The Haunted - Jessica Verday [50]
A rustling sound caught my attention. Were there rats in here? Rats have beady eyes.
Red. Beady. Eyes.
The sound came closer, and I tried to breathe slower. If it didn’t hear me, it couldn’t find me. But my heart wouldn’t stop pounding, and my pulse was racing. I wanted desperately to close my eyes, but I couldn’t even do that.
The noise stopped. “Abbey?”
His voice was right next to my ear, and I turned my head, groping blindly for him in the dark. A spark of electricity tingled faintly in my hands, and I knew he was there.
“What’s wrong?” Caspian said.
I wanted to run into his arms and be told everything was okay. “I had a bad dream.
Couldn’t sleep.”
“So you came here?”
Had I made a mistake? “Sorry,” I whispered. “I just wanted to see you, but I shouldn’t have—”
“No, no, it’s good. I’m glad you came to see me. But won’t your parents find out?” I shook my head, then realized he probably couldn’t see it in the dark. “I snuck out my window. They’ll never notice, and I won’t stay long.” I shifted awkwardly. “Can you, um, light some candles? My dream was pretty scary.”
“Oh, yeah.” He moved, and then there was a soft scratching sound. The bright flare of a flame burst to life at the end of a match, and he lit two candles on my left. “Do you want to sit down on the bench?”
I nodded and followed him, waiting as he lit several more candles that sputtered and shed their light across the empty tomb. He slid down into a sitting position against the wall next to me. It was deadly quiet in our little space, and I tried to imagine him here day after day, all alone. It would drive me to the edge in no time.
“Want to talk about it?” he asked. “The dream?”
I draped my arm across the back of the bench. The metal was cool through the thickness of my sweatshirt. “It was awful. Dark things were chasing me into dark alleys. And I couldn’t defend myself. Then this monster swooped down on me, and…” Caspian got up and moved over to one of the boxes. Reaching down, he pulled out two items and then came back to me. “Here.” He held out a shirt. “You’re cold. You’re shivering.” I wasn’t going to argue that it was just because of the dream, so I took it. It was a button-down, and felt like fleece under my fingertips. Tilting my head back, I said, “Thank you.” Then he placed a small brown paper bag next to me. “Second, a distraction. Sorry it’s not wrapped nicer. This was the best I could do. Happy birthday, Astrid.” He’d gotten me something? I opened the bag and looked down into it. A book with a colorful illustration of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman lay there. “Ohhhhh,” I whispered, pulling it out reverently.
“It’s a kids’-book version,” he admitted, with a bashful smile. “I hope that’s okay.” I flipped through the pages. It was an old book, copyright 1932, and crisp with age. Every third page had a gorgeous black-and-white illustration on it. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. “It’s perfect,” I said. “‘Thank you’ seems so inadequate. Where did you get it?”
“Don’t worry about that,” he replied. “I’m just glad you like it.” I hugged it to my chest. “I love it.”
He stood over me for a minute, looking down with a strange expression on his face.
“Every guy’s dream,” he muttered softly. “To be the one the girl comes running to when she wants to be saved. And I can’t even do anything about it.…” His eyes were intense, holding me captive. My breath caught in my throat. “You can come sit by me,” I offered. “Keep me company.” But he moved back toward the wall, reclaiming his seat on the floor.
“It’s better if I stay here. Easier that way.”
Better for who? I wanted to say, but I tried not to let the disappointment show on my face and busied myself with wrapping his shirt around me. “So how come you can touch things, but not me? Um… people. People, I mean.”
Caspian spread his hands out in front of him and looked at them. “I don’t know why I can move boxes, pick up my charcoal, snap a pencil, break a twig… but can’t touch you. Maybe it’s the rule of this place, or whatever I am. I’m not sure.”