I DON’T SLEEP that first night home. It just doesn’t happen. I lay there in the dark, eyes wide, listening to the tick of the alarm clock on my nightstand count down the seconds to daybreak.
The next morning—Sunday—I find myself on the couch, with the TV on in the background, only partially focusing on a book about software coding. Kimberly thinks the technology and engineering stuff is boring, but she always listens to me ramble on about it anyway. I can practically see her on the love seat now, sitting with her head propped up in her hand, her eyelids opening and closing lazily.
After a while, not long before lunch, I get restless and wander around the house, through the warmth brought on by the floor-to-ceiling windows looking out at the canal. It’s not much as far as waterways go, but the view is still nice to look at, especially now, when the pines are full and green and the rhododendron are huge pink clouds, like cotton candy growing right in my backyard.
I stare out for a while, thankful that even though we’re on the Dagger Hill side of the canal, we can only really see Windale proper from the windows, which primarily face west. If we had big windows like these facing east, I’d have a lovely view of the crash site up on the Hill, the deep, charred wound cut into the trees and the earth. I don’t think I’d ever be able to look away.
Mom took Sophia into town for groceries, and Dad left for TerraCorp before anyone else was awake—I heard him shuffling around at four this morning, then I heard the front door open and shut. I have the house to myself, and it’s just too quiet. I plan to see Charlie after noon, but I have no idea what to do with myself until then. I’d go up to Dagger Hill and help the volunteers search for Kimberly, but Mom said I should take it easy at least for a day, let my body rest. This just doesn’t feel like resting, though. My mind is like the spinning ball basket they show on TV when they draw numbers for the lottery.
Eventually, I drag myself up to my bedroom and collapse onto the comforter, facedown, breathing in the scent of the Radion laundry detergent my mom likes to use. It smells like home, but it doesn’t feel like that. I feel like a stranger here, like a fictional character who wandered out of a movie and into real life, panicked and unsure about everything. Across the room, my new-used computer is sitting, plugged in, powered on. There’s a low-frequency whine coming from it that sounds like a tuneless violin string.
I scream the word fuck into the mattress as many times, and as loudly, as I can.
When I pick my head up again to readjust myself, the comforter is no longer a quilted, floral-printed cloud. It’s been replaced by a blanket of crawling, squirming thousand-leggers. Narrow, centipede-like insects with long, arching legs and searching antennae. They’re surging under my body, tickling the bare skin on my arms. I can hear them, there are so many. An itchy, rasping sound as they claw and scrape over top of one another.
I scream, flinging myself up off the bed. A few of the bugs come with me, slinking across my hands and my arms and my shoulders. Flailing, I throw them off me, bouncing up and down, screaming some more because I don’t know what else to do. The sound of it feels hollow all of a sudden, as if somebody else is doing the screaming.
Thousand-leggers. Real name: Scutigera coleoptrata. We did a research project on them when I was in seventh grade. They’re gray and yellow and vile. They move in wiggling strides, clambering across walls and ceilings, bathroom vents, kitchen cabinets. Wherever it’s dark and hidden. Or, in this case, my fucking bed.
But when I look back, the comforter is just the comforter again. No pulsing, fidgeting insects. My whole body is covered in goose bumps, and I can’t shake the feeling that more are crawling on me.
“Holy shit,” I breathe. “What the…”
I trail off, my eyes shifting from the bed to the window. The bright early-morning light that was baking behind the curtains when I came in is now a grayish-bluish glow. It reminds me of the light on a crisp, snowy winter morning.
Trying not to look at the bed again, I move across the room and push open the curtains. My breath, already stuttering and burning from the panic the thousand-leggers caused, catches in my throat.
There’s a bolt of lightning frozen across the sky. A rough, many-pointed dagger coming down out of slow-churning black clouds. It’s not frozen exactly, just moving very, very slowly. I can see currents of electricity tracing lines, inch by inch, down to the ground. Beneath that slow-motion sky, Windale sits flat and pretty, awash in the cold ether of the storm.
I realize then, backing away from the window, unbelieving, that there are dust motes hovering in the air around me. Not twirling and falling in that snowflake way of theirs, but caught in time just like the world outside is. I can reach out and nudge one across space with my finger.
“What is happening?” I whisper. Hot tears sting my eyes. My lower lip quivers like I’m a kid again, caught scribbling crayon art on the walls.
Someone knocks on the front door.
The sound startles me, and a little yelp escapes my lips. I’m all the way up on the second floor, but the knock reverberates through the walls and doorframes, buzzing under my feet.
Now the tears are spilling down my cheeks because even though I clearly fell asleep, drooling into my comforter, and now I’m having some kind of bizarre nightmare, it doesn’t feel like that. When I pinch my own cheek, I can feel the bite of it, but it doesn’t wake me up.
Outside, the lightning continues its agonizing crawl through the atmosphere. The slowly bubbling clouds glow blue in places where more static charge is building. There’s a deep, gurgling growl coming from somewhere. Not just from inside the house, from everywhere. It’s thunder, I realize. Thunder rumbling in slo-mo, creating a constant, ear-aching thrum.
Another knock. This time it’s more urgent. More like a bang.
Something tells me that staying here and ignoring the sound of whoever’s at the front door is not an option. I don’t know if I’m awake or asleep or … something else. It doesn’t matter. Whatever this is, my own bedroom is not immune to it, which means that it’s not safe. Which means nowhere is.
That thought is mostly terrifying. But it’s also a bit freeing.
With only a little hesitation slowing me down, I open my bedroom door.