In the Shadows

"Wow! Thank you so much," I said as I opened my parent"s gift, a brand new electronic tablet. I ran my fingers along the sleek black leather case, a big smile plastered on my face. Mom and Dad always spoiled me for my birthday.

"You"re sure you don"t want another piece of cake?" my mother offered.

I shook my head. "Positive." I couldn"t eat another bite, my belly already full of her infamous Oreo, peanut butter and Nutella cake.

It tastes as sinful as it sounds.

Dad stood up. "Well, I"ll leave you girls to gossip a bit." He kissed us both on the cheek before walking out.

I joined Mom at the sink and grabbed a towel to dry the dishes.

"You don"t have to help me, honey. It"s your birthday," she said with a smile.

"I don"t mind."

She resumed scrubbing the pan and gave me a sideways glance. "So, who"s this boy you keep mentioning?"

My cheeks burned. "Thom? He"s just a friend." I hadn"t meant to bring him up, but Mom had this crazy sixth sense when it came to boys. She could always tell when I liked someone. As a teenager, I"d found it atrociously annoying. Still did to be honest.

"Is he in your class?" She asked, working her Mom-magic in overdrive to coax information out of me.

I played with a strand of hair. Getting through this conversation without sounding like an infatuated fourteen-year-old would be a challenge. "Yes, but he"s a bit older."

The circular motions of the brush stopped, and she raised a brow at me. "How much older?"

"Now, don"t go all mama bear on me. He"s only twenty-three."

Thom was twenty-four, but it never hurts to embellish things when your mother asks you about a crush. I"d just turned twenty. No longer a teenager, no one could ever again invalidate my decisions with expressions like teenage angst, teenage tantrums, or the scandalous teenage hormones.

"And he"s nice to you?" Mom was using her gentle parenting voice. She clearly thought he was my boyfriend.

I clicked my tongue. "Mom, I told you, he"s just a friend. But yeah, he"s nice."

She failed to repress a soft chuckle. "Okay, okay. I"ll back off."

The infatuated fourteen-year-old had won, and the twenty-year-old cringed in shame. We put away the dishes and chatted about anything but Thom until way past eight.

"I need to go. I have homework. Where"s Dad?" I swiftly packed up my gift and birthday card into my bag.

Mom glimpsed into the living room. "I don"t know. Maybe he went to Larry"s to watch the game. He probably thought you were going to stay over."

Hockey was sacred to my dad.

"I really need to get going but give him a kiss for me. I"ll see you next week."

She nodded and handed me the leftovers from dinner.

Score. "Thanks, Mom. Love you."

We hugged.

"Love you too. Be safe."

I put on my coat, grabbed my school bag and headed out into the windy suburban night. My feet dragged along the stony path to the driveway. All I had to look forward to for the rest of the night was an empty apartment and a pointless struggle against my history essay.

"Leaving so soon?"

I dropped my keys, searched for the source of the shout, and spotted my father on the roof. "Daddy! You scared me to death. What are you doing up there?" I bent down to retrieve my keychain.

"The satellite"s antenna is loose, and it"s only half time. I figured I"d give it a little love," he said, his coat flapping in the wind.

I tightened the thin scarf around my neck. "Good luck!"

"Good night, honey. Be careful out there."

I blew him a kiss.

It was cold for April, and I dearly missed my gloves as I unlocked the door to my blue Yaris. I caught my reflection in the window. The birthday crown Mom had made me was still tangled in my hair. Before it flew off my head, I pried it from my loose, strawberry-blond curls and tucked it safely into my purse.

I checked my phone to see if Thom had called, and disappointment tightened my guts. The screen was silent, no missed alerts. Strange. We normally texted back and forth a few times a day. No text plus his behavior from the night before… He was brushing me off.

A gut-wrenching yell crushed me back to reality, blowing any Thom-related thoughts from my mind. I spun around in time to see my father slump down the roof. A loud cracking sound pierced the chilly air, and my heart froze.

"Dad!" I sprinted to him.

His body was sprawled on the driveway, and short rasps heaved his throat. One arm hung from its socket, twisted in a sickening way. A scream tore from my lungs, but I barely heard a whisper above the pulse at my temples. Mom stormed outside, and a choir of sobs and whimpers followed as she yelled at the 911 operator she had on the line.

"Dad?" I grabbed his hand as I knelt beside him.

Blood pooled against the asphalt, right below his skull. I reached for his head and shuddered as my fingers dug into the gooey, red liquid matted with his gray hair. A heavy boulder nested in my chest. Help wouldn"t arrive in time.

As if to confirm my prognosis, his eyes lost focus, and hiccups choked me. Shocked by my impotence and uselessness, I clung to him in despair.

In an instant, the world shifted.

An alien sense scratched from inside me, my body no longer my own. These eyes belonged to my father, and his thoughts were my thoughts. I was most disturbed by the debilitating pain slicing through me, no, us. Memories appeared, and I traveled through them, lost and confused.

Five teenage boyswere playing tag in a park, us among them. Huge trees blew in the sultry wind, thick with Spanish moss. Sweat dripped down our back, the humidity scorching. A female voice called for the students to go back to class.

The priest askedus to place the ring on Mom"s finger. Our palm was sweaty, and we almost dropped it. Crisis averted, we met the tender gaze of the woman we loved. The white dress flowed around her perfect figure. So, beautiful, we thought.

A baby cooedin our arms, her round cheeks pink. The hint of saliva on her lips bubbled, and she laughed. How cute. "What"s her name?" We asked.

"Alana," a soft melodic voice answered.

We were so excited to bring this little girl home. We couldn't have one of our own, but we would cherish and care for this angel as if she was our flesh and blood.

Everything stilledlike someone had pressed the pause button on a remote, and I blinked, falling flat on my ass in my parent"s driveway.

Where had those hallucinations come from? Had I witnessed a recess at my Dad"s elementary school, his wedding, and my adoption? Nothing weird ever happened to me.

My bloodstained hands were too warm, almost hot, despite the cold, and Mom"s panicked voice sounded like a sluggish drawn-out tune. The sunny yellow of her shirt forced me to squint, the color too bright for my eyes.

Even though he had been dying the minute before, Dad suddenly jumped to his feet. "I—I"m fine." Eyebrows creased in bewilderment, he straightened his coat and turned to me.

I gaped at his outstretched hand in awe.

The ambulance blazed in next to us, its red lights casting a creepy glow over the familiar houses.

Mom"s gaze darted from my dad to me several times as tears flooded down her cheeks. Dad squeezed her shoulder and greeted the paramedics. "Thank you for coming. I fell from the roof, but I"m not hurt. I got lucky, I guess."

Lucky? Did he really believe that?

The blood on my hands spooked the medic closest to me. "You okay, miss?"

I rose to my feet, and nausea rippled in my stomach. "Yeah, it"s my dad"s blood."

The coagulated blood on Dad"s head caught their attention. "Come with us, sir. You might have a concussion."

Dad hesitated. "I feel great."

"Don"t be silly, Robert. We are going to the hospital, and that"s that. Lana can follow with her car and drive us back. This is not a negotiation," Mom said, her hands gripping his arm.

Dad paused, assessed Mom"s grave face and opened his mouth. His fingers drummed against his legs, and he gave me a peculiar look. "Okay. But hurry after us, honey." His furrowed eyebrows and shaky tone sent my mind into overdrive.

Had he witnessed the hallucinations, too? Did he have an explanation?

I nodded in agreement.

The ambulance backed out of the driveway, and sirens resonated through the night.

In a haze, I watched it disappear around the corner, my mind trying to catch up. The dark pool next to my feet both repulsed and captivated me. Too much blood for a scratch, and yet… What about the broken arm? I hadn"t imagined that.

Caught in the riddle of what had just happened, I forgot my promise to hurry and stared at the accident scene for a few minutes, waiting for my iffy mind and wavering stomach to settle back into place.

A large shadow swelled against the ground.

A man came from behind. His huge hand stifled my scream as he punched me hard in the stomach. Dizzy, I staggered against my car. A windowless van screeched in, and the smell of burnt tires assaulted my nose. Two burly men descended upon me wearing creepy black tunics reminiscent of the ones in clichéd cult movies.

I fought to escape their bruising hold, but they were too strong. They tossed me into the van and held me down against the carpet. The fabric burned my knees and elbows as I thrashed in vain. A paralyzing terror gripped me, and I shivered as if icy water had been poured down my back. Where were they taking me?

All the hurdles of the road echoed in my bones as they drove away from my home. The men congratulated each other for a job well done and passed a bottle of liquor around. Acid simmered at the back of my throat.

When the vehicle stopped about ten minutes later, one man said, "Get up," but a kick resonated in my thorax before I obeyed. They wrenched me upwards and pushed me out of the van. My feet scrambled to keep me from falling as I stumbled across the curb. With my hands braced on my knees, I gasped for air.

"Go ahead. Scream," a snide voice said.

The crisp air of the night jolted me to action, and I shrieked for help, but the neighborhood was dead silent. Eyes wide, I took in the barren landscape. A fog hung thick in the air, the dark street empty but for a line of industrial dumpsters.

A cruel laughter rocked the men"s bodies. "See? Nobody cares."

"What do you want?" I asked.

They snickered.

"Why are you doing this?"

"Enough questions." The driver closed in on me and punched me square in the face.

I recognized him. He was my parent"s new neighbor, the owner of the little white poodle my mom always fussed about. I"d seen him walk his dog a few times. My stomach churned as I caught a glimpse of the clothes underneath the robe and recognized a familiar checkered hoodie. He was the one who"d followed me home last night. I spat at him, the blood in my mouth tainting his shirt red.

"Have fun with this one. She has character." He returned to the van while two other men grabbed my arms and dragged me forward.

A third trekked behind us, unaffected, a loose cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth. The nasty dude on my left had a bushy, red beard, and an ugly scar deformed his eyebrow. Easy to identify out of a line-up.

Realization kicked me in the gut. Oh God. No masks on their faces.They didn"t intend on letting me go.

I"d never see my parents again. I"d never finish school. I"d die among the paint-peeling dumpsters, my carcass gnawed on by rats.

My knees buckled. In front of us was a dead-end. A half-torn off metal door marked the entrance of an abandoned building, and I dug my heels into the ground as we drew closer to it. Death awaited me inside this dump.

Wicked fingers dug deep into the skin of my arms, making my hands numb. Exhaustion crept inside me, one muscle at a time. A few feet from the door, every ounce of my strength withered away.

This is it. This is how I die.

One second, they were pulling hard on my arms, and the next, I was free. My legs wobbled, but I managed to stay upright.

In a blur, my two captors rose into the air and crashed against the nearest building as if a tornado had swept them up. Their two lifeless bodies fell to the ground. The third man dropped to his knees, dead. A curved knife poked out of his chest.

A cold sense of relief gripped my heart at the unforeseen turn of events, and I searched for an explanation. The alley was empty, and I couldn"t see a thing out of the ordinary besides the three corpses around me.

Was I responsible for those deaths, somehow? I blinked at the sight of the blade, convinced that, whatever had happened earlier, I hadn"t done this. I didn"t know where the hell I was, but, at least, I was alone.

My respite was too brief.

A man, also wrapped in a black cloak, appeared out of thin air. His tall silhouette sliced the fog. Perched on the ball of his feet, he looked ready to lunge, and the predatory stance curdled my blood. The edges of his body shimmered as if his molecules were too dense for the space he occupied, and I thought my heart might sprout wings and fly out of my chest when I met the man"s stare.

Black pools rippled beneath his long lashes and sucked the light away from his chiseled face.

Not human.