Page 53 of Marked By Shadows
The car screeched and lurched to a stop, but didn’t completely stop the collision. A shadow hit the car, not the other way around. Like it had been hurdled from the darkness and into my path, it slammed into the front of the vehicle, making a loud bang from the hood, then fell backward.
I sat gasping for breath, staring into the headlights. Horrified. Had I just hit something?
Alex put the car into park and jumped out while I struggled to process the last thirty seconds of my life. Light illuminated the road and the tip of something laying on the ground which didn’t look like an animal. My stomach flipped over as I realized I could see a head of hair.
I climbed out of the car slowly, filled with terror, and wanting to throw up everything I ate. Fuck, fuck, fuck. What the fuck? We were in the middle of nowhere! Not a streetlight as far as I could see, only the headlights illuminating a still form. Alex leaned over it, the body, whatever it was, so I could only partially see. I expected the front of the car or even the road to be covered in blood and gore, only there was nothing. Not even a dent in the hood.
“Call 911,” Alex told me. I didn’t move, still stuck there gaping like a fish out of water. “Micah! He’s alive. Call 911.”
Alex’s command broke through the terror for a moment. I raced back to the car and fumbled for my phone, ripping it out of the charger and carrying it back to Alex even as I dialed. I couldn’t speak anyway. Couldn’t breathe. Stupid panic attack.
Alex took the phone from me as the operator answered, and said a bunch of stuff I couldn’t make out. Something about finding someone in the road. I stared down at the crumpled form. He didn’t look like he’d been hit by a car. Instead he sort of lay there curled up in the fetal position, shivering, breathing roughly, and muttering things that didn’t make any sense. The pale light on his face outlined enough of his features for me to recognize.
Joe.
Somehow we’d found Joe. Lying in a road in the middle of nowhere. I looked around, trying to determine anything that would serve as a location marker, but didn’t know enough of the outskirts of Houston to recognize more than trees and road.
Sound vanished with a whooshing pop. Not the usual subtle shift to silence, but a full blanket of it. I stared at Alex who was still talking to the operator, but couldn’t hear any of what he said, and the man on ground. His lips moved, but was he actually speaking? Was it him or me?
Only the pounding of my own blood in my ears surrounded me, an echoing rush of my racing heartbeat. It blocked out everything else.
I raised my eyes to the woods in sudden terror as my skin began to burn. Something was there. Shadows lined the trees in the darkness. Hundreds of them, like some sort of Halloween horror movie come to life. They writhed and danced undefined, at least to my eyes, but my skin prickled with a thousand needles. I could have ripped my skin off in that second and felt less pain. Nothing could be as horrific as the feeling of being covered in fire ants, except maybe the wall of moving shadows around us.
Did Alex see them? Would they look like people to him, or light swallowing shadows, like they did to me?
Somehow I’d taken a few steps past Alex and Joe. When had that happened? I didn’t remember moving, but could feel my blood pounding. A throbbing in my chest that made my ribs hurt. Was it just me? I turned back toward Alex, hoping to reach him, touch him and chase away the terror. Only I came face to face with something…
Monstrous.
More than a shadow it towered in front of me like a wall of shifting—people? Emotions? Faces? I wasn’t sure how to describe it. Only that it looked like the monstrosity of multiple people mashed together in a soup of shadows. Dozens of eyes and mouths gaping, screaming, reaching for me.
Hadn’t Alex said he’d seen something like that? A scattering of faces and perhaps the manifestation of a shattered soul? This was far beyond anything I could have imagined from his description. More like Frankenstein’s monster, with parts cut out and sewn together haphazardly, all still moving, dozens of soundless mouths shrieking of horrors.
I screamed, noiseless to my ears, but could feel the strain in my lungs. Couldn’t help it. Instinct and instant reaction as I fell backward, stumbling far enough to tumble off the side of the road and into the shallow ditch. It moved toward me, floating, running without legs?
Whatever it was came at me, a nightmare like I’d never dreamt, twitching and following me. I scrambled backward out of the ditch, rolling to my feet and running in the opposite direction from the road.
The darkness seemed to swallow up everything around me as I fumbled my way around trees and tripped over unseen rocks or roots. I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t pull in enough air, partly because of the running, and partly absolute terror. It wasn’t fair. I didn’t see stuff. That wasn’t my curse. Feeling things and occasionally hearing things was bad enough. Seeing things like Alex did? I didn’t think my sanity would survive.
I realized in that moment, that while I said I believed him, and tried to assure him he was normal, at least for us, I’d been paying lip service. My own fear kept me from thinking too hard about what he saw, and what would happen if he wasn’t the only one who had a curse of that intensity. But it was a cop out. Alex was a much stronger man than I. He’d have turned around and faced it already, instead of becoming the rabbit like me.
I ran on, not really seeing anything, only darkness and occasionally the sturdy width of a tree smashing into my shoulder to redirect me. I didn’t see the car until I slammed into the side with a thud, bouncing backward with the force and landing painfully on my back, head cracking on the hard ground.
Stars circled my vision. I blinked upward, into a canopy of trees, a car smashed into the woods at my feet. Sound came back with the small plink of liquid falling, a drip like a broken faucet, as the pounding in my ears faded, my ragged breath reaching my ears, and then footsteps, a crunch of leaves and gravel.
I tensed, head still reeling, but instinct screaming at me to get up. I would have if my body cooperated. Instead all I could do was lie there, gasping for air, waiting for the horror to reappear and do whatever to me. Perhaps add me to the mass of terrifying faces gaping and screaming.
“Micah?” Alex appeared above me, his face a welcome sight. “Fuck, you’re bleeding.” He touched my head. There were other footsteps in the dark. Did he hear them? I tensed. “Breathe, baby. I’ve got you. Breathe.”
I struggled for air, chest aching from the effort. Heat trickled down the side of my face and lights began to appear in the dark. Alex didn’t seem alarmed, but maybe he didn’t see them? I gripped his arm, trying to form words when I still couldn’t breathe.
“I think he’s in shock,” Alex said. “His head is bleeding. Is there a medic?” He was looking up toward the lights and not talking to me. “Micah, can you hear me?”
Someone knelt beside me, light illuminating a uniform. “Might have a concussion,” someone said. Fingers touched my head. I knew they weren’t Alex’s because he was holding my chin between both hands.
I must have whimpered or something because Alex whispered comforting things. “Shh. It’s okay. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
Was I? Where was that thing?
