sixty-four

The moon cut a swath of pale light across the ceiling above Nathan and, within that pale stream, layers of darkness shifted and merged. He struggled against sweat-dampened sheets, but invisible manacles held him fast to the bed.

An apparition in the form of a dark man wavered at the foot of his bed. A scream began deep inside Nathan but caught in his throat. His chest was about to explode, his heart beating too hard. The shadow oozed toward him along the swath of moonlight. A creature wriggled within its cupped hands.

“No,” Nathan moaned and struggled harder to free himself. The dark form spread and merged into the shadows until only its dark hands floated toward him.

“Leave me alone,” he said. Or thought he said. “Go away.”

The shadow hands floated closer, hands shaped into a cup, a struggling creature trapped inside them. The fingers tightened, snuffing the panicked chirrup of the bird, and then opened to reveal a goldfinch, its bright yellow and red plumage dulled by death.

“Don’t,” he said. Or thought he said.

The hands closed over the bird and a moment later parted to reveal the goldfinch blinking, fluttering, about to find its wings. The shadow hands crushed down on it again.

And opened. Again. To reveal a dead bird.

Nathan’s neck muscles ached as he strained against the invisible shackles. He was doomed to exist here forever, imprisoned with this bird, this dead-then-alive bird, and the shadowy being that repeatedly snuffed out its light and resurrected it.

“Stop,” he said. Or thought he said.

The hands turned toward him, the palms empty, the bird gone, replaced by a squirmy worm of a creature. The hands bobbed in front of Nathan’s face, now close enough that he recognized himself inside them, and the darkness within those hands descended on him.

He woke to find himself beside the window, gasping within the stream of moonlight. He clenched a kitchen knife so hard his hand ached. He swallowed against rawness in his throat, trying to remember when he had fetched the knife. The carving knife, he now saw.

“Dad!” Zoe pounded on the door. “Let me in.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve been screaming nonstop for the last five minutes. You’re not fine.”

He couldn’t move, though. His limbs refused to obey orders. Instead, he perched on the windowsill and gave in to tremors that rocked his body. The palsy aftermath of one of his night terrors. The knife dropped with a sharp clack against the floorboards.

Zoe must stop with her knocking and her calling. He needed her to shut up, shut up, shut up—“Shut up!” he yelled.

She did, but he sensed her on the other side of the door, ever-present, even during the years before she’d found him.

“This isn’t going to work, Zoe,” he said. Or thought he said.

Yes, he did say it aloud. Zoe’s sigh told him that much. “It can work. You need me. That much is obvious.”

“I can’t have you in the house when you’re—” Nathan shook his head. He had no words. He wasn’t great with words on the best of occasions. “You need to leave people alone. Let them be, especially Liam.”

What he wanted to say, of course, was to let him be. He didn’t want her in the house. Her presence made his scar ache, and the crackle and static paralyzed him at times.

“I’m not leaving.” She spoke with firm resolve. “We’ll work it out. You’ll see.”

Or what? Work it out, or what?

Zoe’s footsteps retreated toward her bedroom. Her door clicked shut. Nathan breathed again, forcing oxygen into and out of his body. The image of the goldfinch returned. The yellow-tipped wings and scarlet face, delicate scales on its toes, glossy black eyes. More real than reality, that goldfinch. But then, memory, dream, or hallucination … what did it matter anymore?