That’s because you’re not Tony.
When he is five the shadows slither up the wall and creep into his room through the foggy cracked window, extend their fingers across the ceiling and open their blind gaping eyes to look at him, tiny Tony with his knees pulled to his chest and with the blankets cast in a tangled heap at the foot of the bed.
And Tony looks back and smiles up at them, and when they ask Why aren’t you afraid he says Why would I be? They laugh in a flicker of black-on-grey at him, like a flutter of feathers and crows in the night, and say, We like you, in a voice like rumbling thunderstorms, like rain over rooftops. Tony looks at them, at the way they crowd around his bed in a weightless mass, and then he is laughing too, and for the first time in his life when he falls asleep he is not alone.
They come again, on the nights when the moon is absent or when the wind their brother veils her pale face in embroideries of stratus lines and cirrus swirls; they come to him when he can not sleep, tell him the stories his mother will not—can not—tell him, and when he falls asleep they curl like a shawl over the thin curves of his shoulders and thread immaterial fingers through the kitten-soft mess of his hair. In Tony’s dreams he walks down a rough, darkening path, and is not afraid; when he falls shadows swarm and lift him to his feet, and lick at the scrapes the rocks underfoot have left on him.
He is still bleeding when he wakes up.
*
Are you going to hurt me?
Do you want us to?
No.
Then why would we?
*
Tony is seven, all huge eyes and messy hair and a little smile like he knows something you don’t, and sometimes when he thinks no one’s watching he cocks his head a little to the side, like he’s listening to a voice no one else can hear. Tony’s not a scary kid, but there’s something in the way he looks at you that makes everyone uneasy, even if no one’s sure exactly why.
Tell me a story, Tony says, and his shadow on the wall turns and tilts its head. About what? He shrugs, and then nods towards the girl jumping rope across the courtyard. Tell me about her.
He does not start when the dark subtly shifts and coalesces into what might, if you were to very carefully not look at it and just keep it at the corner of your eye, pass as a bird, or perhaps a rat, or a scuttling mass of dull, dark beetles. Tony feels the weight of that hollow, cloying gaze, and waits, and smiles when the rumbling voice rises behind him, close enough to touch, close enough that he’d have been able to feel its breathing on his skin had it needed to breathe.
On her sixth birthday her mother gave her paint and a hug. Her father said nothing, because he’d never been good with words, but he took her to the ocean for the first time, and he showed her the sunset over the waves and taught her the way sand felt sifting through the spaces in cupped hands. Then he turned his eyes away from her, and she stepped into the water and was caught by the current, pulled under. She did not close her eyes; through the foam and the sand she thought she could see something, or someone, she’d been waiting for her whole life, and when her father’s arms closed around her and pulled her out it was the worst thing that’d ever happened to her.
And then?
Her mother bought more paint, and wondered what is was her daughter tried to depict when she poured blues and teals, browns and purples, reds and whites all over the canvas. Her father never took her to the sea again. Sometimes when she wakes up there is a taste of salt at the back of her throat and her cheeks are wet, but no one knows that but her.
And us, Tony says.
And us, the shadows agree, and melt back into nothingness.
*
Can you go crazy when you're only seven?
Yes.
Am I crazy?
Does it matter?
I don't know.
*
Tony is nine, and the shadows swirl like inverted fireflies around his head; he knows now that the boy next to him watched his old house go up in flames; knows there are burn scars over his heart, even though he always wears two layers of clothes at least because he doesn't like the way they look, and because whenever he sees them in the mirror when he's at home he starts shaking and seeing fire flickering at the edges of his vision, and his hands reach for lighters whenever he's not paying attention. Tony knows how the fire started, just like he knows the boy has made himself forget who exactly had been playing with the matches that day. It's tragic, the fire that comes two months after the shadows tell him of this. Tragic, but not quite unexpected. Tony watches the news, and then goes up, to another story.
Tony knows his teacher has never forgotten the face of her baby when it was born, early and unmoving and so silent she'd thought at first it'd been some sort of dream, some sort of nightmare. Tony knows she blames herself for it. He knows she hasn't talked to her sisters in years, and she dreads family reunions so much it hurts. The darkness tells him this as it lies at his feet and bares its puppy-sharp teeth at him in class, and he reaches down as though to scratch behind fuzzy black ears before he catches himself. She must be lonely, he says only, and the dark curls tighter around him that night.
He knows the old man next door sees people that have been dead for years. His grandchildren are worried about him, but he won't talk to them; his wife's smile is still as tender as it was fifty three years ago, and he knows that if he ever looked away she wouldn't be there when he turned back. How many shapes can you take? Tony asks, and it chirps gleefully, mysteriously. We are as dreams, Tony, it sings, we can be anything. The old man is gone one day. His daughter says, when Tony comes to ask, that he's happy now, and with the people he loves. Tony nods knowingly, sympathetically, and his shadow laughs, unnoticed.
And the lady at the supermarket was in a car crash when she was thirteen and she's hasn't been able to walk properly ever since. At night she reads and reads dull old tomes and cheap newspapers, anything that will distract her from the lights flashing through the windows from the street outside. Tony almost suggests his favorite book to her one day, but the shadows catch him before he can open his mouth or even just walk up to her; it curls at his ankle and up to his knees and to his hips, hissing and heavy and with a gaze Tony has still not learned to meet. This is not your story, the shadow says, and Tony nods, slowly, and understands. His hand stings where the shadowy fangs have sunk, but when there is a sharp, painful tug he does not breathe a word and merely follows. What happens next? he asks, and the shadows wriggle over the wall, like they don't know anymore than he does. Oh, Tony says, and that's that.
*
Do you have a name?
We have many.
What are they?
We shall give them to you. Soon, but not today.
*
There is a boy, the dark says, and Tony listens. Tony is twelve and looks tired all the time and behind his eyes dark things move, like sharks in the depths of the seas. There are darker, more dangerous things in the world, and they can often be found strolling at his side, but that is a sight reserved to him, and him only.
Tony knows what happened to the people who used to live in his house, and who founded the town, and how his parents met, and how they came to hate each other and how he could have had a little brother if things had gone just a bit different. It's a good thing Tony can keep secrets, he thinks sometimes, but it's not like he has anyone to share them with so really it's more or less irrelevant.
There is a boy, and a foggy night, and loneliness thicker than all the blankets in the world. There is a window, and an old tree in front of it, and there are shadows, quiet and shapeless.
Tony, they say, and it is the first time they have called him by name. His eyes gleam in the penumbra of the room, strangely pale as they catch what little light shines through the curtains.
Go on, he says. You have told me everything else already. It had to end eventually.
The shadows flicker like fire, hesitant and hungry. Go on, Tony says, and the dark buzzes like a swarm of locusts, spills like oil across the room and purrs into his ears, like an apology or like comfort.
You know how these end, it says.
His voice does not shake. Very carefully, he does not nod. Yes.
The dark speaks on, and its voice is very, very soft.
When Tony dreams that night he falls, and cannot get up. He smiles. There is blood on his hands and knees and in his mouth, like it's been a long way down. Maybe it was. Shadows close in around him, all white eyes and open mouths and humming voices. Something inside of him tells him he should be afraid, but he simply nods to the girl and her inky, swirling paintings and waves to the boy with the matches and to the little boy with his teacher's eyes and mostly he just feels like he's finally come home.
Tony doesn't wake up, but you knew that already.
*
Meg is twenty seven and her leg hurts like hell tonight, and there's too much noise outside that she can't tune out. The lights outside flash in and out and she'd be cursing the traffic like usual except this time there's this odd, desaturated quality to the light, like there's something filtering it as it comes, and she swears the shadow of the bookshelf should not be at this angle and what the heck she's pretty sure it shouldn't be melting like it's doing right now.
She blinks and suddenly there's someone here with here, a little boy with a tiny smile that she feels like she should know. Possibly she should be freaking out by now, but she's tired and there's no light, no constant traffic noise right now and it's doing wonders for her mood and weird things to her sanity. Mostly though it's the tiredness.
The boy seems to get that; he glides silent to her, and says, all black hair and white, white eyes, I've got a story for you.
Blame it on temporary insanity, or pain, or exhaustion--she doesn't say no.
