Page 6 of Reverie

Then she loses consciousness.

“I’ll give you one last chance, Hunter.” Father, in his angry aggression, holds the jug high, ready to pour the contents on me. “I don’t want to kill you, son. But I will. I so fucking will.”

It’s okay,Mom said.

“It’s okay,” whispers in my mind.

“I’m sorry,” is what I want to say, but she won’t hear it.

So with one final look at my father’s enraged face, I open my mouth and choke out the words.

“I’ll tell you everything.”

ONE

WINTER

“Hunter, we have so much to talk about,” the woman says.

She’s backlit from where she stands on the landing with the door behind her. The darkness shadows her features, but I can make out enough to tell she’s tall, willowy, with long black hair.

How does she know Hunter?

At once, the people milling around Misha’s compound spur into action, everyone deciding that whatever they need to do is more important than watching the drama unfolding outside the entryway.

“Hunter?” I whisper, staring at the woman. When he doesn’t say anything, I turn to face him. He’s pale—his skin taking on the color of death. A fine sheen of sweat covers his face as he stares slack-jawed at the woman on the landing.

“Hunter?” I repeat.

“I saw you die,” he says under his breath. It’s so low that I can only hear it because I’m standing next to him.

“Hunter? What’s?—”

“They threw sulfuric acid on you. They dumped your body in the Caribbean,” he continues, unblinking, his voice rising in volume with every word.

I shake my head in confusion, and the laceration on my shoulder aches at the movement.

“I know, Hunter. I’m so sorry you had to witness that.”

I snap my head up at the words to stare at the woman. She takes slow, measured steps toward where we stand in the driveway—away from the light spilling from the open front door. When she’s a few paces from us, the spotlights and the full moon cause her features to come into view.

I try not to flinch as I take her in. Her chin is taut as if she’s trying not to cry, but the right side of her face droops as if she had a stroke or as if something severed the muscles beneath her scarred skin. In place of her right eye, she has a prosthetic. It shines silver-white behind the obviously surgically reconstructed lid.

Misha speaks up. “Hunter, perhaps you and your mother?—”

Mother?

Hunter bends over at the waist with his hands on his thighs, breathing deeply and staring at the gravel. He shifts his weight from side to side, a nearly imperceptible movement, and the rocks crunch beneath his boots.

I try to make sense of the scene, piecing together the fragmented parts of this story playing out in front of me…but this is too much. This is too fucking much.

This is his….

Feeling edgy and uneasy, I watch as Hunter spirals. I try to hold on to myself so I don’t follow him down the same mental path.

I reach out a hand to touch his back, to give him some comfort and peace, but he jerks up before my palm makes contact.

“What the actual fuck?” Hunter directs the sharp words at the pakhan as he turns away from the ghost.