《The Long Night》


 1.1

    She was an anonymous part of the crowd that night, jammed into a small concert venue, emergency exit wide open to ensure no one choked. Her name was May Schroder, but tonight that didn¡¯t matter. Tonight the music buried itself in her brain and her limbs, and small as she was she headbanged as violently as the men on stage. She didn¡¯t have to think. She didn¡¯t have to care about anything. There was only the repetitive rhythm of the music ¨C loud, throat-tearing black metal, music that only meant pain and yet soothed everything. She moved her body in synchrony with the crowd, seeming not to notice her exhaustion.


    All she saw was the light show on the back of her eyelids, all she felt the rush of the music. The rhythm forced her body to move, same as everyone around her. They banged their heads and torsos, ever deeper, responding seamlessly to every change in rhythm or riff. The air sparked with the electric energy of the sky before a thunderstorm, and May let it burn her. Even the band was as good as anonymous, just another small town group of men that¡¯d never make it off the island. It didn¡¯t matter; they held an understanding that nothing mattered except the music. It meant May hardly looked at the vocalist before he collapsed and the music halted.


    Soft whispers erupted around her almost immediately. The vocalist ¨C not old, not young, hip-length tangled hair, torn stage clothes - laid on stage, sideways, breathing hard with old wounds on his upper arms. His eyes stared into nothing, but his panting slowed down and the bassist came to help him up. Exhaustion, May thought ¨C an act, the crowd around her whispered.


    There was a stillness in the air that had not been there moments before. It was composed of silence, and countless microscopic beads of sweat, and the electricity which still clung to the atmosphere. May was breathing hard, her heartbeat echoing in her throat. She felt her neck ache, in a reminder of the rhythm that had kept her safe seconds earlier. She tied her hair back, in an effort to keep the sweat out of her face, and considered getting a beer. Yet post-concert, the line was longer than ever ¨C and it got expensive, this far up north.


    She looked around. She hadn¡¯t been on Threoo long enough to make close friends, and on an island this isolated, friendships were established young. Although people at the venue, Dyst, had always been welcoming, she didn¡¯t really feel like joining into a conversation full of inside jokes she didn¡¯t understand. May went for the fire escape instead. Air would be almost as good as a drink, and a scarce necessity on concert nights. She¡¯d gathered so much warmth inside of her that she didn¡¯t shiver when she set foot in the alley behind Dyst. The air, almost as cold as snow on the edge of melting, was a stark reminder that winter would not be kind this year. Worldly problems like climate change didn¡¯t seem to affect the archipelago.


    May froze. She wasn¡¯t alone back here. The vocalist ¨C now very much a human being instead of a nameless performer ¨C sat on the drenched cobbles, smiling at her. He was smoking, the lit end of his cigarette reflecting in his gray eyes. The green light of the EXIT sign made his scars glow green.


    ¡®Hey,¡¯ he said, holding out a mistreated packet of cigarettes. ¡®Want one?¡¯


    May shook her head. ¡®I don¡¯t smoke.¡¯ She nearly told him that¡¯s bad for you. The man put the package back into his pocket.


    ¡®Suit yourself,¡¯ he said, and May figured he very well knew what she¡¯d been going to say. She sat down, against the wall, and immediately regretted it. The moisture in the damp bricks easily crept through her t-shirt. May shivered. The man hungrily inhaled the smoke, and tilted his head backwards to blow it back out. The cold didn¡¯t seem to bother him; there were no goose bumps on his skin. Just old scars. May tried to stare at the street light in the distance instead, but couldn¡¯t stop herself observing the man from the corner of her eyes. He looked tired, hair tangled and knotted around his face. He was smoking as though it¡¯d save his life.


    ¡®There¡¯s supposed to be a full moon tonight,¡¯ he said, suddenly. May held her breath for a moment.


    ¡®Is there?¡¯


    ¡®Yeah. Haven¡¯t been able to see it, though.¡¯ He motioned up. May looked. Thick clouds coated the sky, allowing no light through. May looked at the streetlight again. It stood quietly at the end of the alley, light distorted and moving with fog passing by.


    ¡®You haven¡¯t been around here long, have you?¡¯ the man asked. The girl shook her head.


    ¡®No. I¡¯m from Havn.¡¯


    ¡®Havn?¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯s a small island further south. We have sheep. And bare rocks.¡¯


    ¡®Like the rest of Threoo,¡¯ the vocalist laughed, breaking into a cough.


    May tried not raise her eyebrows at the cigarette the man was still holding.


    ¡®Like the rest of Threoo,¡¯ she agreed. ¡®Except smaller, with even less to do.¡¯


    ¡®Well, welcome to the cultural peak that is Dyst,¡¯ he said, only half joking. ¡®What¡¯s your name?¡¯


    ¡®May,¡¯ she said, distracted by the way the fog was making the light dance. No, not the light, she saw now ¨C the shadows. ¡®Yours?¡¯


    ¡®Thorn,¡¯ he said. An uncomfortable silence fell over them. May realised she should try and ask him something. Hell, he¡¯d made an effort for small talk. Ask about his real name, she thought, or where he¡¯s from or why he collapsed on stage.


    ¡®Are you okay?¡¯ she said instead.


    The man tilted his head back again, blowing out a soft stream of cigarette smoke.


    ¡®I guess so,¡¯ he said slowly. ¡®I¡¯m sorry for the melodrama. It¡¯s been a weird night.¡¯


    ¡®That¡¯s alright,¡¯ May said.


    She clutched her knees to her chest, and shivered. The cold of early September was getting to her. Maybe she should go back inside. She watched the vocalist. He wasn¡¯t looking at her, staring away into the distance instead. She could see the blue bruises forming on his knees, through the holes in his jeans. Had he fallen that hard? She¡¯d been right, then. It hadn¡¯t been an act.


    ¡®Look,¡¯ he said, suddenly. ¡®The moon.¡¯


    She looked up, and as promised, the moon shone through a hole in the clouds. It was full and white, lighting up the ring of clouds around it, giving it a hint of holiness. May looked back at the vocalist. He was looking at the back of his hand, moving his tendons to toy with the shadows running across them.


    ¡®Why¡¯d you fall, just then?¡¯ she said.


    ¡®Exhaustion, I suppose. Song took too much breath, I misjudged, it happens.¡¯


    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.May shrugged. ¡®They¡¯re saying it¡¯s an act.¡¯


    ¡®Who is?¡¯


    ¡®Most of the audience.¡¯


    ¡®That¡¯s alright,¡¯ he said, taking a last drag of his cigarette, before getting up and stomping it out beneath his boots. ¡®I should go find my bandmates.¡¯


    With that, he went back inside, leaving May with an unease in the back of her throat that tasted ever so slightly of iron. She didn¡¯t look back at the dance of the fog¡¯s dance beneath the streetlight. She got up, cursed the wetness that¡¯d seeped through her clothes, and shivered. She didn¡¯t consider staying for the last band, not anymore. She was tired, her muscles already sore enough. She wasn¡¯t big into thrash metal anyway. Some extra sleep would do her good, too. She went to pick up her coat from the big pile beside the stage, then walked through the bar towards the exit.


    ¡®Leaving already, May?¡¯ Oskar, the bartender, asked between orders. She¡¯d gotten to know him well enough during his near-empty day hours, when she¡¯d leave the house to find somewhere quiet to focus on her books.


    ¡®Yeah,¡¯ she shrugged. ¡®I¡¯m tired, and honestly the other band isn¡¯t really my genre.¡¯


    ¡®Not extreme enough for you?¡¯ From anyone else it would¡¯ve nearly been an insult, but May knew Oskar had the exact same preferences.


    ¡®Not tonight, Oskar,¡¯ she said, zipping up her coat.


    As she walked towards the door, she spotted Thorn sitting at a corner table, together with his light-haired bassist and a group of tourists. None of them seemed put off by his scars or tendency to collapse at a moment¡¯s notice. One of the tourists, a twenty-something girl in an oversized shirt with a burning church on the front, threw her head back and laughed hard enough for May to hear in the chaos of Dyst. She pulled the door open and stomped into the fog, combat boots connecting with the brick road, coat zipped up to her throat. The quiet outside felt like sacrilege after the concert, and the ringing in May¡¯s ears guided her home.


    When she woke up, it was still dark outside. May¡¯s curtains were wide open and yet her room was as dark as if they had been shut. Outside, there was only the forest. Come winter, May knew it would be full of snow, reflecting every speck of light and coating even the darkest night with a hint of twilight. This time of year, there was just darkness. Just shadows, darker yet than the night sky, and May flicked on the light to banish them. She was as awake as if she¡¯d been dunked into a bath of ice water, but she had no clue as to why. Her alarm clock read 5:57 in bright red letters. It hadn¡¯t gone off ¨C it was Saturday, after all. All was quiet. Had she heard something, some sudden noise? Had she had a nightmare she could not recall? She got up, hesitant to give up the warmth of her bed. Then she grabbed yesterday¡¯s hoodie of the floor, slipped it over her body, and headed for the bathroom. May blinked, her eyes undeniably still tired. How much sleep had she had ¨C five hours? Four? Not enough, that was for sure. She opened her bedroom door.


    The door to the bathroom was closed, but light came from the slit between the door and the tiles. She frowned. From inside came the undeniable, clear sound of someone sobbing. Asrun, maybe? May remembered being fourteen, and she¡¯d had plenty of reasons to sneak away to cry. Just usually not at six in the morning. She knocked on the bathroom door, opening it slightly, blinking against the white light.


    ¡®Asrun?¡¯ she asked, but as the word left her mouth, she realized it wasn¡¯t the younger girl. Huddled on the floor against the radiator sat Erika ¨C her foster mother. Asrun¡¯s mother. She didn¡¯t know what to say. Erika stared up at her, wide-eyed, dark circles beneath them. May could tell she¡¯d been in here for a while. She knelt down.


    ¡®Are you alright?¡¯ she whispered. Erika shook her head. She looked so much younger than she was, wearing a white nightgown, like a child from some long-gone era.


    ¡®I¡¯m fine, May,¡¯ she said. ¡®I¡¯m fine. I- I just had a nightmare, is all.¡¯


    ¡®Are you sure?¡¯ May answered. She felt stupid, and young, unable to comfort the other woman. The hellish white light of the LEDs in the ceiling made her eyes hurt.


    ¡®I¡¯m sure,¡¯ Erika said, getting up. May wasn¡¯t sure if she believed the woman, but she also didn¡¯t know what she should be doing. She was still too much of a child to help a woman twenty five years her senior. She got up too.


    ¡®Go take a shower,¡¯ she said. ¡®I¡¯ll make breakfast?¡¯


    ¡®That would be good,¡¯ Erika said. ¡®Thank you, May.¡¯


    She felt dismissed, in a way, and she went back to her room to put some more clothes on. She tied her hair back, not bothering to brush it, and went downstairs. It wasn¡¯t right. It wasn¡¯t the natural order of things, the way Erika was breaking down. She¡¯d hardly kept it a secret, the dark that was eating at her, but something childish in May wished she had. She opened the fridge, heated oil in a frying pan until it was hot enough to make the eggs sizzle. She spooned coffee into a filter. Upstairs, the shower was still running. There was an unfamiliar tingling in her blood, an itch that couldn¡¯t be scratched, ants marching about her bones. Was that what¡¯d woken her up? It was so subtle, but it made her fingers twitchy and her thoughts restless.


    ¡®May? Why¡¯re you up so early?¡¯ Asrun said, yawning. May jumped - she hadn¡¯t heard the girl enter the kitchen.


    ¡®Why are you up so early?¡¯ May said. ¡®Want some eggs?¡¯


    ¡®If they¡¯ll be done soon,¡¯ the girl answered. ¡®I have work.¡¯


    There was an unmistakable sense of pride in those last words. May smiled.


    ¡®Yeah? Worth getting up this early on a saturday?¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m not so sure,¡¯ Asrun admitted, staring longingly at the dripping coffee. ¡®But work ethic and all.¡¯


    May laughed. ¡®There¡¯ll be plenty of time for you to have a work ethic.¡¯


    Asrun shrugged, and May slipped some eggs onto a plate.


    ¡®Do you drink coffee yet?¡¯ she asked, grabbing mugs.


    ¡®Of course! I¡¯m fourteen, not eleven,¡¯ she said.


    ¡®I bet your mom doesn¡¯t want you to,¡¯ May said, but she took an extra mug from the cupboard.


    ¡®Mom doesn¡¯t have to know. She¡¯s in the shower. She way past knowing everything about me.¡¯


    ¡®I bet.¡¯


    The girls sipped their coffee in silence, May staring out the window, watching the forest slowly awaken. Through the trees, she could see a blood-coloured sky, the morning tearing itself loose from the night. The itch she¡¯d called subtle moments earlier had become a pull at her gut.


    ¡®You know, I started smoking,¡¯ Asr¨´n whispered, excited. ¡®Don¡¯t tell mum. Anyway, I¡¯ve got to go!¡¯


    May was glad the younger girl was out the door before she had a chance to reply. She was pretty sure she couldn¡¯t have been the co-conspirator the girl had hoped for. When she was Asrun¡¯s age, she¡¯d had a boyfriend that¡¯d always stank of cigarettes, and still couldn¡¯t stand the scent. She wondered if the younger girl had taken the job only to support habits that her parents couldn¡¯t know of.


    Erika¡¯s eggs had begun browning on the edges. May took them out of the pan. She scratched at her arms, hard enough to leave angry red marks, but it didn¡¯t even take the edge off that itch.

 1.2

    Thorn knew it was legally morning, maybe, but his head didn¡¯t tend to agree. It was dark outside, still, with glimmers of stars showing through his attic apartment windows. Everything in him screamed he should be going back to sleep, but the phone buzzing angrily on his nightstand disagreed. He tried, twice, to turn off his alarm clock until he realized it was in fact his phone making the ungodly noise. By the time he¡¯d figured that out, whoever had been calling him had given up. Shielding his eyes from the bright light, he checked who¡¯d called. Abigail Larsdottir, the screen declared, and Thorn sighed. She was quite likely the only person he¡¯d accept calling at this time of the night. He called her back.


    ¡®Abigail, it is three minutes to six,¡¯ he said when she picked up. ¡®I¡¯ve been asleep for maybe three hours and if this can wait-¡¯


    ¡®Thorn, do you think I actively enjoy being awake at this time of the day? Some of us have work to do. Some of us include you.¡¯


    ¡®What happened?¡¯ Thorn grumbled, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. He sat up, searching the floor for yesterday¡¯s jeans. Stage pants would have to do.


    ¡®Collision on the road between Slakshaven and Isgur. We need photos.¡¯


    ¡®Is it bad?¡¯


    ¡®A car hit a sheep truck in the side, at a crossroads. We need pictures taken now so that we can start cleaning.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m getting dressed,¡¯ Thorn said, trying to hold his phone to his ear while slipping a semi-clean shirt over his hair. He growled when he accidentally yanked on a knot in his hair. Abigail hung up without warning. Thorn took one look in the mirror, decided the pain of untangling his hair post-concert would have to wait, tied it back instead and grabbed his jacket. He stuck his feet into his boots without bothering with socks, laced them up, and took his camera.


    Outside, the dark didn¡¯t even vaguely hint at morning yet. Thorn felt a sudden longing for the depth of winter, when the sun would not come out at all, only as a hint of twilight on the horizon. When there was no right time to be awake, and the land made it clear humans were not supposed to be here. This land was meant for bigger things, things that thrived in the darkness. As Thorn walked, he lit the day¡¯s first cigarette, inhaling pure warmth into his lungs. These days it took a lot for him to get anywhere near warm. The cigarettes helped. They weren¡¯t the kind you bought in store, overtaxed and building up tar in your lungs.


    It wasn¡¯t far from his apartment to the outskirts of the city, and from there it was a fifteen minute walk to the spot Abigail had described. A tinge of red began to appear on the horizon, the first signal of the coming day. Again, Thorn longed for the comfort of his bed. But even he needed to make money to eat. To retain a semblance of normalcy.


    The fog was still floating above the fields, ascending from the forest in the distance. He toyed with his shadow as he walked, morphing it, turning it into all sorts of grotesque monsters. The shadows were undeniably excited as he got nearer to the scene of the accident, and that made the vocalist uncomfortable. Yesterday night he¡¯d sensed a similar restlessness in them, and everything that interested the shadows was bad news. As the winds began carrying the screeching of metal on metal and the wailing of sheep towards him, he understood. It sickened him, but did not surprise him when all he felt was curiosity. Abigail came walking towards him, purple curls bouncing behind her and skin remaining a warm brown ever in the icy fog, and he let his shadow slip back to normal.


    ¡®How bad is it?¡¯ Thorn asked, taking his camera out of its bag with icy fingers, fumbling with the clips.


    ¡®The humans, not so bad. The truck driver is fine, the car¡¯s driver- well, she was lucky.¡¯


    ¡®The sheep?¡¯


    ¡®We can¡¯t tell ¨C the impact bent the side of the truck inwards, into, well, the animals, and it morphed the truck bad enough that we can¡¯t get the doors open. That screaming you hear is my commanding officer attempting to saw through the metal.¡¯


    Thorn set the light values of his camera, made a few test images, and began walking towards the accident.


    ¡®Other than this, calm Friday night?¡¯ he asked.


    ¡®I can¡¯t disclose official police matters to civilians,¡¯ Abigail said. ¡®You know that.¡¯


    ¡®Gods, Abigail, I¡¯m not asking for details, I¡¯m just asking if you got some sleep.¡¯


    ¡®I know,¡¯ she sighed. ¡®Well, I didn¡¯t, excuse the bitchiness.¡¯


    Thorn didn¡¯t say anything. He began taking photos.


    Abigail hadn¡¯t exaggerated when she¡¯d said the truck had been crushed into the sheep. Blood was steadily dripping out, onto the cracking asphalt, seeping away into the earth. The screaming was that of animals ¨C living, feeling beings ¨C confronted with the reality of death. Thorn figured they¡¯d been bound for slaughter this morning anyway, but this was somehow worse. He swallowed. Most of the coiled emotions in his stomach were related to morbid curiosity. The nausea, the empathy were someone else¡¯s feelings, he told himself. He pushed them deeper away.


    He caught the carnage with his camera. It didn¡¯t take him very long. Like most pain, its physical reality was small and contained, the implications stretching way further. Thorn photographed the way the car was dented and damaged, the blood pooling on the asphalt, the police force sawing open the truck. By the time a vet arrived, Thorn was done. He didn¡¯t stick around to see what would be pulled out of the truck. Curiosity be damned, he remembered he¡¯d been real, once, and he¡¯d at least try to pretend to have some morality.


    ¡®I¡¯m done,¡¯ he told Abigail. She¡¯s covered her nose with her scarf, against the scent of fear on the air. Thorn only now realised it was there. ¡®Do you need me for anything else?¡¯


    Abigail shook her head. ¡®Go home. How¡¯ve you been?¡¯


    ¡®Not better or worse,¡¯ he said. It was their standard exchange. ¡®You?¡¯


    ¡®Fine,¡¯ she said, staring away from the truck. ¡®I know I grew up with you around, Thorn, but it still feels off the way you treat these things.¡¯


    Thorn swallowed. ¡®It feels off for me, too. It¡¯s not the way I was born.¡¯


    ¡®I know,¡¯ Abigail said. ¡®I know. Go home, Thorn. Get some rest. You look tired.¡¯


    While he¡¯d been working, the sky had slowly become brighter, and by the time he got back home the sun was up and ready for the day. Thorn¡¯s desire for sleep had left him sometime between the sheep truck and his front door. As he stared at his unmade bed, he realised he wasn¡¯t going back to sleep for a while. He sighed, and made himself a cup of coffee. Sipping, he stared out the window, over Slakshaven. The sun reflected specks of pure white on the bay. He knew that in midst of winter he would long for the light, but now it only made his eyes hurt. He turned away. Thorn turned his computer on, stuck his camera¡¯s memory card into it and began flicking through the photos. In some he¡¯d photographed Abigail in the background, scarf over her mouth and nose. He could see it¡¯d been cold in the way she hugged her jacket to her. The seasons were harsh, this far north. It wouldn¡¯t be long before the cold would creep through his windows, under the gap in the door, and he¡¯d pile all the blankets he owned onto his bed. Thorn also knew it wouldn¡¯t help. He hadn¡¯t been warm in a very long time. He looked up at the clock ¨C it was ten in the morning. He considered texting Skygge, but he knew the bassist would still be asleep after yesterday¡¯s gig. Instead he uploaded all of his photos to the police network, wiped his memory card, and stuck it back into his camera. He leaned back, turning circles on his desk chair. There was nothing else to do. The day stretched out ahead of him, empty.Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.


    The grime a concert could build up on Thorn was a special kind of grime. It was sweat, stale beer, and whatever had been stuck to the stage he¡¯d collapsed onto. He hadn¡¯t yet untangled the knots headbanging had braided into his hair, and as he walked into the bathroom to begin the untangling, he cursed. He¡¯d be there for a while. He briefly wondered if Abigail had wrapped her scarf around her nose to shield herself from his stench rather than the sheeps¡¯.


    As he worked at the knots, settled even deeper into his waist length hair by sleeping before taking care of them, he stared at himself in the mirror. He took his shirt off. The scars disgusted him, the thick white coils of old cuts he¡¯d amassed over the years. Some his victims had made. Others he¡¯d carved himself. Sure, he felt he deserved them, and in the moment they¡¯d take the edge of his itches or finally allowed him to feel something, but he still wished he didn¡¯t have them. He groaned as he pulled at a particularly stubborn knot. Bits of hair got loose, fell down towards the floor rather than untangling. Before they hit the tiles, though, they disintegrated into flecks of shadow and then nothing. The first years, it would unnerve him to no end, the way bits of him disappeared if they got away from him. It was just another reminder he was no longer real. Now, with a bit of creativity one could argue the man was used to it. He turned on the shower and undressed, the heat of the water beating at his skin. It turned him red, sure, but it wasn¡¯t enough to warm him up. He worked half a tube of conditioner into his hair, and then his cellphone rang.


    ¡®Oh c¡¯mon,¡¯ he muttered. He figured he could shower first, and then call back, but whoever it was didn¡¯t stop calling and his ringtone got louder and louder.


    ¡®Fine,¡¯ he hissed, opening the bathroom door and grabbing his phone out of the bedroom.


    ¡®Thorn?¡¯ it was Abigail. Thorn held back his annoyance ¨C she sounded as if something was genuinely wrong. ¡®Thorn, you there?¡¯


    ¡®Yeah, is everything alright?¡¯


    ¡®No,¡¯ she said, frantically. ¡®Thorn, I think you¡¯re being replaced. That¡¯s how it works, right? There¡¯s only one at a time, ever?¡¯


    ¡®Abigail, slow down,¡¯ Thorn said, fear and hope building up at the back of his throat in equal measure. ¡®What the hell happened?¡¯


    ¡®Some kid killed their entire family. I¡¯m in the house right now. It¡¯s not normal. There¡¯s no weapon wounds, it¡¯s all teeth and nails. It¡¯s- it¡¯s disgusting, Thorn.¡¯


    ¡®I¡­ fuck,¡¯ Thorn said. He hadn¡¯t been hoping for it, well, he hadn¡¯t wished for anyone to die, but he had wished for it to be over. ¡®Are you sure?¡¯


    ¡®Thorn, I have never seen this before. I wasn¡¯t there when you¡­ changed. I wasn¡¯t even born yet, I don¡¯t know. But if I had to guess¡­¡¯


    ¡®Can- can I come see? I was there. I can tell, probably.¡¯


    ¡®Thorn, this is a triple murder investigation-¡¯


    ¡®Please, Abigail, I have to know,¡¯ Thorn said. This was life or death to him. ¡®I have to know.¡¯


    ¡®Well- fine. Take your camera. I¡¯ll clear you.¡¯


    ¡®Address? I¡¯ll be right over.¡¯


    She told him. He scribbled it down, threw his phone down, and slipped a shirt over his head. To hell with drying his hair, he thought, looking for a pair of jeans. Again, he didn¡¯t bother with socks ¨C there were more important things than blisters right now. Could it be true?


    It didn¡¯t really hit him until he closed the door behind him.


    ¡®Gods,¡¯ he whispered. He caught his breath. It could be over. Finally, definitely over. No more shadows slipping down his drain instead of hair, no more self-made wounds, no more itches building up between his gut and his heart-


    Don¡¯t draw conclusions yet, he told himself. Maybe it was something else. There were thousands of explanations for dead people, and most of them were far more mundane than uncontrollable, unnatural beings. And yet his heart beat in his throat as he walked, wishing he had transport other than his legs. He had to hold his camera to stop it from hitting him in the chest every time he took a step. Thorn hardly felt the water from his hair dripping down his neck, into his shirt, the cold invading what little warmth he had.


    He was glad he¡¯d never before heard of the address Abigail had given him. He thanked several gods it wasn¡¯t Skygge or Oskar or Marcus. For once, he was glad for his lack of empathy. Thorn didn¡¯t have to feel a thing except anxious relief. It was over.


    He didn¡¯t recognize the road he was walking up now; a slim, asphalt track heading away from the suburbs of Slakshaven and into the forest. The pines towered above Thorn, the scent of their needles on the wind. Any other day, he¡¯d have stopped to take photos. Now he just walked, nearly ran, adding more blisters to his feet. When he caught sight of the house at the end of the road, he stood still. There were three police cars in the drive way, and an ambulance, no doubt waiting for clearance to remove the bodies. A man, early twenties and wide-eyed, sat shell-shocked on the doorstep. Thorn shivered. The house was a regular as any, a family home; an abandoned swing set in the yard, flowerpots by the door. The door was open. He called Abigail.


    ¡®I¡¯m outside,¡¯ he said.


    ¡®I¡¯ll come get you,¡¯ she said, and broke off the call.


    It didn¡¯t feel right, the idea that something like this would happen on a day this sunny, this light. The forest around Thorn was alive, preparing for winter but still riding on the high of summer. This was no time for death, for endings. When he had changed, it had been midwinter, the snow had been waist-deep. Nothing grew, people huddled together, praying for spring to come: that was the season of death. This wasn¡¯t right.


    Abigail appeared in the doorway. She raised her hand in a silent greeting, and Thorn walked up to her.


    ¡®How sure are you?¡¯ he asked quietly. She bit her lip.


    ¡®I don¡¯t know, Thorn,¡¯ Abigail said. ¡®They look like you¡¯d said they would, but otherwise¡­ There¡¯s two people missing, Thorn. Two teens.¡¯


    ¡®Two?¡¯


    Suddenly the situation became a hell of a lot more complicated.


    ¡®There can¡¯t be two,¡¯ Thorn said. ¡®That¡¯s- that doesn¡¯t make sense.¡¯


    ¡®And,¡¯ Abigail said quietly, ¡®Whoever committed the murders, they didn¡¯t kill the woman. She¡¯s upstairs, in the bath.¡¯


    ¡®In the bath?¡¯


    ¡®She did it herself, Thorn. There¡¯s a whole collection of medication she wasn¡¯t taking in the cabinet, and her psychologist says she¡¯d stopped coming.¡¯


    ¡®So why am I here?¡¯


    ¡®Because of the others. Grab your camera, pretend you¡¯re working.¡¯

 1.3

    Click.


    Blood splatter on a broken-white wall.


    Click.


    Broken man¡¯s body in the kitchen, knives ignored.


    Click.


    Teeth marks on his inner wrists, his neck, torn-open windpipe.


    Click.


    Blood splatter on a family portrait.


    Click.


    Young woman¡¯s body halfway down the stairs.


    Thorn lowered his camera. There were others with them, carefully preserving evidence, and Thorn couldn¡¯t speak openly to Abigail. But he knew. This was exactly the way he recalled his own murders, the way he¡¯d done it when he killed his family. Thorn hated how he could think those words without feeling the weight of them. He watched Abigail, knowing that she did feel that pain. She was taking samples of the blood splatter, managing to look cold. He knew there wouldn¡¯t be any evidence found. The way his hair, his clipped fingernails, his blood disintegrated, so would this new skugabor¡¯s. Thorn was convinced. It was over. He was done. He felt no need to see the woman, upstairs. Whatever she had to do with it, it was for someone else to figure out.


    He was so, so tired.


    Thorn went outside for a smoke. Abby followed him.


    ¡®I don¡¯t know how, but this is real,¡¯ he told her. ¡®One of those missing kids is sitting somewhere in complete shock of what they¡¯ve done. We¡¯ll have to find them.¡¯


    Abigail swallowed. Thorn knew she was thinking of her mother. He didn¡¯t dare bring it up. As he closed his eyes, he exhaled a lungful of cigarette smoke. This might be his last package. Abigail pulled a photo out of an evidence bag.


    ¡®They identified the girl inside,¡¯ she whispered, ¡®It¡¯s the oldest daughter. She¡¯s moved out, she was visiting at the wrong time. That man sitting by the ambulance, he¡¯s her boyfriend. He came looking for her when she didn¡¯t come home. He called us.¡¯


    There was obvious pain in her voice. Thorn swallowed.


    ¡®There¡¯s two girls missing. Asrun, the youngest, is fourteen. She worked the first shift at a shop in town, then came back home. Had she worked late¡­ well, she didn¡¯t. We don¡¯t know if she¡¯s even been here ¨C technically she could have disappeared on the way here.¡¯


    ¡®Fourteen?¡¯ Thorn said, looking at the photograph. ¡®That¡¯s young, that¡¯s too young. Maybe she came home to the carnage and ran away?¡¯


    ¡®Let¡¯s hope so,¡¯ Abigail said. ¡®The other girl is a foster kid, goes to university here, studies history. She turned eighteen over a year ago, but she chose to stay here. That¡¯s all the boyfriend knew, and honestly, he¡¯s not in a mood to talk.¡¯


    ¡®Do we have a photo of her?¡¯


    Abigail took another photo out of the bag. Thorn dropped his cigarette.


    ¡®Ah, hell,¡¯ he whispered. This wasn¡¯t going to be done and over.


    ¡®What, do you know her?¡¯


    ¡®I spoke to her, what, yesterday night?¡¯ his thoughts were running wild. Was he contagious? No, that was ridiculous. ¡®I¡¯ve seen her before, at concerts. She never said very much. I don¡¯t think she had a whole lot of friends on the island.¡¯


    ¡®Did she tell you her name?¡¯


    ¡®May. Her name was May,¡¯ he said. ¡®Fuck, Abigail, I thought I was done.¡¯


    ¡®What does this change?¡¯ Abigail asked. ¡®It¡¯s not like you have, well, feelings, right?¡¯


    ¡®I have some semblance of a conscious, you know, Abigail,¡¯ Thorn said, a bit louder than strictly necessary. ¡®I don¡¯t go around killing strangers for the hell of it, I don¡¯t have a fucking choice. You don¡¯t know what it¡¯s like- they¡¯re constantly tugging on my borders, on my thoughts, I¡¯m constantly aware of them. I¡¯ve recorded myself sleeping, once ¨C when I dream, the shadows go wild on the walls, under my bed ¨C I pull them around and form patterns, sometimes it looks like they dance, Abigail, I-¡¯


    He took a breath. ¡®I can¡¯t just- pretend I don¡¯t know her and leave her to figure this out alone.¡¯


    ¡®Terji, if the old skugabor dying when the new one emerges is the natural order of things, I don¡¯t think you¡¯ve got much of a choice.¡¯


    ¡®My god, Abigail, I can try, can¡¯t I?¡¯


    She didn¡¯t answer.


    ¡®Do you want me to die?¡¯


    ¡®I though you wanted to die,¡¯ she said. She didn¡¯t admit it, but Thorn knew he¡¯d been right. It pleased him that that hurt, somewhere deep down. But she was right, too. He had wanted to die, to stop the blood, the murder, the endless cycle of itches and carnage. It could stop, now. For him.


    ¡®I¡¯m going to go looking for her.¡¯


    Abigail said nothing. Thorn could tell she¡¯d been hurt. He didn¡¯t know where, or how exactly, but he figured he was to blame somehow. Here, right outside the house, too many people were swarming about. He couldn¡¯t do it here. He began walking towards the forest.


    ¡®Thorn!¡¯ Abigail yelled after him. He paused. ¡®I- be careful.¡¯


    He smiled back at her, and continued to walk away. Did she think Thorn would find May the way she¡¯d been during the murders ¨C raging, unreasonable, without control over even an inch of her body? Probably. She hadn¡¯t been learning very long, before she took over from her mother. Like May, Abigail had been a foster kid.


    Once he was out of sight, Thorn took a deep breath. The vocalist gave in to the shadows.


    He became one with them immediately. He¡¯d never gotten used to it ¨C the ink-black cold, the feeling of not having a body. Thorn didn¡¯t trust the shadows, but today he needed them. They were the quickest way to travel. He hardly had to think it before he was moving, the sickening feeling of being liquid taking over. It stretched out his consciousness, mingled it with the viscious thoughts that filled the darkness. He hated how comfortable, how natural it felt; how easily he sped out of the forest, down to the city. The closer he came, however, the more something began to unnerve him.


    Thorn could feel someone else tugging at the shadows. He had not sensed that in decades. It felt wrong. It wasn¡¯t the calm, rhythmic heartbeat that cities gave out, or the soft rolling of the sea. If he¡¯d have had a neck in that moment, its hairs would be sticking right up. It was a violent, painful tugging ¨C not the gentle, subtle movements Thorn had taken decades to master. Whoever was yanking at the dark down there in Slakshaven was angry and hurt and desperate. And young. Gods, Thorn remembered being that young, somewhere deep, deep down.


    Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.Within the dark, he made himself small; traveling through nothing but the shadows between the cracks in the pavement. It didn¡¯t take him long to get past the suburbs. The closer he came, the harsher he felt the yanking, as if someone was tugging at him. It nearly physically hurt. The second Thorn thought that, the shadows spit him out hard onto the pavement. He swore, breathing hard, heartbeat taking some time to become regular again. He didn¡¯t bother getting up yet. He stared up at the sky, trying to process seeing rather than sensing, knowing. Trying to process how lungs worked, what muscles were for.


    Even outside of the shadow, he could feel that tugging at his borders. He climbed back onto his unsteady feet.


    May sat in the brightest, most depressing caf¨¦ she could find. The cup of tea in front of her had been hot enough to burn her fingers when she bought it. Now, it was stone cold. Everything was cold. Something was constantly bothering her in the back of her head. It took all May had to shove it away. Keep it out of her head. Stay normal, stay alive. Something in May expected the police to come through the door any moment. She didn¡¯t know why she had done it, hell, she barely understood how she had done it. Her memory was a blur, already fading. She was so, so tired. Flecks of dried blood were caught under her fingernails. She knew what had happened before, though. That she remembered too clearly.


    Erika had never come downstairs for breakfast. Her eggs had turned cold, and May remembered hoping that she¡¯d gone back to bed. She couldn¡¯t hear the shower running anymore. She¡¯d sat down at the kitchen table with an essay on the failed christianization of Threoo, unable to concentrate. The itching in her veins had grown impossible to ignore. It danced in her blood, in her bones, right under the surface. It was then she¡¯d seen the shadows dance. They didn¡¯t stay in place like they should. May had turned all the lights on. That had been a mistake. The shadows became harsher, their angles defined, their existence more definite. The fear had set in. Asrun had been gone for hours at that point, it was ten in the morning, and something in May felt undeniably, terribly wrong. She didn¡¯t knew why she¡¯d gone upstairs. She¡¯d intended to go into the bathroom, that she remembered. But when she opened the door, Erika had been there, in the bath. Dead.


    She¡¯d fallen to her knees, expecting to bruise them on the bathroom tiles. Instead, she¡¯d go on falling. May remembered not having a body, the cold, the dead-cold fear running through veins she did not have. Time, like her, had turning liquid, twisting and turning, denying May her life. When the shadows finally spit her out, they had still been inside her body ¨C her veins had been blackened, and every bit of her was so, so cold. She¡¯d heard Erika¡¯s older daughter knocking on the door.


    May remembered thinking she couldn¡¯t let her see her mother¡¯s body, the empty veins. So she opened the door, and she killed her. May killed her. Erika¡¯s husband ¨C what was his name again? ¨C had come downstairs at the noise, the screaming, the sounds of death. So she¡¯d killed him too. She couldn¡¯t recall the details, nearly as though she¡¯d only been watching, uninterested ¨C as if it hadn¡¯t been her, moving like that, killing them so easily. May¡¯s only clear memory from that point on had been turning around, to see Asrun in the doorway. Somehow two hours had passed. They had stared at each other. May had seen the realisation dawn in the younger girls¡¯ eyes, the fear, the disgust.


    From that point on May remembered nothing. She assumed she¡¯d murdered Asrun, too, in that horrible way she¡¯d done the others. She imagined thin wrists torn open, windpipes crushed. Before then May hadn¡¯t known she¡¯d had the strength to even do that. A day ago, she¡¯d have thought it impossible.


    From the second she¡¯d regained control, she¡¯d felt the shadows pounding at her defences, pulling at her, whispering in her ear.


    Can¡¯t you see what power we gave you? They seemed to ask, can¡¯t you tell how strong you are, girl, of course you want to use that strength. Give in- it¡¯ll be easier on all of us.


    Of course it was very much possible that May was making that up. Giving words to the thing she didn¡¯t want to believe was conscious, didn¡¯t want to think was sophisticated enough to make plans like that. So she pushed back. It took what little strength she had left.


    She barely heard the caf¨¦¡¯s door open, a stranger¡¯s voice asking for a coffee, the rustle of a leather jacket when someone took the chair next to hers.


    ¡®May?¡¯


    Only then did she look up. Was it yesterday she¡¯d spoken to him? The hypnotic rhythm of that concert seemed so, so far away, and yet it still echoed in the vague pain in her neck. Yet now that the vocalist was here, the shadows¡¯ pounding on her brain faded to the background of her conscious. She could breathe.


    ¡®How are you doing?¡¯ he asked, not a hint of concern in his voice. Maybe she just couldn¡¯t tell, though. His voice came from very far away. May wanted to laugh.


    ¡®Shit,¡¯ she said. ¡®How do you know?¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m the same,¡¯ Thorn said. May stared at him. His hair was wet, sticking to his face, and she wondered how old he was. There was not a hint of youth left on that face, but there were no wrinkles, no grey hair, no nothing. He looked as though someone who¡¯d never seen an adult had created one.


    ¡®How?¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m the same,¡¯ he said. ¡®I did the same thing, decades ago. It changed me.¡¯


    ¡®What is happening to me?¡¯ May asked.


    ¡®You¡¯re becoming like me,¡¯ the vocalist told her. ¡®Try not to fight it too much, May. It¡¯ll fuck you up no matter what you do. It¡¯ll get easier.¡¯


    May wanted to believe him, but something in her screamed no! at everything he was telling her. She would not, could not accept what she had done. She was human. It should hurt, sanity be damned, and she would let it hurt. May began to cry. Thorn let her be, sipping his coffee.


    ¡®We should go, May,¡¯ he said then. ¡®They¡¯ll come looking for you soon. We can¡¯t have them find you.¡¯


    ¡®Does it matter?¡¯ May whispered. ¡®I just destroyed everything I had.¡¯


    Thorn didn¡¯t answer, but got up and May did, too. She followed the vocalist out of the brightly lit caf¨¦, into Slakshavens dusk. She was so, so tired. If she could just retreat into herself, the yanking would stop, something whispered to her. It didn¡¯t seem so very dangerous. As she watched the heels of Thorns boots connect with the pavement over and over again, May slipped into herself. There was nothing but peace, there, at first.

 2.1

    It seemed so, so long ago that Thorn had been human. The girl curled up on his couch reminded him of that. Somewhere between the murders and his home, she had hidden herself deep in the comfortable safety of unconsciousness. Since he¡¯d gently sat her down on the couch, she had not broken eye contact with the wall. She seemed motionless. Thorn knew her insides were coiling, changing, disfiguring. He could see it in the patterns the shadows formed on the walls, on the floor, in every corner. He remembered being like that.


    He had been seventeen, seventeen and skinny. It¡¯d have been the 20th century, but Thorn hadn¡¯t seen a lot of it. Like May, he had been born on a small, terribly windy fisherman¡¯s island. There hadn¡¯t been electricity, and Thorn was just another cog in a centuries long pattern. He¡¯d felt secure, like that, his life spelled out for him from the beginning. His parents had called him Terji at birth, just like his grandfather before him. His sisters would marry boys from the town, and he¡¯d inherit his father¡¯s boat in time. For the moment, he only had to worry about growing up.


    That had changed the winter after his seventeenth birthday. He didn¡¯t recall exactly when it began, just that it was someone around the time his older sister married and moved out. It was only an itch, at first, tucked away between his heart and his gut. It would get worse and then lessen, and then get worse again. It always returned a little worse than it had been before. Terji hadn¡¯t told anyone. He still didn¡¯t tell anyone when it started to keep him awake at night. It was then he picked up the habit of scratching at his skin, despite the itch lying deeper. The pain would keep the itching away a little longer, and kept it from migrating into his bones and his spine and his brain. The last few days, he couldn¡¯t think of anything else. He botched his work, he yelled at his younger sister, he remembered considering rowing out into the tide and jumping into the water. But by then, the shores were frozen. So he didn¡¯t.


    That final night, when everything he¡¯d known came crushing down on top of him, the itching had woken him up. A million ants marched through his blood, and scratching his skin didn¡¯t push it away anymore. He got up, and went outside, intending to numb himself with snow. The snow was heavy, that year ¨C waist-deep. The top layer was frozen. Three winters earlier, a child had fallen down through that thin top layer and drowned in the snow beneath. They hadn¡¯t found the boy until spring. Terji intended not to go back inside before his skin would be as pale and blue and frozen as the kid¡¯s had been. Yet when he stood there, bare feet in the snow, he realized his insides were colder than the outside world.


    It was then that he went back inside and killed his family.


    Thorn sighed, running his hands through his hair, watching the girl on the couch. Had she felt that itch, in the depth of her bones, wishing for dear life that she could just scratch? He wished he hadn¡¯t met her, not at Dyst, not in that alley. It would be so much easier to leave her behind. But he had to stay, if only for a little while. He couldn¡¯t rely on Abigail to tell her everything ¨C she only knew so much. She¡¯d never experienced any of it. And she wasn¡¯t entirely unbiased. She¡¯d tell May she was a monster, plain and simple. The girl would have plenty of reasons to hate herself, later ¨C she didn¡¯t need Abigail to add to that. So he¡¯d stay. He¡¯d keep her safe, while he could.


    Terji Mjikkalsson had spent three days in the forest before Helga found him. He thought, he knew he was going to die there, freeze to death underneath the pines. He told himself everything would be alright, then.


    He hated himself for being glad the itch was gone. By the second day, he was gliding into himself, keeping himself safe. By the time Helga found him, he was unresponsive, and already changing. She¡¯d carried him to an old, abandoned house somewhere in the woods, and dumped him in front of the fireplace. It took him weeks to regain his consciousness, bit by bit. He spend a lot of time forgetting things. He had no details of his family to cling to anymore, even their names cloaked in a layer of fog. He couldn¡¯t recall the exact layout of their house, what upkeep the boat would need before spring came. Besides forgetting, he learned things. He learned how to keep the shadows out of his head, safe in their nooks and corners where they did not bother him. He¡¯d watch Helga scuttle around the house, using both arms as though she¡¯d never accepted the loss of her right hand. Terji knew she was exactly what he was. He could feel her push on the shadows, and when she¡¯d leave, he could feel her dissolve into them. When she did that, it nearly felt as though she became a part of him, and that sickened him. He didn¡¯t want to be like her, with her unwashed clothes and the sleep deprived eyes, the mass of scars around her stump. He didn¡¯t want to eat nothing but old carrots and stock, say nothing except spit bitterness around. She didn¡¯t look old, Helga ¨C but she acted as though she was centuries old and no one would let her die in peace.


    How young he had been, Thorn thought. In some ways, he was jealous of the boy who¡¯d curled up in front of the fireplace. Dead to the world, somehow at peace with the coiling within him. He recalled that distinct sense that this was right. Thorn knew it was a sign of his humanity that he¡¯d remembered that no, nothing about this was right ¨C and yet ignorance seemed so much safer. But eventually he¡¯d come out of that ignorance. He¡¯d woken up, slowly, scratching the blood off his fingernails. At first, he¡¯d only studied Helga. He didn¡¯t let her know he was awake. Instinctively she felt like a threat, the way she pushed and pulled on the shadows with the grace of a cat. He didn¡¯t know why she¡¯d picked him up and taken him home. Terji hadn¡¯t known anything. Then one time she¡¯d spoken up.


    ¡®Child,¡¯ she¡¯d said, ¡®You know that I know you¡¯re awake, right?¡¯


    He hadn¡¯t said anything. The woman spat on the floor, staring at him. She¡¯d pulled all of the shadows towards her, pooling on the floor around her body, leaving Terji terribly exposed. Involuntarily he jerked his body away from her, and she laughed.


    ¡®No need to fear me, kid, last thing I¡¯d want is killing you.¡¯


    She let the shadows go away. Still, Terji remained on an edge. He reminded himself what had happened to him ¨C this was a game without rules, death nothing but an everyday occurrence. The boy looked at Helga. She was undeniably old ¨C it showed in the way she moved, if not in the way she looked. Yet she wore her hair loose, like a young girl would, as though she¡¯d never married.


    ¡®Did you do something to me?¡¯ he asked, voice unstable. The shadows around him quivered with his fear. Helga laughed.


    The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.¡®Boy, had I done something to you, you wouldn¡¯t be here to ask me about it,¡¯ she said, and then went back to cooking dinner. Terji wasn¡¯t hungry, but the scent reminded him of late-winter food at home ¨C the salty stews, because there was very little left at the end of the dark season. The dark bread, the potatoes that¡¯d already begun sprouting. Helga wordlessly handed him a wooden bowl and he spooned down his portion. Then she¡¯d sat down beside him.


    ¡®There is one thing, boy, you ought to remember,¡¯ she said, cloaking them in shadows. ¡®There is absolutely nothing you can do about what happened or about what will happen. You got that?¡¯


    Terji shook his head. He didn¡¯t dare speak for fear his voice would fail him. He knew he didn¡¯t understand what he was in for. It terrified him. Helga waved her stump at him, the arm lacking a hand, the loss she had never gotten used to.


    ¡®You see boy, I¡¯ve seen you toying with the shadows,¡¯ she said, staring at him, unblinking.


    He wondered if besides old she was mad.


    ¡®You treat them like a curious kitten treats a ball of wool, but I promise you it won¡¯t be long before you¡¯ll hate them, you¡¯ll fear them, you¡¯ll beg at them and you¡¯ll hate yourself for being part of them.¡¯


    Terji swallowed, his throat dry, Helga¡¯s eyes fixed on his fear.


    ¡®You remember your parents, don¡¯t ya? Of course you do. I know it fades, but it never fades away far enough. You¡¯ll always have to live with the life draining out of their eyes, the taste of your sister¡¯s blood in your mouth. Stuck in your mouth. It won¡¯t wash out, I promise, boy.¡¯


    She paused for breath.


    ¡®And boy, they won¡¯t be the last. There¡¯ll always be more. There won¡¯t be anything you can do to stop yourself. You will kill them. And each will be as bad as this first time.¡¯


    ¡®But-¡¯


    ¡®No buts, child. I tried chaining myself up, once, when I felt the urges coming. Figured I could ride it out, wait for it to be over ¨C but they came and took my body anyways, boy. They had me chew my hand of. Then I killed that woman anyway ¨C Gods, it was a mess! Her blood, my blood, hers warm enough to melt the snow, mine cold enough to freeze it back up. Thing is, boy ¨C those shadows are sentient. No matter what Sigrin will tell you ¨C they¡¯re sentient. Promise. They could¡¯ve just broken me out of those chains, you know ¨C but I had to lose my hand. They wanted to punish me, boy. Try not to defy them. Questions?¡¯


    Terji was trembling. He was no longer afraid ¨C he was terrified. Every grain of his being knew wanted to resist. And yet Helga was smiling, happy, almost, it seemed. She got up, stretched, and went for the door. Then she turned around.


    ¡®On last thing, boy,¡¯ she said. ¡®They call us skugabor, but that ain¡¯t quite right. It isn¡¯t us who eat the shadows, those shadows eat us.¡¯


    Then she¡¯d gone out into the winter dark. Terji had thought she¡¯d be back soon ¨C she¡¯d only been wearing a thin dress. But she hadn¡¯t come back. The next time he saw her, Helga had been a dead body in the town square. He¡¯d only caught a glimpse of her. Sigrin shepherded him through the crowd, onto the boat, off the island. It was his last memory of something that vaguely resembled home.


    Now the cycle had passed, and there was a teenager curled up on his couch, for a lack of a fireplace. For the thousandth time, he wished she¡¯d been someone he didn¡¯t know. He wished Sigrin was around to ask her why. Abigail wouldn¡¯t have answers for him. So he stayed home and watched the girl. Fed her. Gave her tea. Watched the patterns she made on his walls, his floors. What worried him were the times she¡¯d drag all of them back into her, nestle all the darkness between her hair and in the folds of her clothes. Thorn thought maybe she was cold, trying to create warmth ¨C so he pulled the blankets off his bed and folded them around her. It didn¡¯t help her pulling on the shadows. She did start smiling, sometimes. He was glad for her.


    They were long weeks, with May on his couch. He made sure none of his bandmates would suddenly come over. He turned the couch, so that she could watch over Slakshaven. He figured she should get some daylight while it lasted - the days were shortening fast. Sometimes when sat down beside her with dinner or a book, she¡¯d huddle up beside him, desperate for warmth. At least he told himself she was looking for warmth, not for comfort. So he let her.


    He didn¡¯t see Abigail much, these days. He figured she was glad to be rid of him. Then again, he wished she¡¯d give some sign of life, some small sign that something in her cared that he¡¯d be gone, soon. He tried not to let it hurt too much. She had her reasons. It had been some long decades, together, and he was only glad it wouldn¡¯t be centuries. He showed up at crime scenes when she called, uploaded his photos, received an income, and tried to consider that enough. He took more portraits and hung them up in his bedroom.


    Mostly, he found more and more excuses to be in the living room. He¡¯d read more than ever, make a thousand cups of tea and coffee, roll his cigarettes at the table. He vacuumed the floor. Cleaned the windows. Tried to play guitar, although he¡¯d long made peace with the fact he¡¯d only ever be the vocalist. And slowly, he watched May come back to life. At first, she only watched him. He¡¯d gotten used to her frantic, instinctive tugging at the shadows, but slowly she gained enough skill to be less noticeable. She stopped making the patterns.


    What worried him is that he knew she had learned to sink into the shadows. He remembered very distinctively that¡¯d he¡¯d hated that feeling, had despised the idea that he could become one with them and travel though them. So he¡¯d never done it if not absolutely necessary ¨C or not compelled by the dark. Yet May seemed to love it. He could feel her spread so thin he worried she¡¯d drown in that darkness. Thorn knew she travelled far away in those shadows, but where to, he could not tell. She always re-emerged on his couch, safe, but unresponsive. He had no idea what she was looking for.


    Even all those weeks later, she was still on the news. Thorn thanked several long-forgotten gods that the news used May¡¯s school ID for a photograph. She was sixteen in it. He thought the girl on his couch was young, but in that photograph she had chin length blue hair and a septum piercing. It screamed teenage rebellion with a passion that reeked of despair. He was glad it hardly looked like the May he knew. There was less chance of anyone remembering her, like that. It¡¯d keep her safe. Despite that, he didn¡¯t watch the news around her.


    Asrun still hadn¡¯t been found. Not dead, not alive. Thorn had no idea if she¡¯d even been at the house, but it became more and more likely the longer she was dead, too. She was fourteen, not four. She¡¯d have known some place to go, and Thorn seriously doubted someone with dubious intentions had picked her up on the same day the new skugabor had been selected. That would be too ridiculous a coincidence even for him. He assumed she was dead somewhere, somehow never found. Thorn didn¡¯t want the girl on his couch to know that, not yet. So he stayed silent, and watched her slowly wake up to a new world.

 2.2

    May was struggling to reach up, to the light. It took every inch of her to break out of the shell that had formed around her; every ounce of strength she could muster just to open her eyes and see. The shadows made her sick. They sucked her in, into an endless cycle of dark and cold and a terrible thinness, and swallowed her whole. In there, May couldn¡¯t see. There was nothing. Nothing but the endless yanking on her mind, and the vocalist¡¯s calmer tugging somewhere in the distance. Sometimes she tried to breathe in that darkness, or scratch, or move, or scream. Whenever she tried that, they spat her out, and it¡¯s wasn¡¯t always in the yellow light of the vocalist¡¯s apartment. Some days she opened her eyes in the forest. Once, in her old room in Erika¡¯s house. So she learned to pretend she was nothing but a soul, an entity without body to reach for. To believe she was nothing but a bundle of thoughts, whenever the inky darkness required it of her; to travel through them without losing herself.


    She was humiliatingly thankful when she opened her eyes on the couch one morning, and could move. May had her body back. It was cold, tired, and unwilling, but it was hers. It was safe. No matter the tugging at the back of her mind ¨C she could get used to that as long as she could finally stretch her sore muscles.


    It was then she started to remember things. Erika. Asrun, her sister, her father, the blood. Gods, what had she done? There were a thousand images pressing up against her, and yet May felt as though she had lost things. She could not recall the exact shade of red of their blood. Had they had carpet on the living room floor? Did they have a separate shower, or just a bath? Had they cared ¨C had they really, honestly, cared?


    ¡®Are you back?¡¯ someone asked. May turned her head.


    Of course. The vocalist. What had his name been ¨C Thorn. A stage name, probably. She shrugged it off. He thought she¡¯d shrugged at him, and he smiled.


    ¡®Take your time. Got plenty of it,¡¯ he said.


    May wanted to smile back, but her body wasn¡¯t used to answering to her anymore.


    ¡®You want something?¡¯ Thorn asked.


    ¡®Thirst,¡¯ May said, although she knew that wasn¡¯t the right word. She¡¯d been supposed to say something else, but-


    ¡®I¡¯ll get you something,¡¯ he said. She watched him walk away, tangled hair and unwashed jeans. She assumed it was early morning. It was dark out.


    It seemed like hours before Thorn returned with with a glass of water.


    ¡®There you go,¡¯ he said. He sat down beside her. The girl took the drink from him, and sipping on it, she started crying.


    ¡®Why am I forgetting everything?¡¯ she said. The man beside her pulled his knees up to his chest. He looked younger than he was.


    ¡®I don¡¯t know. It¡¯s the way it is. It¡¯ll stop, soon,¡¯ he hesitated, ¡®I promise.¡¯


    ¡®Can you remember for me? I¡¯m afraid I¡¯ll lose them,¡¯ May said. ¡®Especially Asrun ¨C I can remember being fourteen, it¡¯s so fucking young. I hated it, and I bet she did, too, but you¡¯re supposed to get through that. Or was she fifteen? Gods, I can¡¯t remember.¡¯


    She curled up, shoulders shaking, holding onto her blankets with white knuckles. What if she¡¯d fall away into herself again? She couldn¡¯t do that. She mustn¡¯t. It was so dark in there, all the time. How much time had passed?


    ¡®How long has it been?¡¯ she demanded.


    ¡®Nearly five weeks, now. It¡¯s winter.¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯s always winter up here,¡¯ she said. ¡®Will you remember her for me? Her name was Asrun. Asrun. When I was fourteen I wrote terrible poetry and ¨C I killed them!¡¯


    She was wailing now, with a terrible high-pitched sobbing.


    ¡®I killed them ¨C fourteen felt like forever but it wasn¡¯t supposed to be the end ¨C I felt terribly grown up because I didn¡¯t smoke. I kissed that idiot boy because he could tell Black Sabbath apart from Iron Maiden ¨C Gods, I don¡¯t even know if she had that. Will you remember it for me, Thorn? Her name was Asrun. She was fourteen. I think.¡¯


    May crawled against him, crying into his shirt, desperate for some shard of warmth, of life, of something other than that endless dark. He let her.


    ¡®It¡¯s all fading,¡¯ she whispered. ¡®It¡¯s all fading, and there¡¯s nothing I can do.¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯ll pass,¡¯ he lied into her hair, ¡®It¡¯ll pass, it¡¯ll pass. I¡¯ll remember for you. It¡¯ll pass.¡¯


    She was so, so tired. She believed him. He was like her, after all. She could feel him on the edge of the shadows, her consciousness, him and only him. He was better with them than she was ¨C he was like the tide, natural and subtle. She felt like a child with a bad temper. Around them, the rhythm of the city twisted and turned; the heartbeat of thousands merged into one.


    ¡®Don¡¯t make me do it again,¡¯ she said, and she felt his body getting tense. ¡®Don¡¯t make me kill anyone again, Thorn. I can¡¯t.¡¯


    The vocalist didn¡¯t answer. Something inside her screamed of betrayal, but that something was disappearing fast. She wasn¡¯t tired - she was exhausted. Before she finished her thought, she was asleep.


    By the time May woke up, the short period daylight had come and gone. She didn¡¯t recall what she¡¯d told Thorn. All that was left in her was a feeling that something was off, that there was something very, very wrong ¨C but for now, she¡¯d let it rest. She got up. Stretched the sleep out of her muscles. She realized she was still wearing the same clothes as she had ¨C that day.


    Thorn was staring at her from behind his laptop. Of course - he was used to having a motionless shell of a girl curled up on his couch, not a moving, thinking one.


    ¡®Can ¨C can I use your shower?¡¯ she asked. There was a thin silence between them, the girl now suddenly a person and not just a ball of misery on the couch.


    ¡®Of course,¡¯ Thorn said, ¡®It¡¯s into the hallway, door on the left- right, from here.¡¯


    May hesitated, then asked:


    ¡®Do you maybe have something clean for me? To wear?¡¯


    ¡®Fuck, yeah, sure, I¡¯ll ¨C let me see if I¡¯ve got something.¡¯


    He got up, shut his laptop, and left the room. May took the chance to look around.


    In short, the vocalist¡¯s apartment was a mess. There was no bookshelf, but there were piles and piles of magazines and books scattered around. The walls were covered in old concert posters ¨C the oldest May could see from a Norwegian bands¡¯ tour in the nineties. The place looked as if it were inhabited by a teenager. May wondered how far off from the truth that was. She was still shaking, unable to control her trembling muscles. Did she trust him? She didn¡¯t know. He seemed harmless enough, but the girl now knew there was more to this world than she could know. When he returned with worn clothes, oversized and obviously his own, she thanked him. The vocalist directed her to the bathroom, where she promptly locked the door. She listened for his footsteps. Didn¡¯t undress until she was certain he¡¯d left. By the sink, there sat a battered first aid kid, and the walls¡¯ tiles looked like they came straight out of the seventies. Tentatively, she turned on the shower, steaming up the mirror so that she wouldn¡¯t have to look. Her body felt the same, after all those weeks. It seemed wrong. So much had changed ¨C there were supposed to be wounds, she¡¯d expected to be marked with new scars and bruises. Something physical to represent what had happened to her, how hard she¡¯d come crashing down. But there was nothing; so instead she scrubbed herself clean until her skin was red and devoid of anything from before. She scraped old blood from beneath her torn fingernails. May shivered. The shower didn¡¯t seem to get as hot as she needed it to be.Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.


    The vocalist¡¯s towels were old, well-washed and worn, soft and faded. May wondered how long he¡¯d been using them, how much of his routine had become permanently transfixed in his life. His clothes were simular, old but comfortable, frayed at the seams. All of it was black, most of it was band merch. Honestly, it did not surprise her. The man was a walking stereotype, and she wasn¡¯t sure if he was even aware of that.


    She hugged herself, still cold, unwilling to go back into the living room yet and talk. May knew she should cry, scream, wail. If not over herself, then over the people she¡¯d left on the floor of their own house to bleed out. She found, instead, that she could not. Something had dug out her insides and stuffed her with cotton to absorb bits of her she¡¯d never wanted to lose.


    ¡®What the fuck am I?¡¯ she said to her mirror image, as she morphed the shadows on the wall behind her, distorting them with the ease of breathing.


    By the time May got out of the shower, Thorn had sat down on the kitchen counter, mug of tea between his fingers. All these past weeks he¡¯d been pondering what to tell her. He still didn¡¯t know what to say. When she returned from the bathroom, she let a hot cloud of steam into the rest of his apartment. Clad in his old clothes - oversized, giving her the appearance of a teenage boy - she made a cautious entrance into the kitchen. She clung to the walls and the furniture, like an animal of prey guarding its back. It stung.


    ¡®They¡¯re all dead, right, that wasn¡¯t a dream?¡¯ she said.


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry.¡¯


    ¡®And you said we are the same?¡¯ she said, arms around herself, knuckles turning white with stress.


    ¡®We are.¡¯


    ¡®We kill?¡¯ she said, now cold, not the crying girl that¡¯d surfaced yesterday night.


    ¡®We do,¡¯ he said, and May was shaking and avoiding his eyes, and he knew he couldn¡¯t die on her tomorrow like Helga had died on him. Hell, that skinny thing in his clothes didn¡¯t even have Sigrin to fall back on. Just Abigail, and her misunderstandings.


    ¡®It¡¯s alright,¡¯ he lied, and sat her down on the couch again, handing his tea over to her. She clung to it, that bit of heat. ¡®It gets easier. You¡¯ll care less.¡¯


    ¡®I already care less,¡¯ May said, ¡®I misremember things, all the bits that made Erika Erika, and Asrun Asrun.¡¯


    ¡®It makes it bearable,¡¯ he said.


    She shook her head. ¡®I don¡¯t want it to be. I don¡¯t.¡¯


    He didn¡¯t know what to tell her, and eventually went to bed. When he woke up, she was gone. He half expected a call from Abigail, asking why May¡¯s body had turned up somewhere in town, but it never came. She stayed gone overnight, and returned early morning, clutching fistfulls of notes. The following evening, Thorn left an empty journal and an old coat of his on the couch, and they dissapeared with May. Abigail never called, not even for work. He pretended that didn¡¯t hurt, making hot, bitter coffee, and drank it staring over Slakshaven, wondering why he didn¡¯t feel any different. This was the point Helga had dissapeared with nothing but a few omnious warnings. He swallowed. There was peace promised to him, now. A way out, without killing anyone or condemning someone else to become his replacement. An end to the cycle of madness. But he didn¡¯t want to let go, now. He didn¡¯t want to die and leave the skinny girl that lived on his couch alone in this absolute clutsterfuck of inhuman misery.


    The days shortened. Thorn chain smoked in Dyst, matching new lyrics to Skygge¡¯s new bass lines. In the background, the evening news still droned on about May and Asrun the September murders.


    He stared out the window. Snow had begun coating the streets, clinging to the cobbles in thick clumps. May¡¯s younger foster sister was still missing, too, and Thorn assumed her lifeless body lay somewhere in the woods. He imagined an ever younger version of May, frozen blue and with snowflakes in her hair. Would he join Asrun, soon? Drop dead and freeze? Probably not. His body would fade into shadow, he supposed, or mummify the way Helga¡¯s had overnight.


    ¡®Hmm?¡¯ Thorn said, as Skygge knocked on his arm.


    ¡®I asked you why we never hang out at yours anymore,¡¯ the bassist said. ¡®Not that you have to invite me, but I haven¡¯t really got the budget to come here every day.¡¯


    Thorn shrugged. ¡®Been procrastinating on cleaning. Again.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯d invite you to mine but you know what my grandma is like.¡¯


    He¡¯d have to coordinate with May. He could hardly tell Skygge that really, it was fine, but May fucking Schroder, wanted by police as either victim or killer, was camping out in his living room, would that be a problem?


    ¡®How about saturday, after practice?¡¯ Thorn said. ¡®Invite the others, too. I¡¯ll get some beer. It¡¯s long past time, you¡¯re right.¡¯


    ¡®Don¡¯t let me pressure you into it,¡¯ Skygge said. He stretched, showing off the shirt with their band¡¯s logo. They¡¯d printed a couple hundred only months earlier, as though a band like theirs had room to grow on Threoo, where Dyst was quite literally the high point of loud music.


    ¡®It¡¯s all right,¡¯ Thorn said. ¡®I¡¯ll figure something out. Let the others know?¡¯


    ¡®I will.¡¯ Skygge got up, shoving his music papers into his college bag. ¡®I promised Thomas I¡¯d look after his niece today.¡¯


    He winced as his hair caught in his zipper, pulled it out, and was out the door before Thorn could react. Ah, hell. He could very well be dead before saturday. Should he have said something, to Skygge? Thorn shook his head. Better not to involve him, in case the dark decided the bassist knew too much or came too close.


    He zipped up his own backpack and shrugged on his jacket. Raising a hand to say goodbye to Oskar, he made for the door, and ventured out into the darkness. It was three in the afternoon, but in late October that meant the sun had sunk far below the horizon. Soon, it wouldn¡¯t rise at all.


    Thorn had nothing else that needed doing that day, and sitting at home and watching time tick away was about the least appealing thing he could do. Instead he turned towards the suburbs. The cobbles, slippery and coated with snow, passed too quickly beneath his boots. He shouldn¡¯t be doing this, shouldn¡¯t be going there, but for his own sake he wanted to say goodbye. It was an uphill walk, towards those bright white-brick houses, along all sorts of houses and playgrounds and shops that hadn¡¯t been there when Thorn was young. He stuffed his hands a little deeper into his pockets. The wind picked up, blowing his hair into his face and snow into his eyes, but when at last he reached the right house he forgot about that. He didn¡¯t ring the doorbell. He just stood across the street and watched, certain the shadows cloaking him would render him invisible to Terji and his family.


    It had been the only kindness he was grateful for, the first few years, that his older sister had moved out before he¡¯d been swept up by the shadows. She had lived, at least, and married, and had daughters she named after his younger sister and mother. He¡¯d never visited her, and so it was a good five years after she¡¯d had her only son that he heard she¡¯d called him Terji.


    Had named her son after him, the one who¡¯d torn up their family. After him, the man no longer a man, who had no right to call her sister still. His own name now turned ashen on his tongue, catching in his throat and dripping acid into old wounds whenever someone spoke it.


    Terji, in his fifties now, sat watching TV in his livingroom with a wife and son Thorn didn¡¯t know. The vocalist looked at them for a long time, before finally turning away. Those things weren¡¯t his. As he started home, he considered just laying down here and dying. The dark around him was oddly tranquil and welcoming.


    But he hadn¡¯t told May were he kept his spare keys, yet, or where exactly you had to kick the heater for it to work properly; hadn¡¯t told her why Abigail might hate her, too.


    ¡®Not yet,¡¯ he told the shadows around him, ¡®not yet.¡¯

 2.3

    May closed the huge tome - population records of Slakshaven, 1532 - 1534 - stood, and kicked the table as hard as she could. It was five in the morning, the fourth night she¡¯d spend here, and she¡¯d found nothing. The archives had never let her down before. They¡¯d been her favourite place, buried deep beneath the university in repurposed, ancient tunnels. They didn¡¯t just keep history, they were history.


    Now, however, she sat blinking in the harsh, white LED light and tried not to scream in frustration. She¡¯d found nothing, no odd deaths, no family graves missing one older teenager, no trials or reports. Not even a myth or saga to back up that monsters truly roamed these islands.


    It was as if she didn¡¯t exist.


    What had she been hoping for? A cure, a way to turn it all back? Others of her kind, a way to at least stop her from killing? Anything, but she wouldn¡¯t find it. That¡¯d become clear. She picked up the massive book she¡¯d been reading and put it away, back in its slot in the metal filing cabinet. She should leave, anyway. In an hour, the university would open, and with exam season approaching there would be students finishing up final assignments down here the moment the doors opened. She took one last regretful look at the useless filing cabinet before May walked into the hallway.


    Here, one could tell these tunnels hadn¡¯t always been used as a place of study. Though the walls were coated in white plaster, the ceiling was glass, and through it roughly hewn rock was visible. To her right was the stairwell that led back up to Slakshaven, but to her left the tunnel extended, winding, and on an impulse May went left. She walked past seemingly endless rows of filing cabinets and studying nooks, her footsteps the only thing to be heard.


    There, in front of her, stood the back wall that separated the archives from the rest of the tunnel system. She¡¯d been through it once, two years ago, a first year student on a campus tour. They¡¯d spend mere moments on the other side of the white metal wall, before the guide had shepherded them back inside. Water had dripped from the ceiling, and an uncanny cold wafted through the tunnel system. She¡¯d found it odd they¡¯d chosen such a wet, mold-prone environment for the entire city¡¯s records.


    Now she stood before the door again. She tried the handle. Locked, of course; but May wasn¡¯t that first year student any more, wasn¡¯t even human any more, and with ease she slipped into the dark. She passed underneath the door, and the shadows spat her out onto cold, hard stone. There was no light. It did not matter. She closed her eyes and reached into the darkness. It was such pure black, here, different from the twilight above ground. Further and further she stretched her mind, encountering nothing but twisting, deserted tunnels. How far they went on, she could not tell; her mind was stretched too thin to keep going. She pulled back, into herself, and took a deep breath. The air was cold here, the dark silky and nearly thick enough to touch. It didn¡¯t frighten her, even though there was movement in it, kaleidoscopic movements that threatened to seep into her lungs. The near-solid shadow seemed almost curious; a kitten encountering a mouse for the first time.


    Then, forming thick tendrils of its own, the shadows reached out to her instead, destroying every notion of control May had just moments earlier. Panicking, she tried to open the archive door, but before she could the dark engulfed her wrist and slipped into her arteries. The horrid cold of it had her crashing to her knees. The girl wailed. Her pain echoed through the tunnels, although they held no living thing to witness it. The dark was inside of her, in every vein, no matter how small. She didn¡¯t know how long it stayed, but when finally it leaked out of her nose and her mouth and her eyes, May was awfully sure it¡¯d left something behind. With burning veins, she stood up on trembling legs. She thanked every god that¡¯d listen that the archive door could be opened from this side, and stumbled away.


    She¡¯d planned to go back to Thorn¡¯s apartment, but the thought of explaining what had happened to the older skugabor wasn¡¯t very appealing. She imagined he¡¯d just gaze at her, raise his eyebrows, and tell her it¡¯d get better.


    It was steadily snowing, that early October morning, flecks of white against a black sky that later joined the thick layer of snow already on the ground. The moon hung heavy above the horizon, and even the city was silent, every hint of sound softened by the snow. May could barely hear her own footsteps. Her body was so cold her breath didn¡¯t form clouds. It was nice, to be outside. Too afraid someone would recognize her, she¡¯d switched her days and nights around, and holed up over research or on Thorn¡¯s couch. Her footsteps were the only ones in the snow, this time of the morning. She trusted the cold and the darkness would keep her hidden.


    She imagined Asrun out somewhere in that same icy dark. Had it formed thick strands of shadow around her, blackened her skin as if burned? Probably not. She¡¯d been human, at the very least, when she died. The younger girl had reminded her of herself so much, a happier, safer version of herself at fourteen.


    May turned towards the forest, in the vain hope she¡¯d stumble across a body, frozen in the snow. Could lay her sister to rest, apologize to her face. Soon, she found herself between evergreens and small scrubs. The pines towered over her, their black silhouettes sharp against the sky, and if she noticed what direction the path was going, she didn¡¯t allow herself to think about it. She wanted to cry. To mourn what had been hers, so briefly, but it seemed too hypocritical to do so. Hadn¡¯t it been her hands, her nails, her teeth that ended all of that? Shouldn¡¯t she have chained herself up when the itch made itself known, or taken herself far away from anyone she cared for?If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    Had nothing happened, she¡¯d be seeing lights between the trees, now; light carried far over the snow. She¡¯d be able to follow the lights home. For a second, she imagined Erika busy in the kitchen, Asrun working at maths at the table, her father grumbling behind the newspaper. Then she made it to the edge of the clearing.


    The house still stood there. She wasn¡¯t sure what she¡¯d expected. Police tape still clung to the entrances, the driveway. She walked over to the old swing set and sat down, not bothering to wipe the snow away. She¡¯d keep vigil here, she decided, at least a few hours was what she owed them. Wet cold seeped into the back of her jeans. May wondered if they¡¯d already been buried, or were kept in a morgue somewhere, how much of Asrun had rotted away before she¡¯d frozen. She¡¯d be buried beneath the snow, now; May hoped that wherever she was she was at least warm. She really, really wanted to cry.


    There were voices coming up the road. Young voices. May cursed under her breath and buried herself in the shadows, zipping back towards the treeline. They spat her back out - without seeping into her, thank the gods - and she leaned against one of the trees, watching.


    ¡®I bet it¡¯s haunted!¡¯ one of the kids exclaimed. There were four ¨C three boys and a girl, maybe twelve, thirteen years old. The one who¡¯d spoken looked excited, the other three terrified. May observed as they got closer to the house, anger building up inside of her. It¡¯d hadn¡¯t even been two months and they were already treating death as a fun way to pass the time?


    One of the boys shrieked. May froze ¨C had he seen her? No ¨C he¡¯d noticed the swing still moving, her footsteps leading up to them. And then none leaving. Oh. The others laughed at him in their nerves, as though nothing was wrong. They whispered between themselves, agitated. May couldn¡¯t hear. She wondered if she should slip into the shadows, glide up to them, listen in. She didn¡¯t dare. She heard Thorn¡¯s warnings resonate in her brain - you¡¯ll kill again ¨C and maybe the shadows leaking into her veins had triggered it. It was only now that she realised just how dark it was out here ¨C how many dark corners, drawn out shadows there were. Fear build up in her stomach. What would those kids do if they saw her? What if the recognized her? What would she do? Could she do it again, so soon, without warning? Would she?


    Panicking, May stepped backwards. One of the kids must¡¯ve seen the movement, because he turned his head and they locked eyes. Her heart stopped. She stood frozen, terrified. But the kid turned around again, speaking to his friends in a rapid, excited voice, and May didn¡¯t wait to find out what they¡¯d do. She backed away, heart thumping in her chest. Wandering home through the woods she imagined bloody entrails in the snow, thick red blood spilling out of pale throats. She tried to feel disgusted at the images, but some small part of her exclaimed the kids would have deserved it, desecrating her family¡¯s house like that. That thought frightened her. Was this what the dark had left inside of her, in the tunnels? Was it rotting there, lying in wait for exactly the right moment?


    When May came home, Thorn was already in bed. He heard her stomp in, felt her distressed yanking on the shadows. He didn¡¯t think she knew that she was doing it. Where¡¯d she been, that she returned so shaken? He stared blankly at his ceiling. Maybe she¡¯d woken up too soon, and that¡¯s why he hadn¡¯t died yet, either? He couldn¡¯t recall feeling this amount of distress around his own change.


    The notion that perhaps his numbness wasn¡¯t entirely caused by the shadows didn¡¯t cross his mind.


    He heard the shower start. Had she already picked up his habits, turning the water up too hot despite not feeling the heat? Breathing in the steam, willing it to burn her lungs, even if it never registered? Whatever she was doing, it must have soothed her some, for the yanking and pushing became a little more contained. Still shaky, though - was she crying?


    Then, it wasn¡¯t just May¡¯s presence any more, in his too-small attic apartment. Had she taken someone, something home with her? There was a movement in the darkness, an undercurrent in the shadows on the walls and between his sheets, between his hair. He pulled his mind together, unwilling to let anything of him slip past his borders. It was coming for him, creeping onto his bed; silken strands of black waved around him. Was this it? Would they murder him here, in his bed, an utterly boring death for an unwilling servant?


    No, he thought, and was surprised by the strength of it; he wouldn¡¯t lay back and die, not like this, not with that near broken girl in his shower. He pushed, but they would not leave him. These were not the shadows he controlled, not those mundane shadows cast by objects or people. They were something more, some other being¡¯s mental tendrils, twisting and controlling him and he knew he could scream all he wanted, thrash around as if possessed; but he would always lose.


    They did not kill him, no. They crawled into him instead, into his veins and nerves and spine. His skin blackened, the small veins in his eyes turned a sickening gray, and the twilight of his bedroom took on a deeper, somehow blacker darkness. He felt no pain, just a deepening of that terrible, horrible cold that never truly left him any more. And then they were gone, as easily as they had come; but the dark had deposited something inside of him, something that tugged and itched and yanked. Thorn knew then he would not die.


    Someone else, however, would.


    He lay gasping, staring at his ceiling, before the dark led him into a fitful, restless sleep.

 3.1

    It was truly winter by then, and darkness had descended over Threoo like a flock of crows onto the treetops. The sun seemed a fantasy, a sweet lie to ease the cold night, appearing only in the hint of dawn that teased the horizon around noon. Thorn was always so, so cold, but that smooth ache was familiar by now. The years had been long, and the old skugabor wasn¡¯t afraid to face another winter. In his veins, however, an itch was brewing. He¡¯d awoken strangely elated at the prospect of not dying, but it was muted by the tingling of his bones. His nerves were on fire, the burning progressing too fast, and it unsettled him.


    It was saturday morning, and Thorn was debating how to ask May to leave for the night - he could not have his band realise he was hosting a murder suspect on his couch - when his phone rang. It buzzed angrily against his thigh. It had to be Abigail, and Abigail¡¯s calls always spelled bad news - they weren¡¯t exactly on friendly speaking terms. He picked up.


    ¡®Abigail,¡¯ he said, ¡®Morning.¡¯


    ¡®Thorn,¡¯ she greeted him. She sounded as if she had a stuffed nose. ¡®We found the girl.¡¯


    For a moment Thorn didn¡¯t understand which girl Abigail was talking about.


    ¡®Oh,¡¯ he said then. ¡®May¡¯s sister?¡¯


    ¡®Foster sister, yeah.¡¯


    Silence.


    ¡®She¡¯s dead, isn¡¯t she?¡¯ Thorn asked. He was pacing the apartment, restless like a caged bear, eyeing the frozen forest outside his kitchen window. In his veins an itch refused to be silenced, too hard to ignore despite only being ignited hours ago.


    ¡®Skygge found her, Thorn. She¡¯s miles away from the house, under half a meter of snow.¡¯


    That surprised him. ¡®Skygge found her?¡¯


    ¡®Walking his sister¡¯s dog out in the woods, apparently.¡¯


    ¡®Skygge? In the morning? On a weekend?¡¯


    ¡®I know, it doesn¡¯t sit right with me either,¡¯ Abigail said. ¡®But they¡¯ve got her, at least. Can put the poor thing to rest. Tell May, will you? I don¡¯t think I¡¯ve got her number.¡¯


    With that, Abigail hung up on him, and Thorn cursed. She hadn¡¯t even told him where they¡¯d found the girl¡¯s body. It would¡¯ve been frozen, he imagined, blue with blackened bloodstains around her throat and wrists. Had she fled so far from the house even the dogs couldn¡¯t find her? It hadn¡¯t snowed yet, in September, not deep enough to hide a body. Where the fuck had she been?


    May. May would want to know. But he had no way to reach her. He hadn¡¯t seen her all day, despite her restless yanking at the shadows in the shower. Was she okay? He should¡¯ve spoken to her. Asked her what had happened - but the dark had not allowed him to. Frustrated, he started pulling knots out of his hair.


    When she got home, Thorn¡¯d been staring at the clocks hands for over an hour, something he otherwise didn¡¯t do until the day before a kill. Usually he tried to force time backwards, but today he was willing it to go faster, willing it to hurry the fuck up and get it over with.


    ¡®Where¡¯ve you been?¡¯ he said, and immediately regretted it. May walked into the kitchen, soft flakes of melting snow covering her hair and shoulders. She raised her eyebrows.


    ¡®Can¡¯t I go out anymore?¡¯ she said, and Thorn could almost hear the sarcastic dad? at the end of that sentence.


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry,¡¯ he said. He stood up. ¡®I didn¡¯t mean it that way. They got Asrun, May.¡¯


    ¡®They what now?¡¯


    ¡®She¡¯s dead. Skygge found her body somewhere out in the woods.¡¯


    Slowly, May took her gloves off, placing them perfectly side by side on the countertop.


    ¡®What are they doing to her?¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t know. Abigail didn¡¯t say,¡¯ Thorn said.


    May opened her mouth to ask something, but she was cut short by the sharp ringing of his doorbell.


    The two skugabor stood staring at each other for a long, terrifying moment, until a voice Thorn recognised as Skygge¡¯s came, muffled, from behind his door.


    ¡®Thorn? Mate? I need to talk to you. Thomas isn¡¯t here and I found someone in the forest this morning and - I don¡¯t know what to do. ¡¯


    ¡®Does he know?¡¯ May mouthed to Thorn, but he motioned for her to shut up.


    ¡®Coming!¡¯ Thorn yelled back, and said to May in a softer voice, ¡®Hide in the bedroom. Be quiet. He doesn¡¯t know.¡¯


    Wondering how on earth everything that could¡¯ve gone wrong had culminated at this exact moment right inside his apartment, he went for the front door. The moment May shut his bedroom door, the vocalist opened his front door to let Skygge in.


    ¡®Hey,¡¯ he said. ¡®What the hell happened?¡¯


    Wordlessly, Skygge walked into Thorn¡¯s house and sank down on the couch. His normally tied back hair hung unbrushed and loose past his shoulders, and Thorn could tell he was wearing the shirt he¡¯d slept in.


    ¡®I found that girl that went missing in September,¡¯ Skygge said. Mud and snow clung to his boots.


    ¡®How the hell did you manage that?¡¯ Thorn said, walking past the bedroom where he knew May to be listening.


    ¡®Went out this morning. Promised Ann I¡¯d walk her dogs while she¡¯s away. She was just¡­ there. In the snow. Thirteen, fourteen, all torn up and frozen.¡¯


    Why was Skygge eyeing Thorn so strangely? Had he noticed May¡¯s gloves on the countertop, the extra mugs in the sink, her bedding tucked away behind the couch?


    ¡®Are you okay?¡¯ Thorn sat down on his desk chair, and turned round to face the blonde man.


    Skygge shrugged. ¡®Just glad she¡¯s found, honestly.¡¯


    So what was he doing here?


    ¡®Shook me up a little, though, and with Thom being out¡­¡¯Skygge said.


    ¡®Yeah,¡¯ Thorn said. An uneasy silence stretched out between the two men.


    ¡®Didn¡¯t you have to take pictures? For the cops?¡¯


    Thorn shook his head. Abby never called on him for skugabor kills.


    ¡®What fucked me over, Thorn, it looked like some¡­ animal had killed her. She was all torn up and yet mile and miles away from the road. She looked like hell. So I called the cops and they came and they acted like it was perfectly normal and nothing out of the ordinary and zipped her up in a body bag.¡¯


    Yeah. They did that, on these kinds of unnatural kills, the kind that needed covering up and forgetting. Thorn wished he could tell the bassist that, but he also knew that people who knew skugabor secrets rarely lived very long.


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.So Thorn made coffee, and the two men talked, first about death and murder and then about band business and then about nothing, the way friends can. By the time Skygge got up to leave, promising to come back tonight with the rest of the band, Thorn had learned nothing interesting apart from where exactly Asrun had died. Only when Skygge was opening his front door, letting in the icy wind, did he speak up.


    ¡®Who¡¯s been sleeping here, Thorn?¡¯ the bassist set, casual as can be.


    Thorn raised his eyebrows. ¡®Picked up some German girl from Dyst the other night. I think she¡¯s forgotten her gloves.¡¯


    As he went to close the door, Skygge zipped up his jacket and smiled.


    ¡®Why on earth are you taking home girls that want to sleep on the couch?¡¯


    Before Thorn could react, the younger man was halfway down the stairs. The vocalist swore under his breath and closed the door behind him, before turning around and opening the bedroom door. May was curled up in his bed, asleep.


    ¡®Well then,¡¯ the old skugabor said to himself. ¡®See that, Skygge? She isn¡¯t sleeping on the couch.¡¯


    He walked over to the bed, put his hand on her shoulder to wake her up. May opened her eyes and blinked against the light.


    When May woke up, Thorn standing right next to her, she realized something was wrong. It wasn¡¯t the usual tugging on her mind by shadows in the distance, or the cold that so easily crept into her bones and lungs. There was an itch somewhere between her heart and her guts, buried so deep inside of her that she couldn¡¯t possibly scratch. It wasn¡¯t entirely unfamiliar. She¡¯d felt it before, months ago, sometime in September.


    She streched, trying to shake off the unease.


    ¡®You awake?¡¯ Thorn said.


    ¡®Obviously,¡¯ May said. She yawned. ¡®Gods, I haven¡¯t slept in a bed in months. Is Skygge gone?¡¯


    ¡®Yeah. I think he noticed someone else is living here, though.¡¯


    ¡®How bad is that?¡¯


    ¡®People who ask questions don¡¯t live very long,¡¯ Thorn said. ¡®And I¡¯ve been itching like mad. I don¡¯t know why it¡¯s this extreme this time, but I¡¯m not going to last much longer and I don¡¯t know what I¡¯d do to myself if I¡¯d murder Skygge.¡¯


    May thought she knew. The vocalist was wearing a short sleeved t-shirt, and she could see lines and lines of old scars crossing his arms. She also knew she should tell him about the needles prickling her insides, but she couldn¡¯t bring herself to say the words.


    ¡®Abigail knows, doesn¡¯t she?¡¯ May said. The man still hadn¡¯t filled her in on why, exactly, Abigail got to know. ¡®She¡¯s very much alive even if she¡¯s not helping either of us.¡¯


    ¡®Abigail has old blood even if not by birth. She has her role, even if she¡¯s shit at it.¡¯


    ¡®Thorn, you shouldn¡¯t be alive either with me here, should you? Things have changed. Maybe nothing will happen.¡¯


    Thorn shook his head. Had she guessed he should have died? ¡®Get dressed. Skygge told me where he found Asrun. She¡¯ll be gone by now, but I suppose you¡¯d like to see the place?¡¯


    ¡®Yeah,¡¯ May said. ¡®I¡¯d like that.¡¯


    Like wasn¡¯t the right word, entirely; the thin girl still had a mountain of guilt eating away at her mind like a trapped animal gnawing at its own leg. There was a certain desperation in her hunt for knowledge, a faint hope that maybe she¡¯d find some old book or manuscript that¡¯d tell her she could stop this. Yet there hadn¡¯t been anything interesting in the archives that¡¯d never let her down before.


    ¡®What do you hope to find, exactly?¡¯ Thorn said as May slipped on a pair of his old jeans.


    ¡®I want to say goodbye,¡¯ May said. ¡®And see if there¡¯s any significance in where she died.¡¯


    ¡®She was fleeing, May, she was probably just trying to get as far away from you as possible.¡¯


    ¡®I know that, but why didn¡¯t she follow the road? She could¡¯ve gone into Slakshaven, found help.¡¯


    ¡®She was bleeding out, I doubt she was thinking straight. The kid was fourteen.¡¯


    ¡®I know,¡¯ May said. ¡®I¡¯m grasping at straws.¡¯


    Outside, the forest was coated in a strange twilight, the ankle deep snow reflecting every bit of light the moon managed to produce. May enjoyed the crunch of it beneath her boots. There was no one else here, no dog walkers or playing children, despite the weekend. The skugabor didn¡¯t bother following the path - they could find their way back if they had to, with the way the shadows produced a slow, steady heartbeat in the direction of the city. The dark seemed to move in rhythm with the itching in May¡¯s body. She wanted to tell Thorn. She really, honestly did.


    But May stayed silent, unsure why, and the two walked beneath the trees, each deep in their own thoughts. She looked at Thorn from the corner of her eye, wondering how often he¡¯d had to kill, how many murders she¡¯d be responsible for. The girl hoped death sentences weren¡¯t doled out randomly on the freezing islands. She¡¯d felt such a consciousness somewhere in the dark, in the creeping tendrils in the tunnels. Would a being like that kill at random? No; skugabor must serve some purpose, to that darkness, at least. Perhaps not so much to the people that lived here.


    ¡®Thorn?¡¯ she said, ¡®Do you know why you kill the people you kill?¡¯


    The man didn¡¯t answer for a long time. ¡®Not always.¡¯


    ¡®But do you think there is a reason?¡¯


    ¡®I have to believe that.¡¯


    He didn¡¯t say anything else, and May shut up too. There had to be a reason, although she couldn¡¯t fathom what Asrun, fourteen years old and terrified, had done to deserve freezing in the woods.


    When finally they reached the place where her sister had died, there was no trace of her left other than a chaotic display of old footsteps in the snow. They would be gone by morning. May didn¡¯t know what she¡¯d expected. There was nothing here, except the tall pines, and the soft moonlight that cast deep shadows among the trees. Thorn stayed back as she circled the small clearing. She reached out to the shadows, morphing them, making them dance for her; and yet nothing would betray to her what had happened here.


    ¡®Maybe,¡¯ May said, ¡®It really just was me.¡¯


    Thorn shook his head, appearing beside her. He put his hand on her shoulder. The weight of it kept her grounded, and May sighed.


    ¡®I have questions,¡¯ Thorn said. ¡®What was Skygge doing here, exactly?¡¯


    May turned around. ¡®Walking his sister¡¯s dogs?¡¯


    ¡®Miles and miles from the path? There¡¯s nothing here; it was way below zero. And then he shows up at my doorstep telling me it fucked him over but not enough to even make him sound unnerved?¡¯


    ¡®Fair. Still, what¡¯s he doing here then?¡¯


    ¡®Maybe he was going somewhere. Maybe he was looking for something.¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯re worried about him, aren¡¯t you?¡¯


    Thorn didn¡¯t answer. May let it go, glad the man felt something other than the pain and frustration he radiated.

 3.2

    ¡®Need a cigarette?¡¯ the vocalist asked May, lighting up himself.


    ¡®I don¡¯t smoke,¡¯ May said automatically.


    ¡®They¡¯re not the nicotine kind, they warm you up,¡¯ Thorn said, but May just shrugged and he left it at that. The two skugabor walked around the small clearing where Asrun had been found, in wider and wider circles. Soon, their footsteps were the only ones in the snow. Thorn inhaled long drags of heat, blowing out the smoke towards the clouds. They were dark, close enough to the pines to merge with the soft fog. Whatever Skygge had been there for, this deep in the woods, Thorn didn¡¯t think the bassist had found it. The old skugabor didn¡¯t know this part of the forest, and couldn¡¯t tell if there were paths beneath the snow. May remained silent, eyes set on the horizon. There was an odd quiet between the dark pines, as if the clouds, hanging low and thick with rain, were absorbing even the sound of their footsteps in the snow.


    ¡®You feel that?¡¯ May said suddenly.


    ¡®What?¡¯ Thorn said, stretching out the tendrils of his mind through the shadows. Nothing, absolutely nothing, except the collective heartbeat of Slakshaven in the distance.


    ¡®Exactly,¡¯ the younger skugabor said. ¡®Slakshaven is to my back. That means that I should notice we¡¯re approaching Klipvegen. It¡¯s large enough that we should be feeling it, right?¡¯


    ¡®Yes,¡¯ Thorn said. Klipvegen was more than large enough to should be noticeable.


    ¡®But there¡¯s nothing in that direction. Nothing at all. It feels like it did when I was human.¡¯


    It was true, the man realized. He hadn¡¯t felt that in a long time, and started in the direction May had indicated. She walked beside him, with long, quick strides.


    ¡®Have you ever felt anything like that?¡¯ she said.


    ¡®Nothing. Never.¡¯ Thorn wondered if it was possible he¡¯d never been on this part of the island, had instinctively stayed away from this blank space. It felt wrong, to him, as if all sound had suddenly dissapeared from the world.


    Unconsciously he sped up, until they were surrounded by nothingness and dark, towering pines. Thorn shivered, and tried not to show the fear that had crept up on him. He¡¯d lost a sense that felt natural to him.


    ¡®I feel like I¡¯m blind,¡¯ May said.


    ¡®Do you want to go back?¡¯ Thorn said, wishing she¡¯d say yes.


    ¡®No. If Skygge was going here and Asrun, too, maybe we¡¯ll find answers.¡¯


    If Skygge had purposefully gone here the bassist was in over his head, and suddenly Thorn doubted the fire slowly consuming his bones was destined to cause Skygge¡¯s death. If his friend knew what this place was, he should¡¯ve been dead a long time ago.


    Thorn found himself at the treeline, at the border of a large clearing. He could see the sky again, with it¡¯s sickening green and purple storm clouds. A ruined building stood in the middle of the snowed-over field. It cast a large shadow, devoid of any life, not even omnious intentions radiating from it. No road led up to the crumbling ruins; no footsteps marked the snow. May halted beside him.


    ¡®What is that?¡¯ she said, staring at the white stoned ruins. Moss-covered arches supported crumbling walls, and thick vines of ivy covered the uneven stones.


    ¡®I don¡¯t know.¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯s absolutely ancient,¡¯ May said, awe in her voice. ¡®It doesn¡¯t look very Threooese, though. More continental¡­¡¯


    She started to cross the clearing, and Thorn had to hurry to keep up with her. Too quickly they reached the doorway, its stone arch without door and revealing a small courtyard.


    ¡®1024 AD,¡¯ she said, nodding at the engraved arch. ¡®Ancient it is. How on earth didn¡¯t I know this existed?¡¯


    ¡®What is it?¡¯


    ¡®A cloister,¡¯ May said, laying a hand on the moss-covered rocks. ¡®It¡¯s mentioned in the history books, but I always assumed no one had ever found it.¡¯


    ¡®It¡¯s right here in the middle of the forest. There¡¯s no way no one knows it exists.¡¯


    May looked at the older skugabor. ¡®We live right in Slakshaven, Thorn. No one knows we exist. I¡¯d say something is off here, too.¡¯


    ¡®What¡¯s it doing here, then? There¡¯s one bloody church in Threoo and it¡¯s a museum. Why is there a cloister here?¡¯


    ¡®It wasn¡¯t used for very long,¡¯ May said, ¡®Christian missonaries ran the island for a few decades, but they were kicked off the island within the century.¡¯


    ¡®So what does this place have to do with us?¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t think it¡¯s the cloister,¡¯ May said, ¡®It¡¯s the soil. They tended to build their churches and whatnot on old pagan sites.¡¯


    She walked into the old courtyard, where the forest had taken hold; young pines and small shrubs grew from between the broken tiles. In the center, descendants of herbs the nuns must have grown grew without constraint. Bright red berries peaked up from the snow.


    Still, Thorn could sense nothing; no matter how hard he pushed at his mental borders, tried to force out the tendrils of his consciousness; there was nothing.Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.


    ¡®I really think we shouldn¡¯t be here,¡¯ he said.


    ¡®Too fucking bad,¡¯ May said. ¡®That¡¯s my sisters¡¯ body they pulled out of the snow. Go back if you want to.¡¯


    Thorn considered it, if only for a second, but mentally kicked himself in the shins for it. May wasn¡¯t waiting for him, and marched across the courtyard, towards the cast iron gate that led deeper into the building. It wasn¡¯t locked, and made no noise when she opened it. It opened as smoothly as Thorn¡¯s own front door. But the hallway behind it was dusty, and moss grew on the walls; there was no light. It had been decades since Thorn had been well and truly blind in full darkness. He didn¡¯t like it one bit, but followed. Guiding herself with one hand on the wall, May walked into the building until she stumbled against the first step of wooden, half-rotten stairs. The man swallowed a new complaint when she tentavily went up, testing each plank before putting her weight on it. He heard every noise the creaking building produced; every bird setting foot on its roof, every sigh of settling, rotting wood.


    Against his better judgement, he kept going. The planks were unsteady beneath his feet, bowing to his weight, threatening to give way. Soon, the dark behind him swallowed the floor, rendering him blind. He¡¯d forgotten how naked one felt in the dark. How vunerable a human body was. How easy it was to stumble, as May then did, falling forward with a sharp cry of surprise.


    ¡®I¡¯m okay!¡¯ she said, and swore, climbing back onto her feet. ¡®There¡¯s a landing here.¡¯


    Slower, Thorn felt his way along the hall. When he looked back, he could see the faint twilight emerging from the entryway, much further down than he thought they¡¯d come. May dissapeared into the dark ahead of him, footsteps echouing through the building.


    ¡®Thorn?¡¯ she said, and he followed her, every step forming clouds of dust in the air.


    With careful steps they made their way across the hallway. There were holes in the floorboards here, each revealing their own, endless abyss. He feared slipping and falling and being unable to catch himself in a shadow, falling and falling and perhaps never crashing against a floor. His eyes should have gotten used to the dark, but its thick, liquid darkness was impossible to see through.


    Then, after balancing past hole after hole, the soft sound of an opening door on well-oiled hinges and there was twilight again. The skugabor found themselves in the doorway of a large room, with holes in both roof and wooden floorboards. Dust danced in the low moonlight. The remains of sparse furniturne laid fallen beside the walls; an old table with two-and-a-half legs, a metal jug on it¡¯s side, a wooden, fallen cross. Shivers rippled along Thorn¡¯s spine. Had he wandered into the domain of some foreign god?


    The walls were of rough, hewn stone, perhaps from the quarry near Klipvegen - but the backwall was brick and plaster, and from it missed three bricks, square in the center. From here, an even deeper dark radiated into the room. Thorn started towards it, carefully avoiding the gaping holes beneath his feet, watching, fascinated, as thick silken lines of black dripped from the hole. Ones he could not feel or reach in to.


    ¡®Who comes here?¡¯ a voice came, creaking as the floorboards did.


    Thorn halted, foot in midair, May someplace behind him hidden by the dark.


    ¡®Child? Is that you?¡¯ it said, ¡®It is not yet time.¡¯


    ¡®What do we do?¡¯ May whispered, not quietly enough, and behind the hole appeared a face so ancient, so absolutely battered with age that Thorn stepped back from its peering stare. The bloodshot, sunken eyes widened when their owner realized there were strangers here, and then radiated with such cold, iron menace that it struck Thorn right in his gut. He heard May cry out somewhere near the door, and the things¡¯ distrust and hate rippled through his organs and his blood and his nerves, and he turned and ran.


    ¡®Not you!¡¯ it screeched, ¡®Not you! Not you!¡¯


    The crying echoud in his ears as he ran. He heard May stumbling somewhere ahead of him, and then he was to the doorway near the stairs and it kept screeching and the floor gave way. His boots punched clean through the half rotten wood, and he fell and fell and thank the gods it stopped, then - stuck to his waist in filthy, old floorboards.


    He swore. The beings hate was punching at his mental borders, so much weaker in this place where he couldn¡¯t feel the shadows.


    ¡®Are you alright?¡¯ May said, hands under his armpits, yanking at him.


    ¡®No.¡¯ He shook his head, to clear the noise out, wood sticking into his ribs and stomach. He could feel his shirt rip, his skin tear, and his feet hanging in absolute nothing. He knew it was irrational, but he could feel the void beneath his boots, endless and ready to swallow him whole. He pushed at the wood and he came free; and he¡¯d later swear the screaming in the distance became even angrier. Thorn crawled onto the clearing. May stepped back, panting, and started down the stairs. The man followed, an arm around his bruised ribs, a barrage of inhuman pain bashing at his eardrums and mind. He was glad for his own hurt ribs, something other to focus on while he ran, fast as he dared, down the crumbling planks. May, in front of him, slipped. She caught herself on the mossy railing, pushed back onto her feet and ran into the twilight shining through that final doorway. Together they escaped onto the courtyard, and Thorn sharply kicked the metal gate shut.

 3.3

    ¡®What was that?¡¯ May said. They were walking home, in the foggy twilight beneath the pine trees, a bit quicker than strictly necessary.


    ¡®I don¡¯t know.¡¯ Thorn was still clutching his side.


    ¡®Should we slow down?¡¯ May said, ¡®How badly did you fuck your ribs up?¡¯


    Thorn shook his head. ¡®I want some space between me and that thing.¡¯


    May wasn¡¯t opposed to that, either. ¡®You felt it too, right?¡¯


    ¡®The despair? The pain, the hate, the full collection of dreadful emotions being hurled right at you?¡¯


    The girl nodded. ¡®I wonder what was done to her to feel like that.¡¯


    ¡®Her?¡¯


    May frowned. ¡®That¡¯s the idea I got, but I¡¯m not so sure why.¡¯


    ¡®You said it was a cloister, so that¡¯d mean nuns,¡¯ Thorn shrugged, then flinched.


    ¡®You sure you¡¯re okay?¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯ve had worse,¡¯ he said, and while May didn¡¯t doubt that, she also didn¡¯t consider that a very good reason to just deal with it.


    ¡®You think Skygge was going to the cloister?¡¯ Thorn said. May suspected him of trying to change the topic.


    ¡®I suppose,¡¯ May said, ¡®And maybe Asrun too. Gods know why.¡¯


    She didn¡¯t know what to think. Instead of answers, the two skugabor had only found more questions in the woods.


    It visibly hurt the vocalist to even climb the stairs to his apartment. May thanked several long-dead deities that they didn¡¯t run into any neighbours, and opened Thorn¡¯s front door. She eyed the clock in his hallway; it was nine thirty in the evening. Later than she¡¯d thought, but it¡¯d been a long walk, and the endless night threw her sense of time off.


    ¡®You need help with that?¡¯ she asked, as Thorn grabbed the battered first aid kit.


    ¡®Could you get me some painkillers?¡¯ he said, taking off his jacket. ¡®They¡¯re in the left kitchen drawer.¡¯


    ¡®Two?¡¯


    ¡®Ideally,¡¯ he said, and when May came back with the pink, glazed pills, Thorn was looking at his ribs in the mirror over the sink. His side was already showing blue and purple marks, and thick, half scabbed over cuts. It looked nearly like an oversized bite mark.


    The old skugabor appeared entirely unfazed.


    ¡®You alright?¡¯ She handed over the painkillers, and he downed them with a sip of water from the tap.


    ¡®I guess,¡¯ he said, dabbing at the cuts with iodine. He winced. May watched as his skin stained a dark yellow. ¡®Had worse.¡¯


    May leaned against the doorframe. It was the second time he¡¯d said that. ¡®That doesn¡¯t mean it doesn¡¯t hurt, though.¡¯


    The man sighed. ¡®Fair. It¡¯s a bitch and I¡¯ll be sore for a few days.¡¯


    There were footsteps in the hallway; and May realised they¡¯d left the front door open right as Skygge, with three others May didn¡¯t know in tow, appeared in the hallway.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ the bassist said, ¡®I suppose that explains why you missed band practice.¡¯


    His eyes shifted from May, to Thorn¡¯s battered, shirtless form as he appeared in the bathroom doorway.


    ¡®What the hell, Skygge,¡¯ the bruised man said. ¡®Can¡¯t you call? Or ring a bloody doorbell?¡¯


    ¡®I called four times and the front door was open,¡¯ the bassist said, a little too smug. ¡®Plus, we were supposed to hang here after.¡¯


    ¡®We were just worried,¡¯ one of the others, the only girl, said. May watchedd the shimmer of her lip piercing bob as she spoke. ¡®It¡¯s not like you to noshow.¡¯


    ¡®So what happened?¡¯ Skygge said.


    The two skugabor exchanged a glance. Thorn spoke up. ¡®Went into the woods, got lost, and slipped on a patch of ice.¡¯


    ¡®That must¡¯ve been a bad fall,¡¯ Skygge said, now eyeing May from the corner of his eye, through a curtain of dark blond hair.


    ¡®I¡¯m fine,¡¯ Thorn said, ¡®I¡¯ve had worse.¡¯


    May chuckled as he repeated himself once again, but then four sets of unfamiliar eyes set themselves on her. At once May remembered how big of a problem that was, and her blood tingled, with the promise of murder in her future.


    Should she introduce herself? Lie? Pretend to be Thorn¡¯s long lost cousin, a girl he met in Dyst, some neighbour who saw him stumble by and came up to help?


    ¡®This,¡¯ Thorn said before she could decide, ¡®is May.¡¯


    She¡¯d expected the hallway to erupt into chaos, into confusion and then fear; to be pelted with questions and accusations. But the others remained standing there, quiet, not even waiting for an explaination of who exactly she was.


    Not one of them seemed to realize this was May bloody Schroder, still looked for in the wake of the September murders.


    ¡®Hey,¡¯ the girl with the piercings said. ¡®Good to know Thorn has other friends.¡¯


    May raised her hand and forced herself to smile. The others - Skygge and a set of dark-haired twin men - returned the greeting. Didn¡¯t they remember? She¡¯d been in the news for weeks. This morning, Skygge had dug her sister¡¯s body out of the snow! And indeed, the bassist was eyeing her a little harder than the others. Yet he didn¡¯t try and call the cops, or accuse her of murder, or any of the other disastrous things that flashed before May¡¯s eyes. She crossed her arms.


    They ended up staying, and although Thorn grimaced every time he moved, none of his bandmates seemed to think that was a reason to leave early. May sat in Thorn¡¯s desk chair, the same near full beer in hand all evening, and observed. There was the girl, who introduced herself as R¨®s, short for some longer name May didn¡¯t quite catch. Then the two men, both guitarists, both with equally dark hair and who May couldn¡¯t tell apart for the life of her. It amazed her how simple the entire scene appeared to her. They seemed so normal, so carefree, just friends on a saturday night. It didn¡¯t occur to any of them - except maybe the blonde bassist - that perhaps something was wrong here. She could feel Skygge¡¯s eyes staring at her whenever she looked away from him.


    Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.When finally, they left, none of them commented about the fact that May wasn¡¯t leaving, even if she¡¯d hardly said a word all night.


    ¡®What was that?¡¯ she said and turned, when the others were good and far down the stairs and out of earshot.


    ¡®It was a bit of a gamble,¡¯ Thorn said, ¡®But they¡¯d already seen you here. It¡¯s a skugabor thing. People forget.¡¯


    ¡®They forget you exist?¡¯


    ¡®They forget something¡¯s wrong. They forget you¡¯re a threat. They¡¯ll forget us, too, eventually. If I¡¯d leave now and come back in two years none of them would even recognize me.¡¯


    May walked back into the living room and sat down, cross legged, on the couch. She swallowed.


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry,¡¯ Thorn said, ¡®I shouldn¡¯t have thrown it at you like that. It¡¯s a hell of a thing to realise.¡¯


    ¡®I should¡¯ve expected it.¡¯ She was strangely unbothered by the whole thing. ¡®Every bit of me that gets loose evaporates into nothing. It¡¯s no so strange that the memory of me should fade too.¡¯


    She didn¡¯t care, she told herself. It didn¡¯t matter. She did not care. It didn¡¯t change things.


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry,¡¯ Thorn repeated, and May knew the man wasn¡¯t referring to his band mates.


    He sat down next to her, on that threadbare, ancient couch of his, and they sat in silence for a long time.


    Despite the slow torment of a fire taking it¡¯s time to eat away at his bones and muscle, Thorn bothered getting up the next day. He was sitting on the kitchen table, amid yesterday¡¯s empty beer cans he had yet to clean up. He had mug of tepid, black coffee resting on his legs, and he¡¯d been debating for the past hour whether or not he should call Abigail.


    He still hadn¡¯t spoken to her. She hadn¡¯t called him for work in weeks. He knew Abigail despised him, and he also knew she had good reason. He¡¯d also known her since she was a teenager, and wished she had a little more compassion - not that he deserved it.


    ¡®What is it?¡¯ May said. She was curled up on the couch, still waking up.


    ¡®Hmm?¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯re worried about something,¡¯ she said, ¡®You¡¯re frowning and staring at your own reflection. Is it the itch?¡¯


    ¡®No,¡¯ he said, and turned to look at her. Now that she¡¯d mentioned it, it crept up from his feet to his legs to his hips, setting his nerves alight on the way up. ¡®I¡¯m out of cigarettes.¡¯


    ¡®So go get some?¡¯


    ¡®They¡¯re not tobacco ones,¡¯ he said, ¡®Abigail grows the plant. They warm you up a little. I¡¯ve offered them to you before, haven¡¯t I?¡¯


    ¡®Right,¡¯ May said, ¡®So go to Abigail?¡¯


    He shrugged, felt his bruised ribs protest. ¡®I don¡¯t think Abigail wants me around. She hasn¡¯t called since September, except when they found Asrun. And she wanted you, not me, then.¡¯


    May stood up, and stretched. She¡¯d slept wearing one of his larger shirts. It was more of a dress on her.


    ¡®Did she say she doesn¡¯t want to see you?¡¯ She walked over to the coffee machine and poured herself a cup. ¡®Maybe she just doesn¡¯t know what to say. She did think you were going to die.¡¯


    ¡®Fine,¡¯ he said, although he doubted May was right. ¡®I¡¯ll call her, at least.¡¯


    ¡®You know,¡¯ May said, sipping her coffee, ¡®I don¡¯t think you¡¯ve ever told me why Abigail gets to know and not die over it.¡¯


    Thorn tied his hair back, and swallowed. ¡®Traditionally, skugabor have a¡­ helper of sorts? It¡¯s a family thing. Passes on. Abigail¡¯s foster mother, Sigrin, she was there where I turned. Helped me cope, set me up with a place to live, temporary jobs, something to keep busy. She was barely older than me at the time, maybe twenty. She couldn¡¯t have kids though. Fostered dozens until Abigail showed interest in the whole¡­ unnatural thing.¡¯


    May eyed him carefully, as if she knew he was leaving something out. Damn it al. He didn¡¯t have to spill all his secrets to her.


    Thorn stood up, poured out his tepid coffee in the sink, and retrieved his cell phone from his bedroom. He stood for a long time hovering his thumb above the bright green call symbol. When he finally did call, it took Abigail equally long to pick up.


    ¡®Hey,¡¯ he said.


    ¡®Thorn,¡¯ she said. ¡®Is everything alright? What is it?¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m¡­ okay, considering,¡¯ he said. ¡®We¡¯re out of cigarettes.¡¯


    ¡®Oh,¡¯ Abigail said, perhaps having expected something more. ¡®Stop by later, then. I got a batch ready.¡¯


    She hung up, and Thorn stood there for a while, phone to his ear.


    The two skugabor left moments later. It was dark out, despite the white snow falling steadily towards the ground. It was cold, too; an icy chill clung to the wind, a chill that blew right through Thorn¡¯s layers and layers of clothes. Abigail didn¡¯t live close, but with the shadow¡¯s second heartbeat twisting at his guts, Thorn couldn¡¯t bear the thought of slipping into the darkness. May didn¡¯t complain, so they walked, out of Slakshaven.


    The pair followed a winding, asphalt road uphill. The snow was thick here, un bothered by the sparse tire tracks. The moon was hidden by thick, dark blue clouds, and there was no moon. Finally, in the distance, lights appeared; a lonely beacon in the vast night that had come over Threoo. Not a single car had passed them on the way. Had they turned, Slakshaven would have lain below them, with it¡¯s thousands and thousands of flecks of light.


    ¡®Is that her house?¡¯ May asked.


    ¡®Yes,¡¯ Thorn said.


    It wasn¡¯t quite true. When they reached the garden gate - thick bushes of rosemary on either side - the small name plate still said Sigrin M¨¢gnusdottir, with a smaller inscription of Abigail¡¯s name beneath it. Thorn touched the plate while he walked past it. How often had he come here, the sole house in Threoo where he¡¯d been welcome? Now, he was uncertain if he should have come at all.

 3.4

    May rang the doorbell before Thorn could voice his doubts, and Abigail opened the door. Her eyes moved from the older skugabor to the younger and back.


    ¡®Hello,¡¯ she said, ¡®get inside. You¡¯re letting the cold in.¡¯


    He¡¯d nearly backed away again, but May followed Abigail into the home and Thorn couldn¡¯t stay behind. Here, a familiar hallway; the cold tile floors, the large kitchen, the wood stove every foster kid burned their fingers on - but only once. He hadn¡¯t been here since the night Sigrin died.


    Gods, the memories. He wished those would fade, over the years, the way people¡¯s memories of him eroded. Abigail and May had dissapeared further into the house. The attached shed was behind the kitchen, and that was where Abigail, and Sigrin, and her father before her had kept all their supplies. He didn¡¯t think that would have changed.


    He reached out and touched the wooden table. It was old, but not the way his possesions were always battered and broken and frayed. This table had been here for generations without complaint, and would be here longer still. He¡¯d sat here, long ago.


    Gods, he¡¯d been so young, then. Seventeen and absolutely shattered. He¡¯d never been off his island before, and Slakshaven seemed so big and so loud. The main island had been too large; had too many places where he couldn¡¯t see the sea. And there¡¯d been the guilt. That towering mountain of guilt.


    There were no kids, then, with Sigrin barely in her twenties and with so much hope still. How that had changed. How it had all come crashing down. He ran a hand through his hair, wet with molten snow and full of knots. He hadn¡¯t brushed his hair this morning. Had been too busy staving off the itch.


    He¡¯d come here, running, the first time he woke up with those now familiar ants marching through his veins. He¡¯d sunk against the wall. Had he cried? Probably. He couldn¡¯t quite remember. But he had known he would kill again, and yet it had completely fucked him over when it did.


    He loathed remembering all of this. With quick steps, he followed May and Abigail into the shed. In low light, the pair stood as far apart as the small space would allow. Dried bundles of leafy plants were drying on the ceiling, and a small but overstocked bookcase dominated the back wall.


    ¡®-I can¡¯t find anything useful in the archives,¡¯ May said-was that where she¡¯d been all those nights?-and Abigail was grinding up a dried plant in a large, stone mortar and pestle.


    ¡®Someone¡¯s censoring that,¡¯ Abigail said. ¡®I don¡¯t know who, though. Mom did it, but I never bothered. Wonder who, then¡­¡¯


    ¡®Could be anyone,¡¯ Thorn said, ¡®Family trees are weird, here.¡¯


    Abigail froze for a moment, and Thorn pretended he didn¡¯t notice


    ¡®Yeah,¡¯ she agreed, ¡®Plently of people related to Sigrin in some way. Could be any of us foster kids, too.¡¯


    She finished crumbling up the plant, and tilted the bowl¡¯s content into a paper bag. It looked like a few months¡¯ worth, but she handed it to May rather than Thorn. Then she looked back at him.


    ¡®How are you?¡¯ she said, and there was a second question beneath that, one he didn¡¯t quite catch. It was unsettling, that missed subtext.


    ¡®I¡¯m¡­¡¯ itching? Tired? Cold? Not dead, somehow? ¡®Alright, considering.¡¯


    Abigail turned to look at him, leaning back with her hands on her wooden table. ¡®Considering?¡¯


    Thorn shrugged. His ribs protested. ¡®The itch is back.¡¯


    How often had he spoken those words, in this house, this shed? To Sigrin, to Abigail? Never before had Abigail frozen, like she did now, at those words, with confusion in her dark eyes.


    ¡®What do you mean, the itch is back?¡¯ she said, ¡®Will you die at the end of it?¡¯


    A possibility he hadn¡¯t even considered. ¡®I don¡¯t think so.¡¯


    He stuck he hands deeper in his pockets. Neither of the skugabor had taken their coats off.


    ¡®I don¡¯t understand,¡¯ Abigail said, ¡®Weren¡¯t you supposed to die? When May showed up?¡¯


    ¡®I thought so,¡¯ Thorn said, ¡®But here I am.¡¯


    Abigail, speechless, shook her head. He continued.


    ¡®It came for me a few nights ago,¡¯ he said, ¡®The dark. And the thing in it. I don¡¯t see it that¡­excited very often, and before that I¡¯d wanted to roll over and die like Helga did, but May-¡¯


    He hesitated, and the younger skugabor raised her eyebrows.


    ¡®I can¡¯t leave her alone to face this,¡¯ he told Abigail, ¡®It¡¯s the only bloody thing about this situation I can change. I won¡¯t let her go through hell alone if I¡¯ve got a say in it.¡¯


    This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. ¡®What about all the people you¡¯ll kill?¡¯ Abigail said. She¡¯d steeled herself, straightened her spine and lifted her chin. ¡®What about their hell?¡¯


    ¡®If I don¡¯t kill them, May will.¡¯


    ¡®You don¡¯t know that!¡¯ Abigail said, ¡®What if you¡¯re going to murder double the people together and this time it will be your choice, Terji?¡¯


    Thorn took a step back. May looked back and forth the two others, and Thorn knew he should have told her a whole lot of things that he hadn¡¯t, but it was no use worrying about that now.


    ¡®Do you know how fucking selfish you are?¡¯ Abigail said, the heat of her anger radiating through the small space. ¡®You¡¯ve taken so much, Terji fucking Mjikkalssen, and now that it could finally be over you choose this?¡¯


    ¡®This is the only thing I can do right,¡¯ he said, but he didn¡¯t think that ever reached Abigail¡¯s ears.


    ¡®You¡¯ve taken so much from so many people,¡¯ she spat, ¡®And you¡¯ve taken so much from me.¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t want to hurt anyone, Abigail-¡¯


    ¡®Obviously you do! You could end it! Roll over, like Helga did! It¡¯s only right! I spend so much time going from foster home to foster home and they all told me call them mom and dad, only to kick me out in hardly a year-¡¯


    ¡®Abigail-¡¯ May tried, but the other cut her off.


    ¡®And then Sigrin took me in, and I never called her mom until her fucking funeral, Thorn!¡¯


    Wide eyed, May stared at him, and Abigail was panting, and Thorn felt as if the walls of the familiar house were crashing down on him.


    ¡®You say it wasn¡¯t you,¡¯ Abigail said, not cold, Gods, Thorn wished she would sound cold - but she was near crying, her red hot anger fading. ¡®You say it wasn¡¯t you, Thorn, but it bloody well were your nails and your teeth and your hands, weren¡¯t it?¡¯


    May looked at him in horror, and Abigail started sobbing, and Thorn tried not to remember. He¡¯d stuffed those memories deep down in his subconscious, where they only emerged on those summer nights where the sun wouldn¡¯t go down. The nightmares would leak in with the sunlight, then, and refuse to leave him until finally night would come again. He searched for an answer, desperate.


    ¡®Abigail, please, I never wanted to hurt anyone, let alone Sigrin-¡¯


    ¡®You killed her, Terji,¡¯ Abigail said, now calm despite her tears.


    ¡®I had no choice,¡¯ he said, sounding weak even to his own ears. It was true; but the guilt still gnawed at him, Gods, it had for decades, now.


    ¡®You have a choice now,¡¯ Abgail said, ¡®And you chose wrong. You should have died.¡¯


    That gods-damned itch was growing in his gut again, and he pushed it down. Not now. May opened her mouth to say something, but thought the better of it.


    ¡®I want you out,¡¯ Abigail said, hugging herself. ¡®I don¡¯t want you in my house again, Thorn. I don¡¯t care if you¡¯re out of fucking cigarettes, I don¡¯t care if you need help. Stay in the apartment, mom paid it off long before-¡¯


    She caught herself, now suddenly unable to spit out those words again.


    ¡®I¡¯m passing on your phone number to someone else for jobs,¡¯ Abigail said. ¡®Figure it out. Hell, do you even need the money? Do you even need to eat?¡¯


    ¡®We do,¡¯ May said, and started to leave.


    Thorn was still staring at Abigail. May pushed past him, into the kitchen.


    ¡®Do we really-¡¯


    ¡®Go, Thorn,¡¯ she said, shaking her head. She turned back around, steading herself against the table. Her shoulders were shaking when he followed May through the house, through that familiar kitchen, and back out into the cold.


    ¡®You could have told me,¡¯ May said, as Thorn closed the garden gate behind him and wondered if it was to be the last time.


    ¡®I was going to,¡¯ he said, ¡®I couldn¡¯t bring myself to it. I still can¡¯t think about it.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry,¡¯ she said, and then, softer: ¡®Do you know why you had to¡­ do that to Sigrin?¡¯


    Thorn shook his head, realized the girl probably couldn¡¯t see it in this weather, and added:


    ¡®If there¡¯s a reason, May, I¡¯ve never found it. She devoted most of her life to this; she taught Abigail; she did so much for me she didn¡¯t have to do.¡¯


    They walked in silence for a long time, back towards Slakshaven, its lights glimmering below them. Snow twisted around them, the strong winds pushed the clouds along the sky, and Thorn kept trying to push the memories away. Of Sigrin, alive and laughing, first twenty and then near sixty; and of her body, bloodied and broken and down at his feet.


    ¡®You know,¡¯ May said, when they eventually reached the city outskirts, ¡®I still have your bloody plant. If you still want it.¡¯

 4.1

    She could go out.


    She could go out and no one would recognize her or would hunt her down in the streets. No one remembered her. No one on the busy streets looked her in the eye. Not one of the people hurrying through the dark knew that she was May Schroder, murderer.


    It was strangely exhilarating to be forgotten.


    May had intended to go the cemetary when she left Thorn¡¯s attic that morning. See if Asrun had been buried yet, if someone was taking care of her family¡¯s snowed over graves. She desperately wanted to voice the guilt that had tortured her the entire period she spend in coma on Thorn¡¯s ratty couch.


    But, when she approached the cast iron gates, one creaking in the strong wind, she saw Abigail¡¯s purple-haired silhouette bend over a grave. For a moment May held still, gloved hand on one of the gates¡¯ bars. Should she go up to her? What was there to say? Certainly nothing that was appropriate above Sigrin¡¯s grave.


    With quiet regret, May walked past the entrance. She didn¡¯t want to speak to Abigail again, see that hurt again, feel so rightfully judged again.


    Despite the fact she¡¯d sided with Thorn, yesterday, she understood why Abigail had said those horrific words, still echoing in her ears.


    Where to then? There was no one to visit, no one above ground still. The archives, beneath the university? She could just walk in now, another faceless student in the halls, forgotten before she was out of the building again. But no. Before Thorn had declared he was to live, Abigail had told her all evidence of skugabor had been cut out of May¡¯s beloved archives. Even if those immensely valuable pages hadn¡¯t been burned or trashed or ripped and scattered on the wind, May hadn¡¯t a clue where to look for them.


    Should she go to Dyst? Find the booth where she used to write her essays, chatting with Oskar over the bar during the slow hours? Would he remember her, however vaguely? She shook her head to herself. No sense in digging up those memories if they¡¯d only mess her up.


    Without destination, she wandered through the moonlit city. Here, the small used book store where she¡¯d bought battered textbooks she couldn¡¯t bring herself to ask Erika for. Christmas lights were already in the windows. She considered going inside, but she had no money, and as she walked past a group of girls Asrun¡¯s age wandered into the store. May pushed her hands deeper into her pockets. Perhaps it would¡¯ve been better if Skygge had never showed up in Thorn¡¯s apartment, if she¡¯d never realized the outside world had forgotten about May Schroder and her September murders. It had been easier to miss the city when she thought there would be something here for her, still.


    In her gut, there was a tugging begging to be noticed, itching in rhythm with her heartbeat and too deep inside of her to do anything about. She wanted to cry, but kept walking. Her boots stomped hard on the fresh snow, and May was glad for something to kick at. The itch had spread, slowly seeping through veins and nerves, disregarding her will. The other people on the dark Slakshaven street, clad in thick coats and soft scarves, didn¡¯t look twice at her.


    And here, in front of her, on a square in the old part of the city, stood the only church in of the entirety of Threoo. It towered high above the other buildings, and was made of wood despite burning down every other century or so. May wondered why they kept rebuilding it. She walked up to it. Cold, half molten snow dripped from her hair into her neck. Beside the massive, wooden doors, a list of years kept track of every rebuild. The first of them was 1033; not even a decade after the cloister in the woods had been erected.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.May frowned. Her teachers had always been fuzzy on the details regarding the history of this single church and it¡¯s rather close relationship with arson, even in her college lectures. It had frustrated her to no end when she tried to write her homework essays. She tried the door. It swung open with surprising ease, despite the size of it. The roof towered high above her head, wooden support beams defying gravity high up in the distance. She shivered. Was it the cold? No - as she stepped over the threshold, the itching inside of her had intensified, become frantic. May swallowed.


    It wasn¡¯t used, this lone church; it¡¯s relics all had signs regarding their historic significance beside them, and the wooden pews - remakes of remakes of remakes - were roped off. With every step May took towards the altar, the trashing in her gut intensified.


    Here, the shadows were deep and fleshy. She¡¯d half expected to be cut off from them, in the way both she and Thotn had been in the cloister - but the dark was easy to reach, too close on her mind to be comfortable, and there where too many small nooks where shadows could hide and watch, unnoticed. A sense of dread settled in her stomach. She glanced back, towards the open entryway. May could see the early christmas lights outside. Her veins prickled. The dark was pushing at her mental borders, not at all subtle any more.


    The soil beneath this building was ancient, she knew with unsettling clarity. The rock, the mud here had seen rituals long before christianity briefly settled on these islands. What lay beneath these floorboards, the harsh tiles with their latin inscriptions? A sense of dread rose up from them, seeping through the pores in her skin and joining the coiling in her stomach. The dark of it was so thick that it did not surprise her any more, that people tried to destroy this place. Would a human being feel it, too?


    She was not alone, she realized. Somewhere behind the altar a silhouette stood, perfectly still, aiming a camera at something behind her. For a moment she thought it was Thorn, photographing churches now Abigail no longer required him to photograph her crime scenes. No - she¡¯d have felt his pull on the dark, his rhythm along the edges of her mind. She turned, to see what the man was photographing.


    There was a stained class window there, the full moon thick and round behind it, and it¡¯s depiction was clearly visible. A man, in pain - some saint or other she¡¯d have assumed, if it hadn¡¯t been for the coiling dark around his thin body. His face was twisted in a permanent, timeless agony, and his exposed wrists showed gray veins, his nails stained with a hit of red. Suddenly May didn¡¯t question any more why no christian missionary had set foot on these islands after 1033. The message of this single window was very clear.


    There be monsters here.


    Not sparing another glance for the photographer, May hurried towards the open doors, back into the soft white snow of Slakshaven. A weight lifted off her mind the moment she stepped outside, and she took a deep breath she hadn¡¯t realised she desperately needed. Here, the shadows were gray, not black, and thin as air.


    As May marched home, feet cold in her boots, she couldn¡¯t shake the dread that had settled in her stomach. It had taken on a near physical form. She could feel it break down in smaller grains of unease, entering her blood stream. She swallowed, hard. The old, looming buildings of Slakshaven towered around her, black silhouettes against an even blacker sky, and she couldn¡¯t help but wonder what horrors these streets had seen.

 4.2

    The morning after Abigail''s accusations, Thorn woke up with an absolutely immense feeling of dread, and he was quite glad for the dark around him. It matched his mood perfectly, and the cold allowed him to dress in layers upon layers of frayed, black band merch. He was on his third cup of overly bitter coffee. Beneath his kitchen window, the lights of Slakshaven glistered. What should have looked serene filled him with a twitchy, nervous fear, as though he alone was responsible for the lives of all the people in the city below him.


    May was out, somewhere. He wondered why she bothered still - hadn¡¯t Abigail told her there was nothing to be found? Perhaps she knew of other, more secret archives, or was scouting out every cemetery in Threoo for family graves with missing teenagers.


    His nerves were on fire, and the shadows were agitated, too energized. Thorn could feel them bashing at his mental walls, saw them forming kaleidoscopic patterns on the floor that wouldn¡¯t be silenced. Something was up, something perhaps unfamiliar to him. He sipped his coffee and realized it¡¯d gone cold while he¡¯d been staring out the window. Thorn wandered over to the sink and poured it out. In his gut, the itch was no longer subtle, but deep and impossible to ignor. The pain of it was screaming at him, telling him to kill.


    His wounds, freshly made overnight while May was asleep in his living room, itched too, in insufferable rhythm with the murderous second heartbeat inside of him. He sighed, considering cleaning them out again. It would be something to do.


    Then - as sudden as lightning against a clear sky - a pull came forth from the agitated shadows. It yanked him off his feet, down to the floor, where the enthusiastic dark swallowed him whole. Immediately he was stretched thin. Thorn became liquid, one with the cold, no, freezing darkness. It was excited, energized, without the usual laziness of a snake challenging prey. There was no thought that could have terrified him more. He tried to push back - it was too soon - but he couldn¡¯t gain a hold on something physical. The current within the darkness was pulling him along, tearing him towards some destination, a victim - already? With jerking movements he sped across the island. Through the forest. A familiar disorientation came over him, his consciousness spread thin, everything that made him Thorn struggling to stay together.


    Not yet - Gods, not yet, he thought, with the small part of him that could still manage to think. He wanted to fight it, he really really did, trying to gather the strands of dark that had been his body. They would not come to him. Unwilling, he kept moving, fast, towards a man or a woman unaware they were already dead.


    Then he blinked - he had muscles again, he realised, and it was exhilarating - he was on his back in wet grass. Still with that fire in his nerves; the shadows still chaotic around him, but, as he now realized, not because of him. He tried to stand. His muscles were his, unsteady, but under his control. What had happened? The desire for murder was still in his blood, still slumbering in his veins. But they weren¡¯t yet blackened, his movements were still his own. He had not killed, while in the shadows.


    So where was he?


    He climbed unto unsteady feet. Had May killed someone? Hidden the urge from him, was now slaying someone with bloody nails and of something else¡¯s volition?


    He looked around. He was on top of a hill. There was nothing here but grass and low stone walls; the lights of a town in the distance. Not Slakshaven, no; Slakshaven was larger. The wind was beating around his head, blowing wet hair into his eyes. It was raining still, large drops pelting his shirt and shoulders. Against the dark of the horizon he saw the silhouette of a farmhouse. All it¡¯s lights were off, but a reddish glow coated the fields on the other side of it. Thorn started towards the building. The shadows whispered at him, so softly he thought he might have imagined it.


    ¡®Come,¡¯ they said, ¡®Come and see¡­¡¯


    Had it been May? Had she killed, did it feel like this from the outside? It could not have been. He¡¯d seen her last night, before she¡¯d headed out for some library or other. The rain grew thicker, the wind stronger; Thorn was cold, colder even than was usual.


    ¡®Thorn-!¡¯


    Somewhere behind him, a voice on the wind - the old skugabor turned around. May stumbled towards him. Her eyes were wide, but her nails unbloodied and her veins blue. He relaxed. Whatever this was, it hadn¡¯t hurt her, not yet.


    ¡®What the hell is going on?¡¯ she said.


    ¡®I don¡¯t know,¡¯ he said, and looked back at the farmhouse. The peculiar glow - fire, despite the thick rain?- still came from the fields behind it. ¡®I don¡¯t think this has happened before.¡¯


    May nodded, something resolute coming over her.


    ¡®Let¡¯s go look,¡¯ she said.


    Thorn started walking, and the girl followed. As they approached the house, the glow faded before dying down completely, easy as a candle snuffed out by the wind. The farmhouse appeared deserted as they walked across the grounds. Doors, windows were shut; no lights brightened the dark, no dogs barked when the intruders walked onto the driveway. Shadows danced on the ground, the walls, as there were no humans eyes they could betray themselves to. The stench of fear clung to the air, no matter the effort of the rain to wash it away, and Thorn knew something terrible had happened here.


    ¡®This wasn¡¯t us, was it?¡¯ May said, her voice small.


    ¡®No,¡¯ Thorn said, wondering how he could be so sure. ¡®We¡¯re just spectators here.¡¯


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. ¡®Too late for the show,¡¯ May said. They¡¯d reached the fields that had been glowing moments earlier. Its grass was burned, the soil black and wet with rain. The farm¡¯s buildings wereperfectly untouched. The darkness was ecstatic around them, buzzing with a gleeful energy that could be nothing other than bad news. The field, void-like, stretched out before them.


    ¡®There¡¯s bodies in it,¡¯ May said. She pointed with her chin to the middle of the blackened field. Thorn could barely see the dark silhouettes against the ashes. He struggled to step forward. He was convinced the void would swallow him whole again if he¡¯d set foot on that dark soil. But it was just that. Soil.


    May went ahead, and this time the older skugabor followed.


    ¡®They¡¯re sheep,¡¯ May called over the pelting of the rain. ¡®Burned.¡¯


    Thorn looked up at the clouds. ¡®Burned? In this weather?¡¯


    It was a stupid question, he realized the moment the words left his mouth.


    ¡®Whatever did this wasn¡¯t concerned by the bloody weather,¡¯ May said. She knelt down, staring at one of the corpses, hand hovering above it as though she didn¡¯t dare touch it.


    Thorn felt bile rising in his throat. What new form of death had descended here? He turned away. The wretched carcasses were twisted into all-encompassing torment, limbs stretched in all directions as though the beasts had tried to get away from their own bodies.


    ¡®I suppose we should call Abigail,¡¯ May said, and stood up. ¡®I don¡¯t suppose that¡¯s an option anymore?¡¯


    Thorn shook his head, the sudden movement making him retch. He had his phone, and he had Abigail under speed dial - but she¡¯d made it very clear she wanted nothing to do with the skugabor any more. He ran his hands through his hair. The rain had soaked through his clothes, and was busy summoning goose bumps from his skin.


    ¡®Let¡¯s leave her out of this,¡¯ Thorn said, although a considerable part of him was telling him to suck it up and let Abigail know.


    The dark was still pulsing around them, merging almost perfectly with the burned field.


    May was looking at him with large, questioning eyes, and Thorn knew she¡¯d figured out he couldn¡¯t bring himself to call Abigail.


    ¡®No one is dying,¡¯ he said, ¡®It¡¯s sheep, not humans, we didn¡¯t do this, and Abigail has fuckall to do with it.¡¯


    The younger skugabor took a few tentative steps towards the border of the burned circle.


    ¡®It¡¯s not as though she¡¯d be able to anything,¡¯ May said, and Thorn assumed it was mostly to convince herself. She shook her head, looking around. Thorn followed her gaze, scanning over the dozen or so bodies, each of them frozen in an image of permanent hell.


    He wondered if she¡¯d remain this stoic once she¡¯d bloodied her own hands, had watched someone die after weeks of buildup. At that thought, the promise of murder erupted once more in his blood, setting each of his organs alight.


    ¡®Let¡¯s go, then,¡¯ he said through gritted teeth against the pain. ¡®No use in sticking around here.¡¯


    ¡®Can¡¯t we wait a bit longer?¡¯ she said, ¡®Figure out what happened?¡¯


    ¡®May, I¡¯m burning up,¡¯ he said, ¡®The dark here isn¡¯t good for me.¡¯


    He only realized that when he said it - from the soot and burned soil a darkness was sprouting.


    ¡®You feel that?¡¯ he said, stepping back, the near-solid tendrils of black threatening to engulf his boots.


    ¡®I see it,¡¯ she said, now with something frozen in her voice.


    As they left the circle, Thorn feared that dark would keep him there, suck him in, some unnatural version of a tar pit. He imagined his bones, picked dry and sinking, somewhere in the soil deep below, and shuddered. Once the skugabor had reached the farmhouse once more, Thorn looked back, unable to descern the mutilated sheep from the soil.


    He didn¡¯t think they were still lying there.


    The city lights in the distance glistered, promising humans and normalcy. Warmth, maybe. The road here was nothing but a single lane of old asphalt, and sometime between the field and the road the rain had turned into snow. It blew into their eyes, clinging to eyebrows and eyelashes. Thorn lit a cigarette, gratefully inhaling the heat of it. It soothed the itch some, held it down a little longer.


    ¡®Have you ever seen something like that before?¡¯ May said. She was walking quicker than she otherwise would.


    ¡®Nothing,¡¯ he said, ¡®Then again, there¡¯s never been two of us either. Want one?¡¯


    May shook her head at the offered cigarette.


    ¡®They warm you up,¡¯ Thorn said. He took a long second drag, welcoming even the smallest speck of warmth into his body.


    ¡®I don¡¯t care, I don¡¯t smoke,¡¯ May said.


    ¡®Suit yourself.¡¯


    It took them an hour to reach the city - a harbour town where Thorn had spend a few years, long ago, when Sigrin was still moving him around to avoid lingering human eyes. He hadn¡¯t been back here since. It was six in the evening, on a Sunday - two hours before the next bus to Slakshaven would leave. They could be home in minutes if they¡¯d let themselves dissolve into the shadows. Neither wanted to.


    Thorn bought them two plastic cups of bad coffee and waited. Sometime after seven a police car drove past with screeching sirens. They could follow it¡¯s glaring lights up the hill, and Thorn wondered if they¡¯d still find the sheeps¡¯ bodies.


    The bus pulled up, and Thorn was glad someone had called the cops, even if he¡¯d been unable to convince himself. They sat down somewhere in the back, and waited as five others entered, leaving the vehicle mostly empty. He leaned his forehead against the glass.


    Again and again, Thorn turned the night¡¯s events over in his mind. There was nothing that hinted at skugabor involvement, except the near happiness that had radiated from the shadows. Skugabor didn¡¯t burn - they tore. They didn¡¯t burn perfect circles into grassland, they just flung around blood and bits of tissue, and then had those images burned into their retinas for life. Thorn had lived on these islands for a long time, and never had something else killed. Nothing unhuman, anyway. Nothing like this. He¡¯d long stopped fearing the dark, believing himself to be the only monster in it.


    Perhaps that wasn¡¯t entirely true.


    ¡®Bloody hell,¡¯ May said, ¡®I can¡¯t make sense of it. I wish I could¡¯ve had a better look at the house.¡¯


    ¡®I wish I could still ask Sigrin.¡¯


    Thorn stared out the window, eyes unseeing. He felt the itching grow beneath his skin, the ants marching across his bones, that pull between his heart and his gut. It wouldn¡¯t be long, now.

 4.3

    He would kill today. Thorn was absolutely, irrevocably certain, and because of it he was crying in the shower. It¡¯d come on so quickly, this time. Had given him no time to catch his breath. It must have been revenge, of sorts, because he hadn¡¯t died when he¡¯d been supposed to.


    Right now, with the too hot shower water beating at his back, he regretted that. The beckoning wasn¡¯t an itch any more. It was fire, in his stomach and his veins and his nerves. It threatened to overwhelm him, turn him brain to mush and let the darkness in. Gods, he couldn¡¯t fight it much longer. The old skugabor turned around, grimacing at the pain, the hot water beating into fresh cuts - perhaps too deep, but something else to focus on, something to keep him sane just a little bit longer. He was still wearing his jeans, the fabric heavy with water. Hadn¡¯t even had the time to undress, too afraid it¡¯d get the better of him. He inhaled the steam, the heat of it. He willed it to burn his lungs. To seep into him. Something to keep control, just for a little while longer.


    Could May feel his pain? Did she notice that excitement in the dark? She was in the living room, her anxious rhythm somewhere in the background of his mind. So vague - usually there was more of her, but now something else was taking over, something that was inserting red hot needles into every nerve in his body with surgical precision.


    He cried, then howled, then turned the water up a little hotter still. So what if she could hear?


    The dark would come for her soon enough. It wouldn¡¯t care about how small she was, how boyish her frame still. It would break her, too, but perhaps it was easier to listen to wailing in the bathroom than to howl at the fucking insanity of it all.


    Was that movement, underneath the cabinets, a swirl of dark on the floor? Not yet.


    There were quick footsteps, outside the bathroom door, and frantic pounding on the wood. He heard May call his name over the hissing of the water, the pain in his wounds, the cascading of the shadows down the bathroom walls.


    ¡®It¡¯s only been days,¡¯ he tried to plead, but knew they would not listen. He hated most that quiet curiosity that dark always emitted when it came for him, once he was sufficiently broken. There was a silent wondering the shadows gave off - why was he fighting so hard? Had he not been hurt enough, didn¡¯t he know he couldn¡¯t stop it by now? There was a second question today, another he didn¡¯t want to answer - why hadn¡¯t he died when he could?


    And honestly, Thorn didn¡¯t understand any more either. He could¡¯ve spared himself this torture, the yanking on his guts, the demand to roll over and kill. He was still sobbing. From beneath the cabinets, and from between the fibres of his towers, and from the cracks between the tiles rose a darkness so thick it might as well be solid. It came for him, and he punched the wall and tried to scream, but his body wasn¡¯t his any more.


    It sucked him in with that horrid feeling of being just a consciousness, a current of thoughts slipping through the dark, out the bathroom and the building. They swept him away, through Slakshaven, but at least the pain was gone, and he was ashamed to be thankful for that. He hadn¡¯t been taken very far when they spat him out, yanking him to his feet like a puppet, not giving him time to catch his breath or remember how to balance. A house; a home - unfamiliar to him, thank the gods - rose before him, well trimmed bushes near the front door, Christmas lights already on the roof. He had no time to wonder, to mourn. It took him, again, underneath the front door and through the hallway, upstairs, higher still. He knew there to be people, perhaps asleep, perhaps waking at the cold seeping under their doors, in these other bedrooms. He was glad for every door he passed, but the dark dragged him closer and closer to some other victim. He went up more stairs, dreading the moment he¡¯d hold still, but the being in the dark was yanking erratically at him.


    It spat him out onto his feet, which didn¡¯t know how to be feet any more, but the puppeteer didn¡¯t care. Here, the attic - he was too tall to stand beneath the support beams, and so the shadows made him hunch, an unoriginal monster in a cheap horror move. Frozen, across from him, stood a graying man Thorn recognized. That was the worst torture of it, when the darkness pushed him forwards and onto the man''s body. Who was this, he asked himself, as his unwilling nails dug deep into the man¡¯s flesh, and the other¡¯s screaming in his ears threatened to deafen him.


    It weren¡¯t his fingers, not truly, he told himself when they tore into the man¡¯s veins with strength Thorn didn¡¯t think his body possessed. The man - where the hell did he recognize him from? - managed to grab a hobby knife from his desk, but couldn¡¯t conjure up the strength to stab him very deep. Thorn relished the pain, the too minor punishment. The dark wouldn¡¯t have it, though, and Thorn found himself with his hands, blackened veins and bloody nails, around the man¡¯s neck. The undercurrent in the shadows reached into Thorn, forcing him, with a palpable anger that tasted ashen on his tongue.


    How quickly he could drain a man of his life¡¯s blood, and how long did the will last in comparison. There was still fight in the man¡¯s eyes, the primal desperation that Thorn had seen too many times before, in too many wide-eyed people. None of them had ever managed to fight him off. Downstairs, doors slammed, and he heard panicked feet quick on wooden floors. Where they coming towards him, the old man, would he have to end more lives, tonight?


    He wanted to scream, but even that the dark wouldn¡¯t let him have, and Petr - fuck, his name was Petr - manage to slice at him again. At least he could tell May the man had cut him up and not be lying. It hurt, but it was a measly, weak pain - still the dark roared in anger around him, and Thorn brought down his teeth some place near an artery.


    He could tell the moment Petr died; his weak imprint on the dark disappeared, as sudden as though Thorn had flicked a switch. He was gone, his body limp and bleeding. There were sirens in the distance, and as the dark absorbed him again, he imagined Abigail¡¯s unmeasurable fury when she¡¯d realize what had happened.The author''s content has been appropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.


    May had still been pounding on the bathroom door when she felt the dark rise, and scoop up the vocalist as simply as though he was a willing participant. She could tell, in a horrid, wrong way how thin he was spread and how quickly he was carried. She pried open the door¡¯s lock, then, with a rusty screwdriver from Thorn¡¯s kitchen drawer. There was no one there, as she¡¯d already known, and no trace of Thorn save for the bloody knife discarded in the sink.


    She was pacing in the hallway when the vocalist was spat out of the shadows, clutching his side, someone else¡¯s blood all over him. He fell to his knees and May grimaced as his kneecaps hit the hard floor. The long-haired man looked up at her. His eyes were red, and the veins on his bare arms were blackened still. May swallowed.


    ¡®I knew him,¡¯ Thorn said. A silence stretched between them as May struggled to find words. There were none. She shook her head.


    ¡®He had a knife,¡¯ Thorn said.


    And then something broke through Thorn¡¯s carefully build up fa?ade, that stoic mask he¡¯d been crafting for decades. May¡¯s eyes opened wide in astonishment as she heard the man cry.


    ¡¯Come on,¡¯ she said, walking over and helping him up. ¡®Let¡¯s get you cleaned up.¡¯


    May opened the door to Thorn¡¯s bedroom and flicked the light on. The endless rows of black-and-white portraits on the walls made her feel shifty, watched, judged; she couldn¡¯t fathom Thorn enjoying their presence.


    ¡¯How much do you remember, afterwards?¡¯ She sat him down on the edge of his bed.


    ¡®All of it,¡¯ the vocalist said, shaking now. ¡®They don¡¯t take the memories, gods, I wish they would, but they¡¯re that cruel.¡¯


    ¡¯Oh.¡¯ A fear coiled in her stomach, on the quickening rhythm of her still-growing itch. ¡®Be right back.¡¯


    She fetched their perpetually half-empty first aid kit from the bathroom and soaked one of Thorn¡¯s kitchen towels. When she returned, he sat with his head in his hands, shoulders shaking. May swore under her breath. The man¡¯s calm tugging on the shadows had derided into chaos, a storm on the border of May¡¯s consciousness that wouldn''t let itself be ignored. Somehow, some of his pain leaked into her mind, too.


    She knelt in front of him, and took his hands, cleaned them off. Peeled dried blood from beneath his ragged fingernails, scrubbed the rusty stains from his palms. He kept on crying, and she could tell he was screaming on the inside; she sensed the agitation in the shadows, like a spider would feel its prey get stuck in its web. Shaken, she sat back to look at the rest of him, his battered torso, the wounds. Across the webs of old scars on his torso someone had carved shallow new wounds with a desperate imprecision, but May knew Thorn wasn¡¯t breaking down because of the pain. There was no way to tell which ones he¡¯d made himself and which had been made by a dying man.


    ¡äMay,¡ä Thorn said, voice unsteady and somehow still crying, ¡äMay, you really don''t have to do this. Just let me be.¡ä


    ¡äNo. You''ll keep me up anyway. You shouldn¡¯t be alone right now.¡¯


    That shut him up. Gods, boy, she thought, when is the last time someone cared for you?


    ¡®How come you knew him?¡¯ she asked softly, unsure if she wanted to know. She still hadn¡¯t told him about the itch she¡¯d woken up with the other day, the tingling inside her bones she couldn¡¯t scratch.


    Thorn nodded. His hair, full of knots and dried blood, fell in his eyes. He didn¡¯t bother tying it back. ¡®It was Petr. Did you ever meet him?¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t think so,¡¯ she said, drenching a piece of cloth in iodine. He hissed when she reached for the first cut, but the skugabor didn¡¯t stop her. She watched his pale, bloodied skin turn yellow from the ointment, staining her hands too.


    ¡®He¡¯s a photographer, lives up north from Slakshaven.¡¯ His words came out in an unsteady, shaking voice. ¡®I¡¯d met him, before. He liked my work. He had a knife, and a family¡­¡¯


    ¡®Oh.¡¯ May didn¡¯t know what she had expected, and now she really didn¡¯t know what to say. She was nineteen, damn it all, and not at all equipped to deal with this.


    ¡®What time is it?¡¯ Thorn asked, roughly drying his eyes with the back of his arm.


    ¡®About eleven at night,¡¯ May said, bandaging another cut. If Petr had managed to find a knife, it hadn¡¯t been a very long one. Thorn leaned back, hands on the bed, tendons stretching beneath his skin. The darkness had retreated from his veins, and he looked a little more human without all the blood. The shadows were still frenzied around them, dancing on the floors and walls, and when May looked up from Thorn¡¯s bandages, he was in tears again.


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry,¡¯ he said, ¡®I¡¯m sorry, May, I don¡¯t know¡­¡¯


    ¡®Is all right,¡¯ she told him, ¡®It¡¯s all right, Thorn, you can cry if you have to. You¡¯ve been through more tonight than anyone ever should.¡¯


    He didn¡¯t answer, and May didn¡¯t think the vocalist believed her.


    ¡®Are you hurt anywhere else?¡¯ she said and shut the first aid kit when the vocalist shook his head. She stood up and looked at him. He was staring at the ground, his tangled hair draped across his back like a widow¡¯s veil. The man was still trembling, ever so slightly, and his pale skin was covered in even paler bandages. How long until she¡¯d be huddled up like that? Weeks, perhaps days, she guessed by the way her blood danced whenever she thought of murder. On the wall behind Thorn the shadows coiled, in beautiful, erratic patterns. They contracted around the pair and then spread out again, darkness pooling around them, removing the oxygen from the air around them.


    ¡¯Please don¡¯t leave,¡¯ he said, and it was an admission, of guilt, of hurt, of vulnerability. It was so unlike the Thorn she¡¯d lived with these past weeks that she sank down on the bed beside him. He opened his mouth and shut it again. Sometime between her getting up and sitting down again his tears had stopped, but May could still practically see the pain radiating from his body. It was in his hunched-up shoulders and even in the frayed ends of his jeans.


    She sat down behind him, legs nestled against his shaking, skinny back. May took the hairbrush he kept on his night stand and started at the knotted ends of his waist-length hair. He hadn¡¯t brushed it in days, she knew. Hadn¡¯t she seen him, pacing and terrified and focused on nothing but death? Gods, the man cared so much, hated himself so much. He¡¯d gone to such length to postpone it all.


    She didn¡¯t think most of his fresh wounds were made by Petr.


    ¡®Talk to me,¡¯ she said.


    ¡®About what?¡¯


    ¡®About anything.¡¯


    And he did talk; in short, tired sentences about the man Petr had been, and the man Thorn should have become. May sat, and listened, and worked the knots out of his hair. It wasn¡¯t tiring work, but by the end of Thorn¡¯s words she was drained.


    ¡®What is it?¡¯ he said, eventually, when May had stopped moving but hadn¡¯t moved away from him.


    ¡®I¡¯m itching, too,¡¯ she said, and the weight of it threatened to crush them both.

 5.1

    It had been three days since Petr¡¯s death, and Thorn was ever so slowly coming back to life. His limbs were his own again, lacking the raging fire that had consumed them for so long, and he was sick with himself for being grateful. Still, even if he was free of the urge, for now, he saw it reflected in every jerky movement of May¡¯s, even sudden gasp that betrayed a flare of pain or an unwilling nerve. Packed into his small attic, with nothing to do and so much to worry about, he was damn glad when Skygge called.


    ¡®Hey,¡¯ the bassist said, ¡®Are you free today?¡¯


    ¡®Yeah, why?¡¯ Thorn said. May, from his desk chair, raised her eyebrows.


    ¡®I need some help,¡¯ the bassist said, ¡®I¡¯ve bought two new amps, and eh, they¡¯re too damn heavy to drag to R¨®s¡¯s place alone. Give me a hand?¡¯


    ¡®Sure,¡¯ he said, ¡®Cool if I bring May?¡¯


    There was a long silence on the other side of the phone.


    ¡®Of course,¡¯ Skygge said, finally. ¡®Extra pair of hands would be nice.¡¯


    ¡®See you where?¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m at my grandmother¡¯s place.¡¯


    That surprised him. ¡®Your grandma¡¯s? You sure you want me over, then?¡¯


    ¡®We¡¯ll be in and out in minutes,¡¯ Skygge said, despite having claimed many times in the past that his grandma did not like having over ¡®those long haired friends of his¡¯, no matter how briefly.


    ¡®If you¡¯re sure,¡¯ Thorn said.


    ¡®See you in an hour?¡¯


    Thorn agreed, and Skygge hung up. May, turning bored, slow circles in his desk chair, raised her eyebrows again. She sat curled up, knees to her chest, still only ever wearing his clothes and he didn¡¯t think he really minded.


    ¡®What was that, then?¡¯ May said, when Thorn didn¡¯t answer.


    ¡®Skygge needs help and we need to get out of this bloody room for a change.¡¯


    ¡®Fair.¡¯ She stood and stretched. He could tell by the warping of her shadow that the itch was growing worse, but she hadn¡¯t said a word about it since that night. He shook his hair out of his eyes.


    Outside, the snow had stopped falling for a moment, instead caking onto the pavement and threatening to turn into black mush beside the roads. Still, the air was freezing as it should be in November - wordly things like global warming didn¡¯t seem to affect Threoo.


    ¡®I wish the sun would come back,¡¯ May said. She¡¯d wrapped half her face in a ratty scarf she¡¯d dug up somewhere in his apartment. ¡®I never used to take winter this bad, even up here.¡¯


    Thorn nodded. Despite the nightmares that seeped into his mind on summer nights when the sun didn¡¯t go down, the light wasn¡¯t as bad as the constant dark. He zipped his coat up a little higher, feet cold in his boots.


    In one of the ancient streets of Slakshaven stood Skygge¡¯s grandmother¡¯s house, hardly newer than the city itself. Its stone fa?ade had been repaired too often, showing the wear and tear of generations and multiple wars. Ivy clung, desperate, to the wall and framed the windows. Thorn had delivered Skygge here in various stages of drunk over the years; never before had the home seemed quite so ominous.


    ¡®This is it,¡¯ he said, ¡®I¡¯ve never actually met her, but Skygge¡¯s grandma¡¯s¡­ difficult. Apparantly.¡¯


    May shrugged, then chuckled. ¡®I think I¡¯ve had worse.¡¯


    Thorn stepped forward, tried to ring the door bell, and knocked when he realised the home didn¡¯t have one. The rough, wooden door was old and worn; almost something his family might have had when he grew up, so long ago. Shivering at the memories, Thorn stared up at the churning clouds instead, and ignored May¡¯s questioning eyes.


    Skygge opened up, quick as though he¡¯d been waiting for them right behind the door.


    ¡®Morning,¡¯ Thorn said. ¡®Where¡¯re they at?¡¯


    ¡®They?¡¯ Skygge said.


    ¡®The amps¡­?¡¯ he said. May, for the third time today, raised her eyebrows.


    ¡®Oh! They¡¯re uh, upstairs. Come in.¡¯


    The narrow hallway was as dark as the sky outside. A door, perhaps to a kitchen or a living room, was cracked open. Dust danced in the thin ray of light that came forth from it; even Skygge¡¯s movements seemed more careful, more planned here. Somehow the air felt colder here than it had outside. It leaked through his clothes with insulting ease, teasing goose bumps up from his skin.


    ¡®Thorn,¡¯ May whispered from behind him, ¡®There¡¯s something off here.¡¯


    ¡®Be right back,¡¯ Skygge said, and dissapeared up the creaking stairs. His footsteps dissapeared further into the building, until Thorn couldn¡¯t hear them anymore. He turned around. The front door was closed.


    ¡®There¡¯s something wrong,¡¯ May said again, ¡®The dark¡¯s too thick here, Thorn.¡¯


    It took him a moment. Now, right after a kill, he was less sensitive, and it was easier to ignore the gliding shadows between the floorboards. But May - still itching, still building up to murder - was right. The shadows were vidcous; just below the surface, something sentient lurked.


    ¡®You trust him, right?¡¯ she said. Her pupils were wide, in the dark.


    ¡®I¡¯ve known him for years,¡¯ Thorn said.


    ¡®He found Asrun,¡¯ May whispered, ¡®And that led us to the cloister, Thorn, he showed up afterwards too. Have you ever been to this house?¡¯


    Thorn shook his head. ¡®He always said his grandma didn¡¯t like visitors.¡¯


    May pointed her chin at something behind him. He turned, again, seeing nothing but the door - and the light falling through. Despite his better judgement, he took a step forward, hearing May follow.


    The door was open wide enough to see into the living room, lit in soft, yellow light. It was oddly clean, too neat for a space inhabited by Skygge. The room was deserted, containing wooden furniture and rough rugs, of the type his parents might have had. He took another step.


    In a corner stood a wheelchair - and in it sat the smallest husk of a woman Thorn had seen in all his years. She looked dead or dying, but her eyes, too blue, were wide open and staring directly at him.


    ¡®You!¡¯ she coughed out, louder than he¡¯d thought possible. ¡®You! Are you the one who¡¯s been coming into my house?¡¯


    ¡®No, I¡¯m- we¡¯re friends of Skygge¡¯s,¡¯ he said. May stepped into sight beside him. The woman¡¯s eyes narrowed. Then she gasped, bared her teeth, and spat:


    ¡®I will not have you in my house!¡¯


    Thorn looked over his shoulder, but there was no sign of Skygge yet. He looked back, and the frail woman sat trembling, her eyes still fixed on the pair of murderers in her hallway.


    ¡®We¡¯re just-¡¯ May said, but the woman cut her off.


    ¡®No! I know what you are!¡¯ she said, ¡®You¡¯re closer to death than I am, and I will not have you in my house! Skugabor!¡¯


    May had gone pale beside him. Thorn looked over his shoulder for Skygge again.


    ¡®Omhetr take you!¡¯ she screeched, ¡®I will not have you in my house! Not you! Not you! Not you!¡¯


    And Thorn was back in the cloister in the woods again, the words enough to trigger that memory and the hate he¡¯d had hurled at him. He stepped back. The shriveled woman went on screaming, now for her grandson, with long intervals of desperate not you!


    In three long strides, May was at the front door, but right as she began to open it Skygge appeared at the top of the stairs.


    ¡®Skygge!¡¯ Thorn said, barely able to drown out the bassist¡¯s grandma¡¯s harsh screeching. ¡®What the fuck is going on?¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯m sorry, mate,¡¯ the other said, and for the first time Thorn realized how tired Skygge looked - hair untied and with a week¡¯s stubble on his jaw. ¡®I had to know for sure.¡¯


    Thorn took another, tentative step towards the door. ¡®You could¡¯ve just asked.¡¯


    Skygge laughed. ¡®You¡¯re more stubborn than half the people in Threoo combined. You¡¯d never have told me.¡¯


    ¡®What do you want?¡¯ May said, distrust in her eyes. She was fumbling with the dead bolt as she spoke; in the living room, grandma was still screaming insults into the void.


    ¡®I want to know what the fuck¡¯s been going on,¡¯ Skygge said. ¡®Shall we go to Dyst?¡¯


    They slid into a familiar booth. Outside, it had begun to snow again, and the thick flakes clung to the windowsills. May looked wary, and refused to sit between Thorn and the wall. She had her arms crossed, and was staring Skygge down with an intensity that impressed him. Thorn found it hard to imagine Skygge wanting to harm them; he¡¯d known the man since he was a teenager, long before they¡¯d played in the same band.


    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.Then again, this morning he¡¯d not have believed that Skygge, of all people, knew what haunted these islands.


    ¡®Well,¡¯ Thorn said, leaning back against the hard wall. ¡®Why the hell was that necessary, Skygge?¡¯


    The bassist apologized again. ¡®I didn¡¯t want to believe it was you.¡¯


    ¡®How do you know, anyway?¡¯


    ¡®You think Abigail¡¯s the only one with family ties, here, Thorn? Half the bloody archipelago is related in some way. Gran¡¯s got her secrets, and so does the rest of the family.¡¯


    He still heard Skygge¡¯s grandmother¡¯s screaming in his ears, and in it the echo of the woman in the cloister.


    ¡®But gran won¡¯t tell me anything,¡¯ Skygge said, ¡®Because my sister¡¯s female and the firstborn child, so she¡¯s waiting for Ann to come and ask. She won¡¯t. No way in hell Ann¡¯s raising my niece into, and I quote, ¡®your deranged ideas about non-existing gods¡¯.¡¯


    ¡®How¡¯d you know?¡¯ Thorn said. He hadn¡¯t thought it was possible for anyone to remember him long enough to piece it together.


    ¡®That you¡¯re skugabor?¡¯ Skygge paused, then counted on his fingers. ¡®I realized I can¡¯t remember how we met, despite having played in Scythe with you for years. You skip band practice when someone dies, and reappear with bloody knuckles. I heard that cop call you when I found that girl¡¯s body, but you didn¡¯t have to photograph the scene, so why¡¯d you care? Except May had snapped back in September, so I doubted myself. Thought maybe it wasn¡¯t you, ¡®cause you didn¡¯t die - and then I find May fucking Schroder is sleeping on your couch.¡¯


    ¡®Sounds pretty solid,¡¯ May said, and Thorn looked over to find her smiling.


    ¡®Still,¡¯ he said, ¡®It¡¯s not really safe, knowing these things.¡¯


    Skygge shrugged. ¡®You should¡¯ve been dead by now. The rules don¡¯t appear to apply anymore, and I¡¯ve got old blood anyway. And I want to know what the fuck is going on.¡¯


    ¡®Tough luck,¡¯ May said, ¡®We haven¡¯t got a clue either.¡¯


    ¡®So it isn¡¯t you?¡¯ Skygge said.


    May frowned. ¡®I thought we¡¯d just established that it is, in fact, us.¡¯


    ¡®Not that,¡¯ the bassist said, his shoulders sinking. ¡®Someone¡¯s been coming into gran¡¯s house, and I¡¯d hoped it was one of you.¡¯


    May looked at the long-haired skugabor beside her.


    ¡®No,¡¯ he said, ¡®It¡¯s most definitely not me breaking into your house.¡¯


    Skygge sunk back, defeated.


    Thorn went and bought three large mugs of coffee, so dark May nearly believed she¡¯d be able to bend it to her will like she did the shadows. She took a large sip to prevent herself from asking too many questions, saying things that¡¯d get Skygge killed. She looked at the vocalist from the corner of her eyes; he seemed so eager.


    ¡®What¡¯s been happening?¡¯ Thorn said, skinny fingers locked around his mug.


    The other man shrugged, dumped a packed of sugar into his coffee, and stirred. May studied his unshaved face, the tired eyes. Something had been keeping him up all night.


    ¡®At first I thought it was just gran dreaming things up,¡¯ Skygge said, ¡®She¡¯s not all there any more, and she knows things that¡¯d fuck over the most stable of minds.¡¯


    He took a long sip from his coffee before pouring in another packet of sugar.


    ¡®I¡¯ve been sleeping over, you know, help take care of her,¡¯ he said, ¡®Ann¡¯s got young kids, my mom¡¯s in Sweden, so I do it. I swear I¡¯ve been hearing footsteps - at night, middle of the day, doesn¡¯t matter.¡¯


    ¡®All the time?¡¯ Thorn said.


    ¡®Nah, every few days or so, just when you think you¡¯d made it all up.¡¯ Skygge¡¯s spoon clinked against the sides of his mug. ¡®I¡¯ve checked all the windows, doors, nothing. Figured maybe someone had a key, so I bought deadbolts, but whoever it is, they aren¡¯t stopped by locks and chains.¡¯


    ¡®So you thought¡­¡¯


    ¡®Skugabor,¡¯ Skygge said, ¡®Looking for something gran might have? She¡¯s ancient, she knows things, she might have things too.¡¯


    ¡®Well,¡¯ Thorn said, untying his hair and raking his hands through, ¡®It wasn¡¯t us.¡¯


    They sat in silence for a moment.


    ¡®Has your grandma ever told you anything about the house?¡¯ May said. She could still feel the thick dark of it, as if it had left some sort of residue on her skin. Was that all it was? It felt so real, still.


    ¡®What¡¯s with the house?¡¯ Skygge asked.


    ¡®The shadows are too heavy there,¡¯ May said, ¡®It feels like it does in the tunnels. It¡¯s wrong.¡¯


    She wrapped her hands around her mug, savouring the heat of it. It wasn¡¯t hot enough. Thorn was staring at her.


    ¡®You¡¯ve been in the tunnels?¡¯ he said, ¡®When?¡¯


    ¡®The city archives are in there,¡¯ she said. She shivered, remembering the sensation of near-solid dark forcing itself into her bloodstream. It hadn¡¯t taken very long for the itch to start, after that. The urge began yanking at her the moment she remembered it was there, amplified by the memory of that narrow hallway. She realised Thorn was still staring at her. Was the itch showing, now? Did she look like she was in pain, or was her shadow morphing?


    ¡®Do you know anything about those murdered sheep on the hill?¡¯ she said, quick to change the subject.


    It hadn¡¯t been on the news, but neither had Petr¡¯s death been - folk were quick to realise which things they shouldn¡¯t think about too much.


    ¡®What sheep?¡¯ Skygge said, and Thorn explained what had happened, his voice low.


    May shuddered. She could still see the horrid bodies in her mind¡¯s eye - twisted in as much agony as the man in the church window.


    Skygge leaned back and shook his head. Did he already regret confronting them? There were worried creases by his eyes, and May didn¡¯t think he¡¯d slept much. The bassist opened his mouth to say something, but closed it again.


    ¡®Yeah, me too,¡¯ she said, before she realized that didn¡¯t make sense. She felt the itching travel up the veins in her legs, right up to her eyeballs, and May was clutching her mug to stop herself from scratcing.


    They drank their coffee, but dark in her body drowned out the bitterness of it, and it might as well have been water. How bad would she become before she¡¯d snap? Would she, like Thorn, be reduced to a crying, self-mutilating pile of non-human before they¡¯d take her anyway?


    ¡®May?¡¯ she heard Thorn say, ¡®Are you alright?¡¯


    She shook her head, then nodded, confusing even herself. ¡®I¡¯ll be fine, Thorn.¡¯


    Two sets of worried eyes glanced at her. She chewed on the inside of her cheek.


    ¡®We should search your house, Skygge,¡¯ May said, switching topics.


    ¡®May-¡¯ Thorn started, but Skygge was quicker.


    ¡®We should,¡¯ the man said, ¡®Maybe you¡¯ll find something I can¡¯t.¡¯


    The men were talking, but she found she couldn¡¯t listen. It was coming on too hard, too quick, not quite the pain Thorn had described - it was an oncoming toothache, a bruised rib. She stared at her hands. They were still her own, but she didn¡¯t dare to imagine how long that would last. What was that dizziness in the back of her skull?


    Skygge was saying something about getting his grandma out of the house, so Thorn could come in without her screeching at them - but May couldn¡¯t focus on the words. The grain of the wooden table was moving in front of her eyes, and she stood up.


    ¡®May?¡¯ Thorn said. She didn¡¯t look back at him.


    ¡®Bathroom,¡¯ she said, unsure if it came out right. She felt drunk, as though her coffee had been spiked with half a liter of throat-burning vodka.


    She¡¯d forgotten what a mess the toilet stalls at Dyst were - their walls filled up with years of vandalism. She remembered marking down her own name there, somewhere. She¡¯d been sixteen, had just moved into Erika¡¯s place, seen a mediocre band here. Had she been drunk?


    Probably. She¡¯d felt so mature for it, too, most likely.


    How long had she been sitting here, now? Did Thorn miss her yet? She moved her fingers, shadows dancing between her tendons. She inhaled, the cold of the air seeping right into her lungs and her blood.


    ¡®What the fuck,¡¯ she said, or thought, she couldn¡¯t really tell. And then there was that pull, right behind her midriff, almost like when they¡¯d found that body.


    Was that what it was? Again? She shook her head, and her vision swam. That hadn¡¯t toyed with her mind like this, hadn¡¯t hyped up that horrid itch she should be ignoring.


    There, on the wall, was that Asrun¡¯s name? Had she sneaked in here, despite her beloved pop music and radio songs?


    She couldn¡¯t be thinking about Asrun, not now, not again. She got up and stumbled past Thorn and Skygge, towards the outside world, where the sky had the same colour as her blackening veins.

 5.2

    May struggled to open Dyst¡¯s door, pushing before she remembered she should pull. She stumbled into the street. She didn¡¯t have her coat, but welcomed the ice in the air, the snowflakes twisting in front of her eyes. Thorn followed her outside, jacket unzipped. She tried to swallow, her throat dry, the sky black and too large and threatening to choke her.


    ¡®Skygge, stay back, okay?¡¯ Thorn said, and May vaguely remembered that the bassist had been in Dyst with them, too. ¡®I don¡¯t know what¡¯s happening.¡¯


    Neither did she, she wanted to say, but her tongue felt thick and foreign in her mouth. She stuck her hands out, and the arteries in her wrists were black, her skin marbled with a thick layer of gray. She tried to breathe faster, unable to get enough oxygen into her blood - but how much blood did she really have, if her veins were that black?


    ¡®That¡¯s not me,¡¯ she choked out. She wasn¡¯t sure if that made sense, but the right words wouldn¡¯t come.


    It didn¡¯t hurt, yet, not as bad as Thorn had said it would, nothing that should have reduced him to a screaming half-naked mess in the shower. She¡¯d heard him scream, hadn¡¯t she? Why didn¡¯t it hurt like that? Was she that weak, snapping at this when Thorn had managed so much worse?


    The skugabor, suddenly much closer than she thought he¡¯d be, grabbed her by the shoulders.


    ¡®Look at me,¡¯ he said, and May nearly wept when she realized she still had control of her eyeballs. She stared up at him, hoping he¡¯d say that this was fine, this was normal, she¡¯d be back in control any moment now.


    Skygge, despite Thorn¡¯s request to stay away, stood fidgeting outside the bar¡¯s door. May wondered if he understood what was happening, somehow knew more than either of the skugabor.


    ¡®Look at me,¡¯ Thorn repeated. ¡®What is happening, May?¡¯


    ¡®I don¡¯t know,¡¯ she said, the words sluggish and slow in her throat. ¡®Am I snapping?¡¯


    Had he even seen the dark in her veins, the thin gray film over her eyes?


    ¡®Not like this,¡¯ he said, ¡®It¡¯s not like this.¡¯


    ¡®Then what is it!¡¯ she said, tried to scream, but her vocal cords didn¡¯t work any more and she saw Skygge staring at her, with horrid wide eyes as though he¡¯d only now realized this was real.


    Her legs gave way, like they had when she found Erika¡¯s body with her mutilated wrists in the bathtub, but this time there was no soft dark to catch her. Her kneecaps crashed against the snow and, worse, the cobbles beneath it. Her knees hurt at the impact, but the pain was too vague. Her vision was still swimming; the snowflakes falling up towards the thick black clouds. Thorn was kneeling beside her, now and she hadn¡¯t seen him sit down. He was saying something but sounded very far away.


    She didn¡¯t feel drunk any more - she had never been drunk enough to warrant feeling this bad, not even when she was fifteen and lived on Havn still, those nights when she¡¯d sneak out with near strangers and vodka bottles.


    There was that yanking again, in her midriff, every nerve commanded to come forward and she fell into the snow. Was it cold? She wasn¡¯t sure, but it should be cold, and someone was shaking at her shoulders, yelling something that could have been her name. The other - was it the vocalist? - grabbed her arm, pulling it up and her hoodies sleeve down. Her skin was gray, the artery black.


    Gods, if that was inside of her, her heart must have been pumping around pure shadows and once she understood that, she dissolved into the dark.


    She heard him yell for her, somehow, despite not having ears - but she was pulled away, with jerking motions. It wasn¡¯t as smooth as it had been, the last time, when they¡¯d found those sheep outside Klipvegen and Thorn had been spat out of the dark beside her. She couldn¡¯t feel him, any more - she was alone, but Gods, she realized now what a sacrifice it had been for him to stay alive.


    The dark spread out around her, further and deeper than May could believe, and she had to be careful not to let herself spread too thin. She was outside of Slakshaven, she thought - the city¡¯s pulse was no longer around her, there was nothing here, nothing human at least. Was she slowing down? Perhaps, but she still could not resist against the dark - she was just a grain of sand caught in a current. She wanted to scream, push back, but her muscles were reduced to non-existence and it didn¡¯t feel as though she¡¯d ever get them back.


    There still wasn¡¯t too much pain when the dark spat her out on a snowed over field. The wind was harsh here; the snow so thick she could hardly see a half a meter ahead of her. It seemed the dark knew where to take her, and May¡¯s muscles moved without her willing them too - but her movements were slow, unwilling and tentative, as if even the thing in the shadows was uncertain.


    Very little could have frightened May more.


    Her body wasn¡¯t hers, nerves firing commands she¡¯d never made, but she could control the tendrils of her mind, the dark tangles of shadow she could send forth. The thumping of Slakshaven was at her back - she hadn¡¯t gone very far, then - and she was marching towards the cliffs. She could sense the violent waves somewhere far below her, and for a moment she feared she was to throw herself down into them. The sea crashed into the cliffs, over and over again, with plenty of power to tear her to shreds.This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.


    Then she realized where she was.


    This was Slaksf¨®rn they were dragging her towards, with its huge granite stones where one could still see the blood stains of old sacrifices if you looked hard enough. She could not see them yet, just the twisting of the snow, but at once she wished her mind was as fogged up as it had been moments ago. She could imagine how they¡¯d loom over her in moments, the tall silhouettes covered in snow and never speaking of what had happened here.


    May had been here before - what history student hadn¡¯t? - but it had been summer, then, and there¡¯d been tourists everywhere and overpriced ice cream cones. She¡¯d read the vandalized information signs, words she couldn¡¯t properly recall any more.


    As her strained muscles forced her towards the threatening set of rocks - just fucking rocks, she reminded herself - she tried to keep the one thing she did remember about Slaksf¨®rn out of her thoughts.


    Had it been a summer day, she would have been able to see it by now, the crooked circle of half-fallen rocks. In the middle of the circle she¡¯d see that horrid, flat stone, with it¡¯s carefully carved grooves and dark stains, just large enough for an adult to lie on. To be tied to.


    Don¡¯t, she screamed at herself, don¡¯t remember!, but whether she dared think about it or not, the dark forced her forwards. Was this her punishment? Was she going to die in Slaksf¨®rn of all places, because Thorn had not?


    With violent desperation, she send out her thoughts again, as the first of the Slaksf¨®rn stones appeared as silhouettes on the edge of her vision. May nearly missed it - but her dark brushed along that center stone, the rough granite of it, and it¡¯s surface was already occupied.


    There was someone there, on that altar that had lain dormant for life times, for centuries. Whoever it was, they were dying already, the heartbeat so quiet May had nearly missed it in the vast dark around her.


    The shadows controlling her staggared, and for a moment she was free, but just as quick as it let go it caught her again. Her feet were heavy, the cold finally sneaking into her. She passed the first stone, skewed enough that it should have fallen already. May wanted to grab at it, stop her moving, but could not - and the granite radiated something ominous that she didn¡¯t want anywhere near her skin.


    She willed the dark to move her faster, make her take longer strides, get it over with - but it seemed hesistant, still, despite dragging her all the way here. The constant snow had cleared up a little, and it allowed her to see the center stone as she approached. She could tell there was something, someone on top of it indeed; if she hadn¡¯t known there was a person there, perhaps she¡¯d have mistaken them for a pile of snow.


    The dark forced her closer still, and the circle of crooked pillars stood guard around her, unwilling to let her escape. May could almost imagine a crowd of cloaked men and women around of her, and perhaps those lost souls of old had called her here, to end that fluttering life tied up on the altar of Slaksf¨®rn.


    She wanted to cry when she saw how young the girl was still - to call her a woman would be a wild exagarration. Still May¡¯s muscles weren¡¯t her own, despite the hesistance in the shadows, the sputtering of it¡¯s force - she would not save this life. The girl was shivering, half frozen already, in only a shirt and underwear but with large, half-opened eyes that reminded her too much of Asrun. For a moment, the shadows held her still, and she dared hope perhaps they¡¯d let both of them go-


    Then the rage came, that murderous rage the itch had promised to her, and with it the burning in her veins and nerves she¡¯d so dreaded. She crossed the remaining distance to the ziptied girl in two long strides. May wanted nothing but to close her eyes when her nails found the girl¡¯s arteries, stop herself from watching, pretend this wasn¡¯t real. She tried to tell herself it was kindness, this was better than freezing - but as the dark forced May to do its bidding, the girl screamed with eardrum-piercing wails. Gods, how much May wanted to cry. How she savoured the pain in her nerves, how hard it was to believe this girl wasn¡¯t Asrun.


    With blackened veins and a burning heart, the dark made her tear and rip at everything soft enough to yield beneath her nails and teeth. They were sharper than she could have imagined them to be, but the taste of blood was just as sickening as it should be.


    The girl trashed, so alive still, but whoever had bound her had done too good a job. May had never realized how long it truly took for someone to die. The girl screamed her throat raw, and May pushed back at the thing in the dark but it simply would not let her - and the center stone of Slaksf¨®rn stained red again, for the first time in centuries.


    When finally May fell back into the snow, failing to remember how to use her body, hot red blood was melting small holes into the snow. She was panting. Everything hurt, as though she¡¯d ran a marathon, as though she was the victim here.


    Had it been like this, in times long past? Had priests of long-lost deities called on skugabor to take their sacrifices?


    May spat on the ground, trying to wash the taste of rust out how her mouth. Across the clearing, one of the Slaksf¨®rn stones - slimmer and less crooked than the others - seemed to move. It took her muddled brain a moment to realize it was a person there. Whoever it was, they were leaving, fast, and May could barely will herself to stand up.


    She pulled her knees against her chest and hugged them to her body. Snowflakes collected in her eyebrows and eyelashes, and the cold tore through her body. May shivered.


    She refused to look back at the mutilated body.

 5.3

    May - unable to speak and wide-eyed - evaporated from right between Thorn¡¯s fingers, and at first he thought she¡¯d died. It was a long, horrid moment before Thorn realized he could feel her in the dark, travelling steadily away from them. Skygge was still standing in the bar¡¯s doorway, leaning onto the doorframe to support himself. He looked as though he couldn¡¯t quite believe what he¡¯d just seen.


    ¡®What was that?¡¯ the bassist said, and Thorn shook his head. ¡®Is she going to kill someone?¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯ve never seen that from the outside,¡¯ he said. ¡®But I never lose my mind like that, either.¡¯


    The dark had spread May thin, thin enough that he could hardly feel her, and soon enough she was gone too far for his mind to follow. He cursed, and climbed to his feet. His jeans were soaked with molten snow, but he hardly noticed the cold of it.


    ¡®Come on,¡¯ he told Skygge, ¡®She¡¯s going north. You¡¯ve got a car, right?¡¯


    ¡®Yeah,¡¯ the bassist said, and Thorn started down the street. Skygge had to hurry to follow.


    They rushed north. The snowflakes were thick on the wind, and Skygge couldn¡¯t drive as fast as Thorn would have liked him to. He was fidgeting with the holes in his jeans, tearing at the seams - the past few days were breaking him up, fast. He¡¯d seriously begun to question how much more he could handle.


    The roads were almost deserted, the street lights unable to illuminate the asphalt in the snow storm. There was nothing, north of Slakshaven; nothing but fields and farms and cliffs.


    ¡®Do you know where she¡¯s gone?¡¯ Skygge asked, and Thorn shook his head, tying and untying his hair just so his hands had something to do. He closed his eyes, pushed his thoughts out as far as they could go. There was nothing except the thumping of Slakshaven behind them, not even the morbid excitement that had terrified him on that dark hill.


    ¡®We¡¯ll have to get off the main road,¡¯ Thorn said.


    ¡®That¡¯s mad,¡¯ Skygge said, his knuckles white on the steering wheel. ¡®You might be immortal, mate, but I sure as hell am not.¡¯


    Thorn swallowed. ¡®I¡¯m not any more, I don¡¯t think.¡¯


    The bassist raised his eyebrows, asking something Thorn pretended not to notice.


    ¡®The main road bends off towards the west,¡¯ he said instead, ¡®And they were dragging her north - we¡¯ll never find her there.¡¯


    ¡®Fine,¡¯ Skygge said, in such a tone that Thorn knew it was very much not fine. Well, then. The bassist had decided he wanted in on the skugabor secret - he¡¯d have to deal with the hell of it, too.


    They found a single lane road, leading towards the cliffs and perhaps a lone farm. The few tire tracks didn¡¯t do much to break up the snow, and Skygge drove slow enough to drive Thorn mad with worry. He still couldn¡¯t feel May in the dark around him - not even the smallest hint of her, of anything unusual in the shadows. Had they taken her to punish him, for daring not to die? Was it his fault, had she just dissolved, never to be seen again?


    ¡®Thorn, there¡¯s nothing here,¡¯ Skygge said.


    They drove beside the cliffs now; the faintest hint of sunlight visible at the horizon. He wished the day would just come, but it was november still - the winter wasn¡¯t even close to being over.


    ¡®It¡¯s not like we can turn here,¡¯ Thorn said, and the fidgeting with his clothes had turned into messing with his skin, his nails less sharp than he¡¯d thought they¡¯d be. Were it really these fingers that had murdered Petr, nights earlier?


    ¡®Fuck¡¯s sake,¡¯ Skygge said beside him, ¡®I know where we are.¡¯


    The bassist had turned pale, and pulled over.


    ¡®This is Slaksf¨®rn,¡¯ he said, slow, ¡®This is where people used to do their sacrifices, Thorn.¡¯


    And the old skugabor understood. ¡®Human sacrifices?¡¯


    Skygge nodded. ¡®Gran told me stories.¡¯


    A near endless list of all equally horrid possibilities thundered into Thorn¡¯s mind, each demanding immediate attention. He opened the door, bracing against the wind, and marched into the dark. The snow had cleared up a little; and now that he expected to notice her, he felt May¡¯s erratic patterns - softly, too quiet- right on the edges of his consciousness. He didn¡¯t care if Skygge followed. The blonde could drive back to Slakshaven, if he wanted. Thorn had fucked up too many things these past days not to go towards that faint, terrified rhythm that came from somewhere in front of him.


    If there was a path beneath his steel-toed boots, he didn¡¯t notice it beneath the snow. It didn¡¯t take him very long to see the silhouettes of the Slaksf¨®rn stones, askew against the horizon. There was a darkness pulsing around them, contracting and widening around the centre stone, tentatively as though it had only just woken up.


    There, huddled on her knees in the middle of them, sat May - and he reached her before he even noticed the broken body on the centre stone.


    ¡®What happened?¡¯ he said, and kneeled down beside her in the snow. ¡®What did it make you do?¡¯


    ¡®I killed her,¡¯ May said, and after that first confession the words kept spilling out of her. ¡®She was already here - someone tied her up there - it¡¯s so fucking cold, Thorn. It took so long, and I don¡¯t think I was supposed to kill her - she was just there - she¡¯s just like Asrun, Thorn-¡¯


    It was true - she lay there just as he¡¯d imagined May sister before she¡¯d been found, half buried in the snow by now, black and blue and stained red in all the wrong places.


    ¡®It hesitated,¡¯ May said, ¡®It made me walk here, and wait, and I - she was still alive and I thought maybe, maybe it¡¯ll let me go and I can save her, but I fucking killed her.¡¯


    ¡®It wasn¡¯t you,¡¯ he said, and he half remembered that maybe he was supposed to try and hug her now - ¡®It wasn¡¯t you. It wasn¡¯t you.¡¯


    May nodded, but he could still see the disbelief in her eyes, and Skygge came half-jogging onto the clearing.


    ¡®One of the stones moved,¡¯ May said, ¡®I don¡¯t think it really was a stone. I didn¡¯t have the strength to follow¡­¡¯


    ¡®You¡¯re not making sense,¡¯ Thorn said, half to May, half to Skygge¡¯s questioning expression.


    ¡®There was someone else here,¡¯ May said.


    That thought chilled Thorn to the bone. ¡®They tied up the girl?¡¯


    Stolen story; please report. ¡®I think so,¡¯ she said, ¡®It sure as hell wasn¡¯t me.¡¯


    She tried to get up, pushing away Thorn¡¯s hands when he tried to help. He looked away, at Skygge, who was staring at the broken girl on the centre stone.


    ¡®She did that?¡¯ he said, looking back and forth between both frail girls.


    Thorn shrugged. He wasn¡¯t about to debate the subtleties, not here, with the snow blowing into his eyes and melting in his neck, next to a half-frozen corpse.


    May managed to stand up, on trembling legs.


    ¡®Can we leave?¡¯ she said, and opened her mouth to explain more, then shut it again.


    ¡®Please,¡¯ Skygge said, and began walking, a little quicker than May could handle at the moment. Thorn fell back with her.


    ¡®I thought he knew what we were,¡¯ May said. She didn¡¯t have a coat, and was trying to drag the too-short sleeves of her hoodie over her hands. Was she cold or trying to hide the reddish stains?


    ¡®It¡¯s one thing to know it, it¡¯s another to see it,¡¯ Thorn said.


    ¡®I suppose,¡¯ she said, and Thorn considered a miracle that she wasn¡¯t sobbing on the floor.


    As they walked, Skygge dissapeared from sight towards his car. Thorn supposed they could have looked for footsteps in the snow, but the thickening flakes on the wind would have hidden them by now.


    ¡®I¡¯ll take that cigarette now,¡¯ May said, the slightest tremble in her voice. He looked at her.


    ¡®Are you sure?¡¯


    She shrugged, hugged herself a little closer. Thorn pulled his battered pack from his pocket. It was a miracle his prerolled cigs weren¡¯t soaked through, and he lit one, inhaling a lungful of smoke before handing it to May. She took a shallow drag of it, but managed it without coughing. Her fingers were covered in the girl¡¯s blood, still, and it stained the cigarette red.


    He watched her inhale again, the tip glowing bright, deeper this time. She closed her eyes.


    ¡®I didn¡¯t think it¡¯d actually help,¡¯ she said.


    Thorn lit one for himself too, wondering where he¡¯d get the next batch now that Abigail had disowned him. He let the heat of it flow into his lungs, his blood. Finally.


    May had saved the sobbing for Thorn¡¯s shower, which was never hot enough but hid her tears wonderfully. She¡¯d left the two men in Thorn¡¯s living room, and was furiously scrubbing at her skin. The blood washed away quick enough, but her skin turned red with the friction of it, and that was somehow worse. When she¡¯d woken up on Thorn¡¯s couch, weeks earlier, there had been nothing on her body that reminded her of the murders - but now there were scratches and bruises and then the fucking blood.


    She¡¯d looked like Asrun so much. At least she¡¯d known Asrun¡¯s name - this was just a faceless girl with simular hair and frame, as if whoever had tied her up at Slaksf¨®rn knew May¡¯s demons specifically. That was a thought too dark to entertain - that would make it her fault, somehow, and May wasn¡¯t ready to face that. She turned up the heat of Thorn¡¯s shower, but it wouldn¡¯t warm her up. She started at her hair, as she did every shower, and the knots stopped her in her tracks. Maybe she¡¯d chop the whole lot off; at the very least it would mean she didn¡¯t become Thorn¡¯s clone. The taste of his cigarette still lingered in her throat, but she didn¡¯t regret taking it. Another bit of the old her gone. She started working at the invisible dirt on her body again.


    It was no use. The stains she was trying to scrub off were tattooed beneath her skin, thick yet invisible, and soap wouldn¡¯t do anything to them. She sobbed in frustration. May dug her nails into her palms, wishing she could scream, wishing Thorn and Skygge weren¡¯t in the living room.


    No point in staying here, then; May turned off the shower tap, and dried herself off with harsh motions. She understood Thorn¡¯s self-destruction, now. Staring into her own bloodshot eyes in the mirror, she prayed to long-dead deities that she¡¯d never go that far.


    She took a long time to dress, in the vocalist¡¯s well-worn clothes. Her own wardrobe had been the same, before she came to Slakshaven, when she still lived with her mother. Everything frayed on the edges and oversized; every shirt well-loved but near broken down. In her mind¡¯s eye, she could see the girl tied to the centre stone still, and her shirt had been the same - black and too large and old. May dried her eyes with the back of her arm - she would not blame herself, not like Thorn did.


    She did, however, swear a quiet oath of revenge as she walked out of the bathroom, the soles of her feet colder than the tiles on the floor. She wasn¡¯t sure if it was for her benefit, or for the nameless stranger she¡¯d sacrificed at Slaksf¨®rn this morning.


    Skygge was perched on the couch when she entered the room, and Thorn was pacing. They¡¯d been talking, but stopped silent in their tracks when she appeared in the doorway.


    ¡®I really,¡¯ she said, eyeing Thorn in particular, ¡®do not want to talk about it.¡¯


    He returned that stare for a little too long, perhaps having guessed how hard she was fighting not to break down, even if she pretended nothing was wrong. Yet he said nothing, and sank down in a kitchen chair. May folded herself up in Thorn¡¯s desk chair, one leg dangling to the floor, wet hair clinging to her face still. Silence stretched out between them. May turned circles on her chair. The others would not meet her eyes, now, and she realized it¡¯d be up to her to pretend nothing happened.


    ¡®So, Skygge,¡¯ she said, ¡®someone¡¯s been in your house?¡¯


    It was that easy - they were that grateful to ignore the whole ordeal. Particularly Skygge, who still didn¡¯t look her in the eye, and seemed to think she¡¯d jump him at a moment¡¯s notice.


    ¡®Yeah,¡¯ the bassist said, ¡®Thorn offered to take a look at the place, when you were, eh, in the bathroom. It¡¯s not my house, though, it¡¯s my grandma¡¯s, but I lived there when-¡¯


    He was making intense eye contact with an old band¡¯s tour poster Thorn had stapled to the wall. Gods, May thought to herself, he really wasn¡¯t prepared for the reality of this.


    Neither was she, but she was damn good at faking it.


    ¡®We can go now,¡¯ she said, and hit her hands in the pockets of her borrowed hoodie, so that she didn¡¯t have to look at the guilty nails and tendons.


    Skygge agreed, and it surprised her - she¡¯d thought he¡¯d want to get out of the skugabor¡¯s presence the moment he could. She swallowed. If Skygge was more afraid of whoever had broken in than of murder, perhaps she shouldn¡¯t have offered.


    Too late, now - they were leaving, and Thorn stopped her by the front door while Skygge went ahead.


    ¡®Are you sure you¡¯re alright?¡¯ he said, and she really didn¡¯t want to have to deal with his sympathy now, too.


    She shook her head, then nodded. Nearly told him I¡¯ve had worse, but she¡¯d just decided she wouldn¡¯t become a female version of him. ¡®I¡¯ll be fine.¡¯


    The disbelief radiated off him, and she knew she was a fucking hypocrite - hadn¡¯t she told him to talk after Petr? But she pushed past him, and he didn¡¯t stop her, and she was halfway down the stairs before he followed.

 5.4

    May said nothing as they drove through the gray city, snow a blackening mush on the side of the road. Her face reflected in the window, the outside world forever dark, and she couldn¡¯t bear looking into her own, accusatory eyes. She wanted another of Thorn¡¯s cigarretes. Feel the heat of it again, something resembling normalcy. As the life had left that frozen girl¡¯s eyes, some uninvited cold had snuck into May¡¯s veins, worse still than it had been all those long weeks before. She hoped someone would find her body, soon. She couldn¡¯t stand imagining how cold the girl must be, snow building up atop her body. She knew it didn¡¯t make sense.


    That didn¡¯t matter.


    She swore she¡¯d find whoever had tied up those thin wrists with zip ties and long lengths of rope - who had then stayed, and watched, and hadn¡¯t stopped her. How often had this happened, at Slaksf¨®rn, how many more times would it happen again?


    Skygge pulled up somewhere near his house. The bassist still couldn¡¯t look directly at her, and if the near physical guilt she felt was only a thin remnant of humanity, she could only imagine how Skygge was feeling about all this.


    They got out of the car, into the thin, cold air, and May struggled to remember what warmth should feel like. In the distance, looming over the block of houses, the church¡¯s silhouette was blacker still than the night sky.


    The gloom of the hallway hadn¡¯t faded while the skugabor had been away. May doubted it had been a welcoming entrance at some point - maybe very long ago. As she stepped across the threshold, the unsettling sensation of too-thick shadows rose from the floor again. She wanted to fall down and throw up, but Thorn was right behind her. She took another step. Only now did she notice how neat the house was, how carefully aranged every oddity Skygge¡¯s family had collected over the years. She¡¯d never managed to keep her room nice, Erika had always lamented. May could still see her stacks of books and journals in her minds eye.


    ¡®I¡¯ll go see if gran is asleep,¡¯ Skygge whispered, ¡®She¡¯d skin me alive she finds you two in here again.¡¯


    He dissapeared further into the house, and May turned around and checked the deadbolt on the front door.


    ¡®No way in hell someone got through there,¡¯ Thorn said, ¡®Are you sure you¡¯re okay, May?¡¯


    The vocalist had spend two days in bed, staring at the ceiling, when he¡¯d killed Petr. He¡¯d been a wreck, and May had understood. Made him talk. She was well aware she was being a hypocrite. She also couldn¡¯t bear the thought of breaking down in front of them.


    ¡®I¡¯ll be fine,¡¯ she said, knowing that if she would start talking now, she wouldn¡¯t be able to piece herself together for weeks to come. Still - the dark seeping up from the floorboards was oozing into her skin and making her ill. It was nice to be able to blame something else.


    ¡®You feel that?¡¯ She crouched down to touch one of the tendrils, but it was as thin as regular air.


    ¡®Yeah,¡¯ the older skugabor said. He was still looking at her. ¡®I don¡¯t know how Skygge¡¯s family¡¯s lived here for so long.¡¯


    Panicked footsteps came from the ceiling, and then Skygge rushed downstairs.


    ¡®She¡¯s not still in the living room, is she?¡¯


    ¡®What?¡¯ May said, turning away from Thorn and forgetting about the sentient dark for a moment.


    ¡®Gran,¡¯ he said, ¡®Ann was supposed to come by and bring her to bed. I think. She¡¯s not there.¡¯


    He didn¡¯t wait for an answer, and pushed open the door to the living room. The dark corner from where, long hours earlier, the old woman had screeched at them to leave sat empty. For a moment May feared Skygge would accuse them - her - of dragging her off and murdering her.


    ¡®The door was locked when we came in,¡¯ Thorn said, ¡®Right?¡¯


    ¡®Yeah.¡¯


    ¡®Then she¡¯s probably still inside,¡¯ he said, ¡®Unless whoever¡¯s been in here took her.¡¯


    ¡®I¡¯d call Ann first,¡¯ May said. Skygge had gone pale, and she shot an angry look at Thorn.


    The rising shadows had subsided, now that Skygge was here, with his humans eyes. It reminded her of the way the field had felt, that night they¡¯d been dragged away to witness the tortured corpses of murdered sheep. Would it open up to suck them in, into nothing?


    She shook her head. Skygge pressed his phone to his ear, hard, muttering at Ann to pick up, already. He was pacing the length of the hallway, back and forth and back and forth, and once again May caught Thorn¡¯s worried eyes. She pulled her sleeves down over her guilty hands. Was there blood beneath her nails, still?


    Once his sister picked up, Skygge spoke short, stressed words, and barely waited for Ann¡¯s reply before hanging up on her.


    ¡®She hasn¡¯t been by yet,¡¯ Skygge said, shoving his phone down his pocket. ¡®Kids kept her busy.¡¯


    ¡®Let¡¯s search the house, then,¡¯ Thorn said, ¡®Could she be upstairs?¡¯


    The bassist shook his head. ¡®She¡¯s in a wheelchair. Unless someone took her there?¡¯


    Skygge stormed upstairs, alarmed at the thought, and Thorn followed.


    That left the ground floor for May, with it¡¯s rough rugs and overflowing bookshelfs. She wandered through the empty rooms, the kitchen, every space overflowing with the traces of past generations. Skygge had said he had old blood, and she could see what he meant here - decades upon decades of family history had been imprinted on this house. No wonder his family had secrets; they¡¯d been here for centuries.Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.


    She¡¯d circled back to the front door - there was no one here. The dark swirled around her ankles, as she walked, like cold, shallow water. She crouched down again. It bothered her, this unhidden dark. An old house alone wasn¡¯t reason enough, she thought, and reached into the shadows.


    Hours earlier she had dissolved into this dark, and the sensation of pushing out her thoughts made her gasp at the memory. She was in her body, still, but at the same time she was not - sending her thoughts out through the shadows, feeling every black corner of the house, no matter how small. The dark was thick and swirling here, and hard to send her mind into; it was if she was pushing against another sentient being, here. It made her shudder, sending out these crucial fibers of herself willingly into it, and she feared something might be pulled back into her once she would retreat.


    It reminded her of the tunnels.


    Once she realized that, she forced her thoughts down, ignoring her sudden exhaustion and her prickling spine. There was a space, below the kitchen, one she¡¯d somehow missed. She yanked her mind back into her body, breathing hard at the sensation. She glanced at the ceiling - Thorn and Skygge were still up there, somewhere. Should she call them down? No- she didn¡¯t want to see Thorn eye her again as though she was about to shatter.


    She was, but that was completely beside the point.


    With haste in her step she left the hallway, entered the living room and then the kitchen. She looked around, but saw nothing strange; long, blackout curtains hung in front of the windows, an old rug lay on the wooden floor. The room, like the entire house, was terribly neat and well ordered. It was impossible to imagine a house this immaculate to host such deep secrets.


    And yet, when May yanked open the curtains one by one, she found a half-opened door behind the last one. How had she missed this? She shivered at the sight of the splintered, abused frame; there was a heavy key in the lock, still, and she had to force herself to step through the opening.


    It did not surprise her to find the wheelchair laying empty at the top of a narrow staircase. One wheel was spinning still, and May absentmindely stopped it. The stairs led down, to a the basement, May assumed, where the dark was thicker and something was wrong. She could sense was someone down there, at the bottom of the stairs, in the shadows. A faint heartbeat echoued through the dark. It was as faint as the girl¡¯s had been in Slaksf¨®rn.


    ¡®Don¡¯t think about that,¡¯ she told herself, and steadied her body against the damp wall.


    ¡®Skygge!¡¯ May yelled, switching on the light. It didn¡¯t help much, and her feet were uncertain as she descended. She could heard the bassist¡¯s footsteps coming towards her, but she didn¡¯t wait for him. The dark seemed to solidify around her, and it caught in her throat as she inhaled; slowly, Skygge¡¯s grandma began to take shape at the bottom of the stairs.


    As she approached, the woman¡¯s heartrate quickened. May had been spotted, somehow, and the older woman had realized who and what exactly she was. Her eyes, blue as gleyser ice, shot open in the faint twilight.


    ¡®You!¡¯ she said, still unmoving, and May crouched down beside her. ¡®Why are you here?¡¯


    ¡®Skygge asked me to help look for you,¡¯ she said. ¡®I don¡¯t think he¡¯d have found you, here.¡¯


    ¡®I told you to stay out of my house.¡¯


    ¡®Can you move?¡¯ May said, and yelled for Skygge again. How far upstairs had they been, for him not to be here yet?


    ¡®Stay away from my grandson,¡¯ she said, with such menace that May leaned away. She narrowed her eyes.


    ¡®Stay away!¡¯ the woman repeated, pounding at May¡¯s mental walls, harsh and with the power of decades of practice.


    ¡®You do that thing,¡¯ May said, the right conclusion nearly on her tongue, ¡®with your voice. Throwing all that pain straight at me. I¡¯ve had that happen to me before.¡¯


    Skygge came bounding down the stairs, pushing May out of the way in the process and yelling at her to call a fucking doctor, already, May!


    She didn¡¯t have a phone, but Thorn, who had appeared at the hidden doorway, pale as a the dead, did. As he called, she dragged herself back upstairs. Skygge crouched down beside his grandma, and May sat down on a kitchen chair. She shivered. She shouldn¡¯t have tried Thorn¡¯s cigarettes, she figured now; she¡¯d already developed an appetite for the heat of them.


    As they sat waiting for an ambulance, Skygge¡¯s grandma¡¯s words echoued through May¡¯s skull. She considered telling Thorn, but he was looking at her as though she was a dying puppy hit by a speeding car, so she stared at the floorboards instead. Besides, the words didn¡¯t hurt the way the¡­ thing in the cloister had hurt her with its words. But it was close, and it didn¡¯t help that she was telling herself worse things, now.


    When help arrived and the old woman - broken bones and all - was carried up the stairs, the dark sent silky tendrils after her, reluctant to let her go. May could hardly believe that Skygge couldn¡¯t see it. Then again, maybe he felt them, because he kept glancing back into the basement, as though he could sense the consciousness that radiated from the dark, here.


    ¡®I¡¯m going with her to the hospital,¡¯ the bassist told them. May nodded. She¡¯d not expected anything else.


    ¡®We should go home,¡¯ Thorn said, eyeing May with that insufferable worry that made her bravery collapse. She shook her head. She knew she should take care of herse


    ¡®Can we look through the basement?¡¯ she said. Skygge stared at her.


    ¡®I think we¡¯ll find whatever your intruder was looking for in there,¡¯ she said.


    The bassist shrugged, looking over his shoulder to where his grandma had been carried.


    ¡®Go ahead,¡¯ he said, ¡®It¡¯s probably just bags of potatoes.¡¯


    ¡®We¡¯ll go home after,¡¯ Thorn said, and May didn¡¯t bother disagreeing.

 6.1

    With the house empty, they descended the basement stairs. Thorn had turned on the flash light of his phone. It managed to illuminate the steps beneath his feet, but not much else. May was right behind him. He hoped they¡¯d find some stale sacks of potatoes, and not much more. May needed to be home, get some time to break down and cry. A festering wound wouldn¡¯t scab over, let alone heal. He knew what murder did to a person.


    However, at they approached the lower floor, he couldn¡¯t deny the dark was too deep here, promising depths that shouldn¡¯t be hiding between the floorboards. It was all too familiar.


    The door at the end of the stairs wasn¡¯t locked. Thorn pushed it open. May¡¯s rhythm in the dark had become faster, nervous. Did she know what they¡¯d find, here? She¡¯d been so dead set on staying; perhaps she had a clue what they might find.


    The flash light on his phone didn¡¯t reach very far into the swirling shadows of the basement. He searched the wall for a light switch, unwilling to reach out into this dark, afraid it would refuse to let him go. To his surprise, he found one.


    The pale yellow light showed nothing but the cellar Skygge had predicted. There were, indeed, sacks of potatoes; and also cans so old they might have seen a world war or two, and stacks and stacks of cardboard boxes. All but one wall had rickety wooden shelves leaning against them.


    ¡®There¡¯s nothing here,¡¯ May said, in disbelief, pushing past him into the room. ¡®You feel that, right?¡¯


    He did. The churning of the dark was all around them, now; in the walls and the floor and the ceiling. It worked its way into his throat, merging with his heartbeat, eating away at his confidence.


    ¡®The hallway must be right above here,¡¯ he said. He stepped into the room, and the door fell shut behind them. There was a sense of doom to the atmosphere, floating in the light like flecks of dust. He told himself feelings wouldn¡¯t hurt him.


    ¡®It¡¯s in the walls,¡¯ May said. ¡®Help me with these?¡¯


    She picked up one of the cardboard boxes piled against the back wall, and Thorn moved over to help. They worked steadily; the first few boxes were full and heavy, but the second row was empty, just filler. There was a second door behind them, old and wooden, matching the doors upstairs. It didn¡¯t surprise him any more. Had the old woman tried to come here? There was no way she¡¯d have been able to move all this, alone, let alone get back upstairs.


    ¡®Skygge doesn¡¯t know about this, does he?¡¯ May said, and Thorn shook his head. Skygge seemed to know just enough to get himself into trouble, and not much more.


    May visibly hesitated before turning the doorknob - this door was unlocked, too. She pushed the door open, and from the room behind it spilled out a near-solid darkness, a sludge of shadow and ancient misery.


    Thorn stepped back, but the oozing dark disintegrated before his eyes, the way May had only hours earlier. A deeper room lay before them. A slow heartbeat came forth from it, lethargic and threatening on the edge of his mind, but May stepped forward and he followed. The dark engulfed him; it was near liquid here, trickling into his lungs. It took him a moment to realize he could breathe despite the viscosity of it, and then May flicked the light on, and the worst of it was gone.


    It wasn¡¯t a room, exactly. Sure, it had a floor and a ceiling and contained ancient-looking furniture, but there was no back wall. The single lamp could only do so much, and its light couldn¡¯t illuminate all of the tunnel, fading into twisting, curling dark. He stared into it, trying to wrap his head around the implications. May stood frozen by his side.


    The walls, here, were lined with bookshelves and opened chests; there was a desk with a thick coating of dust, and half-empty folders lay strewn across it. A toppled chair lay in a corner.


    May swore. She strode into the room, picked up a folder, read half a page, and tossed it back down in frustration.


    ¡®This was it, Thorn,¡¯ she said, hugging her arms to her chest. ¡®This was the archive I was looking for.¡¯


    ¡®So Skygge¡¯s grandma¡­¡¯


    ¡®Is the one who filtered anything interesting out the bloody archives,¡¯ she said, ¡®and someone else figured it out before I did.¡¯


    She sounded like she wanted to cry, and Thorn stepped forwards, uncertain what he should do.


    ¡®Are you sure?¡¯ he said, ¡®Maybe Skygge¡¯s grandma just moved the entire thing when she couldn¡¯t use the stairs any more?¡¯


    ¡®Look what a mess it is!¡¯ she said, gesturing to the chaos of half-open folders and the few left-behind books. ¡®Have you seen the rest of the house? This isn¡¯t a woman that accepts the very concept of clutter.¡¯


    ¡®Fair,¡¯ he said, shoving his hands into his pockets. He looked at the rest of the dark, culminating at the back of the tunnel. He could have sworn¡­


    ¡®It could¡¯ve told us so much!¡¯ May kicked the wall, sending echoes through the tunnel.


    ¡®Maybe they left something useful behind,¡¯ Thorn said, although he didn¡¯t consider it very likely - the absolute last thing he wanted, however, was May breaking down here. He wasn¡¯t convinced it was safe.


    She shook her head, but stomped over to one of the bookcases and picked up a book.


    ¡®Population records of Klipvegen, 1345 -1350,¡¯ she read out loud, ¡®Sounds incredibly useful.¡¯


    ¡®Half an hour ago you¡¯d have been glad for it,¡¯ Thorn said, distracted - was that movement, in the dark? He turned to take a better look before reaching out with a tentative tendril of his consciousness. It bounced at the border of the shadows. He swore in frustration, and May turned to look at him.


    Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. ¡®What is-¡¯ she said, and followed his gaze, ¡®There¡¯s something in there.¡¯


    Thorn nodded. May slowly put down the book she¡¯d been holding, then walked over to where he was standing. There it was, again; a movement, too solid, too real to be the dark itself.


    He didn¡¯t answer, focused on his mind instead and finally he slipped a thought into the dark, despite it¡¯s resistance. His spine began to tingle, but his mind did brush at something, someone, leaving fast-


    ¡®There¡¯s someone in there,¡¯ May said, dead certain. She stepped forward, out of the thin circle of light and into the swirling dark. Thorn followed, tearing his mind loose from the shadows. His combat boots connected with the floor, real and solid despite the wrongness of this place. As long as something here was real, they would be fine.


    He had to hurry to match May¡¯s pace. Soon, there was nothing but twilight and damp rock around them. The heartbeat of Slakshaven writhed above them, and he tried very hard not to think about the way these tunnels may have come into existence.


    Eyes fixed on the near-invisible movement in the dark, May marched forward with the promise of revenge in her step. Whoever had found these archives before her had taken knowledge that should have been hers. She was quite certain what exactly had been done with that knowledge. She had been used, as a carving knife, a tool of sacrifice - she swore to herself it would not happen again.


    The whispering voice of doubt at the back of her mind reminded her that perhaps it would not be her choice to make.


    Thorn was somewhere beside her, unspeaking, the rhythm of his footsteps matching her own and she wondered when the vocalist had given up on dragging her home. It was cold, here; the damp athmosphere restricted her breath. Water trickled down from the ceiling, into her neck, chilling her spine.


    That did not matter. By now, May had had worse.


    There, somewhere in front of her - in the twilight was the silhouette of a person. The shadows took no notice of the stranger, swirling away at their own tranquil pace. Whoever it was, they were half running, and May picked up her own pace. Had they noticed the skugabor? May pushed out her thoughts, now willing to deal with the discomfort and how much it felt like when she¡¯d been summoned - but the shadows were thick and sluggish and unyielding. Her mind could not stretch far enough to touch the other person. She tried, pushed further - but she felt faint and sick, perhaps a little further still -


    Thorn hand on her arm stalled her. She snapped back into her body, gasped at the sudden realization how thin she¡¯d been spread.


    ¡®Don¡¯t do that,¡¯ he said, ¡®You¡¯ll lose yourself.¡¯


    It was true - she was breathing, hard, and she wasn¡¯t entirely certain how to think. She inhaled, shaken. May shook her head. They couldn¡¯t stop - she had to know who it was, who¡¯d raided her archive, who had forced to do-


    Ahead of them, the tunnel twisted, and she lost sight of the stranger. She forced herself to go faster, although her lungs were telling her the tunnel air lacked what they needed. May nearly lost her footing on the smooth, wet floor. She stumbled back onto her feet, Thorn ahead of her now, and rounded the corner.


    She swore - churning shadows obscured her vision, and there was no one in sight. Worse, further down the tunnel, the path divided into two seperated ones. She halted. Then, trying something she hadn¡¯t before, May gathered the churning dark around her and sent it away. For a moment the tunnel was bright - but the other had already entered one of the split-offs.


    May pushed the shadows into them, further than she¡¯d have thought possible and it took more strength than she¡¯d ever admit - and nothing. She howled.


    ¡®Fuck¡¯s sake, May,¡¯ Thorn said, three steps further down the tunnel, ¡®We¡¯ve got a fifty percent chance of picking the right one, you going to stop now over that?¡¯


    ¡®We could split up,¡¯ she said, but even as the words left her mouth she knew Thorn wouldn¡¯t agree.


    Indeed, he shook his head. ¡®I still think you should be home, now, but-¡¯


    ¡®Fine,¡¯ she said, and stomped forward.


    Left or right? It didn¡¯t matter, so she went right, without a clue where exactly they were going. The tunnels were the same, here, damp and carved into the bedrock beneath Slakshaven. How many generations had smoothed out this path? What had they been used for, once?


    She didn¡¯t question why they¡¯d never covered them in college, not any more.


    Long, tense moments were filled with nothing but the stomping of their boots and the steady dripping from the ceiling. Then, in the distance - May could hardly believe it - there was the stranger again. They¡¯d slowed down, perhaps out of breath, perhaps in the false belief the skugabor had picked the wrong path.


    She forced her feet to go faster once more. May narrowed her eyes. If only she could see more than a silhouette, hell, just see if the other was male or female - but the swirling dark got in the way, still. All she could do was run, now, with Thorn in her wake and the icy shadows spreading into her lungs. She wasn¡¯t used to running, had never been very good at anything physical - even back on Havn¡­


    Focus, she told herself. Thorn was faster, but not by much, and the darkness swirled in their wake. Their footsteps pounded against the floor, echoing through the entire system of twisting caverns, and they must have been heard - ahead of them, the stranger rounded another corner.


    She wasn¡¯t thinking straight. Faster, she forced herself, but in her mind¡¯s eye images played that she really did not want to remember. She could feel the hot, crimson blood on her fingers again. From her throat, the taste of blood welled up, coating her tongue in a thick layer of rust-


    She rounded the same corner the other had, moments earlier, and swore. There were stairs here, of smooth, worn-down rock; and in the distance May could hear the slamming of a door. The sound vibrated through her bones as she forced her unwilling body towards the faint light that shone from the upstairs. Thorn was two paces ahead of her. She could hear his heavy breathing - the vocalist wasn¡¯t used to running, either. He waited for her, at the top of the stairs, where a heavy wooden door connected the tunnels to the outside world.


    Gathering her breath, May pushed it open. Her shoulders sunk, and she tried to swallow, to purge the taste of metal from her mouth.


    They were standing at the back of the only church in Slakshaven, and it was empty.