Evan awoke sometime in the night, his eyes coming open like shutters thrown wide. He’d been dreaming of something—darkness so black it was solid. He’d tried to walk through it and felt things touching him, quick, intimate caresses that chilled and made him sick with fear. That’s when he’d realized the darkness was alive and nothing but its cold embrace, like a long-dead lover, was there.
He blinked and rolled over, suddenly afraid that Selena would be gone, but she wasn’t. She lay on her back beside him, breathing softly. He moved closer to her form, feeling her warmth again, and reached out, searching for her hand in the darkness. He found it resting on her stomach and slid his palm into hers, remembering how he would do the same thing with Elle on nights when sleep eluded him. The comfort of holding her hand, even while she slept, helped send him back into a serene rest. Selena clasped his hand tighter, and he scooted closer to her, the smell of her perfume not as vivid as before but still there, somehow even more enticing as it mellowed. Another scent met his nostrils, and Evan opened his eyes, sleep leaving him fully.
Decay.
There was no mistaking the stink. It was the same as the smell from the closet, as heavy and cloying as an open grave. He raised his head a few inches off his pillow and looked at Selena’s profile, her lips parted, her eyelashes long against the top of her cheeks. Evan sat up a little more, and Selena shifted, her elbow bumping his shoulder.
His eyes traveled up and saw that both her arms were above her head, hands splayed out on her pillow.
The hand he held squeezed once. Evan tried to rip his arm back, but the fingers gripped him tighter as he opened his mouth to cry out. His eyes shot to the hand holding his, the rotting flesh almost black in the dim starlight that shone through the window, the arm attached to it snaking into the darkness beside the bed.
“Uhh!” he grunted, and managed to break his hand free.
The other hand slid away, and a quiet scuffling sound came from the other side of the bed. A shape rose and stood over them, hunched and broken, its face turned toward him, its outline reminiscent of something ancient, curled in on itself by time. The figure limped across the room, not thin and ephemeral but solid and real. With a turn of its stunted head, it went through the open door toward Shaun’s room.
“No! No!”
Evan sprang from the bed, his yells and the commotion waking Selena.
“What?”
He flicked on the light, drawing back a fist, ready to throw it.
The hall was empty.
Shaun’s door was in the same position as earlier, or so it looked. Evan rushed into the room, his fist still held high. The light flooded the space enough for Evan to see it was empty except for the boy and his bed. He slept on, not moving but for the rise and fall of his chest.
“Evan, what’s going on?”
He turned. Selena was standing in the hallway, her hair sticking out in several places, her eyes bleary.
“I, I thought I saw something, someone.”
“You saw someone? In the house?”
“Yeah, it was there in the room. It held my hand.” The memory of the thing’s grip made him convulse, and he rubbed his palm on his pants leg.
“Held your hand? Evan, you’re not making sense.”
“It was there, right there,” he said, moving past her and into the hall. He pointed toward the bed, looking at the floor, hoping for a telltale sign of the thing’s passage. “I went to hold your hand, and it wasn’t yours. It was something else. It ...”
His dropped his head as Selena came closer.
“I think you may have been dreaming,” she said, touching his shoulder.
“I wasn’t dreaming, I was awake. I know I was awake.”
“Are you sure? I’ve had a few clients with night terrors that they swear are as real as waking life.”
“This wasn’t a night terror,” Evan said, shrugging off her hand.
He moved into the hallway again and stood, sniffing the air. A faint hint of rot lingered.
“Do you smell that?”
“Smell what?”
“That smell. It’s like something rotten, spoiled meat. Here, come here.”
He motioned her into the hall, then pulled her closer to the living room. “Do you smell it?”
Selena raised her face and inhaled a few times. She frowned.
“No, I don’t. All I smell is last night’s dinner.”
Evan closed his eyes, opened them, and walked to the living room. He looked at the dark lake, no light on its surface yet, only a black cloth beyond the trees.
“Let me ask you this,” Selena said, moving to the couch. “Was I the first one you told about your wife, what she asked you to do?”
Evan didn’t answer for a long time, and then finally said, “Yes.”
“Do you know what kind of stress comes with a burden like that? Keeping it all inside, letting it whittle away at you?”
He didn’t say anything, just let her talk.
“Releasing something like that can cause stress too, you know. It’s like pulling out a knife that’s been keeping a wound from bleeding. When you do, there’s trauma.”
“You know, I’d like to believe that, I really would.” His voice sounded strange, far away, not his own. “I want to think stress, the past, is what’s doing this, but I’m not sure, and that’s the worst part. Not being sure is worse than anything else. You’re on a high wire knowing you’re going to fall, but not which way.”
“I’m sure it’s stress.”
“Well, that makes one of us.”
“What you’re experiencing is perfectly normal.”
He coughed laughter. “Nothing in the last four years has been normal.”
The faint inklings of the treetops across the water became visible. The sun was rising, throwing its radiance out like a candle in another room.