Estimated reading time — 26 minutes

Now that I’m trying to tell the story of how I died, I’ve found myself appreciating the craft of eulogy more than I ever did in life. I’m finding it difficult to find where the story of my end begins.

It all started with it, I suppose. I saw it first on my walk home from work a month ago. I’d stayed late at the coffee shop after my shift was technically over, and that shift had itself only begun after a long day at school, so I wasn’t in the best of moods. What helped distract from the foulness of my mood was that me and my buddy, Rick, worked similar hours as part-timers in the city who could only work outside of school hours, and we worked close enough together that we’d meet up after work and head back home together; we lived in the same neighborhood, so at least we had some company in the dark, silent city late at night.

I forgot all about the woes of university life, though, when I saw it. I caught it in the corner of my eye at first, two pale eyes peering out from the darkness of an alley into the street as we walked toward the train station long after the buses had stopped running for the night.

What I thought it was at first, I don’t know, but I remember not thinking much of it at the time. A homeless person looking for some spare change, maybe. I didn’t say anything to Rick, whose eyes were, as per usual, glued to his phone. I didn’t say anything when I saw those two pale eyes, all white with no iris or pupil if my mind wasn’t playing tricks on me, set into the bald, papery white skull of the figure that I spotted in the reflection of a store window following not too far behind us a few minutes later.

I didn’t take it seriously. If I had, perhaps none of this would have happened. If anything, I thought it was annoying; if I was going to get robbed or attacked by a homeless guy, he couldn’t have found me at a worse time.

In hindsight, I should have known something was up. Despite its emaciated appearance, it moved in a way that suggested strength and power, with an even stride that made him look as though he was floating and not walking. It was dressed in shades of black, which somewhat hid the disheveled state of its clothes, as it did look very much like a person who slept on the streets, despite the fact that it wasn’t wearing very many layers. Even the long coat it wore was thin and couldn’t have provided much heat, though the thing never shivered in the cold the entire time my eyes were on it. Rick and I were dressed for the cold and were trembling before we’d walked a block.

It was on the train, too. I knew at once when Rick saw it, because his face went red as he tried not to laugh. Despite my annoyance with that habit of his — unfortunate-looking people were one of the funniest things in the world, if you asked Rick — I had my own bad habit of laughing when others did, even when it wasn’t appropriate.

Soon we were both consumed by a fit of laughter that was only silent through our efforts to not break the silence that blanketed the world at such a late hour with our nonsense. It didn’t seem to mind. It just stared out at the world passing by out the window. I only realized later, after things outside of my ability to stop had already begun, that it had never cast a reflection onto the window no matter how the light shifted.

When we got off the train, it was time for Rick and I to part ways, and we did so without much fanfare. We’d see each other at school tomorrow. What I thought was a random stranger who’d just happened to catch the same train as us didn’t get off at our station, so I put him out of my mind. Just one of those people you meet when you’re out late at night. No one of note.

The problems started when I got to the train station two days later — Rick sometimes had days off when I didn’t, lucky bastard — and Rick wasn’t there. I texted him to ask whether or not he was going to be late, but he didn’t answer. He didn’t even read my text, according to my phone. I shrugged it off and went about my day as normal. When I had some free time around noon and saw that Rick still hadn’t read my text, I started getting a little bit annoyed at how off I felt without him at my side throughout the day.

We took all the same classes, so we were rarely apart; our childish pipe dream was to study game design, which we did, and then open a studio out of the unused garage at my parents’ house when we graduated. That had been the goal since we were twelve. I found myself feeling kind of embarrassed by how codependent I must have gotten without even noticing. I had work again that night, so I couldn’t keep checking my phone like I had been throughout the day, but I got the feeling that if I had, I would have continued to see that read receipt showing that he hadn’t even seen my message. Instead of being worried, I thought, what a loser! Skipping school wasn’t going to get us our studio.

The next morning, which I had to myself, I walked to his house a few streets over from mine, the way it had been for near-exactly a decade, and knocked on the door intending to give Rick a piece of my mind. Instead, his mother answered the door, and I swallowed the harsh words that had been on the tip of my tongue in favor of a smile.

“Hey, honey,” Nancy said quietly, almost whispering. Her voice had the same tight quality as her face. “Ricky’s not well right now, so he might not be up to going out, if that’s why you’ve come.”

That made no sense. If he was just sick, then why the hell had he not answered my texts? “What’s he sick with? Can I talk to him, at least?”

Nancy hesitated before saying, “Sure, why not?” The way she said it made me think she was holding something back. I didn’t fail to note that even as she walked me to his room — I had no clue why she felt the need to do that, considering that I’d been in their home a thousand times before — and I asked again, she didn’t tell me exactly how he was sick.

At this time, I hadn’t seen Rick in three days. I don’t think I had gone that long without seeing him since we were fifteen. When I stepped into his room and Nancy closed the door behind me, I’ll admit that I cringed at the sight of him. His room was dark, his curtains drawn so that no sunlight could fill the room from outside. It took my eyes a moment to adjust, but when I did, I almost gasped.

Rick was a small bundle of pale flesh wrapped in thick, dark blankets on his bed, buried in them. His skin was so white that his veins were visible all over, and he shone with slick sweat. If he wore anything under the blanket, I thankfully couldn’t see what. He was not quite gaunt, but he was visibly thinner than he’d been when I last saw him. His eyes were dark still, as was his hair, though his usually bouncy curls were matted to his scalp from the sweat.

I almost blurted out that he looked like shit, which I realized before even opening my mouth wouldn’t do any good. That’s when the smell hit me, the stench of Rick’s sweat-soaked body and the musk of unwashed flesh. His room’s window must have been closed, and it must have been closed for a while. I made a noise of shock and disgust, and Rick’s face twisted into a wry grin.

“Sorry,” he said in a dull voice that shared none of the humor in his eyes.

“No problem,” I said, making an effort not to pinch my nose so I could stop smelling him. “What’s going on, man? Haven’t heard from you in a few days. Your mom told me you’re sick.”

“Yeah. Sick,” he mumbled, shifting stiffly under the blankets that he brought up to his neck with shaking arms. “Don’t know with what, but it’s bad.”

I nodded slowly, and tried not to breathe in too hard. “Have you seen a doctor?”

Rick scoffed. “No. Dad thinks it’s just the common cold. Won’t hear anything about a doctor.” He laughed, and it carried a sickly wheeze. “A doctor would have to come to me, anyway. Can’t walk. Can barely move my arms. My body feels tight. And cold. Really cold.”

I shuffled on my feet, not knowing what to do to help my best friend feel better. “Some sun can’t hurt. I’ll open the curtains.”

Rick sat up so fast that he almost lurched forward. “No!” he roared, his voice filled with something that might have been fear or rage. His eyes met mine and I was frozen to the spot by the intensity of his gaze. There was a dark patch where his head had rested on his pillow.

A few moments passed before I gathered enough of my wits to recover. “Okay.” The smell of Rick’s unwashed body, the sharp smell of sweat, filled my nose even more strongly than it had when I was standing at the door. It was a proof of my willpower that I didn’t gag. My voice was strained, though, when I repeated myself without anything more to say. “Okay.”

Rick’s eyes filled with pain and he groaned as he laid back down in bed slowly. His movements were jerky and stiff, as if moving was not only painful, but difficult, as if all strength had left his body, or as if his limbs had locked up and relaxing was the hard part. He was left panting afterwards, and my first instinct was to move closer and help him however I could, but the thought crossed my mind that whatever he had might have been contagious, and that kept me where I was, one step from the door.

“Em,” he said with his strangled, breathless voice. “You probably shouldn’t hang around.”

“Yeah, probably,” I sighed. I looked around the dark room and instantly regretted breathing deeply enough to sigh. “Have you talked to our teachers? I won’t do your homework for you, but I can set something up.”

“Yeah, that’d be great.” His eyes met mine, and even as his body sagged into his bed after his brief exertion, those dark eyes were burning.

I left after that — the smell drove me out just as much as Rick’s insistence that he was fine. The whole way home, I breathed deeply to get the stench out of my nostrils, despite how it burned my nose and lungs. That wasn’t the only reason I took my time. I tried to figure out what the hell kind of disease makes a person that kind of sick. I went to our local park and sat while I searched the internet, but I found nothing. Not a single thing matched that he could have possibly caught from anywhere or anyone. It’s like his body had just decided to shut down out of nowhere. It bugged me, but there was nothing to do except wait for Rick to get better.

The week that followed was hard. I wouldn’t claim that I had it harder than Rick, but I struggled. If three days on my own had made me so thoroughly uncomfortable after a decade of inseparability from my best friend, then I wasn’t looking forward to spending what eventually became weeks that way. I had work and school, so I couldn’t visit Rick often, which only added to my loneliness.

He never read any of my texts, much less answered them. We called a few times, but those calls always left me feeling hollow inside. His voice was a poor replacement for his friendship. I had never been the type to wear earrings, but I started wearing the studs he’d gotten me for my eighteenth birthday a couple of years back — they were pure silver, and gleamed even when there wasn’t much light. It’s just a shame that I can’t wear them now.

What really bothered me at the time was that Rick wasn’t getting better. Whatever he’d caught, it was not a common cold, whatever Rick’s dad said. The guy was a neat freak with whom my mom — who had a degree in psychology that proved its worth every day while she worked as a lifeguard at the pool — liked to joke about the OCD diagnosis she knew he’d get if he saw a professional, which he refused to; any kind of illness of the mind or body set him off. It was why he was sleeping in the car while his son worked through this sickness.

About two weeks into my new status quo, I encountered him again. Or, rather, it. It had filled out a little in the time since I’d seen it last, and it moved with even more strength and liquid agility than it had had before. It moved like a shadow upon the ground, gliding more than stepping.

The Shadow had not emerged from an alley this time, it hadn’t stepped out from the darkness. One second, I had been alone on the streets of the city while making my way home in the middle of the night, and the next, the Shadow was there. I made an abrupt left turn as soon as I could without missing a step, not looking where I was going. I had no destination in mind. All I wanted was to not be alone with it.

I glanced back a few steps past the turn and found the Shadow gliding around the corner. It was much closer than it had been mere seconds ago when I had taken my eyes off of it, and that caused my heart to leap up into my throat. I stifled a gasp and picked up my pace a little, because I suddenly got a much better look than I ever had before. My eyes had met the Shadow’s, empty and whiter even than its papery skin, which was not as tight around its skull and throat than it had been last time, which I noticed at the same time as the faint pale shine of bone jutting out from between its lips.

No, not bone. Teeth.

Prickly dread flashed through me like ice in my veins, and I came to another realization; the Shadow wasn’t gaining on me, wasn’t catching up — it was keeping pace with me.

That was when I realized the Shadow was dangerous. I had been so at ease, so comfortable, that even when a danger had entered my life the first time I spotted the Shadow following us, I had ignored it and carried on with my night. The next turn I made was another left, taken at the nearest available opportunity. As soon as I rounded the corner I started sprinting down the street and looked for any small space that I could tuck myself into so that I could hide. Unfortunately, there were none. I cursed my luck and begged my aching legs to move faster, but I’d just gotten off a longer shift than usual and was just about dead on my feet.

When I glanced back to see whether or not the Shadow was following me, my heart skipped a beat. It wasn’t behind me. While my back was still turned away from the direction in which I was running — which was back the way I had originally been walking after leaving work after making two left turns — I stumbled backwards into what felt like a brick wall. I bounced on impact and fell forward onto my hands and knees.

The back of my head, which had struck its exposed chest — its clothes were in an even worse state than ever — burned the way that touching cold metal burns. Looking back, I was met with the towering figure of the Shadow. It had never been close enough to me before for me to properly gauge its height, but it had to be six and a half feet tall. As I scrambled to my feet and backed away from it as it looked down at me with pale, white eyes that almost glowed in the moonlight, I realized another thing.

The Shadow couldn’t be human. It had crossed a hundred feet in a second without a sound. The damned thing didn’t even look like it breathed, that’s how perfectly still it was when it wasn’t moving, so I didn’t think it had ever risked becoming out of breath through such a physical feat.

It could have caught me at any time. Even aside from that, running into it at full speed had felt like crashing into the ground! It hadn’t budged an inch. Whoever this person was, if it was a person, was no mere man. Panic flashed through me like a lightning bolt and I turned to run, panting hard as I pushed my body to the limit in a snap decision that hadn’t really been much of a choice at all. I was in the hands of my fight or flight response then, and my body chose to flee.

I ran right across the road without checking if it was safe to cross, and almost got pulverized by a car that narrowly missed me by three feet or less. The headlights blinded me for a second, but when I fell on my ass in the middle of the road and stared back the way I’d come and blinked spots out of my eyes, I saw clearly that the Shadow’s head turned to follow the car that had nearly killed me. The car slid to a stop halfway through the intersection.

The Shadow turned back to me and my skin prickled with the heavy anticipation of death as my eyes met its own. The driver, whose hands shook in trembling fists, approached me from where he left his car door hanging open and asked me if I was alright. I glanced at him and told him that I was alright, but when I looked back at where the Shadow had been, almost taunting me with its casual demeanor, it was gone. Only the dark of the night remained where it had stood.

I got a cab home from right there on the street, from the spot that I refused to move from without some form of protection from the Shadow.

The guy who’d almost hit me with his car must have felt really guilty for almost killing some random girl out of nowhere, because he stayed with me the whole time and seemed curious and worried about what a young woman was doing running through the city with such recklessness that she’d almost get herself hit by a moving vehicle. I told him that I had a stalker, and figured it was close enough to the truth that I could get some protection before my cab got there. The Shadow had only left after another person had shown up. Was it scared of getting caught? Somehow I thought it was something else.

When I got home, I didn’t mention what happened to my parents right away. In the morning, I only told them what I had told the man who’d stayed with me after the Shadow had disappeared. I had a stalker, and I didn’t particularly want to be leaving the house knowing that some creep was out there waiting for me to be alone so it could do whatever the hell it wanted to me. I had no idea what the Shadow might have even wanted from me, since its non-humanity was certain in my mind by then, but my parents certainly had a hunch.

I was thus glad to receive what they called a ‘benevolent grounding’, happy to be stuck in the house while my parents had me call the police and give them a statement when they showed up shortly after that. They said they’d keep in contact if they found the Shadow using my description of him as a guide. I didn’t mention its eyes, or its overwhelming physical abilities.

I got the feeling that they’d laugh at me if I told them that the man stalking me had purely white eyes that shone in the moonlight and could move faster than I suspected any human could. I didn’t know exactly what the Shadow was, but I wanted to find out. My first idea for getting information also happened to be the one person that I wanted to see more than anything at that time.

It took a few days to convince them that nothing bad would happen if I went over to Rick’s, though the only thing that got them to agree to it was my acceptance of a bodyguard; my father, who liked to think he was tough because he was ex-military, but only had a medal and a limp to show for it. Another of his demands was that he got to finally crack open the safe he hid under their bed and carry the gun he kept in there the whole time we were out of the house.

In those few days, I didn’t go to school or work. I had my homework delivered by trusted friends, and I got all my shifts at the coffee shop covered for the foreseeable future. A deep cringing shame overwhelmed me the entire time that my dad and I walked the empty suburban streets. Despite that, I was just as anxious as he was, looking over my shoulder and walking quickly. We made it to Rick’s place in record time after setting out just as the sun was dipping below the horizon, so that we’d be home in time for dinner.

Nancy answered the door again, and in the second before her whole face changed when she realized who was at her door, I saw clear as day the despair that had made her expression stony and dark. She let us in without a word, and hugged both of us so tight that I thought she might’ve become so depressed that she’d flipped and become manic and decided to strangle me. When I was free from her iron grip, I excused myself to talk to Rick and started down the hallway. That was, until Nancy called out with a shaky voice and her mania seemed to break, leaving her to plummet back to depression in an instant.

“Wait!” she cried before realizing she’d yelled and taking a deep breath that seemed to soothe her. “Ricky’s not well, honey. I mean, you knew that, but … I don’t think he’s in the mood for visitors.”

It took me a moment to recover from the feeling of being slapped in the face. “Why not?”

“He …” Nancy struggled with the words. Her legs started shaking, and my dad guided her over to the sofa in their living room where they both sat. When she could collect herself, Nancy explained. “I don’t quite know how to say this.” She laughed, but it was a hollow sound. “Emily, could you please sit?”

“No,” I said roughly, fighting the tears that wanted to form in my eyes. I’d never liked getting emotional. When Rick and I had first met, he’d been one of my few classmates back then to not make fun of me for being an overly emotional girl. “What’s wrong with him? Why can’t he tell me himself?”

Nancy’s breath came in shaky huffs of air as she too began to tear up. My parents had always joked that they, both of them being fairly stoic people, had never taught me that little habit of getting worked up easily, and instead I’d learned it from Nancy, since I was over at her house so often hanging out with Rick. “He’s sleeping right now, but he’s become … particular … in his taste in company.”

When I stared at her in a silent demand for more, she averted her eyes from mine and stared at the carpet underneath her feet. “When we got the doctor down here to look at him, something happened to Ricky. He got mad, or maybe scared, and acted out until the poor man left without figuring out what was wrong with him. Every doctor since then has gone through that same thing. He just lashes out. He’s stronger than he looks, too — especially now — so when he gets violent …” She paled at even the memory.

Only one thought came to me at that moment. What in the world? “That’s insane. Do you need to get the cops down here or what?” I asked.

My turbulent emotions had died down and I had become strangely calm; the shock of hearing all that had driven the sadness away and replaced it with sheer disbelief. The Rick I’d known hadn’t been violent. Mostly because he’d never had the muscle mass to be really dangerous. As that thought crossed my mind, I made a connection, though I really, really didn’t want it to be true. My suspicion was a crazy thing to just pitch to two rational, normal people, though, so I took a moment to decide on what I wanted to do about it.

I ended up deciding to just walk away from Nancy and my dad and march down the hallway toward Rick’s room. I had to see for myself. At that moment, I didn’t particularly care if whatever he had was contagious or not. His door was already off its hinges when I arrived, and I stood staring at it for a moment before the smell hit me for the second time, all the way out in the hall. It was worse this time. The same odor of sweat and Rick’s unwashed body hung in the air, worsened with time, but there was a metallic undercurrent to it this time, the bitter stench of iron that warned me of what I would find in there before I even stepped inside.

Within the bedroom it was entirely dark, the curtains drawn and the window closed, and this time I did gag when I got far enough in that sweat and bodily fluids and blood was all that I sensed, so foul and rancid that my knees weakened and I had to stop to recover my balance. I turned his overhead light on and bathed the room in yellowish light that illuminated the scene that will stick in my memory forever.

Rick wasn’t anywhere to be seen. A slurry that was more solid than liquid stained the carpet, red and yellow mixed into orange bile that steamed heavily and filled the room with its sickening aroma. The room was cold, so cold that my breath misted in front of my face. His window must have been opened finally, but it did nothing for the smell. There was rotten meat somewhere judging by the stench, and the buzzing of flies that I couldn’t see, and I held my breath as I pushed further into the room to find it.

A sound that could not have been made by a person made me jump as it echoed slightly from the bathroom attached to Rick’s bedroom. The door was closed, and I was hesitant to destroy the memory of first coming to this house and marveling at how Rick had his own private bathroom when I didn’t at home, but I walked over and gripped the doorknob tightly as it stung my hand from the cold, just like the Shadow’s skin. That reminder pushed me to action even faster.

The smell of rotten meat and blood were only made worse by opening the door. There Rick was, hunched over his toilet and retching, making that awful, ear-splitting noise that had made my whole body erupt with goosebumps. When I screamed, his whole body turned toward me so fast that a cracking sound came from his neck or back, I don’t know which. Red stained his lips and chin, and ran down his neck to soak his chest, which was just as bare as the last time we’d seen each other.

He suddenly lurched again, and turned back to vomit up a gush of thick, dark blood that dripped from his tongue and lips slowly, as if partially congealed. He breathed wetly, his gasps causing him to choke on more of that thick, chunky blood that must have still been caught in his throat. Another heaving retch later, and something solid fell into the bowl beneath him, which made my blood run just as cold as his must be — what he threw up didn’t steam at all.

“Em,” his rasping, flat voice said. He spoke as if it hurt to speak. His eyes caught mine, and I screamed again, but not because of the fresh blood that dripped down his stained face and chest, which was just as dark and clotted as the old blood. I screamed because when I met his eyes, what I saw was not his usual blue pair of bright, happy eyes.

Rick’s eyes were white, paler than pale, empty.

“Emily?” he asked again, slowly standing with a motion so smooth that you would never be able to tell that he had been literally puking his guts up just a second earlier. He moved with a boneless sort of agility, another trait he now shared with the Shadow. “You finally came. We’ve been waiting for you.” He did not smile, but amusement of a sort played across his bloody features.

We. A thrill of fear shot through me, and I moved on pure instinct, taking off out the door to Rick’s room and leaping over the unhinged door. My dad was right there when I fled from the bedroom, peering into the room and blocking my way. I crashed into him and we both went staggering down the hallway, but while my mind was consumed with thoughts and fears of the Shadow and what Rick’s resemblance to him might have meant, it was a comfort to know that others around me were not like them.

My dad put himself in front of me instantly, and he didn’t flinch when Rick’s white body emerged from the empty doorframe with an almost slithering grace. Rick’s light, bouncing steps brought him a few feet away from my dad and I, and we kept stumbling backwards as he approached slowly with a grim focus on his face.

“Hello, sir,” Rick said, and he almost sounded like himself, but there was still a breathless rasp to his voice that marked him as different. “You mind if we talk to Emily alone for a bit? We have a lot to catch her up on.”

“Jesus Christ, kid!” my dad yelled, putting his hand out in front of him so that there was something between him and Rick. “You ought to see a doctor.”

“No more doctors!” Rick roared as he surged forward with serpentine agility. He lurched and tackled my dad, who was still built like a brick wall even ten years after being forced into an early retirement due to the bullet a crazy squad-mate of his had put in his leg in a fit of psychosis, or so they said. They fell to the floor, Rick crouching over my dad’s fallen body, and pushed me down the hallway in the process so that I spilled out onto the floor in view of Nancy, who stood and shook like a leaf at the sight of her boy.

As I stood and put as much distance between Rick and myself as I could, dragging Nancy along with me as I backed up against the front door, a window caught my attention at the corner of my eye. I didn’t yet know the significance of why the Shadow had only ever appeared at night, but I remembered that Rick had sounded almost scared of the sun when I’d seen him last, so I figured the kind of thing they were — because they sure as hell weren’t human — didn’t just prefer the darkness, but actively avoided the light. As soon as half a plan formed in my head, though, I noticed that all that remained of the sunlight had faded to a dull orange halo around the horizon as the sun had just minutes ago set for good.

“Don’t you see us?” Rick said flatly, walking with a posture that showed off how thin he had really become since I’d seen him last. His bones showed through his thin, tight skin, and his shorts hung off him so loosely that they might have fallen off at any moment with some bad luck. His stomach was entirely concave, empty of the innards that he had purged in the bathroom mere moments ago

Rick’s chest did not rise and fall with the rhythm of breath.

He held his arms out and smiled — his skin was pulled so taught against his ribs that I expected them to pierce through — but his eyes were still that same flat, pale white, empty of the humor that had filled his home, his life, just weeks ago. “No more pain. No more doctors. We will never need a doctor again.”

Rick turned his back on Nancy and I quickly, and looked back at my dad, who’d forced himself to his knees; getting to his feet from the ground was a thing of the past. His gun, sleek and black, pointed right at Rick’s chest, and even though his whole body shook, his hands were still. “Stand down, son. We can help you, alright? You just need to stand down.”

When Rick moved faster than I’d ever seen a person move before, my dad opened fire. It didn’t even look like Rick took any steps, he simply appeared behind my dad as if he hadn’t bothered with the distance between them at all. My dad fired three rounds. One impacted the window with the loud sound of shattering glass.

Another flew right by my head with a whizzing noise that I didn’t process until I realized my face had suddenly become very wet with the red stench of metallic blood, and Nancy collapsed back onto the door behind us with a gasp that turned into a hacking cough as her lungs filled with blood.

The third came when my dad must have felt Rick’s hands on the back of his head and aimed his gun so that the bullet sailed right through Rick’s neck through to the crown of his skull.

Fresh, dark red soaked Rick’s entire front and splattered on the wall and ceiling behind him and above. A lot of that red coated my dad’s head and shoulders and back. He tried to move away from Rick, to free himself from the grip that only tightened upon getting shot, but those hands were iron and he couldn’t pry them off of the sides of his head, nor could he untangle those fingers from his shoulder-length hair. Rick’s face, which was only intact due to the angle at which the bullet had blown through his brain, contorted in rage and sadness.

“Know this, Frank,” Rick whispered, his words causing congealed blood to ooze out of his neck wound even faster. “We regret spilling blood without feeding. We only want to talk. You did this to yourselves.”

Rick’s hands moved as though he experienced no resistance from my dad’s spine and neck muscles. He twisted my father’s head around so quickly and effortlessly that he must have died before his body even jerked and fell to the ground, his chest slumped into the carpet and his lifeless eyes looking up at Rick as the remnant of breath caught in his twisted throat.

I screamed again and looked between my dad, dead or dying on the ground with his neck broken, Nancy, bleeding out and shaking as she drowned in the blood that was quickly soaking into the welcome mat under my feet, and Rick, who seemed no worse for wear after having his brains blasted out of his skull and throwing up all his insides. He was well and truly empty inside, just like those pale eyes that regarded me without emotion as he once again slowly approached with his almost feline gait.

“What are you?” I screamed as tears streaked down my face. I had come here hoping for answers, but had only gotten blood, and more questions to boot. Trembling where I stood backed up against the front door to Rick’s home, I finally broke. “Stop it! Please, Rick!”

That gave him pause. His dark, thick blood, the blood of a man long dead, flooded down his legs and began sinking into the carpet as he stopped in his approach. “We are Rick.” He said it like he didn’t even really know. “We remember being Rick.”

“Do you …” I hesitated to ask, now that I had a shot. My body refused to stop shaking, which didn’t help. “Do you remember how you became … ‘we’?”

His empty eyes could have been looking at me or past me for all I knew. “When we were Rick, we were walking in the night. Night is dangerous, the night hides many things best left unseen and unsaid.” Watching a person talk without having to stop to breathe was uncanny; it gave him a bizarre speaking rhythm, almost like he was trying to force as many words out as quickly as he could, but he never ran out of time. “A shadow passing in the night. The other us. The one we were before we were us.”

“The Shadow,” I stammered. It was the first time I had said it out loud. “He came after me again the other day. Did you know that?”

Rick was silent for a moment before speaking again, almost like he was thinking, though I don’t know how that was possible with his brain painting the walls of the home we had both loved once. “No. The other us knows things that the other us does not share. That comes with being the first us.”

“The other you tried to kill me!” I shouted. The more I learned, the more I saw, the more my fear transformed into rage. “You’re supposed to be my friend!”

“We are your friend, Emily,” Rick said with an imitation of a smile. “We would like to keep being friends if possible. That is why we have an offer for you.”

A chill ran down my spine. “You want me to be like you?”

“Yes. We remember being Rick. We know that we were fond of you, and you of us. If we were all us, we could be together. Forever,” Rick said, holding out his blood-covered hand to me and putting on that fake, empty smile. That smile exposed the pointed ends of teeth that had become sharper than knives.

Clarity filled my mind like a light bulb being switched on. Rick was gone, and this thing wearing his face might have remembered being him, but it clearly didn’t remember well enough. Rick and I had been best friends, sure, and received more than our fair share of teasing given that we had been a boy and girl going through the growing pains of puberty together, but our relationship had never been the way everyone thought. We’d been friends to the end. The only feeling I had left for this hollow mimicry of my best friend was regret that I hadn’t been with Rick when the end had come sometime in the last two weeks. What stood before me was the Shadow, talking through his mouth, seeing through his pale eyes, making him dance on invisible strings.

I tried to turn and open the door at my back, but the instant my back was to him, Rick’s hands, colder than ice, took me by the shoulders and stopped me in my tracks. “You will see. When you are us, you will see as we do.” The air around my neck grew colder as his head tilted as if to kiss the soft flesh of my throat, and it was at this moment that I realized what Rick had truly become.

“No!” I screamed, but I had no power to resist his inhumanly strong grip.

His teeth punctured my skin with ease, many sharpened points slicing through my flesh like hot knives through butter, except they were cold, as cold as his skin. My neck and shoulders were flooded with an indescribable cold that seeped through my muscles right down to the bone as his lips closed over the wounds, and he began to drink up the bright red blood that I could feel his freezing, slimy tongue seeking as it lapped against my warm skin.

I writhed against him, trying to pull my head and neck away from his, and to my surprise, it worked. My earrings, the ones he’d given me, dragged across his face as I threw my head back and forth to try and break his hold on me, but nothing worked until Rick chose to let go himself. He screamed and lurched away from me so fast and hard that his feet left the ground and he tumbled over the sofa, collapsing on the floor in a boneless heap.

When he rose to his feet again, Rick’s flesh was smoking and melting away from the bone, the skin of his face was blackened and charred in patches and lines. I stared at him like an idiot before realizing what must have happened and taking the silver earrings out of my ears and clenching my fist around them. I resigned myself to what I had to do. Friends to the end.

When he leapt at me again with his mouth open and wet with my blood — I didn’t even feel the burn of being bitten; it must have been that numbing cold — I let him tackle me to the floor between our dead parents and when the angle was right, I shoved the earrings into his mouth and used the bullet hole in his neck as a handhold to force his mouth shut, even though it didn’t really work.

He screamed. Smoke and dark, thick blood spilled from his lips and made me splutter and cough. He rolled onto his back and clawed at his mouth, but he couldn’t seem to spit it out. When he screamed again, with another waft of black smoke, I got a glimpse of the earrings melted into the roof of his mouth. The smell of cooking flesh filled the air as he thrashed around and smoke began to pour from that neck wound, and the back of his ruined head, and his nose.

Rick went limp after a while of struggling, though the burning continued. Whatever had been keeping him alive must not have been able to fight off the silver, and soon his head was a flaming ball of charred meat. Sometime after the fire had consumed his head but before it spread to his body, I felt something akin to a string snapping, a connection that ran from me to him breaking. I also felt that same sensation, of a connection breaking, with something outside. That was a mere moment before the door rattled, something heavy and powerful pounding against it as if intended to knock it right off its hinges. I had no doubt that it could. I went to the door on weak legs and prayed that my suspicion about what Rick was had been correct before opening the door.

The Shadow towered over me in silence, and did not attack. He stood a few steps out from the threshold of the house, and peered in with those empty eyes that had likely seen more than anyone could in one lifetime. “I see that my thrall has met Death after all.” It spoke as if it didn’t even truly care about that. “Very well.”

“So that’s it?” I asked, a little bit breathless as I recovered from the shock of hearing the Shadow actually talk.

“What is done is done,” it said, its deep voice filling the silent night outside.

“Am I going to turn into a vampire now, or what?” I said shrilly as I gestured to the wound on my neck. The Shadow regarded me for a moment with its empty eyes and then turned to leave. “Answer me!” I didn’t dare go outside and meet it on its turf, and watched as the figure melted into a shadow behind Rick’s dad’s car and vanish. Rick’s dad was asleep in the car, his limp body slumped against the steering wheel. I hoped he was asleep.

That was last night. I spent today in Rick’s room with the curtains drawn, writing this, because I don’t know how much longer I’ll have before my fingers and limbs start locking up. Looking up the effects of rigor mortis knowing that it’ll be happening to me soon wasn’t fun. I already feel cold, and it doesn’t matter how many blankets I cover myself with, it’s never enough. Rick’s dad hasn’t come searching for his family yet. I haven’t heard any sounds from outside since the Shadow left. I hope he’s still just sleeping.

I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I do know that if I survive the change as myself, I’ll have the freedom to choose, at least. Killing Rick broke the bond that I would’ve had with the Shadow, too. At least there’s that.

Credit: Dex Hopper