Haunted Shadows 1: Sickness Behind Young Eyes by Jack Lewis

plug and grabbed as
much hair as I could. It was slimy beneath my fingers but I gripped it. Feeling
the blood rush to my face, I yanked at it with all my strength and pulled it
away. It felt like I had an entire scalps worth of the long strands in my hand.
I threw them to the ground, not even caring that I missed the bin. I stood in
the dark room and tried to let my breathing settle.
     
    I tried to work out where the hell
the hair was from, but my mind fogged over. Then a thought hit me in the guts.
A memory crept up and socked me in the stomach so hard I felt winded.
     
    When I moved into the room, the sink
had been disconnected. It had never worked.
     
    Suddenly I saw movement in the corner
of my left eye. A nearly imperceptible shifting in the dark, as though pale
fingers played with the black. A shiver ran through my body and I had the
overwhelming urge to run. Suddenly the bedroom door felt far away. It was only
metres, but it seemed that if I ran then it would stretch even further out of
reach.
     
    I couldn’t let this happen. I
realised I was falling victim to the fear. I was thinking like the kind of
people who were scared of legends.
     
    With my heart drumming in my chest I
forced myself to look to my left. My neck was stiff, as though my muscles
didn’t want my head to turn. I looked deep into the darkness that swam in the
corner of the room, and I saw nothing. I breathed out.
     
    I looked back over to the bedroom
door, and my heart stopped. There was an envelope on the floor.

 
    10
     
    Every step down the narrow stairs
jolted my head and made my bones ache. My body felt like it was covered in
sludge, and my brain swam in a thick goo that bunged up my nose and made my
temples pound. Any sensible person would have been in bed, but I couldn’t do
that. I wasn’t going to let Jeremiah see me weak.
     
    When I walked into the pub Jeremiah
was already sat at a table poking his fork into a fry-up. A radio span soft
tunes from somewhere behind the bar. The sky outside still had a dark tint to
it. The branches of the trees shivered in the wind and the leaves clung on for
dear life. Opposite Jeremiah was a plate with four rounds of toast, honey and
marmalade. There was also a bowl spilling with cereal and one full of fruit.
     
    “What’s this?” I said, the words
sounding croaky in my throat.
     
    “Take your pick,” he said, and lifted
a slice of bacon to his mouth. He had rolled up a full rasher around the fork
and obviously planned to eat it whole. He added: “I’m sorry about last night.”
     
    I pulled out the chair and had to
bite back a wince as my shoulder joints ached with the movement. I knew this
was going to be a bad cold. It seemed like I was a germ magnet the whole year
round, and it was rare I didn’t have a red noise or puffy eyes. But it was when
my joints started hurting that I knew it was going to be a nightmare.
     
    “Did you get some kip?” asked
Jeremiah.
     
    I had already decided that I wasn’t
going to tell him about the hair. I wasn’t even going to let Marsha see it. I
had taken it out of the bin, wrapped it in a bag and I would get rid of it
later. I certainly wasn’t going to tell him about the feeling I had, like
someone was in my room. He’d say I was just being silly and letting all of this
affect me.
     
    “Funny thing happened to me last
night,” he said.
     
    My ears pricked. “Oh?”
     
    “Yeah. I woke up at about three in
the morning. It was pitch black. I looked over to my bedroom window and there
was a face watching me.”
     
    For a second my heartrate spiked. I
breathed through my nose and tried to calm down.
     
    “Are you sure it wasn’t a cloud or
something?”
     
    Jeremiah smiled. “No. It was a crow.
Little bugger was watching me sleep.”
     
    He sawed a sausage in half and popped
it into his mouth. His ginger beard was a tapestry of egg yolk, brown sauce and
breadcrumbs. It was most likely that the crow had been watching Jeremiah
because it