He crossed the field and went between two houses. Music blared from the house on his right; the house to his left was silent and dark. He burst through the wall of the right house directly into a bedroom where a woman in a full-body suit of red leather slapped a riding crop against her palm, her attention on a man in footie pajamas who said, “This is going to be so awesome.”
“Oh dear god,” Wallace croaked before backing out of the house slowly. He turned toward the street in front of the houses.
He paused when his feet met pavement. He wasn’t sure where to go, and now the skin on his legs was flaking off through his sweats and off the top of his feet. His ears were ringing, and the world had taken on a hazy glow, the colors running together. The cable flashed violently, the hook shaking.
He hurried down the sidewalk, wanting to get as far as he could. But it was as if the bottoms of his flip-flops had melted, sticking to the concrete. Each and every step was harder than the one before it, like he was moving under water. He grunted at the exertion. The ringing in his ears grew louder, and he couldn’t focus. He gritted his teeth as he tried to push through it. The fingernail from the pinkie of his right hand slid off and disintegrated.
He curled his hand into a fist as he looked up. There, standing in the middle of the street, was a man.
But he was wrong, somehow, off in ways that turned Wallace’s skin to ice. The man was hunched over, his back to Wallace, his shirtless torso covered in gray, sickly skin, his spine jutting out sharply. His shoulders shook as if he were heaving. His pants hung low on his hips. His sneakers were scuffed and dirty. His arms hung boneless at his sides.
A chill ran down Wallace’s spine even as he took another step, everything in him screaming to back away, to run before the man turned around. He didn’t want to see what the man’s face looked like, sure it would be just as terrible as the rest of him. All sound seemed muffled, as if his ears were stuffed with cotton. When he spoke, it sounded like it came from someone else, his voice cracking. “Hello? Are you … can you hear me?”
The man’s head snapped up as his arms twitched. On either wrist, angry welts rose the length of his forearms, making a T shape.
He turned around slowly.
Wallace Price was clinical to an almost inhuman degree. Details were his job, the little things others might have missed, something said in passing in a deposition or during intake interviews. And it was this attribute that caused him to catalogue each and every bit of the man before him: the dull, dead hair, the open mouth with blackened teeth, the horrifying, flat look in his eyes. The thing was shaped like a human, but he looked feral, dangerous, and if Wallace had felt fear before, it was nothing compared to what roared through him now. A mistake. He’d made a mistake. He should’ve never tried to speak to this … this thing, whatever it was. Even as his skin continued to rise around him, Wallace tried to take a step back.
His legs didn’t work.
The stars blotted out until all Wallace knew was the dark of night, shadows stretching around him, reaching, reaching.
The man moved toward him, but it was awkward, as if the joints in his knees were frozen. He rocked from side to side with each step. He raised an arm, all fingers pointed toward the ground except one that was trained on Wallace. He opened his mouth again but no words came out, only a low animalistic grunt. Wallace’s mind whited out in terror, and he knew, he knew that when the man touched him, his skin would be thin like paper, dry and catastrophic. And though he’d been told God didn’t exist, Wallace prayed then, for the first time in years, a dying gasp of a thought that arced through his head like a shooting star:!!HELP ME OH PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!!
Movement then, sudden and quick as Hugo appeared between them, his back to Wallace. Relief like Wallace had never felt before bowled through him, knocking violently through his ribcage. The cable had shrunk to only a couple of feet, extending from Wallace around to Hugo’s chest.
He said, “Cameron, no. You can’t. He’s not yours.”
A dull clacking sound followed, and though Wallace couldn’t see the man, he knew the noise came from him snapping his teeth together.
“I know,” Hugo said quietly. “But he’s not for you. He never was.”
Wallace jerked his head when Mei appeared beside him. She frowned as she stood on her tiptoes, looking over Hugo’s shoulder. “Crap.” She dropped back down on her heels before raising her hands close to her chest, left palm toward the sky. She tapped the fingers of her right hand against her left palm in a staccato beat. A little burst of light came from her hand, and she reached over, grabbing Wallace by the arm.
“Get him home,” Hugo said.
“What about you?” she asked, already pulling Wallace away. She grimaced when the skin of his wrist filtered through her grip.
“I’ll follow,” Hugo said, staring straight ahead at the man before him. “I need to make sure Cameron stays where he is.”
Mei sighed. “Don’t do anything stupid. We’ve already had enough of that for one day.”
Right before Mei pulled him around the corner, Wallace glanced back once. Cameron had tilted his head toward the sky, mouth open, white tongue stuck out as if he were trying to catch snow. Later, Wallace would realize that it wasn’t flakes of snow that fell onto Cameron’s tongue.
* * *
He didn’t speak the entire way back.
Mei did, however, muttering under her breath that of course her first assignment would be such a pain in the ass, she was being tested, but by god, she was going to see this through if it was the last thing she ever did.
Wallace’s mind whirled. He noticed with no small amount of dread-tinged awe that the closer they got back to the tea shop, the less his skin disintegrated. It became less and less until they hit the dirt road that led to Charon’s Crossing, where it ceased entirely. He looked down at his arms to see they looked as they always had, although the hairs were standing on end. The hook and cable were still attached to him, though the cable itself now led to where they’d just come from.
Mei dragged him up the porch stairs and shoved him through the door. “Stay here,” she said before slamming the door in his face. He went to the window and looked out. She stood on the porch, wringing her hands as she stared out into the dark.
“What the hell?” Wallace whispered.
“Saw one, did you?”
He whirled around. Nelson, sitting in his chair in front of the fireplace. The fire was mostly embers now, the remaining charred log glowing red and orange. Apollo lay in front of the chair on his back, his legs kicking in the air. He snorted as he fell to his side, jaws opening in a yawn before he closed his eyes.
Wallace shook his head. “I … don’t know what I saw.”
Nelson grunted as he rose from the chair, using the cane to prop himself up. Wallace didn’t know why he hadn’t noticed before, but Nelson’s slippers were little felt rabbits, the ears floppy and frayed. He glanced back out the window. Mei paced, the road in front of the tea shop dark and empty.
Nelson smacked his lips as he shuffled over to him. He looked Wallace up and down before peering out the window. “Still intact, I see. You should thank your lucky stars.”
Wallace wasn’t sure how intact he was. It was as if his mind had blown away on the wind with the other pieces of him. He couldn’t focus, and he felt cold. “What happened to me? The … man. Cameron.”