far too young to die ✰ m.w.

CHAPTER FOUR

"I don't know. It came for me, and... and I tried. I tried to make it go away. But it got me, Mom."

"Well, what does that mean?"

"I felt it... everywhere. Everywhere. I- I still feel it. I just want this to be over."

Joyce pulled her son into a hug as he began to cry, rubbing his back to try to comfort him. Emily felt tears begin to run down her face as she realized just how much her brother was going through. She quickly wiped away the tears, but her heart broke, because she knew nothing about how to help him.

"It's okay. It's okay. Hey," Joyce said, pulling away from Will and holding his face in her hands. "Listen. Look, look at me. I will never, ever let anything bad happen to you ever again. Whatever's going on in you, we're gonna fix it. I will fix it. I promise. I'm here."

She pulled Will back into her again and held him. Emily reached over and rubbed his back, silently letting him know that, like their mother, she would also do anything in her power to help him.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

The next morning, it was decided that Will and Emily would be skipping school that day after Will told Joyce that he was still feeling off because of the episode he had the day before. Emily took this opportunity to catch up on homework that she hadn't done the night before that would have been due that day had she gone to school. While at the time, with everything going on, homework seemed trivial and insignificant to her, it gave her something to do, so she figured she would take advantage of that.

She had been doing this for about a half hour when she heard a light knock on her doorframe. She looked up to see Joyce, who gave her a small smile before entering the room.

"Hey, Em," she said. "Are you busy? Do you have a second to talk?"

Emily glanced down at her math homework, which was nearly finished. "Yeah, sure," she answered, figuring she had all day to finish the assignment.

Joyce came over and sat down on the bed. "So I was just running a warm bath for Will, you know, hoping that might help him feel better, but, uh... well, at first, he complained that the bath was too hot. So I went to check, and it really wasn't that hot at all. Then I told him that it needed to be a bit hot to be able to get his body temp back up, because it was a bit low, but then he said 'No, he likes it cold.' Do you have any idea what that means?"

Emily thought for a moment, a frown appearing on her face when she couldn't think of any reason why Will would say such a thing. "I don't know, Mom. I wish I could help you, but... I just- I don't know. Maybe that monster...?"

Joyce seemed to be thinking as well as she nodded. "Yeah. Maybe." She looked back at her daughter and frowned when she saw the distraught look on her face. "Hey, it's gonna be okay. I know it's scary right now, but we're going to figure this out and we're going to fix it. Okay?"

Emily nodded and gave a weak smile, still wishing she could do more to help. Joyce kissed her forehead before leaving her alone again.

.・。.・゜✭・.・✫・゜・。.

Later on, Emily walked into Will's room with a blanket wrapped closely around her, since Joyce had all of the windows and doors in the house open in order to keep Will satisfied, since he apparently wanted to be cold. Without saying a word, she sat down next to him on his bed, both of their backs to the door. Something on the floor caught her eye, and she looked down to see what appeared to be a detailed drawing of their front lawn, except in the sky was what looked like a storm, colored in red, with the same monster from Joyce's drawing that she claimed she had seen in the video tape from Halloween, colored in black. Emily didn't have to ask to know that this was what Will had seen in his episode the night before Halloween, and that this was the drawing Joyce had been referring to the day before when she asked Will about his episode on the field. Before she could say anything, though, she heard the door to Will's room open the rest of the way after a light knock.