The Everborn - Nicholas Grabowsky [9]
The possibility suddenly occurred to the girl of the building collapsing around them in a quake of deadly plaster boulders, and her paranoia gorged hungrily upon the illusion that the ground floor walls were weakening with age beneath the floors above. She replaced her crumpled baseball cap upon her head as though this could shelter her and her hand darted for a portion of Matthew’s shirt and held tight for assailable comfort. Physical contact with girls annoyed Matthew as he found no remedy to the unfailing tension brought along with it, and he swung a hand to self-consciously fend it away. She responded with an irritable tug and wound his shirt tighter around her fingers.
Nigel let out a solemn yawn. As young as he was, he knew that anything called a Wraith-child could not possibly be as monstrous as what he heard. The fact that it was a child in the first place was a sure indication of harmlessness. Even if the Wraith-child didn’t exist at all, this outing certainly topped remaining at home with Ma. Ma was a penniless sexoholic and willing groupie to any rock-and-roll band passing through town toting needles to share; where Nigel was now couldn’t possibly be any worse than being with her, at least on weekends when she was most deliriously dreadful.
Without warning, Matthew screamed in terror. This abruptness could have come at no better time for Dabby’s poor, persecuted nerves, which reacted like the inner coils of a pocketwatch wound too tightly, propelling her forward and into Matthew’s side. The impact sent them both tumbling, her deathgrip on Matthew’s shirt stretching the material up and over the back of his head and into his face. The boy fought to wrench free, his cries muffled against the force of her smothering grasps. The wrestling ceased soon enough, and Matthew sat up from the decaying carpet to look at the girl.
“It was a joke,” he spat at her. “I wanted to make you jump. Jesus...”
Sprawled and panting, Dabby rolled to her side and rubbed her eyes. She looked up at him and began to laugh, if not for the simple fact that it had been a false alarm, which she’d prefer against the real thing. “You buttwipe.”
“You lunkhead.”
“You buttwipe.”
Matthew smoothed over his shirt and brushed the dust from his jeans. Gazing absently around, he rose to his feet. “Where did Nigel go?”
Dabby sprung from the carpet and darted her head. They were both alone. Desperately, she began to call out for him, and Matthew joined her.
The panic was real now, and little Nigel had vanished completely into the oblivion of the building’s shadowy, broken innards.
***
Matthew’s inept scream had sent Nigel running; a suddenly frightened, scurrying vision of baggy clothes darted across sleek cement and into the blackness of an open section of wall opposite the direction where the three had journeyed.
He had been more excited than frightened. His first impulse was to run, and as he did so he squealed in frenzied glee as his two friends wrestled yards behind him. His second impulse was to hide.
And hide he did, right straight through a gaping hole surrounded by brick and plaster. It was like entering a giant, opened mouth, much the same as the uncanny entrance of a carnival funhouse. He once visited a funhouse, with its mirrors and bellowing mannequins and multi-colored mists. This, however, was much different. This was real, and a real friendly ghost was lurking about, waiting to be discovered.
Somewhere.
If the Wraith-child was real, Nigel thought, then maybe people were scared of it because it cried. Matthew himself admitted to have heard its crying and fled. If Nigel could make the Wraith-child stop crying, then perhaps it would befriend him.
Perhaps, except...no one was crying here. No one yet.
Maybe the Wraith-child was hiding.
But when Nigel entered the gaping section of wall, he hadn’t counted on falling, tumbling; apparently his feet met with a floor board which sloped into the darkness at an angle. His chest met with smooth concrete,