Phoenix in My Fortune by Naquin R.L

Author:Naquin, R.L. [Naquin, R.L.]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Carina Press
Published: 2015-03-02T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

The next night, Shadow Man made his debut appearance at Mom’s cottage. She and Darius were in the sitting room, Mom curled in a chair, reading a book, and Darius on the floor, hacking at a chunk of wood with a knife.

Apparently, all the down time had him bored lately, and Mom had talked him into taking up a hobby. So far, we’d each been presented with a misshapen representation of a woodland creature. I treasured my deformed, potato-headed squirrel and kept it on my mantel.

Whatever Darius had been making that night would never get its day on someone’s mantel. Mom looked up from her book, saw Shadow Man grinning through the window and screamed. The sound startled Darius, and the wood snapped in his massive hand.

By the time Mom took a breath and pointed at the window, Shadow Man was gone. There were crickets, of course. Lots and lots of crickets singing their cheery song and hopping around the windowsill and in the garden beneath it.

Kam had been stretched out in a nearby tree keeping watch. “I swear,” she said later, “I was looking right at that window when I heard the scream. I didn’t see a damn thing.”

And that was the important part of the story I grabbed from the event. Kam had been staring directly at the spot where Shadow Man had been standing, yet she hadn’t seen him. Only Mom had.

How the hell were we supposed to catch him if most of us couldn’t see him?

Mom spent the next day covering up all her windows. I didn’t blame her, but I couldn’t do the same at my house. The bedroom window was one thing—I wanted to sleep without fear of being watched. But I couldn’t live in a cave. The idea of not being able to look outside made my skin itch.

If I couldn’t see out, he could be standing by the door waiting for me. How could I ever go outside again if he might be lurking? It was like being afraid of the monster in the closet and hiding under the covers. Sooner or later, you’d have to come out for air, and he could be standing right there by your bed.

Of course, that probably wasn’t the best comparison, considering how things turned out with my own scary closet monster. I seriously doubted Shadow Man would be back in a few years to make me pancakes.

A person only got lucky like that once.

Now that we had Phil around, that gave us another hard-hitter to guard us—not that it mattered, since he couldn’t hit what he couldn’t see. Phil sort of wandered back and forth through the night, keeping watch over the path between my house and Mom’s. Occasionally, I saw him during the day clomping through the woods with Tashi. Maybe they were just friends. But it still made me happy. Phil was recently divorced, and Tashi was a widow. It made me smile to think that Phil might step in where Iris could no longer be.

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