Jeremy Robinson - MirrorWorld

I point. “It’s right there.”

“The lot is empty. I don’t—” There’s a slap and her voice cuts off.

I glance toward the sound and find my hand clutching her wrist. That’s unusual. But it’s not fear. It’s surprise. “What’s happening?”

“Look again,” she says. “Try to see more. When you feel it, push.”

When I look back to the window, my eyes feel strained. Like I need glasses. Something tickles my eye, and I fight the urge to blink. Following Allenby’s advice, I push forward. I can feel the stretch, like some newly formed muscle in my eye, and I will it to flex. And then, with a twitch, it does.

Blinding pain comes in waves, flowing from my eyes and down into my torso. My stomach clutches, pitching me forward with a grunt. My muscles spasm, the pain becoming systemic. “What’s happening?”

“It will get easier,” she says. “Look again, when you can.”

Fighting the pain, I turn my eyes up.

The parking lot is gone.

New Hampshire is gone.

The land is dark, mixed with veins of shimmering green light. The sky appears as a dark purple hue. There’s movement in the dark. Indistinct. Revealed by shifts in the green light. My vision flickers, pulsing pain throughout my body.

I see the parking lot.

And then it’s gone. Or not. It’s just dim. Less focused. And the veins of green remain.

I rub my eyes and the two views—the real and surreal—strobe back and forth. I close my eyes again. “I’m still hallucinating.”

“No,” Allenby says. “You’re not.”

“Then what am I seeing?”

“The world. But in a way no one else can.”

“There’s a shadow in the parking lot. Moving. But there’s no source. It isn’t connected to anyone.”

“Just the one?” Allenby asks, suddenly tense.

I scan the lot and see nothing else moving. “Yes.”

“That shadow,” she says, “is your enemy, our enemy, hidden from the world but present. Always present. They are the shifting air that makes hair stand on end. The monsters under the bed. The sense of impending doom, great depression, and panic that has no source. Most of us feel their presence—fear without tangible cause—on a regular basis. You, on the other hand, Mr. Fearless, have never felt them.”

The pain lessens and I open my eyes. The view is back to normal. Shifting movement turns my eyes back to the parking lot. The moment I see the strange shape skulking around the cars, the world goes black and green again, bringing a fresh wave of nausea-inducing agony along with it. “Dammit.” I turn away from the window. The apartment and Allenby look normal.

“How do I stop it?” I ask, clutching my gut with one hand, supporting my weight on the kitchen table with the other.

“Are you afraid?” Allenby asks. She sounds concerned, but I think she’s more worried that I’m feeling fear than she is about my physical state.

I rub my throbbing temples. “Is it supposed to hurt like this?”

“Try to focus,” she says. “See what you want to see. See where you want to see.”

“Have you done this before?” I ask.

“God, no.”

“Great,” I say, turning toward the dark window. “So your advice is—”

“Bullshit?” Allenby says. “Maybe. But it’s also you’re only hope, because once we step out of this building, you’re going to have to control it—and the pain—on your own.”

I turn back to the window and lift my head, tracking a fast-moving shadow as it sweeps by. A faint whispering tickles my ears but then fades. Allenby must see my surprise this time because she asks, “What?”

“The shadow.”

“Where?” Her voice is instantly tense. Almost a whisper.

Whatever this thing is, she’s definitely afraid of it. “It just passed by the window.”

Allenby takes a deep breath, lets it out slow. “How did it make you feel? When you saw it.”

I glance at her. “Are you asking me if I felt afraid?”

She nods.

“No.”

She pulls down the shade and collapses into one of the kitchen chairs. “Did it notice you?”

Focused on the kitchen and Allenby, the pain quickly subsides. “Notice me? I said it was a shadow.”

“Mmm.” She’s lost in thought. On another world.

I sit down across from her. “Allenby.”

She doesn’t acknowledge me.

“ Aunt Allenby.”

That gets her attention. She looks up with a hint of a smile. “Yes, Josef?”

“Crazy.”

“Still?”

I tilt my head. Half a nod. “It was more than a shadow, wasn’t it?”

“What you saw… however briefly, it’s the reason your son is dead, your wife is lost, and you elected to forget it all. They’re your enemy, Crazy. And they’re right outside the windows. You’re not here to be experimented on. You’re not here to find Simon. Or to save Maya. All of that is in the past.”

“Then why am I here?”

“Honestly? I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect it has a lot, if not everything, to do with vengeance.”

“Vengeance,” I say, without enthusiasm. The word feels hollow. Untrue. Vengeance is an act of passion, driven by emotion. It’s not even a desire. It’s a need.

“And there’s the real problem,” Allenby says. “When Lyons offered to remove your memory, it was an act of mercy, but also refinement. You were always his preferred coconspirator. I was never sure if that was because of your potential to be a living WMD used in humanity’s defense or genuine affection, but when Simon and your parents died and Maya… You lost focus. You nearly lost your mind. You—”

“My parents are dead, too?”

Allenby sucks in a breath. She’s horrible at keeping secrets.

“Tell me about them.”

“They were beautiful people.” Her eyes are downcast, unable to meet mine. “Joyful. Silly, really. Laughed a lot. You did, too, for a time.”

“What I meant,” I say, “is how did they die?”

“Oh,” she says, then a whisper. “Oh…”

“They were on vacation. A tropical resort. Had a suite on the top floor. Jumped off the balcony.”

“They killed themselves?”

“That’s the official report. Mutual suicide. But when you know how to look between the lines, you can make sense of the senseless. Your father, Daniel, hit the concrete walkway not far from the pool. Your mother, Lila, made it to the water but struck the bottom. When she was lifted out, she regained consciousness long enough to speak.” Tears well up in her eyes. She’s describing the brutal death of her best friend and sister-in-law. My mother. Lila. Though I have no memory of the woman, I find myself moved by the story. I take Allenby’s hands. The gesture elicits a sob, but it’s quickly crushed with an efficiency that only comes from practice. “Your mother’s final words revealed the truth about their deaths. ‘The darkness came for us,’ she said. A monster, like the one you glimpsed outside, drove them to jump.”

“Drove them?” I ask.

She nods, her fluffy hair sliding slowly forward and back, seaweed in a current. “They’ve turned fear into a weapon. Can push it into people. Steal their sanity. Force them to do things to themselves, to others, that… they can make us do horrible things.”

“So my mother knew about these fear-inducing shadows? About what’s outside?”

“We all did. And it made our family targets. That same night… that same damn night, they took Hugh, my husband—your uncle—and Simon.”

They … Who or what are they ?

“But you survived,” I point out.

“I nearly didn’t. I was tackled before I could follow Hugh into traffic. I tried to warn you, but was too late. The phone was ringing when you found them, Maya and Simon. You never answered, but it was me on the other end.”