The Destiny of Ethan King

Chapter 5: The Cold Light of Day

One year later: The year 2013

"Leave me alone!" Ethan sat bolt upright in bed, eyes wide. It was a chilly winter's night, but his bedclothes were soaked with sweat. 

His eyes were fixed on the spot where the figure had been just moments before. Now there was nothing except for the silhouette of his telescope against the backdrop of the moon-lit curtains. There had been somebody standing there. He was sure of it. But as his breathing started to return to normal and his eyes adjusted to the darkness, the doubt resurfaced. 

The same thing had been happening each night for weeks. He would wake up with a jolt, often from a nightmare, to see this... whatever it was. He could never make it out properly; just see its dark outline and red eyes. It was the eyes that terrified him. They burnt a hole in his mind. At the time, it was as real to him as anything he'd experienced. He could feel the presence in the room with him; it made the little hairs on his arms prickle to attention. But each morning, after the sun came up and the shadows faded, he convinced himself that he'd been dreaming, or that it was a trick of the light, or his imagination running amok. 

The cold light of day. That was the expression which occurred to him that following morning as he hit his alarm clock with more force than was necessary. He hated having to get up early for college during the winter. Six thirty a.m. and what little light there was , was cold. He grabbed his dressing gown off the back of his desk chair and flung it on, wrapping it tightly around his slender frame. He went downstairs, picking the sleep out of his eyes. What was that junk anyway? As a kid, Ethan had wondered if some kind of nocturnal monster roamed the streets at night, smearing the sticky slime into children's eyes. 

As he poured a bowl of coco pops, Ethan considered the classes he had that day. Psychology, English Literature and Human Biology. Shit! He'd forgotten to finish his psychology essay and it was due in that afternoon. He panicked, then his panic quickly turned to amusement at the irony; the essay was entitled Theories of Forgetting: An Examination of the Mechanisms of Human Memory. He pictured telling his tutor that he'd forgotten to write about forgetting. In the movie in his head, he was calm and brave and wasn't too worried about the consequences of not having handed in the essay on time. In reality, the butterflies quickly returned and were fluttering around his stomach as he tried to come up with a plan of action. 

There was no way he could complete the essay on time because of the other lessons he had to attend. Unless he skipped his morning classes. But then it would look suspicious going into college in the afternoon. Maybe he could take the whole day off and pretend he was sick and then hand the essay in on Friday. 

He juggled a few scenarios around in his head as he crunched on his cereal. After five minutes or so, he realised that he did feel a bit ill. His stomach felt unsettled. Perhaps he was coming down with a bug. And he felt cold; he was shivering now. Yes. Better take the day off. 

He finished eating, gulped down half a glass of apple juice and scribbled a note for his mum saying he was ill and had gone back to bed. As the seventeen-year-old climbed back up the stairs, he already felt guilty. Mostly because he knew his mum would interrogate him later about his illness and he'd have to lie to her. He hated lying to her. It was always like she knew, but would play along just in case she was wrong. 

His bed was still warm and he huddled up under the thick duvet like a caterpillar in its chrysalis. He was warmer now, but he was still shaking. 

As Ethan drifted off to sleep, he saw spheres of light floating in his room. He saw them with his eyes half closed. They were all different colours and moved closer to him, then farther away. He also saw faces he didn't recognise; they seemed to be trying to communicate with him, but there was no sound. It was strange, but he was used to it; the same thing had been happening to him almost every night since he was a young child. He remembered telling his mum once when he was five years old, but she dismissed it as a nightmare. He tried to explain that he was not asleep when it happened, but his explanation didn't come out right and he'd ended up feeling frustrated.