For two days, Alex tossed and turned in that hospital bed, burning, aching, fevered. No goddamned clue which way was up or down. No idea of what was real and what wasn’t. When he started to feel better, he tried to talk about what’d happened, but no one would listen.
That was when Alex began to understand that telling the truth wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. When the truth makes people uncomfortable, you tell them what they want to hear, or better yet, you say nothing at all.
Through Alex’s fevered state, he knew his mom, dad, and big brother, Mike, had come, but something felt strange. They sat or stood far away from the bed, never kissed him on the forehead, never held his hand, never a finger through his hair. As if they were afraid to get too close. Afraid of him.
Alex had always made fun of Heather because she kept a diary. He’d teased her and told her only girly girls did that. But no words could express how glad he was, in the end, that she had that diary. After Clint, Danny, Reid and Alex didn’t show up for their sleepovers, panic ensued. But they’d always pulled stunts like that. So it wasn’t until Alex’s parents realized Heather was missing, too, that the real worry started.
They searched her room and found her diary under her pillow, with the full confession of where they all were about to go and what they were about to do.
They found Alex and Reid two days after the five of them went into that house. Just two fucking days. With all they’d gone through inside, it seemed like two years.
They searched that tiny one-roomed house and found nothing. No Danny, no Clint, no Heather. They did find something odd, though. Three piles of ashes. But no burnt clothes or remnants of who those ashes belonged to.
There was an unspoken consensus of what’d happened. They didn’t need Alex’s story, his truth. The house was evil. Hush, hush, no one talk about it or go near it. That’s the way it had always been, and now it seemed obvious that’s the way it was always going to be.
Everyone knew. It was just too bad that Alex and the rest hadn’t listened.
Just talking about it was an invitation for something else evil to happen. The entire town swept the whole goddamned thing under the rug because they were scared. As though not talking about it would make things safer, take back what’d happened. Or worse yet, act as if they’d never even existed at all.
But Heather, Clint, and Danny had existed. They had lived and died, and what remained of their lives were nothing but piles of ashes.
And still, no one told Alex what’d happened to Reid. Every time he asked, they ignored him or hurriedly leave the room.
Until one night when they thought he was sleeping. He’d overheard two nurses chirping like birds outside his open door, about the cursed duo.
That night, he found out that everyone was afraid of him, and that Reid had made it out alive.
The two nurses said the police had barricaded the house’s door again. That everyone was too afraid to go near it or do anything more to it. Everyone knew better than to try, they’d said. Only bad things happened to those who spent too much time near it, and God help anyone who tried to go inside. It had been crazy enough with that one firefighter who’d raced inside the house to pull them out. And look what good that got him. The doctors had never seen third degree burns like that on a person who was never touched by fire. And the other fireman who went in with him, stark raving mad, that’s what he got out of it. A babbling idiot afterwards, talking about shadows and ghosts and fires burning in the night. Should’ve left those two boys in the house, yes, they should have, those nurses had said.
And oh, how afraid they were of Alex. The scar on his temple, the one the Shadow had marked him with, was the mark of the devil, they’d said.
Maybe it was.
And then they talked about Reid, his whole family and how they were all cursed. Mom dead from cancer. Dad an abusive alcoholic. And the kid, worst of them all. He was always a bad seed, but the state he came out of that house in…devil inside.
Alex listened, and discovered that Reid was in the hospital, down the hall.
So he waited for those old biddies to go away and dragged himself down the hall until he found Reid’s room.
Alex thought he’d be relieved. Thought maybe Reid would be okay. But as when walked into his friend’s room, the temperature plummeted, like someone had left the window open on a crisp December morning. But this was August and no window was open. So Alex watched in amazement as his breath appeared before him when he exhaled.
Once Alex got closer to the bed, he wanted to cover Reid up, shield him from the cold, but he noticed that with each step toward Reid, the temperature got colder. Alex almost turned to go find a nurse and tell them to turn the fucking heat on for him, but he thought better of it. Besides, he had a feeling that the cold was something more unnatural than a thermostat problem.
As he leaned over to get a closer look, he reached for the blankets, and that’s when he noticed Reid’s eyes were open. He was blankly staring at the ceiling. When Alex pulled the blankets up higher on his chest, Reid’s hand flew up so quick that Alex didn’t see them before he felt a grip so tight around his forearm he gasped. Like a claw, Reid’s hand locked on him, fingertips pressing into his flesh like they were made of steel.
Alex tried to calm him down and get him to let go, but Reid’s hand remained like a vice grip, eyes unblinking, still staring at the ceiling. Those eyes…looked wrong.
They’re darker, grayer. Empty.
Alex’s heart thudded. All he’d wanted to do was get to Reid, and now all he wanted was to run away. This is not my friend. This is not Reid. There’s something else inside.
The cigarette dangled from Alex’s lip while he spaced out, trapped reliving the past. Another ash dropped and missed this time, ending up in between his legs, on the car seat. Whatever. As it singed the fabric, Alex regarded it detachedly. He pulled the cigarette from his mouth and tapped it out the window to flick off the ashes. A light breeze carried them off.
Fuck this.
He knew he was being a big baby. The sooner he went in there, the sooner he could go and be done with all of it, put the past behind.
Before he could talk himself out of it, he flung the car door open and jumped out, but his feet refused to go any further, like they were stuck in cement. He closed his eyes and summoned his old friend’s voice, the one that used to bully and shame him. He needed some of that now. He could hear him saying, “Quit being such a pussy.” He could see the look in his eyes, the way his brow furrowed when he got all pushy like that. His eyebrows would tilt down into a “V”, all mean-like.
Alex kicked a foot backwards into the car door and it slammed shut. The finality of it startled him. Nowhere to go but forward.
While shuffling across the pavement, he looked up at the morning sky. Beautiful. A hot, humid summer day was already in the works.
Pink rays streaked across the sky, bleeding into red.
An old saying popped into his head.
Red sky at night, sailor’s delight.
Red sky in the morning, sailor’s warning.
He never really knew what that meant—something about a hot day. Fuck, I’m no sailor. But I do vividly remember the last time I saw a sky as dramatic as this.
Alex was still in the hospital, four days after the rescue, when the fever finally broke. He was alone in his room, looking off into the morning sky.
That day, he found Mike’s note. The note that said goodbye, that he was off to college and couldn’t wait any longer. He’d waited too long already. He was glad Alex would be okay, blah, blah, blah. But he’d left without saying goodbye face-to-face.
Four years later and Alex still hadn’t seen him. But Alex knew the truth.
Mike was afraid of him. They all were. Even though he was rescued and given a second chance, life would never be the same. People would never be the same. Alex would never be the same—alone forever.
The realization had made him so angry, so hurt that he scrambled down the hall, searching for familiarity, for someone who knew him. Someone who wasn’t afraid of him.