Clue to the Absent Hand

Chapter 1

At eighteen years old, Nico knew enough to say he should be in therapy. But going to therapy meant talking about Them, and that was something he just couldn't do.

He could still remember the first one he saw, her bludgeoned head and sunken eyes, the blood in the remaining teeth. He had been two years old and alone in bed, staring up at her with a frozen body and wide eyes. She had stayed all night, and ever since then, he hadn't gotten a good night's rest.

And now, years later, he laid on his dorm bed and stared at the same woman, his heart in his stomach and his skin too pale. His father would have said to get used to it. His father would have given him something to be more fearful of.

You'll never make it in this world. Just give up and join me, and we can take them down to Hell with us.

The words still haunted him just as the ghosts did, and he wondered if his father had seen them as well. If not, why him? Where had this curse come from? Was it born from his father's evil spirit and the rapes he committed? Or was there something else?

All Nico knew was that his father was a serial killer, and since he was two years old, he was being haunted by his father's victims.

.

.

Nico was a week into college when he left his dorm for the first time. He hadn't slept once since arriving, nor had the ghosts stopped haunting. If you called them ghosts. He wasn't sure what they were, only that they were there and they hated everything about him.

He was busy emailing one of his teachers another excuse for missing class when his roommate came in, his bag over his shoulder and his girlfriend in tow.

Jason and Piper. He still wasn't sure how he felt about them. It was a little hard to focus on the living when the dead wanted to make you one of them.

"Hey, man, is it cool if Piper stays for a minute?" Jason asked. "Her dorm's taken up."

Nico nodded and went back to his email, and that was the end of every basic conversation he had with Jason. The only time they had talked more was when they exchanged names on their first meeting.

He wasn't trying to be antisocial. He didn't mean to keep slipping into this hole his father created. But his childhood was a little too traumatic to just get over and it was still haunting him. A wound couldn't begin healing until it was left alone.

So he didn't speak unless spoken to. Tried not to flinch when a particularly gruesome ghost showed up. Did his best to act natural when natural was the opposite of his day-to-day world.

Piper and Jason had been there for ten or fifteen minutes, and Whatshername had been breathing the smell of rotting flesh down the back of Nico's neck. He was two seconds away from vomiting when a knock came at the door.

He figured it was for Jason. It was always for Jason. Jason must have thought so, too, because he went and opened it for himself.

But on the other side was a girl neither of them knew. A girl with dark skin and honey hair and a coat wrapped tightly around her petite shoulders.

"Can I...help you?" Jason asked.

The girl wiped her raw eyes and nodded. "I'm looking for Nico di Angelo."

Nico closed his laptop and sat up, the unfortunate smell following him as he walked over to the door. He was still in his pajamas, black pants and hoodie, clothes to keep him warm when the dead kept him cold.

"I'm Nico, what'd you need?"

She looked him up and down before looking in his eyes, her voice quiet and soft. "You have his eyes."