Cobweb Head

t w e l v e

I told Effie I was sick and went back to my dorm.  There was something wrong with Rosebud Tower, sitting lonely at the edge of the forest, and I couldn't get the feeling out from under my skin.

The afternoon cast long shadows across the dorm's floorboards. I pulled up to the desk and pressed my thumb against the edge of my pen, keeping my head down as I studied. I feared that if I looked up, I would see the shadow again, and so I didn't. I kept my eyes lowered and stared down at the sheets in front of me.

Leo only returned at sunset. I whirled around when I heard door open.

"Where were you?" I started, and Leo's eyes shot up to meet mine as he closed the door softly.

There were dark rings around his eyes, and his silken shirt was ruffled and unbuttoned halfway down his chest. Exhaustion hung low on his shoulders. "Archives, like you said."

"All day and all night?"

A dim smile pulled loosely at his lips as he walked towards his bed. "Yep."

I sat back down as he fell against his bed, an arm dangling over the side and face buried in a pillow. Loose curls hugged the nape of his neck. I cleared my throat. "What did you find?"

He sat up and whistled through his teeth. "Your shadow problem may be related to echoes – we use them for the oath of silence."

I frowned. "Echoes?"

"It's kind of like remnants of nightmares, the stuff they leave behind. Sometimes people mistake them for ghosts, but they're almost harmless, invisible most of the time." He shrugged. "They're only dangerous if they grow strong enough, build on more fear, but that's barely ever. We bind them with the mind, so that if one would want to talk about the Frights, they couldn't. "

"That sounds wrong." I frowned.

"They're the ones who wanted to join – they knew the risks." His words had started to blur together as his eyelids became heavier.

"And they're invisible... most of the time?"

"Well, they're uncommon, but since you can hear these phobias, you probably just see them more easily." Sunlight was tracing the curve of his lips, and his dark eyelashes looked as soft as cobwebs as they touched his cheeks.

I left him in silence for a long moment – I wanted to say thanks, but my throat tightened whenever I tried to get the words to leave my chest. I was such an ass.

"Why were you down there for so long?" I said instead.

He lifted his hand wearily, waving delicate fingers through the air in a lazy attempt to shut me up. "Let's just – stop, with the questions."

I nodded and whirled my attention back over to the work, looking at him only briefly through a sideways glance. Leo had crumpled into the bed, not long after followed by snores muffled by a face full of pillow. Why couldn't I just thank him? It was so impossibly simple that it hurt.

God, I was an ass.

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When the sky turned black, I shook Leo awake.

When he finally sat up, rubbing his hands across his face with an ill-faced yawn, he frowned at me. I could see the chipped purple polish painted across his stubbed nails. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, why?" I arched a brow at him.

He cocked his head to the side, and the ruffled curls fell with it. "You look sick."

I opened my mouth to say something, but no words left my lips. I was sick – sick with the phobias talking loudly in my ears. My chest was tight with a sickly warmth, and my face looked skeletal in the mirror.

I sighed. "It's the phobias – they're louder than they are at home because of all the students. It's making me feel a little... off."

"I've actually got a tea for headaches." He smiled, something so warm it replaced the sunlight that had lined his face only a few hours before. "I could get you some by tomorrow if you want."

I went to protest but stopped myself. The tea could actually do something good, maybe it'd help with the phobias – maybe. "Alright, sounds good."

His grin widened, an excited shine playing along his eyes. "This'll be great, seriously, no one ever tries my tea."

"Do I want to know why?"

"No – you really don't."

I was alone in the dorm when Leo left, waiting for him to come back and collect me for the hunt.  I sat in silence, wrung my hands and chewed my lip. Moonlight slipped through the window and struck the floors, touching one of Leo's old comic books. In big, bold lettering, it read Wonder Woman: The Secret of Limestone Caves. I scoffed quietly.

When a soft knock on the door sounded, I stood up from the bed and found Leo on the other side. His hair was more ruffled than before – his grin shone in the dim moonlight.

We moved down the halls, and when Leo placed a shaky hand on my shoulder, I didn't shrug it off. This was risking a lot, risking his place in the Frights. Even his gloomy shadow was trembling against the walls.

"You know what you're doing?" His eyes darted down the blackish halls.

His voice was obscured behind the noise in my head as I bit back the ache in my skull. "Yeah – just... try to be quiet."

I'm scared.

My knees almost buckled beneath my weight as I pointed towards a door, the numbers blurred together in the darkness. 

"There." The word was carried with my breath.

Leo drew out a key from his pocket, the wink of light flashing across the silver as he brought it towards the lock. I fought through the dizziness in my head. "How'd you get that?"

He slotted it in. "It's a master key – every member is given one to use during the hunts."

When we found ourselves in the dorm, I immediately felt uncomfortable, as if every bone was pulling on my flesh in hopes to get out of the room. "This is creepy; we're being creeps."

He ignored my comment. "Which one?"

There were two beds pressed against both walls, and my stomach twisted into harsh, aching knots. "Over there."

I had to leave the room as Leo brought the ring towards the sleeper's head. I watched from the threshold, with lips parted, as a giant cloud of black smoke rose from their face.

It was bigger than the one I'd seen on the fourth hunt. Hollowed eyes formed in the soot and smog, its body pressing along the walls and touching the roof as it struggled against the ring's pull. I thought it'd swallow Leo – engulf him in the thickened smoke and choke him off, but the ring held.

When the nightmare had vanished into the ring, Leo left the room and closed the door quietly behind him.

He grinned. "You were right, that's the strongest nightmare I've collected since the first hunt."

"Let's keep going." I turned the hall. I wanted to avoid talking – talking lead to questions, and twisted expressions, and drawling insults. The few confrontations I had had when it came to my ability never ended nicely.

I halted in my step.

It was the thin outline of a girl, black on black, and she was staring directly at me. She stood at the end of the corridor.

I went to say something, but she'd already vanished around a corner.

"C'mon," Leo started from behind me. "I want to get at least five nightmares by the end of the night."

I nodded faintly – I was both sick and nervous and anxious, and the taste in my mouth had turned bitter. Who'd just seen us?