Chapter Three

When I woke up, the sun peeked over the treetops and dew speckled the windows in a way that refracted the light. Mini rainbows decorated the normally plain interior of my car, and I took a moment to admire them even though my lids were still heavy and my eyes dry with the vestiges of sleep. I was exhausted and hungry, but at least my sleeping bag had held up against the cold and luckily, aside from a few nightmares, I’d managed to sleep through the night.

I decided to try my luck at starting my car one last time before I spent more money than I had paying for a tow into town. My limbs were still tingling with the pins and needles of leftover sleep as I wiggled my way into the front seat and flipped my keys in the ignition.

When the car spluttered to life I nearly cried. All the engine lights were off, the engine purring happily as I sank with relief into my seat and felt my eyes burn with unshed tears. Maybe I’d imagined the whole thing? It wouldn’t be the worst trick my brain had ever played on me.

Last night had been bizarre to say the least. It was possible that I’d fallen asleep and the man I’d met had been nothing more than another nightmare.

I pulled onto the road, feeling rejuvenated as I headed into town towards the nearest grocery store. Thank god for GPS, or there was no way in hell I would’ve made it out of my hometown at all. I gorged myself on a cup of pineapple and a loaf of French bread after I checked the label twice for eggs, then headed to the gym just across the parking lot to find a place to shower.

I couldn’t find a potential roommate, or roommates, if I smelled like gas station burritos and stale sweat. Now that my stomach was full and my car was working, I was feeling rather optimistic about the whole thing.

Everyone stared at me. It was unsettling. Their eyes followed me wherever I went, the feeling heavy and cloying as their attention tickled the back of my neck and made my pulse throb as I fought my fight-or-flight instincts.

I tried to convince myself that they weren’t looking at me. That I was paranoid.

But the emptiness of the businesses haunted me long after I left them, the solitary sets of eyes stark in my memory as there had been so few people I passed by, and all of them had delivered the same suspicious gaze. Maybe I’d accidentally stumbled upon one of those hive-towns. Hive people? I wasn’t sure what to call them.

The towns where the people were brainwashed—their minds empty of their own opinions—violence at their fingertips.

Despite my trepidation, showering was a religious experience. Normally I did it as quickly as possible, too self-conscious to be naked too long, too frightened of the scrutiny that would come when our water bill was due. After the first time I’d been blamed for that mess I’d started timing myself. Two minutes under the spray was all I allowed when I knew there were cameras watching.

This was different though.

I was a free man now.

So I let myself bask in the hot spray and I thought about nothing and everything all at once just because I could. My tense muscles melted as days of uncertainty sloughed off me and swirled down the drain. It felt like a stain that had been on my soul was slowly separating from my body. With each step I took towards independence the stain lifted, until one day all that would be left was a discoloration so unnoticeable maybe even I would forget.

I hoped anyway.

When I was finished I slipped into an oversized hoodie with a cross-eyed Dracula on it. He had his tongue out and a cross was laid atop it, his eyes winking in a cartoony style that was both erotic and just a little sacrilegious.

Jeffrey had gotten it for me for my birthday in secret. With the allowance our aunt had given him he’d saved up for my presents, always conscious that the moment he spent the money in too big a chunk she’d ask him for proof of where it went. So he scavenged away dollars here and there and pieced together enough that she would never know what he did for me. He was sweet like that.

Part of me always thought he felt guilty for those first few years living with her as kids. I felt guilty too. It had taken me a long time to realize that throwing Jeffrey under the bus never saved me from punishment. And it had taken him even longer to realize that his failures were met with me becoming an example why failure was never an option. He was the golden boy, but not by choice. We were two children thrown into a life we never asked for, forced to figure out how to survive when every step we took only made us sink deeper into quicksand.

Despite everything, Jeffrey was a good brother.

Even when he wasn’t.

Google Maps led me down a long winding road called Spruce, which bisected the town from east to west. The name struck me as funny, considering the fact that the town was called Elmwood. Which in my head could be broken down into tree-tree. So technically, I was driving down Tree Road in the town of Tree-Tree. Which felt hilariously comical.

When I arrived, the house itself towered over the skyline. It was taller than it was wide, with the front angled down and the back shaped in a massive triangle overlooking the forest behind it. The exterior was made of what looked like dark wood. It was worn from the weather, but well maintained considering the fact the house had been abandoned for more than half my lifetime. Vines of ivy clung to the siding, as it reached ever upward, digging its greedy finger like shoots into every crevice and crack.

The rickety front porch had seen better days. It looked much less stable than the house did, the wood warped and brittle, steps lopsided and sagging slightly to the left.

Tree trunk shadows gave the house the illusion of being glossy black. It was Gothic in a way that would’ve been fantastic if I’d picked it myself but, because I was nothing but a voyeur, just looking at the pointed silhouette of the house caused an unsettling flip inside my gut.

The prospect of resting my head somewhere with a roof that wasn’t made of metal was too good to pass up, so despite my reservations and the fact that I’d felt eyes on me all day long, I exited my car.

The sun would set soon, the day swallowed up by my wanderings through town in search of bulletin boards and roommate-wanted ads. I’d come up empty, so with a heavy heart I navigated my plants from the trunk of my car and took my first unsteady step onto the battered wood of the staircase.

The steps beneath my feet creaked as I stumbled, my arms too full to see past, up to the front door. I’d have to get the keys remade. My uncle, unsurprisingly, hadn’t had a set lying around with the paperwork I’d nabbed. I tried the door only to discover that it was, also unsurprisingly, locked.

I’d have to break in.

I prepared myself for violence, though it hadn’t ended up being necessary.

After setting my leafed companions down, I wandered the edge of the property in search of entry. There was a half open window on the side of the building.  I cheered when I saw it, tripped over an overgrown tree root, and face planted in the weeds. Extra bruised but triumphant, I pushed the window further upward and slung my leg over the ledge. I was grateful there was no one around to hear my grunting as my belt buckle caught on the sill only moments before I plummeted to the hardwood floor inside the house with a quiet oof.

It was cold, but I’d prepared for this, so I wasn’t alarmed as I wound my way through the empty living room to the front door and unlocked it. I was sweaty and wheezing by the time I finished dragging everything inside. My plants lined the wall beside my sleeping bag and as I collapsed onto my makeshift nest with a painful wince, I marveled at the lack of dust underneath the window. It wasn’t like I was a dust expert, but it seemed to me for a house that had been abandoned this long there was a suspicious lack of it.

I could’ve spent the next few hours obsessively stalking Jeffrey on Facebook but I somehow managed to refrain. Instead, I searched the house for something more comfortable to sleep on. I hadn’t anticipated the hardwood floor being quite so unforgiving. I discovered an entire room in the back of the house that was stuffed full of furniture covered in white sheets. It looked like a graveyard for Ikea and I grunted, wiping away sweat and dust from my brow as I whipped off yet another sheet and realized I’d hit the jackpot. A mattress.

It took me a while, and a lot of coughing, to tug the thing into the room where I’d decided to set up camp. I could’ve grabbed one of the bedrooms I discovered, there were six of them after all, but the idea of sleeping somewhere I’d existed a lifetime ago seemed…too much for me. Besides. This was a temporary measure.

I’d spent very little time in the front room as a child, so it was the safer bet emotionally. Harder to reconnect with the ghosts of my past when they existed hidden in corners and I banished myself to open spaces.

When the mattress was finally set up I lay my sleeping bag on top of it and piled up the blankets I’d pilfered from our apartment before I’d left. I almost laughed when I realized that there was probably footage of me stealing them sitting on my aunt’s laptop just waiting for her to discover it. If she hadn’t already.

I’d changed my number before I’d run. Cut all ties I possibly could aside from the most important one. Jeffrey didn’t have my new number though, and I didn’t plan on calling him until I at least found somewhere more permanent to live. I owed him an explanation and some peace of mind, and I couldn’t give him that yet, so I stayed silent.

I stared at the artful rafters decorating the twelve foot tall ceiling above, cringing as I coughed on a wayward plume of dust that exploded from the mattress when I shifted. The lack of dust under the window looked even more suspicious now. The exposed beams that stretched along the ceiling looked like the love child of a Gothic cathedral and an old time-y cottage. It was both unholy and cute in its ugliness.

I tried to force myself to relax.

But the thing with forcing yourself to relax is that you quite literally can’t do it. So I just continued to stare blankly at the ceiling and tried not to freak the fuck out. I didn’t know what to do with all the open spaces. For someone with claustrophobia, I sure seemed to be complaining a lot. I should be grateful. I should be a lot of things.

“It’s just a house,” I reminded myself, shifting uncomfortably as that prickling sensation along my skin that had followed me all day returned. I thought back on the faces I’d seen throughout town, all suspicious, their eyes heavy—accusatory. Was it because I looked like Edward Scissorhands? Or was there just something about me that screamed look at me, judge me, hate me?

My aunt had certainly thought so.

Stop! Stop.

Fuck.

I rolled over, digging my fingers into my scalp and pulling at my hair so hard it began to sting. Stop it. That line of thought only led to madness. I’d run to get away from her influence over me, it did me no good to allow her words to corrupt me even when she was thousands of miles away.

So why couldn’t I get her out of my head?

Pathetic.

Fucking pathetic.

I shook as I reached for the back of my own neck, my face smooshed into the slick fabric of my sleeping bag as I squeezed tight with both hands. It was a soothing gesture, one that Jeffrey had used on me over and over when we were kids. If I could just—if I could just pretend—maybe I could get my skin to fit my body again.

I trembled, nails biting into my flesh until the pain grounded me in the present and I was finally able to breathe. It could’ve been minutes or hours that passed while I was in limbo but I had no way of telling. Not when my world had turned to darkness and my head to nightmares.

It was nearly three a.m. by the time I managed to get situated in my little pile of blankets. The noose of anxiety that had tightened around my neck finally loosened enough for me to relax. Though my mind had finally gotten on board, my body didn’t seem to get the picture. Every time I thought I was about ready to drop off into sleep, there would be a creak from upstairs or a rustle outside that would cause me to jump and tense inside my sleeping bag all over again.

At least tonight I was warm.

I lay in the dark, sighing inky bangs out of my face and stared blankly up at the wood beams that climbed the ceiling. Man, the architect of this place was either a creative genius or a Tim Burton-obsessed asshole. Even inspecting the house as closely as I was, I could hardly remember this place. Realistically I knew I’d lived here until I was eight. Wading through my memories felt like pushing through a wall of molasses, thick and cloying and impossible to pass through.

The numbers on my phone climbed higher and higher, three o’clock, three-thirty, three forty-five. My eyes burned, my body numb with fatigue. By the time four rolled around it seemed my body had taken over for me, the sluggish feeling in my veins making me leaden as my eyes drooped and I finally, blissfully, let the exhaustion overtake me.

I jolted awake ten minutes later when I heard a scraping sound at the window.

I’d closed it right?

Right?

I tried to soothe myself thinking maybe it was just a branch. Yes. Just a branch. Nothing more. It wasn’t like one of the creepy townies had followed me back to my house just to murder me unaware. Right?

The scraping noise happened again and I flinched, cuddled up like a black caterpillar in the dark as I tried to force myself not to look. You’re not going to see a face in the window, I told myself over and over. You’re being stupid. This isn’t a horror movie. Nobody followed you here.

Despite how many reassurances I gave myself, there was no way I could force myself to keep looking away. Not when I heard the window begin to shudder and whine as it was shoved up. It was clear now I wasn’t imagining things. My pulse beat its fists against my breastbone as the window climbed up inch by inch, until finally it settled presumably just the way I’d found it.

My head turned slowly, carefully, a dark tendril of hair slipping across my brow as I forced myself to look.

The wind whistled in my ears, slinking through the now open window with an almost howling desperation as a quiet little noise echoed from just outside. It sounded like a grunt.

I froze.

My blood turned to ice in my veins as I dragged my eyes over the window frame, peering through the foggy glass to see the exact thing I had promised myself wouldn’t be there.

A face.

I stared, my fingers slick with nervous sweat where I gripped the fabric of my sleeping bag like a lifeline. Thank fuck I hadn’t actually fallen asleep. Holy shit. Maybe there was a god.

Upon closer inspection, I realized the face was not in fact a ghost. It was, however, a boy. He was pale, his eyes large and dark, with a wounded quality that eviscerated me. He scrambled to climb through the window. He was probably close to fifteen, his face just on the side of puberty where his jawline had begun to square but he still retained the hint of baby fat along his cherub-like cheeks. His red hair was a flame in the night, his eyes nearly black as he forced the window open wide enough he could sling one knobby knee over the windowsill. In that moment he looked so much like a young Jeffrey that I was filled with a homesickness so visceral I thought I might throw up.

“What the fuck dude?” I said, unable to help myself as I jerked to a sitting position the moment his small frame hit the floor. He jumped, slamming back into the wall in alarm and holding his hand out like he could somehow air-bend me into submission. Against my better judgment I found him…adorable. Intruder and all.

“What—” he spluttered, confusion flaring across his face as his head snapped around the room in an attempt to locate me. When he finally spotted me, wrapped in my cocoon in the back corner of the room, he deflated. “Oh my god! you can’t squat here,” he pointed out, obviously alarmed.

“I’m not squatting,” I told him pointedly. “Besides. Why are you here?” I asked, attempting to get the power back in the situation even though it was hard when I looked like a shiny caterpillar and my eyes felt like they’d sunken nearly a foot into my skull. I probably looked terrifying to him. Gaunt. The bruises around my eyes giving the illusion that I was just a skeleton of a person, my black hair windswept and wild.

I looked more like a ghost than he did. Which was…depressing, but I was weirdly okay with it.

“It’s none of your business,” he huffed, obviously freaked out as he continued to hold his hands out like a little ninja ready to attack.

“Pretty sure it is my business when you’re breaking into my fucking house at four in the morning,” I pointed out. He frowned.

“This is your house?”

“Yes.” I gritted my teeth as I reached for the zipper on my sleeping bag, the noise far too loud in the quiet room.

“Prove it,” he said, obviously a stubborn little shit.

“Look. I’m not going to fucking prove to you that this is my house. It just is. Also, why do you care? Why are you here? Who are you?” Questions burst from my tongue as I glared at the little dude across from me. The smudge of dirt on his nose revealed itself to be freckles when he drew closer, his eyes wide and dark as he seemed to assess me. He was quiet for a while, too long really. Long enough I thought at first maybe I’d imagined him in a fit of exhaustion fuelled hallucinations. But then he spoke again, plopping down only a few feet away from me, a cloud of dust pluming up in his wake.

“I’m Collin,” he said softly, holding out his frankly massive hand to me. It was so at odds with his skinny body it made me want to laugh. I bet he had big feet too—like a little red-haired hobbit.

“Blair.” I accepted his handshake, treating it very seriously because he was. The tension left Collin’s shoulders immediately and he beamed at me, releasing my hand before he wiggled in place in excitement.

“I remember you!” he said eagerly, even though I was pretty sure he hadn’t even been born the last time I was in Elmwood. “Well, I mean. I remember hearing about you,” he clarified.

I nodded because that made a lot more sense, even though I thought it was wild that people still talked about my family. “So why are you here then? Breaking into my parents’ house on a school night?”

“I’m homeschooled.” His expression called me an idiot without him ever having to utter the words. Despite the fact that he was the one breaking and entering, accosting strangers with his sass at four in the morning.

“And…?” I waited.

“And what?”

“And why does the fact you’re homeschooled mean you can break into other people’s houses?”

“I didn’t break anything,” he said in a confused little huff, his brow scrunched up. “Did I?” He looked concerned.

I honestly wasn’t sure why he was asking me that, considering the fact that he was the one that would know if he’d broken shit. But, oh well. “That’s not what I meant and you know it,” I pointed out.

Collin wilted, losing his steam as he fidgeted and began picking at the hem of his shorts. “I just…sometimes I come here to think, you know? It’s never been a problem before.” He grimaced, his fluffy little head bobbing, “It’s so loud at home and no one is like me—and I just…I don’t know.” He trailed off with a frown, shrinking as I observed him. And for some reason, watching this brave little boy grow small made my heart hurt.

“Hey man, don’t let me stop you.” I grunted, arranging my sleeping bag around my waist. “I’m not gonna tell you that you can still break in since I don’t want to get sued when you like…impale yourself on a nail or something. But I don’t mind if you use the front door.”

He perked up immediately, his eyes full of light as he bounced to his knees. “Holy shit, really?” his eyes narrowed like he expected me to retract the offer. When I didn’t, I got to see the way the tension in his shoulders bled away.

“Yeah, sure, bud,” I replied. God…I was going to regret this.

We exchanged numbers and Collin left an hour or so later. By the time he was gone my head was gloriously blank. His sunny presence had scared away the shadows in my mind and I was finally able to fall asleep peacefully, for the first time in what felt like years.