Rising Darkness (Game of Shadows #1)(3)

As a small boy, over thirty years ago, he had been prone to screaming fits and spells of inconsolable sobbing that had lasted hours. Once it had lasted days. In his memory of that time, his parents were vague, ineffectual shadows, pantomiming concern and alarm. That one time had involved doctors, along with a hypodermic needle.

He hadn’t liked shots. Five adults had been needed to hold him pinned down. After that he had gone through a period of medication and therapy. The medicine taught him a valuable lesson. It made him feel odd and fuzzy. He realized he would have to curb his behavior if he wanted to be free of it, so he learned how to be cunning.

He colored a lot of pictures and studied the therapist as much as she studied him. As soon as he figured her out, he told her everything she wanted to hear. Eventually the sessions stopped, and so did the medication.

Still, he remained a stormy, headstrong, brilliant child. Despite all of their early literacy efforts, his parents could not interest him in reading until he saw an evening news segment on the First Persian Gulf War. Rapt, he watched unblinking until the news program was over, and then he demanded that his father read every article in the newspaper on the subject. Within a few years, his reading comprehension approached the college level.

School was pastel. It didn’t make much of an impression on him. The other children were pastel too. He didn’t have friends. He had followers. By observation and raw gut instinct he knew what the teachers thought of him, that they were both intrigued by him and also worried about his future.

He didn’t care. They were pastel. Nothing external was ever quite as real as what shouted inside of him.

He was well on his way to developing into an adult sociopath. His dreams of release from pastel rules were as yet unformed but increasingly dangerous. He had already been in several fights with other children, and he had discovered that he liked violence.

And he was good at it.

One day when he was eight, an old woman appeared at the fence of his schoolyard playground.

Michael was as aware of her presence as he was aware of everything else around him, but he ignored her while he organized his group of followers for a strenuous bout of playground mischief.

Then the most extraordinary thing happened.

Boy, the old woman said.

That was all. But she said it INSIDE HIS HEAD.

He turned to stare at her.

The old bat looked exceedingly pastel. She looked like just a nondescript woman with a cheerful apple-dumpling face who had paused to watch children run and play during a school break.

His eyes narrowing, he walked toward her, school, stranger-danger, followers and mischief, all else forgotten. Several of the other kids called his name, and some kind of missile thumped him on the shoulder. He ignored everything else and stopped about fifteen yards away from the six-foot chain-link fence. All the while, the old woman watched him with bright, black raisin eyes.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

Shrieking children ran between them, playing a game of tag, but she still heard him in spite of the noise. Her face crinkled into a friendly smile. It’s a secret, she said. I know a lot of secrets.

His breath left him. He stared at her in wonder. She might be old and wrinkled, but she was definitely not pastel. He took another quick, impetuous step toward her. “Teach me!”

Her smile wrinkles deepened although she never stopped watching him. Those bright eyes of hers were alight with amusement and something sharper. I might, she said, her mental voice casual. Or I might not. It all depends.

Never before in his short, pampered life had he been stared at as if he had been weighed and found wanting, but that was how the old woman stared at him now. He scowled, not liking the sensation. “It depends on what?”

On whether or not you know any manners, young man, she told him. And whether or not you’re still salvageable.

He had never seen eyes as old as hers. He was too young and ignorant to understand how deadly they were. All he knew was that this strange conversation was more real than anything else that he could remember.

He ran to the fence, clutched metal links in both hands and looked up at her. “I’m sorry,” he said. The unaccustomed words stuck in his throat, but he forced them out anyway. “I’m sorry I was rude. Please, would you teach me how you did that?”

Her face softened and she touched his clenched fists with gnarled fingers as she spoke aloud for the first time. “Well said. And I might teach you, but it still depends on one more thing.”

He shook his head in confusion. It was so odd. From a distance she had seemed so small, barely taller than he was. Now that he was right up next to her she seemed to tower over him.

“Anything,” he promised. He had been so young.

She bent forward and locked gazes with him. He realized that he had been wrong about her eyes too. They weren’t like friendly little raisins. They were hot and full of burning power like black suns.

“You must keep it a secret,” she whispered. “Or I will have to kill you.”

Terror thrilled him. Never, in reality or his wildest imagination, had an adult spoken to him like that. And she might even mean it.

(Whereas the man he had grown into knew very well that she had.)

He pushed against the fence. “I promise. I won’t tell anyone.”

“Ever,” said the old woman.

He nodded. “Ever.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Cross your heart and hope to die.”