Chapter 10

                                    

                                          
C͞͞h͞͞a͞͞p͞͞t͞͞e͞͞r͞͞10
                          
The unconscious mind can sense when somebody is staring at you. 
You could lay there in bed, asleep; vulnerable and impotent. A stranger walks into your room. They stand there, merely watching you. Observing your chest as it rises, falls. They count the rhythmic breaths trickling from your nose. 
And you? You would either dream of somebody, somehow, intruding into your life - or you would wake. 
                          
Sam, much like the sleeping mind, could apperceive eyes glued to him like that of a heavy, pressing weight. Something was walking next to him - but ... it wasn't similar to that of the other times in which he's had to encounter figures and spirits. 
He couldn't see this. 
Ah, he could feel it though. 
                          
The new presence surmounts in brining an unsettling tactility to adjust itself inside his chest, snuggle between those protective bones of his ribcage. The feeling mirrors the actions of the scuttling leaves dancing in quick succession along the sidewalk. Red leaves. Yellow. Orange. Red. 
His fingers of one hand clench tightly around the flimsy plastic handle of his bag, tense around the milk in his other. 
He walks faster. 
                          
"You are poison." 
The first syllable is pronounced; the second clipped. 
                          
Sam's spine liquifies. Leaks from his pores and freezes upon his skin as an icy film; he ceases all actions save for that of staring at a hazy, dubious conformation now in front of him. 
He could see it. 
And he knew it. 
Somewhere ... he had met this translucent figure before, he had interacted with it at least once...? This sinking suspicion though, merely makes those previous three words - you are poison - that much more painful to hear. Because if this spirit in turn knew him, then surely it meant what it said. Surely it knew what it was speaking to, and it's venomous purpose behind those words had to be real.
                          
The shape flickers in front of him, in, out, in, out, and solidifies in the slightest manner upon oscillating the third time in. 
Sam takes a shrinking step backward. He does not get far, however, as the weak stitches of his stomach are folded in at the press of a hand delving inside. Reminding him that he is frozen.
The man in front of him didn't ask for permission. He didn't ask if he would be alright if something broke through delicate skin. He simply did as he wished, as if there would be no consequence afterward, no blood dribbling around cadaverous fingers, no gasp trickling from Sammy's starch lips, no groceries falling to the sidewalk, and no plea to stop.
                          
"Does it hurt, son?" The figure speaks, but his pale lips hardly move, and Sam's not sure if this is real, because when people speak, their lips move.
Sam merely looks down, chokes at the sight of red pooling and leaking around - through? - the hand buried inside of his abdomen. 
"I don't-" Sam starts, however words seemed so difficult to get out, how had he done so with such ease before? His breath exits his mouth in that of another declined gasp, small and nearly inaudible this time.
                          
"Oh my god-!" 
That - that wasn't his voice. That wasn't ... that voice didn't belong to the figure in front of him either. 
Sam's voice consisted of a little moan. 
The spirit was silent. The man was gone... 
Sam stood there on quivering legs, panting quietly like a dog who knew he was about to die, yet trying hard enough to get through pain without alerting any other predators. 
                          
An older African woman, who had most likely been on a walk, or simply on her way to buy food much like Sam had, rushes up to him. She's quick with her actions and timid in the way she was unsure of who this injured boy was and why he was in such a condition. Sam might have backed away with a similar uncertainty if he thought he could. Rather, he finds himself slumping forward, hoping that maybe this person could be friendly; maybe she could help him. Like Wes, she could patch him up. 
Her brow is contorted with that of worry, mouth parted with something like awe as she steadies him.