Hear No Evil

Chapter 11

There was something about Case 142 that Will liked. Enough to run away with him. Enough to follow him until they couldn't breathe and follow him some more.

The woods were dark and deep and dangerous to roam. The public didn't come near them, not much, not far in. The dead called it their own.

And what once hid the house They used to hold Case 142 now held the house they could escape to.

Nico collapsed through the doors and into the arms of the Shadow Man. Exhaustion rattled from his mouth and lungs and escaped into the musty air. His legs were out and his ears were in his hands again and his head fell onto the Shadow Man's chest.

Case 142 was asleep, and the Shadow Man was staring at Dr. Solace, and everything was tense until the dead realized what the dead could always see.

What you would die for. Who Will would die for.

The floors and chandeliers creaked and the wood crackled to life when he started that fireplace. He found Their bones in the place Nico once called his room, and Shadow Man said he had killed them without saying a word, and Will heard Their screams and heard nothing at all.

He didn't care. He kicked Their bones. Case 142 told him everything he needed to know about Them.

Shadow Man showed him the farm outside and the garden he could grow. He showed him the barn where the bones of Nico's two other sisters laid. He showed him where he could bury them.

.

.

.

Case 142 sat against the wooden wall, his black hair in a bun on top of his head, his ears gone and his head wrapped and stitched. He had expressed how much he hated noise. Will knew he deserved anything he wanted.

Dr. Solace entered the room with a blanket and a plate of food. Case 142's eyes never left the fireplace.

"Nico, can I sit?" Dr. Solace asked. Will. Too blonde of hair and too blue of eyes but something about him Case 142 liked.

The black-haired boy nodded, his eyes sunken from undernourishment, his skin scarred from his past.

The could-have-been doctor sat across from Case 142, sat on the blood-stained floor and the spot They stopped breathing. His lips moved enough to be read. "Here, eat."

A jerk of a head. A small showing of the blood-stained teeth.

He gave him that plate and stirred the fire and watched Shadow Man climb over the walls. His limbs grew and grew. The dead supervised. The dead watched. The dead protected the living from anything that grew too near, and protected the bones in their graves in the backyard, and protected Case 142 like he was their own.