Thorn knew it was legally morning, maybe, but his head didn’t tend to agree. It was dark outside, still, with glimmers of stars showing through his attic apartment windows. Everything in him screamed he should be going back to sleep, but the phone buzzing angrily on his nightstand disagreed. He tried, twice, to turn off his alarm clock until he realized it was in fact his phone making the ungodly noise. By the time he’d figured that out, whoever had been calling him had given up. Shielding his eyes from the bright light, he checked who’d called. Abigail Larsdottir, the screen declared, and Thorn sighed. She was quite likely the only person he’d accept calling at this time of the night. He called her back.
‘Abigail, it is three minutes to six,’ he said when she picked up. ‘I’ve been asleep for maybe three hours and if this can wait-’
‘Thorn, do you think I actively enjoy being awake at this time of the day? Some of us have work to do. Some of us include you.’
‘What happened?’ Thorn grumbled, blinking the sleep out of his eyes. He sat up, searching the floor for yesterday’s jeans. Stage pants would have to do.
‘Collision on the road between Slakshaven and Isgur. We need photos.’
‘Is it bad?’
‘A car hit a sheep truck in the side, at a crossroads. We need pictures taken now so that we can start cleaning.’
‘I’m getting dressed,’ Thorn said, trying to hold his phone to his ear while slipping a semi-clean shirt over his hair. He growled when he accidentally yanked on a knot in his hair. Abigail hung up without warning. Thorn took one look in the mirror, decided the pain of untangling his hair post-concert would have to wait, tied it back instead and grabbed his jacket. He stuck his feet into his boots without bothering with socks, laced them up, and took his camera.
Outside, the dark didn’t even vaguely hint at morning yet. Thorn felt a sudden longing for the depth of winter, when the sun would not come out at all, only as a hint of twilight on the horizon. When there was no right time to be awake, and the land made it clear humans were not supposed to be here. This land was meant for bigger things, things that thrived in the darkness. As Thorn walked, he lit the day’s first cigarette, inhaling pure warmth into his lungs. These days it took a lot for him to get anywhere near warm. The cigarettes helped. They weren’t the kind you bought in store, overtaxed and building up tar in your lungs.
It wasn’t far from his apartment to the outskirts of the city, and from there it was a fifteen minute walk to the spot Abigail had described. A tinge of red began to appear on the horizon, the first signal of the coming day. Again, Thorn longed for the comfort of his bed. But even he needed to make money to eat. To retain a semblance of normalcy.
The fog was still floating above the fields, ascending from the forest in the distance. He toyed with his shadow as he walked, morphing it, turning it into all sorts of grotesque monsters. The shadows were undeniably excited as he got nearer to the scene of the accident, and that made the vocalist uncomfortable. Yesterday night he’d sensed a similar restlessness in them, and everything that interested the shadows was bad news. As the winds began carrying the screeching of metal on metal and the wailing of sheep towards him, he understood. It sickened him, but did not surprise him when all he felt was curiosity. Abigail came walking towards him, purple curls bouncing behind her and skin remaining a warm brown ever in the icy fog, and he let his shadow slip back to normal.
‘How bad is it?’ Thorn asked, taking his camera out of its bag with icy fingers, fumbling with the clips.
‘The humans, not so bad. The truck driver is fine, the car’s driver- well, she was lucky.’
‘The sheep?’
‘We can’t tell – the impact bent the side of the truck inwards, into, well, the animals, and it morphed the truck bad enough that we can’t get the doors open. That screaming you hear is my commanding officer attempting to saw through the metal.’
Thorn set the light values of his camera, made a few test images, and began walking towards the accident.
‘Other than this, calm Friday night?’ he asked.
‘I can’t disclose official police matters to civilians,’ Abigail said. ‘You know that.’
‘Gods, Abigail, I’m not asking for details, I’m just asking if you got some sleep.’
‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘Well, I didn’t, excuse the bitchiness.’
Thorn didn’t say anything. He began taking photos.
Abigail hadn’t exaggerated when she’d said the truck had been crushed into the sheep. Blood was steadily dripping out, onto the cracking asphalt, seeping away into the earth. The screaming was that of animals – living, feeling beings – confronted with the reality of death. Thorn figured they’d been bound for slaughter this morning anyway, but this was somehow worse. He swallowed. Most of the coiled emotions in his stomach were related to morbid curiosity. The nausea, the empathy were someone else’s feelings, he told himself. He pushed them deeper away.
He caught the carnage with his camera. It didn’t take him very long. Like most pain, its physical reality was small and contained, the implications stretching way further. Thorn photographed the way the car was dented and damaged, the blood pooling on the asphalt, the police force sawing open the truck. By the time a vet arrived, Thorn was done. He didn’t stick around to see what would be pulled out of the truck. Curiosity be damned, he remembered he’d been real, once, and he’d at least try to pretend to have some morality.
‘I’m done,’ he told Abigail. She’s covered her nose with her scarf, against the scent of fear on the air. Thorn only now realised it was there. ‘Do you need me for anything else?’
Abigail shook her head. ‘Go home. How’ve you been?’
‘Not better or worse,’ he said. It was their standard exchange. ‘You?’
‘Fine,’ she said, staring away from the truck. ‘I know I grew up with you around, Thorn, but it still feels off the way you treat these things.’
Thorn swallowed. ‘It feels off for me, too. It’s not the way I was born.’
‘I know,’ Abigail said. ‘I know. Go home, Thorn. Get some rest. You look tired.’
While he’d been working, the sky had slowly become brighter, and by the time he got back home the sun was up and ready for the day. Thorn’s desire for sleep had left him sometime between the sheep truck and his front door. As he stared at his unmade bed, he realised he wasn’t going back to sleep for a while. He sighed, and made himself a cup of coffee. Sipping, he stared out the window, over Slakshaven. The sun reflected specks of pure white on the bay. He knew that in midst of winter he would long for the light, but now it only made his eyes hurt. He turned away. Thorn turned his computer on, stuck his camera’s memory card into it and began flicking through the photos. In some he’d photographed Abigail in the background, scarf over her mouth and nose. He could see it’d been cold in the way she hugged her jacket to her. The seasons were harsh, this far north. It wouldn’t be long before the cold would creep through his windows, under the gap in the door, and he’d pile all the blankets he owned onto his bed. Thorn also knew it wouldn’t help. He hadn’t been warm in a very long time. He looked up at the clock – it was ten in the morning. He considered texting Skygge, but he knew the bassist would still be asleep after yesterday’s gig. Instead he uploaded all of his photos to the police network, wiped his memory card, and stuck it back into his camera. He leaned back, turning circles on his desk chair. There was nothing else to do. The day stretched out ahead of him, empty.
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The grime a concert could build up on Thorn was a special kind of grime. It was sweat, stale beer, and whatever had been stuck to the stage he’d collapsed onto. He hadn’t yet untangled the knots headbanging had braided into his hair, and as he walked into the bathroom to begin the untangling, he cursed. He’d be there for a while. He briefly wondered if Abigail had wrapped her scarf around her nose to shield herself from his stench rather than the sheeps’.
As he worked at the knots, settled even deeper into his waist length hair by sleeping before taking care of them, he stared at himself in the mirror. He took his shirt off. The scars disgusted him, the thick white coils of old cuts he’d amassed over the years. Some his victims had made. Others he’d carved himself. Sure, he felt he deserved them, and in the moment they’d take the edge of his itches or finally allowed him to feel something, but he still wished he didn’t have them. He groaned as he pulled at a particularly stubborn knot. Bits of hair got loose, fell down towards the floor rather than untangling. Before they hit the tiles, though, they disintegrated into flecks of shadow and then nothing. The first years, it would unnerve him to no end, the way bits of him disappeared if they got away from him. It was just another reminder he was no longer real. Now, with a bit of creativity one could argue the man was used to it. He turned on the shower and undressed, the heat of the water beating at his skin. It turned him red, sure, but it wasn’t enough to warm him up. He worked half a tube of conditioner into his hair, and then his cellphone rang.
‘Oh c’mon,’ he muttered. He figured he could shower first, and then call back, but whoever it was didn’t stop calling and his ringtone got louder and louder.
‘Fine,’ he hissed, opening the bathroom door and grabbing his phone out of the bedroom.
‘Thorn?’ it was Abigail. Thorn held back his annoyance – she sounded as if something was genuinely wrong. ‘Thorn, you there?’
‘Yeah, is everything alright?’
‘No,’ she said, frantically. ‘Thorn, I think you’re being replaced. That’s how it works, right? There’s only one at a time, ever?’
‘Abigail, slow down,’ Thorn said, fear and hope building up at the back of his throat in equal measure. ‘What the hell happened?’
‘Some kid killed their entire family. I’m in the house right now. It’s not normal. There’s no weapon wounds, it’s all teeth and nails. It’s- it’s disgusting, Thorn.’
‘I… fuck,’ Thorn said. He hadn’t been hoping for it, well, he hadn’t wished for anyone to die, but he had wished for it to be over. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Thorn, I have never seen this before. I wasn’t there when you… changed. I wasn’t even born yet, I don’t know. But if I had to guess…’
‘Can- can I come see? I was there. I can tell, probably.’
‘Thorn, this is a triple murder investigation-’
‘Please, Abigail, I have to know,’ Thorn said. This was life or death to him. ‘I have to know.’
‘Well- fine. Take your camera. I’ll clear you.’
‘Address? I’ll be right over.’
She told him. He scribbled it down, threw his phone down, and slipped a shirt over his head. To hell with drying his hair, he thought, looking for a pair of jeans. Again, he didn’t bother with socks – there were more important things than blisters right now. Could it be true?
It didn’t really hit him until he closed the door behind him.
‘Gods,’ he whispered. He caught his breath. It could be over. Finally, definitely over. No more shadows slipping down his drain instead of hair, no more self-made wounds, no more itches building up between his gut and his heart-
Don’t draw conclusions yet, he told himself. Maybe it was something else. There were thousands of explanations for dead people, and most of them were far more mundane than uncontrollable, unnatural beings. And yet his heart beat in his throat as he walked, wishing he had transport other than his legs. He had to hold his camera to stop it from hitting him in the chest every time he took a step. Thorn hardly felt the water from his hair dripping down his neck, into his shirt, the cold invading what little warmth he had.
He was glad he’d never before heard of the address Abigail had given him. He thanked several gods it wasn’t Skygge or Oskar or Marcus. For once, he was glad for his lack of empathy. Thorn didn’t have to feel a thing except anxious relief. It was over.
He didn’t recognize the road he was walking up now; a slim, asphalt track heading away from the suburbs of Slakshaven and into the forest. The pines towered above Thorn, the scent of their needles on the wind. Any other day, he’d have stopped to take photos. Now he just walked, nearly ran, adding more blisters to his feet. When he caught sight of the house at the end of the road, he stood still. There were three police cars in the drive way, and an ambulance, no doubt waiting for clearance to remove the bodies. A man, early twenties and wide-eyed, sat shell-shocked on the doorstep. Thorn shivered. The house was a regular as any, a family home; an abandoned swing set in the yard, flowerpots by the door. The door was open. He called Abigail.
‘I’m outside,’ he said.
‘I’ll come get you,’ she said, and broke off the call.
It didn’t feel right, the idea that something like this would happen on a day this sunny, this light. The forest around Thorn was alive, preparing for winter but still riding on the high of summer. This was no time for death, for endings. When he had changed, it had been midwinter, the snow had been waist-deep. Nothing grew, people huddled together, praying for spring to come: that was the season of death. This wasn’t right.
Abigail appeared in the doorway. She raised her hand in a silent greeting, and Thorn walked up to her.
‘How sure are you?’ he asked quietly. She bit her lip.
‘I don’t know, Thorn,’ Abigail said. ‘They look like you’d said they would, but otherwise… There’s two people missing, Thorn. Two teens.’
‘Two?’
Suddenly the situation became a hell of a lot more complicated.
‘There can’t be two,’ Thorn said. ‘That’s- that doesn’t make sense.’
‘And,’ Abigail said quietly, ‘Whoever committed the murders, they didn’t kill the woman. She’s upstairs, in the bath.’
‘In the bath?’
‘She did it herself, Thorn. There’s a whole collection of medication she wasn’t taking in the cabinet, and her psychologist says she’d stopped coming.’
‘So why am I here?’
‘Because of the others. Grab your camera, pretend you’re working.’