Now Peter looked concerned.
“And he said something about how I had to be careful because I didn’t want to ‘go missing’ again,” she said, doing her best to remember exactly what happened.
Deep frown lines creased Peter’s forehead. “Maybe he just recognized you from the news?” he offered. “It’s a small town, maybe he just remembered you going missing…” It was like he was trying to convince himself.
Wendy shook her head. “No, like you said, it’s a small town, and I had never seen him before,” she explained. “Not only that, but there was something really weird about him. He was creepy. He felt…” She paused, trying to think of a way to describe him. “Dangerous. I couldn’t see what he looked like, either,” Wendy continued. “It was dark, sure, but it was more than that. He was standing right in front of me, but I couldn’t make out his face. It was like I couldn’t focus on a feature because they kept … moving around, like I was looking at him through water, you know? But dark.”
He shook his head, not understanding her train of thought.
Wendy swallowed. Her mouth felt dry. “It was like he was made of shadows.”
Peter stopped walking. “Shadows?” he repeated, suddenly very alert. Wendy nodded and Peter stared off into the woods, deep in thought.
“Yeah.” Wendy shifted her weight between her feet. She didn’t like that look on his face. She wanted to keep walking. She was scared to hear the answer to the question she needed to ask. “Peter, your shadow can’t…” How could she put it into words? “It can’t … take a human form, can it?”
Peter shook his head. He looked dazed. “That’s never happened before,” he said. “It’s never even become a solid being before.”
Wendy felt hopeless. “Why is this happening, Peter?”
He looked like he was holding himself back from saying something as he sucked on his bottom lip. But then he just sighed and shrugged. “I have no idea.” That was not what she wanted to hear.
“Well, when I heard Alex’s voice, he—it—disappeared, or maybe he was still there? I don’t remember. I just took off running into the woods,” Wendy continued. “Then another thing happened after you left and I went to bed…”
Peter groaned. “Another thing?” he asked dejectedly.
“I … think it was in my dream last night,” she began, glancing up at him apprehensively. Peter looked at her intently, waiting for her to go on, so she did. “When I fell asleep, I dreamed that I was in the woods,” Wendy told him. “There was snow, so it must have been winter, and it was starting to get dark. I was standing in front of this huge tree—”
“A tree?” Peter asked abruptly. His shoulders went rigid, his blue eyes intense.
She nodded. For some reason, his reaction unsettled her. “Yeah, it didn’t look like any of the other trees in the woods,” she explained. She could almost smell the dead leaves from her dream. “It was huge and its branches bent at weird angles. They were completely bare and it almost looked like it was dead. It had a huge tangle of roots.”
Peter was standing so still, Wendy wondered if he was even breathing.
“And I could hear something coming from the tree. Like the voices in the woods last night, did you hear them?” Wendy asked.
Peter only responded with a short nod.
“Before I could get closer to the tree, the shadow appeared, but this time I could see him.”
“What did he look like?” Peter asked, but his voice was laced with dread, like he already knew the answer.
“Like … well, like you,” she said, shifting uncomfortably. “But not you. His hair was dark, his skin was pale, and his eyes were like looking into a pitch-black room,” Wendy tried to explain. She searched the cloudless sky for the right words. “He was a twisted version of you that only a nightmare could conjure up, but it wasn’t just a bad dream.”
“What do you mean?” Peter asked cautiously.
“I mean, I don’t think it was a dream at all.” Wendy swallowed and wet her lips. “I think I got a memory back, from when I was in the woods.”
All the color drained from Peter’s face.
“And when I woke up, I had drawn the tree everywhere in my sleep—on my blankets, all over my legs, my hands.” Wendy gestured at herself. She held up her hands for him to see. They were less red, but still dry and irritated from all the scrubbing.