The chill night air is a knife driven deeper into his chest with each desperate breath. He runs. All around are skeletal trees - corpse-flesh pale and winter-dead - rising from tangled webs of uneven rootsnarl that catches his feet and sends him staggering. Their long branch-limbs stretch out for him. Sharp spindle-digits rake hot welts across pale flesh as he wrenches himself free. He keeps running. Faster now. Head down. Another snare, and another. A dozen welts. A hundred. Oil slicks his skin where the dead trees touch, bubbles up and dribbles wax-slow from the rakes the branches leave on his flesh. He raises a hand to ward off another thrashing grasp and the world explodes in silver pain and jagged howling.

  Stef wakes by staccato inches. Breathing hurts. Everything hurts. He is caught. Trapped. Something snares him, binds his limbs. A beartrap of agony is cmped around his leg. His heart hammers against his ribs and every beat is fire and pain. Every frayed nerve finally catches up with him and he does not even have the breath to scream.

  He is sobbing as a hand gently takes his.

  The touch anchors him. Drags him back out of the world of pain and hammering adrenaline fire in his veins.

  A woman is standing there in pale sky-shade scrubs. Blue. That colour is called blue. Pale blue scrubs. She is radiant, surrounded by brilliant white. Her mouth is moving but the words are drowned under the roar of blood in his ears and the jangling cacophony beyond the close-curtain world the two of them exist in.

  She sees the bnkness in his eyes and tries again, enough of her voice finally carrying through the din. It is a soft voice, warm and rich with a Scottish burr. "It's ok. You're in St Giles Hospital. You've been in an accident but you're safe now."

  Her pale eyes fix on his. She gently squeezes his hand while watching for signs of comprehension. "Can you tell me your name?"

  "Stef." His voice is rough, half-strangled in his throat. It takes effort to hold down the urge to whimper when he breathes in deep enough to speak. "Stefan Riley."

  "Nice to meet you, Stefan. I'm Mairead." She smiles with a brilliant bright fsh of teeth and relief, then pats his hand once more. "We're just waiting to get you X-Rayed to see what's broken, and then we can get you all fixed up. Your parents will be here soon."

  Stefan simply nods. He tries not to move. To not breathe any deeper than he must. To not think about his parents' reactions. To not think about what happened in the shadow of the warehouse.

  About the broken oil-slick man.

  About the wolf.

  Wolves.

  Mark ... he stops himself. He can't call her that. Her. Her. Her.

  The breath catches in his throat, stalling and choking then suddenly accelerating. His ribs sear and snap with each breath. The world colpses into spirals of racing doubt and jagged memory.

  "Stefan. It's ok." Mairead's burr cuts into the tumult. Her hand on his is an anchor. He wheels and spirals around it, hearing but not hearing her words. Fighting to breathe as she counts and talks. He can hear her voice reeling him in, each soft and even word drawing him back toward a centre that refuses to hold.

  The edges of her words blur and fray, washed away by the relentless tide of noise. The world beyond the curtain swells louder. Metal and footsteps, rattling motion and thin tannoy voices. Each squirming into his head, biting deep and splitting his skull with the pressure of it all. The lights overhead are daggers, hard-edged and stabbing no matter how tightly he squeezes them shut.

  His head is static and jagged memories, thoughts shattering and dissolving before they fully form.

  Memories made of oil and silver.

  Wolves and shattered men and choking night.

  Her. Her. Her.

  There is no air. No breath. He gasps, fighting to inhale. It sticks in his throat, thick and burning, struggling like trapped prey. His ribs are spasming, fighting to contain the runaway drumbeat of his heart.

  Mairead is talking louder now. Her eyes fire bright, voice burning fierce and insistent now. Stefan hears his name. A colour. Nothing more. The rest is noise and numbers, drowned by the tumult without and the thunder within.

  Night is rising up. Closing around him. There are other people now, their voices are muffled into urgent whispers amid a thunderstorm. Everything is so heavy. Cold.

  The world lets go at st and darkness folds around him.

  The endless throng of spindle-limbed trees rises all around, sharp and grasping branches reaching hungrily for him.

  Heart hammering, he runs. Breath burning, he runs. Cws raking across tangled forest floor, he runs.

  And eyes the colour of liquid sunset watch.

  2014 January 28TuesdayStef tries not to notice as the brush strokes in the paintwork start to move again. They ripple in slow waves across the ceiling, like trees in a storm. He tells himself that it’s not real and tries to prop himself up to look out the window. The clouds shield him from the blunt bde of fading winter sunlight as they scud across the sky. In the distance the skeletal forms of trees shiver in the wind, waving to him like friends on a passing train.

  He flinches back, squeezes his eyes shut and tries not to remember the dreams. His ribs scream at the sudden movement and he bites down on the pain. The tang of warm copper hits his tongue.

  He knows he is supposed to be taking the painkillers but he can’t deal with these side-effects. So he stopped as soon as he got home, when he could hide them and pretend he had taken them. That was yesterday. And he’s still seeing things.

  Maybe it just takes longer for things like that to get out of his system.

  At least he is home. Away from all the tumult of the hospital. Too much noise. Too many lights. Too many people. Too much everything.

  He swallows against the tightness in his throat and shifts again. Another protest from his ribs - a grumble rather than a scream - and he lets himself open his eyes. The ceiling stays still this time. It takes effort to drag his gaze away, to keep himself from fixating. Motion at the window catches his attention. The wind-tossed trees thrash in the distance, their bare limbs waving now like the hands of drowning men.

  Think of something else. Anything else.

  The pain is real. More real than the squirming paintwork or the trees or the shadows whispering at the edge of his vision. The ache in his leg that refuses to settle no matter how he tries to rest the cast is real. The sharp fire in his ribs every time he tries to move is real. The dull, thudding pressure in his skull that builds with each bright little noise or sharp-edged light is real. He can measure them. Measure himself by them. He clenches his hands to fists, feels the nails dig white-hot into his palms then releases. Still here. Still real. Still himself.

  School hasn’t even sent homework yet. They probably think he needs time to recover. Or maybe they think he’s not coming back at all. Maybe they don’t want him back.

  The thought sends an ugly twist through his gut, and he pushes it down with the rest of them.

  His mind wanders back to the hospital. The dagger-bright white lights, the cacophony of behind drawn curtains, sharp antiseptic over the curdled tang of blood and sickness. The way everything had dissolved into noise and darkness.

  A trauma response, they said. Understandable.

  His memory is a broken mirror. He can feel the jagged edges of it splintering his skin when he tries to think about it. Suffocating darkness that crushed the breath out of him and the certainty that something had followed him out of the shadow of that warehouse.

  They said he had run into traffic. That he had sprinted full-tilt into the street, straight into the path of a car. That his head hit the pavement hard enough to concuss him. That he was lucky to escape with a few broken bones.

  They asked him why, and he said he didn’t remember.

  Blows to the head sometimes do that, they said.

  Stef lets out a slow breath and looks at his arm. Four little crescent moon scratches, half-healed and scabbing over, stare back at him. Another throbs warm and insistent on the other side. No-one had thought much of them. Minor compared to broken bones, cracked ribs and a concussion. Just abrasions from the accident. Likely from the asphalt.

  He inhales sharply, holds the breath and closes his eyes. The memory is fire-bright in the darkness behind the lids. He feels her grip around his wrist, her cws biting skin as she catches him when he falls. He remembers her saying his name and then knowing beyond any doubt who this was, impossible as it seemed. Remembers the heat of her breath when she looked at him for the st time with those golden eyes and begged him to run.

  Her grip. Her cws. Her breath. Her.

  Stef doesn’t even know what to call her in his memories. Not Mark . That name feels like draping her in someone else’s skin.

  Her. Her. Her.

  His phone is beside him, battered and barely functional. He’s tried to look things up but the screen flickers and bleeds pixels every time he presses too hard. Cracks spiderweb across the gss, stinging his fingertips when he types too long. Sometimes, if he stares, it looks like the cracks move. Twist into words he can’t quite read.

  He doesn’t know where to start. He tried as many searches as its battery could bear while in hospital. Nothing on the news. No missing persons. No reports of violence in the industrial estate. No proof. It’s like it never happened. He doesn’t dare type the words werewolf or monster , but that’s what she was, right? What she had become.

  Whatever had happened to her couldn’t be all bad. She seemed happier, despite it all. More alive than the shell he had been in the year before disappearing.

  Stefdoesn’t know why that thought feels so barbed.

  He tried researching dreams, too. The ones that came before the accident. The ones that won’t stop. Maybe he should start writing them down. Journal them to make sense of them. Something to do, but it’s hard to focus. His thoughts feel thick and sluggish, as if the meds haven’t fully left his system. They don’t stop the dreams, just make them st longer. He wakes up sore, muscles aching, feeling every mile of the endless headlong run through the forests of the night.

  He tries not to, but he’s still seeing things. The flickers at the edges of his vision. The shadows that move when he is not looking. The whispers under the tinnitus hum of the half-broken television in the other room.

  The sound of his mother’s voice, praying in the dark.

  He had been half-asleep, still caught between the dream and wakefulness, when he heard her. Whispered words, thick with worry. He remembers how she sat beside his hospital bed, murmuring something soft, something rhythmic. He doesn’t remember the words, just the way her voice felt . Like wind through trees. Like fire in the woods.

  And now? Now she’s talking to his father. Arguing. Low voices behind the kitchen door, barely above a whisper but sounds carry in a small house. Why was he even there? she asks. Why didn’t you go for the groceries?

  His father doesn’t answer. The silence between them is heavy and sharp-edged.

  Stef swallows against the lump in his throat. He shouldn’t be listening. He shouldn’t care . But something about the way his mother’s voice wavers makes his stomach twist.

  A knock on the front door startles him. Too sharp, too sudden, the stillness broken. Voices at the door. His mother greeting someone, calling up to him. Before he can even process a reply there is a knock on his bedroom door.

  “Stefan? You alive in there?” Russ calls through the door

  The tension in Stef’s chest unwinds a few degrees. Russ’ voice is casual but Stef can hear a knot beneath the surface. The worry he’s trying to hide. They had fallen out of each other’s orbit since Mark disappeared, each lost in their individual means of dealing with the grief. Yet Russ had been there with Stef’s parents when he woke from surgery, groggy and exhausted with a fresh-set cast, and he had kept visiting nearly every day since.

  The door creaks open before Stef can answer and Russ steps in, holding a bag in one hand. He lifts it like a trophy. “I come bearing knowledge. And, unfortunately, homework.”

  Stef exhales, something like relief loosening his spine. “Hey, Russ,” he says in a voice that he hopes doesn’t sound entirely dead.

  “Man, you look like hell,” Russ says matter-of-factly. He dumps the bag on the bed beside Stef before flopping down into the nearby chair. “Just a flying visit, butI figured you’d appreciate the distraction.”

  Stef takes a long, slow breath. The pain in his ribs has settled to a dull throb, mostly manageable, but it’s the weight in his skull that drags at him. He gnces at the bag, spotting a few textbooks among the crumpled sheets of assignments.

  “I’m honoured to be burdened with knowledge,” he mutters, shifting against the pillows. “Anything new since yesterday?”

  Russ leans back, bancing the chair on its hind legs. There’s a flicker of something in his expression, too brief to pin down, before the smile settles back in pce. “Other than the tragedy of yet more maths homework? Not much. You’re still the talk of the css. Everyone’s got a theory. Max thinks you got mugged. Jonah says you probably did it on purpose."

  That twists something unpleasant in Stef’s stomach. He forces a smirk. "Is he still going on about that?"

  Russ shrugs, a little too casual, his eyes flicking away for just a second before meeting Stef's again. "Can’t stop people from talking. Anyway, I know you’re not dumb enough to just throw yourself under a car without a reason. But you’re not telling me everything."

  Stef stays silent. He’s too tired to lie, too tangled in the weight of everything to expin. He can still feel the way she - not Mark, not anymore - had gripped his wrist. The fear in her voice. Run, Stef.

  "You still wouldn’t believe me," he says finally.

  Russ watches him for a moment, eyes sharp, weighing his words. For a second he looks like he might argue. "Try me."

  The words stick in his throat. His mouth opens, but nothing comes out. His mind trips over the memories - golden eyes, the fsh of cws, the impossible horror that dragged itself out of the warehouse. A sensation, deeper than thought, screaming danger, danger, run .

  He swallows. Looks at his phone, cracked and flickering uselessly beside him. If there had been news, any confirmation of what happened, maybe—maybe he could say something. But there’s nothing. No reports. No missing persons. No proof.

  His fingers tighten slightly in the sheets. He gnces at Russ, but the words still won’t come. He shakes his head, barely more than a twitch.

  Russ exhales sharply but doesn’t push. He just watches, unreadable.

  Stef lets himself slump into the pillows, a rattling breath forcing its way painfully through his teeth as he moves. He feels like he’s losing his mind.

  "Alright, keep your secrets. Get some rest and maybe some of this work so you don’t totally fail." Russ topples the chair onto all four legs and stands up, his smile sitting awkward and ill-fitting. He nudges the bag toward Stef as he heads out of the room. “See you tomorrow, Stefan.”

  Stef manages an awkward wave before he is left alone again with his thoughts.

  2014 February 14FridayStef shifts his weight on his crutches, adjusting the grip to keep the blood flowing in fingers bitten chill by the cold air. Winter is lingering and spring feels still years away. Russ is walking beside him, carrying his bag. He had picked it up like there was never a question and Stef was too sore to argue. Just walking with the crutches is enough to make his ribs ache and the extra weight of a bag would have made it torture.

  "You look less like death today," Russ said. His voice was light but concern flickered over his face whenever he thought Stef wasn't looking.

  "Gd to be moving up in the world," Stef mutters, keeping his gaze locked on the pavement ahead. He fights the urge to gnce at the spaces between the houses, at the shadows beneath the winter-bare trees.

  "So, first full week back. How's it been?" Russ asks.

  "Fine." Stef says too quickly. He takes a deep breath to try and hide the haste and regrets it as the lungful of chill air sets him coughing. His ribs feel like fire. By the time he has fought the pain down enough that he can move again, he can taste copper.

  The wind shifts. Flickers of silver pain cross the corners of Stef's vision. Bright and sharp as knives. As teeth. He forces himself not to react, blinking away the st of pain until it is gone. He wipes at his split lip and tries not to notice the look on Russ' face. "It's fine. Nearly home."

  "Ok..." Russ looks unconvinced but forces himself to smile. "I mean, good. I don't think I can carry you, your bag, and your amazing academic reputation all the way down the street."

  Stef snorts and swipes at Russ' ankles with a crutch. It almost doesn't hurt to ugh and he nearly feels normal again.

  "You sure you're okay?" Russ gnces over.

  Stef hesitates, adjusting his grip on the crutches again. He could feel the chill settling into him now as they stood in the cold wind. "Yeah. Give me a minute. Still not sleeping great."

  Russ let it drop with a nod. He slings the two school bags up onto his shoulders and hops up onto the top of a low garden wall, rapping the brickwork beside him with his knuckles to beckon Stef to join him.

  Stef nods slow, exhales slower, and lets himself slump against the wall. He must look awful. It was bad enough this morning with the dark smudges under his eyes and skin pale and drawn like parchment.

  "The pain?" Russ asks, then continues after a beat, "Or more weird dreams?"

  Stef is gd he can't taste any more blood in his mouth as he swallows, throat dry. He wishes he had never told Russ about the dream. But what could he say now? That they hadn't stopped? That sometimes the silver light from between those trees lingered at the edges of his vision like the afterimage from staring at the sun?

  That there was a song in them now, threaded through his thoughts and calling to him from just out of reach?

  "It's fine. Just painkillers making me loopy." He says, too casual.

  Russ gives him a look but doesn't push. He pulls his own school bag around onto his p and pys with the zip. Stef catches a glimpse of something colourful and pastel among the journals.

  A car passes. Its headlights splinter across the pavement and send the shadows dancing. Stef feels his gut twist and locks his face neutral. Just tricks of the light. Just the gloom and the pain pying games with his eyes.

  The moment passes. Russ exhales and hops down off the garden wall. He nudges Stef's arm lightly, his bag closed up tight and back on his shoulder. Stef isn't sure when he did that. "Just don't go getting lost in your own head again, alright? Talk to me sometime?"

  Stef huffs a thin ugh and nods, starting to walk again. "I'll try to not freak you out."

  Russ grins, a bright and wicked expression that does not reach his eyes. "Too te for that."

  They pse into silence on as they round the st corner toward home. The wind picks up and a deep chill settles into Stef's bones as they close the final stretch toward the Riley home. Russ keeps close beside him, looking like wants to say something else. Instead, he just pulls the straps of his school bags higher on his shoulders and hunkers down against the cold until they reach Stef's front door.

  An awkward silence lingers as Stef fumbles for keys.

  "I should go," Russ says finally. "Babysitting. And you should get some rest anyway."

  Stef nods, watching as Russ hesitates for half a second before turning away. Something unreadable and distant lingers in his expression before he tucks his hands in his pockets and crosses the road to his house. Stef lets out a slow breath, suddenly feeling heavier.

  His mum's voice greets him as he steps inside. "It's so nice to see Russell around more, after everything that has happened. I'm so gd to see you two being friends again, Stefan."

  He doesn't answer. He isn't sure what to say.

  He is running. The song beckons through the trees. Coiling about him and around him and through him. There are words and he needs to hear them. He scrambles over the pale fallen tree bones. The trees reach out their talons, raking and tearing and flensing at his skin. Their touch scars with oil and night that boils away as he bleeds silver light. His cws rend a path through their skeletal legions, need and blessed pure hunger burning in his heart. A sound like silence manifest sings to him…

  Stef snaps awake in a room filled with silver light. The moon shines huge outside his window, a brilliant disc consuming half the sky and filling the rest with its radiance. He feels so small before the vastness as it looms above, watching him. Something burns deep in his bones, aching at the sight of it. He can hear the song, a whisper on distant wind, and even that is enough to set his blood dancing in time to it. He strains toward it without intent or thought, his body drawn forward on an urge beneath even instinct.

  The crutches are under his hands before he realises what he is doing.

  Outside. He needs to be outside.

  The air is cold and damp as he settles onto the garden bench. Moonlight pools around him like liquid silver, warm and soothing as a mother’s first embrace. It takes him a moment to realise that there is no pain. The ache and burn and sharp grind of bone and rib and skull are distant. Forgotten. Wrapped in the warmth of the light and the song.

  The song. He can almost hear the words now. So close to comprehension. The shape of the words fills his mind like fire and water as the song wraps itself about his being and threads through his breath. The world is singing to him. He wants…

  “What the hell are you doing out here, Stefan Reilly?”

  The voice shatters the moment like gss. His father is eclipsing the silver, shaking him with meaty hands.

  Stef flinches small, trying to disappear into himself before his father’s voice continues, gesturing hard for the back door. “Get back inside, you stupid boy!”

  The words hook into something raw. The song is gone, the silver is tarnished to mundane moonlight. Rain falls cold into his sodden clothing, runs down his neck, mingles with his tears.

  “Come on, get in there before you catch your death.” His father snaps, voice knife-sharp and eyes dark. “Sitting out there in the rain? What were you thinking?”

  Stef doesn’t answer. He isn’t sure what the answer is.

  His mother is there now, an umbrel raised against the elements. Her concern softens the sharpness of his father’s words. Raised voices. Towels pressed into his hands, sodden clothes swapped for dry ones, then ushered to bed.

  Muted voices drift beyond his door, muffled but pressing in through the empty silence. “I was calling him for minutes. He didn’t even hear me. Just sat there…” A long painful silence. “We’ll call the GP on Monday. Or the mental health line. It’s been a month. He’s getting worse. They have to do something.”

  Stef stares at the ceiling, the afterimage of silver still burning behind his eyes.