or something. And wasn’t that an awful thought. “Maybe it was a murder suicide, like Joe killed her and tried to kill himself but only separated his soul from his body?” Crap that was too heavy for me this early in the morning. I took a long drag of the coffee, a thousand things in my head. “Did the police say anything?”

“Not really.”

“Did they confirm she’s dead?”