Ben's head was absolutely killing him. Sure, Cat was positive that he was having a migraine, and he almost agreed... save that his brain was feeling physically fuzzy, like its boundaries were evaporating into air, and his spine felt wobbly, like it was made of loosely packed jellyfish instead of cartilage and bone. He'd never had a migraine like this before. Migraines were sharp, rhythmic, grating, not dull, deep, and fuzzy. It was not half as painful as the rock wound Thomas had given him, but... it still hurt.
His thoughts turned to what had happened to his murderous babysitter... or, rather, what he knew of it. It wasn't a very pleasant place for his brain to wander. Following a statewide manhunt, Thomas Moore had been found dead in his little car, about eight hours after Ben gave his statement at the county hospital. He'd been hiding out in the desert - or it appeared that way, anyway. He had been viciously beaten to death. It was suspected that he had been the victim of mob justice. Cisne was a decent-sized town, but surrounded by desert as it was, its citizens' social circle was largely limited to other desert-dwellers, which gave it a small-town feel. Small-town men don't take kindly to whack-job slap-ass-crazy bastards trying to kill children. The police ran around for a couple of days; Thomas's parents left town; a forensic psychiatrist diagnosed Thomas with schizophrenia postmortem. The case went cold. No one looked too hard for the killers, and frankly, that was just fine with Ben.
He ducked into the bathroom. He'd go home after lunch, maybe, but he had a calculus exam third period that he really didn't want to make up. Besides, he thought as he hung his head over the sink, math always makes me feel better. It's all clear-cut. It makes sense. Unlike life. Or English. Maybe he could manage to stick it out until fifth, and then all he had was a study hall, French, and -
Thomas Moore was sitting against the wall, eyeless, smirking.
Ben literally jumped, blinked rapidly, rubbed his eyes. A half-strangled yelp escaped him before he saw that it was a mere trashcan. But it had seemed so... real. So real, in fact, that every time his eyes shifted, he caught another glimmer of -
Ben whirled, faced the trashcan, and backed out - slowly, eyes on ... the traschan. NOT Thomas. The trashcan.
***
Ismat woke with a start, her wound raging into vivid oranges and sickly green-yellows. Now.
---
Ben made it, shockingly, through the day. His mouth was drier than lint as he stumbled through the parking lot, having lain down in the room of a sympathetic art teacher for half an hour or so after the final bell rang. He hadn't wanted to drive out with the herd of buses and cars. Now the lot was nearly deserted as thunder rolled in the distance.
And then those footsteps came up behind him - those low, murmuring voices.
Ben sighed and gritted his teeth. "Fuck off, assh-"
And then the back of his head burst into heat and flame and he lost control of his legs.
YOU ARE READING
The Fracture: Book One of the Arcana Series
FantasyBen is left by his schizophrenic babysitter to die in the desert and saved by what he can only describe as an angel. This seems to have broken some kind of wall, somewhere in the universe: twelve years later, he begins experiencing extreme paranoia...
