He caught his breath and petted the ugly, fur-covered face nudging his hip. Still in her pajamas, Cybil sat with her knees drawn up to her chest, her bare ankles shoved into sneakers caked with mud.
She’d gone too close to the woods again. “What did I tell you about the woods?”
Her arms wrapped tightly around her shins. Sounds from the Pennsylvania Turnpike whispered in the distance.
He sat beside her and scooted close, trying to steal some of her body warmth. She never took her eyes off the trees.
“You can’t keep doing this, Cybil.”
A strand of her long, blonde hair blew into his face and he batted it away. Her hair still held that baby-soft quality the girls his age no longer had.
“You can’t keep running off like this.”
He didn’t expect her to answer. It had been so long since she said anything or even let a giggle slip. Dane was beginning to forget what her voice sounded like. Sometimes, she would sneeze or cough and he would try to pick up parts of her voice in that bodily function, but it was no replacement for her conversation or laughter.
A brief impression of their dog filled his mind and he scowled at her. “Colby is not the same as having a person with you.”
The vision shifted from Colby’s playful, panting face to a fierce protector, baring teeth and growling viciously in a way the dog never behaved. “No, Cybil. You need a grown-up out here with you or at least me.”
He winced. The memory hit like a bullet through his heart, but the recollection wasn’t his own.
He saw himself standing in the woods from his sister’s perspective, the creature holding his mother’s lifeless body in its claws. He stood in the memory, exactly as he had in reality, useless and terrified.
“Damnit, Cybil!” He shot to his feet and glared at her. “What could I have done? Stop reliving it! It’s over. She’s gone!”
He marched off and Colby barked. Cybil didn’t follow.
His sister didn’t project her memories for malicious reasons. She couldn’t filter her thoughts, and he had no idea how to block the ones he didn’t want to see. She was right anyway. When they had been in real danger, he proved himself to be worthless.
He had always been intuitive, but when Cybil was born, he began to understand the extent of his curse. By second grade, he had learned tricks to control it better. Not only could he see his classmates’ test answers and daydreams, but he also could see the things they didn’t like about him. His mind overflowed with unwanted opinions and disturbing secrets.
For him, there was no magic in Santa Clause or surprises at birthdays. He overheard too much and learned things he wished he never knew. Children were much more perceptive than adults were comfortable admitting, and there was a world of untold secrets flitting through their heads.
Thankfully, he could only see into younger, open minds like the minds of his peers. He didn’t know if it was an age thing or a purity-of-thought thing. But the more innocent a child was, the brighter their thoughts appeared. Age, or perhaps the bitterness of time, mutated the human mind into an opaque shadow too murky to read.
With the recent darkness of his sister’s thoughts, he worried he might lose this fragile thread they still shared. But he had no way of cheering her up, no way of absorbing her grief on top of his own.
If their bond severed, it would be another loss, another thing to grieve. He shivered at the thought, hoping that, one day soon, her silence would end.
He pushed the vision of him standing uselessly before his mother away and nudged Cybil. “Come on, it’s freezing.”
He saw the distant trees in her mind. First, the vision was of the woods on the opposite side of the highway, then it moved closer. Trees, branches, pine needles, and leaves, then bark. Her vision zoomed in on a single tree, and that was when he caught it. A clawed hand wrapped loosely around the bark of the trunk.
He spun and looked to the woods across the highway. His panicked gaze searching the exact place his sister just showed him, but all the trees looked the same.
His eyes scanned for any movement, but they were standing too far away. He searched for details, picking through her thoughts and staring into the distance.
Yellow leaves popped boldly against the faded brown decay and he saw the exact place the hand had been.
A chill skittered up his spine. “Come on.” He grabbed her hand only to have her yank her arm free.
She glared at the tree line. Dane stared too—anxious and unsure what might be watching them.
“Do you see someone out there now?”
She opened her mind and he saw the memory. Bloodied, tattered clothing and clawed hands like the creature that killed their mom, but this one was different. He was taller with olive skin. There was something civilized about him, despite the damage to his clothing, but also something very dangerous.