Clearer in the Night Read Free

about half an hour left before I got to the apartment Shan and I shared. The trail I was going to take would basically take me through my mother’s back yard, and for one crazy second, I thought about stopping. Walking in, waking her up, and telling the truth, for the first time in a decade. Seeing what happened next.
    My father and my sister were always with me, always a single thought away, and now they were surrounding me, filling my heart so full that I thought it might burst. My sister, laughing and teasing. My mom and dad, shouting in the living room, the last time I heard his voice. Ghosts with teeth, they swirled around me, and I tried not to swat at them. It wouldn’t chase them away any more than it would bother gnats.
    The school was completely dark, the windows reflecting the light of the full moon, and nothing else. It made the building look like a many-eyed lizard, squatting in the field, ready to bite. I hurried on. I fought the urge to run. I didn’t look behind me. I was imagining things in the darkness, things with teeth, and if I didn’t stop, I really would be crazy at the end of it all.
    It wasn’t too late. I could walk back to the main road and call a cab. It’d take them a while to get here, even on a Monday night, but I wouldn’t be stuck out here in the dark, by myself.
    But what was the point, really? Nothing would have changed. Nothing would be different. Whatever was broken in my brain would still be broken. I kept walking. My legs were jittery with exhaustion, twitchy and tired. I wanted to just sit down, just stop, but my feet kept plodding on, too dumb to give up and rest. I followed them. I was attached to them after all. Ha, I killed myself.
    I heard something. Everything froze.
    The something was something bigger than the world, and I heard it with my actual ears, not with the broken corner of my brain. I couldn’t describe it, even to myself; it touched the part of my mind that had existed before words. I turned towards it. My eyes struggled to take in what I saw in front of me. They gave me snippets of information, but refused to bring the whole picture to my mind at once. I saw teeth, long and sharp like razors. Feet—paws—as big as cakes. A furred face the size of my chest. Flat, blue eyes, locked onto mine. There was a sound in my throat, like an engine trying to turn over when the starter’s busted, and my trembling legs were a heartbeat away from dropping my ass into the grass. I was a yard or two from the tree line, but what good was running going to do me? Was I really going to try and outrun a wolf the size of a pony?
    That’s it, my brain decided. We’re done now. Checking out, see you on the flip side, dark side of the moon incoming.
    And then the monster, the huge wolf, snarled, and my feet were smarter than my brain. They took off running without waiting to see if the rest of me was going to follow. My hands were empty—my spike heels gone—and I stumbled a couple times, falling and catching myself on my hands before I found my stride. The wolf was right behind me as I hit the tree line and shot up the path. Wolves could outrun humans, easily, so why was I still moving? Didn’t matter, keep moving, keep running, and maybe you’ll get away.
    It herded me. I knew it, even while it was happening. When I exploded into a clearing I’d never seen before, with an idyllic little pond, and no breaks in the tree line other than the one I’d just come through, I knew I’d been neatly corralled. I tried to turn, to head back down the path before the monster caught me, but that was a joke. It had already filled up the world. My feet tangled underneath me, and I crashed down. My hands clawed into the ground, trying to drag myself away, but the soil was packed harder than stone, and I gained no purchase.
    I squeezed my eyes tight, breathed in silence, and then flipped over. It was a hallucination. It had started in the club, started with sounds. Now I was seeing things. I