Footsteps [Will GrossmanxReader]

1

"So he's still not awake?"

You looked up at your Mother, who gave a sigh and shook her head sadly.

"I'm afraid not." She said, plucking a book off of the shelf and handing it to you.

"Do you think reading to him actually does anything?" You asked, setting the book in your lap. The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the cover read in whimsical lettering. The cover also featured a fountain, a stump, and a couldron that appeared to be hopping around on a human foot.

"Maybe, maybe not." Your Mom answered with a shrug. She clasped the handles on the back of your wheelchair and began pushing you along. "But the important thing is that he has company. The poor thing, no one's been able to identify him yet. Without us, he'd be all alone in the world."

"Yeah, I guess." You ran your fingers over the cover of the book, as more and more questions swirled around in your mind. "Any idea what happened to him yet?"

"All we know is that he was attacked." Your mother shook her head again, as she always did when she was thinking about something sad. "Who or what attacked him...well, me may never know."

You pursed your lips as you thought over the possibilities. A boy around your age, beaten half to death and ditched at the front door of the hospital? It was terrifying to think about, even though it had happened over two weeks ago.

"Alright, Mommy's got to get to work. You let a nurse know if you need anything, okay?" Your Mom said, taking a glance at her watch. You nodded and she kissed your forehead before hurrying down the hall. Your Mom was a surgeon, so she was almost always busy. You were used to her rushing off. Actually, you had been spending a lot more time with her lately than you ever had, but not because she was less busy. You were just spending more time at the hospital.

You turned the doorknob and swung open the light wooden door, then closed it again after you had wheeled yourself in. The inside of a hospital room was different from the atmosphere of a hospital corridor. The rooms were always still, quiet, and somewhat chilly. This room especially exemplified all of those qualities. The only sounds in this space were slow, steady breaths taken through an oxygen mask, and the constant beeping of a heartrate monitor.

"How are you doing today?" You spoke plesantly to the room's inhabitant as you wheeled up to his bed. He didn't say anything. People in comas weren't usually the best conversationalists. "I brought a new book today, since we finished The Great Gatsby. I think this one's a collection of short stories, or something."

The boy in the bed looked to be about your age. His skin was pale (not surprising, from the state he was in), and his face was marked with a bruise on his left cheek and a little scratch below his left eye. He had shaggy blonde hair that flipped uncontrollably in all directions. You often wondered what he would look like, awake and alive. Would he be handsome? It was hard to tell, when a guy was lying there with an oxygen mask on his face and an IV in his arm, still as a corpse. What was he like? He was a complete stranger, which was a rarity in your little town. The boy was shrouded in mystery, the epitome of a John Doe. You'd spent hours after school reading to him, wondering what would happen if one day, in the middle of a word, his eyes would flick open, and you would no longer be alone.

"At once there came a loud clanging and banging from his kitchen. The wizard lit his wand and opened the door, and there, to his amazement, he saw his father's old cooking pot: it had sprouted a single foot of brass, and was hopping on the spot, in the middle of the floor, making a fearful noise upon the flagstones." You read aloud. Just as you finished, you heard a loud clang from outside the door. You glanced at the clock on the wall and noticed it was getting to be around 8:30 PM, and the sun had already dropped behind the horizon, making way for another cold late-autumn night. You opened your mouth to start reading again, but the lights in the room began to flicker. They did so for about three seconds before dying completely, leaving you in darkness.

"What the...?" You muttered softly to yourself. The fluorescent lights must've died or something, because you could still see light coming in from the hallway, under the door. A shiver ran down your spine as you wheeled yourself to the door. It felt like...you were being watched? You opened the door a crack, casting light over the coma boy's face. You twisted to look back at him, just in case. His eyes were still closed, and nothing about him had changed. You must've been imagining things. I'm getting a little old to be scared of the dark. You thought to yourself as you exited the room, so you could tell someone about the lights.

You closed the door and began to roll away, but The Tales of Beedle the Bard slid of your lap and onto the ground with a small rustling sound and a thunk. With great effort, you bent down and strained your fingers to reach it. As you were struggling with the simple task of picking up a book, a noise from the other side of the wall caught your attention. It was muffled and slight, just barely loud enough to be heard. Based on the timbre, it sounded like a male voice, repeating a single syllable between pauses. Wait...could it be? Had the John Doe woken up after all?

You put yourself in reverse and returned to the door. You paused a moment to listen through it. The door was much thinner than the wall, and you could hear more clearly.

"Will. Will." The gravelly male voice said, getting increasingly more urgent. "Will. C'mon. Naptime's over. Wake up."

As quit as a mouse, you turned the doorknob and pushed the door open, just a crack. The lights were back on in the room, and through the crack you could see bits of black and white near John Doe's bed. You dared to open the door even further, giving way to a better view. What you saw snatched the air right out of your lungs.

A black and white figure, nearly 8 feet tall, stood with his back to you, shaking the comatose boy's shoulder, as if trying to wake him up from a nap. The man had long, striped sleeves topped with dark feathers at the shoulders. He had a head of thick, chin-length black hair, and what appeared to be a pull-string dangling from between his shoulders. His outfit reminded you of some sort of weird, freaky clown, but he gave off the vibe of being something..inhuman. The only thing you could say for sure was that you were frozen to the spot with sheer terror.

"I've given you two weeks. It's time to get this show on the road again." The clown man huffed, and you watched in shock as he raised a clawed hand and made a move to slice the cords connecting the patient to his IV. You were scared, but you knew that if he broke that cord, it wouldn't be long at all before the boy died.

"Stop!!" You cried out, pushing your way fully into the room. "Y-you can't-"

The clown turned around and gave you a glare that stopped you dead in your tracks. His face was even more terrifying than the rest of him, featuring pale eyes, sharp teeth that poked out over his lower lip, and a striped cone-shaped nose. Before you could do so much as squeak, the clown's arm shot out, stretching to unnatural lengths until it crossed the room and pushed the door shut behind you. Then the arm snapped back into place like a released rubber band.

"I. Can't. What." The clown growled. His pale grey eyes and smooth white skin reminded you of a porcelain doll. However, this was not a doll that you thought anyone would want in their collection.

"Y-you c-can't..th-the IV...h-he'll die!..." You sputtered, all of the courage having been sucked out of you by a single look from this clown.

The Clown looked down at the coma boy, then back at you. His eyes were predatory and confident, like he was acutely aware of just how scary he was. Yet something in the back of that glare, and in the way he held himself, told you that he was scared too. He just wasn't scared of you. The Clown stepped toward you, his lanky figure leaning forward so that he loomed over you like the grim reaper himself. Then, after you'd been making eye contact with him for what felt like an eternity, his mouth opened you and his rough voice beckoned you, "Go on."