In the Shadows

his brow furrowed. Another mirror was placed on the wall directly

opposite so the two reflected each other. Now that they stood

between them, it created an eternity of Thomas and Arthur in a

dark flickering tunnel. The candle leeched the color from their

faces so their features were all contrast — pale cheekbones and

lips, dark holes for eyes. After the second image repetition, the

details were hazy enough that the boys could have been each other

or no one at all.

“Looks a bit like my vision of hell,” Thomas whispered.

“At least there’s good company.” Arthur’s reflection gave a

ghost of a smile, and Thomas’s met it.

“What’s that?” Thomas leaned forward, touching a pendant

hanging from the top of the mirror. “A bug?”

Arthur grabbed Thomas’s hand, surprising the other boy into

dropping the candle, which sputtered out. The walls of books

leaned in, leering, and the old familiar breathless terror Arthur

hadn’t felt since his mother had died now twitched through his

muscles, begging him to run, run, run into the night, find a new

town, find a new life, find a new place to hide.

He had seen a necklace like that before. The green beetle fig-

ure at the end of the chain was featured in every portrait his father

collected, was scribbled in the endless, illegible notes Arthur had

flipped through as a child, was even engraved on an ancient book

his mother had used to prop up their kitchen table.

His father had been clutching a necklace just like it the last

time they’d ever seen him.

Seeing the necklace here ended all his nights trying to tell

himself that his father had been crazy, had poisoned his mother’s

mind, had merely abandoned them instead of meeting a horrible

fate. The green beetle meant that whatever dark secrets his father