Chapter 5 #2
However, he did not find many books upon the shelves that belonged to this category.
He moved to the next aisle, hopeful, and was surprised to find three: The Maxims of Altruism, A Canticle of Being, and Which Life to Critique?
He was about to continue his investigation when a breeze skittered up the shell of his ear and swirled into the shelf.
There, shoved behind the philosophy texts he’d discarded, was a decrepit, dog-eared red text entitled Crisis Inverted: An Examination of the Nonexistent.
Roy blinked, mystified. He reached forward, intrigued by the otherworldliness of the book’s title, the wind that he’d sensed moments ago fluttering around his fingers.
Then a shadow swept past the other side of the bookshelf.
He stiffened, his heart climbing inch by inch up his throat, and waited for the owner of the shadow to follow.
He stood for long moments like this, his outstretched fingers just near Crisis Inverted, tears trembling in his wide, unblinking eyes.
He felt another shift in the air, the wind passing through and over him, and then he shuffled slowly back.
After a moment, he glanced to the right, where the shadow had gone, and fear spread through his chest, coiling and twisting like black roots.
There was a monster at the end of the aisle.
It wore the shape of a human, but all its contours and edges were made of shadow.
Jagged chunks of burning scarlet light shone where its eyes should have been, like rubies excavated from the darkest trenches of Hell.
It was hovering above the redwood floorboards, its unnaturally long hands splayed at its sides.
As its gaze passed over Roy, scrutinizing him, the curve of its cheeks and the slope of its shoulders grew clear.
Somewhere in the back of his petrified, screaming mind, it occurred to Roy that this creature could be a mirage, a hallucination, as the Governor had described.
And yet, the longer he stared at the shadow, the harder it was to confirm this suspicion.
The anthropoid quality of its features was undeniable, even more terrifying for its familiarity.
Was it possible, then, that this creature was of the same breed as those that had compelled the Radiant Droves to take their own lives? Or were they one and the same?
And does that mean there’s a third fate awaiting me? Roy wondered, recalling his earlier rumination about how these apparent hallucinations and supernatural sightings would inevitably conclude. Is that to be my end, too? Suicide?
For one paralyzing moment, he forgot why he was where he was, in this artifact of the old world, why he had left Dawnseve Manor at all.
He could not move, nor could he shift his gaze from the shadow’s.
His skin was clammy, his hands slathered in sweat.
It tilted its head toward him, but the implication was lost on Roy.
All he could see were those piercing scarlet eyes, ogling him.
An unearthly interrogation. The shadow glided forward, a single daring movement, and then Roy turned and ran down through the bookshelves.
He stumbled forward, disoriented, his hair tumbling across his face and the laces of his right boot coming undone.
Then the boot itself slid off his foot. The ground came up to meet him, and by instinct his body braced for impact, but as his sock-clad foot hit the floorboards, relief punched through his chest. He resumed his sprint, racing around the corner.
His breathing ragged and dry, Roy lurched forward step by aching step, his enervation and disorientation turning his vision into a blur of parchment pages and foggy moonlight.
But he ran on, his foot striking the floor and producing intervals of resonant thwacks through the library.
He gasped, sweat plastering his tailcoat to his flushed, feverish skin, and miraculously found the courage to glance over his shoulder.
Somehow the shadow had almost caught up to him, and its dark, transparent hand reached out toward him in a hooked claw.
Its eyes blazed in the night like cavernous wells of magma, throwing hectic red shadows across the books.
He was not sure how he hadn’t heard it before, but Roy could now distinctly make out a low, ululating cry.
He dashed around another corner and into the next shelf passageway.
He was nearing the last dregs of his energy, though, and he realized only then he had nothing with which to defend himself—nor, if he was being honest, the ability.
Another quick look over his shoulder revealed the shadow—the ghost?
—to be unarmed, but that did nothing to quell his anxiety.
Maybe he could confuse it, make it lose its way.
But he was becoming quickly delirious himself, and the pressure and tiredness that had been piled upon him were doing little to help matters.
A feral, shrill scream exploded through the library, echoing about the bookshelves and rattling the glass cabinets Roy had observed earlier.
He started, then staggered back, trying to find his balance, before the wind whipped past him and released a hysterical shriek.
He shot out a hand and clutched the shelf nearest him but was interrupted by another blast of wind, which pummeled him in the gut.
He keeled over, breathless, let out a wheezing gasp, and then fell to his knees, holding the shelf all the while.
But he could not keep up his weight a moment longer.
Roy crumpled to the ground, burying his hands in his hair.
He squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth, a bolt of hot pain shooting through his muscles.
He uttered a raw, broken scream, but it sounded so quiet beneath the bellowing wind.
Pressure built behind his eyes, and tears leaked out, streaking down his face.
Ahead of him, the breeze quieted, as if a door had been shut in the face of a storm.
He looked up, hesitant. The shadow was still staring at him, but it only stood there now, its finger pointed at him in silent accusation.
He grimaced, waiting for its killing blow, for some black, infectious mist to spiral out of its finger, seep into his chest and quiet the pounding drum that was his heart, but the shadow performed no such move.
Instead, it swung its finger back and forth, swaying from Roy to the shelves, the shelves to Roy.
A pendulum determining his fate. He was so absorbed by the cryptic gesture that he didn’t even notice the shadow advancing toward him until it was bearing down upon him, its blank, murky face a hairbreadth from his own.
Panic overtook his body. His hands shook; his skin tingled; his vision fragmented and blurred like he was looking through a smudged kaleidoscope.
He thrashed on the floor and flung out a weak fist at the shadow, but it flew through the creature with frightening ease.
As skin and shadow connected, a sound materialized in his head, pitching higher and higher until it clarified into a crazed cacophony.
He heard distorted screams and guttural howls, akin to those of a wolf, and earth-rumbling roars rebounding as though from the bottom of a deep, deep well.
And for a split second, flashing before his eyes like a flare of light, Gabriel was looming over him, rising up from Roy’s memories, his deranged grin stretching wider and wider across his lips, pulling at the skin of his mouth, ripping it—
Roy shrieked, his eyes rolling in his skull. He scratched the sides of his head, trying to burrow into his temples, tear flesh from bone and rip the voices out of his mind. “Stop!” he screamed. “Please, Gabriel, not tonight! Stop! Please, just stop—”
Then a hand closed around his arm and hauled Roy to his feet.
“Look at me. Look at me, damn you! Are you hurt? Are you all right?”
Roy froze, his hair strewn in knots across his face, and laid his hands upon the chest of the shadow. But it wasn’t the shadow, he saw as he opened his eyes.
It was a blond, hazel-eyed, and strikingly beautiful man.
“I’m . . .” Roy whispered. “I’m fine.”
The man released Roy, glowering. “Wonderful. Then give me one decent reason why I climbed three staircases to find you screaming and sprawled on the ground.”