hear. She reached for her phone.
And as she dialed, color suddenly drained from the world, like The Wizard of Oz in reverse. Emma went gray. The cops went gray. The shoppers went gray. And suddenly everyone stood in a swirling, twisting colorless fog.
I sat in the fog.
Still screaming, I waved my hands near the ground, trying to feel. Real fog was cold and damp, but this was … insubstantial. I couldn’t feel it at all. Couldn’t stir it. But I could see it. I could see things in it.
On my left, something twisted. Writhed. Something too thick and vertical to be serpentine. It twisted somehow through a shelf of towels, without ever touching the shoppers pressed against them, as far from me as they could get without leaving the department.
Apparently I was enough of a freak show to justify the pain of listening to me.
On my right, something scuttled through the mist on the ground, where it was thickest. It scurried toward me, and I leaped to my feet and dragged Emma away. The cops jumped back, startled all over again.
Emma pulled free of my grip, her eyes wide in terror. And that’s when I shut down. I couldn’t take anymore, but I couldn’t make it stop. I couldn’t stop the shrieking, or the pain, or the stares, or the fog, or the eerie movement. And worst of all, I couldn’t stop the certainty that that child—that poor little boy in the wheelchair—was going to die.
Soon.
Dimly I realized I’d closed my eyes. Tried to block it all out.
I reached out blindly, desperate to get out of the fog I couldn’t feel. Could no longer see. My hands brushed something soft and high. Something I no longer had the word for. I scrambled up on it, crawling over mounds of material.
I curled into a ball, clutching something plush to my chest with one hand. Running my fingers over it again and again. Clinging to the only physical reality that still existed for me.
Hurt. I hurt. My neck hurt.
My fingers were wet. Sticky.
Something grabbed my arm. Held me down.
I thrashed. I screamed. I hurt.
Sharp pain bit into my leg, then fire exploded beneath my skin. I blinked, and a familiar face came into focus over me, gray in the fog. Aunt Val. Emma stood behind my aunt, face streaked with mascara-stained tears. Aunt Val said something I couldn’t hear. And suddenly my eyes were heavy.
New panic flooded me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t make my eyes open. And still my vocal chords strained. The world was closing in on me, dark and narrow, with no sound but the harsh wail that still poured from my abused throat.
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