THE UNDYING | TWILIGHT

33. Innocents

Within the west wing of Volterra's hospital, a sickly young man lay shivering beneath a heavy layer of blankets, which soon became so itchy against his sensitive skin he cast them all aside.

A living skeleton, passersby used to call him, because he possessed so little body fat and his skin was horribly thin, almost see-through. Some days, he would sit on the street curb and listen to the children's screams as he picked and picked at the fresh scabs on his inner-arms. He came to enjoy the sound of their screams. It drowned out all the loud, maddening thoughts in his head. But now those thoughts were all he heard as he picked, picked, picked.

He had a brand new set of scabs today, ones that went real deep and made his skin bleed when he tore them off. He'd been scratching at them for most of the day, and every time he tore one off, another scab would quickly grow in its place. So he kept ripping them off again and again.

I've been touched by the devil, thought the man as he recalled the events of the night before. He was stumbling around the Gutter as he did most nights, still on the nod from his latest slam with Judas. He didn't even realize something was stalking him from the rooftops, not until it was already too late.

Thinking about that night made his heart race and his forehead dampen with sweat. With quivering fingers, he reached for the nurse call button on the rail of his hospital bed. Since his admission, he'd pushed that button a total of thirty times. It never took long for them to respond.

"What's the problem now?" the nurse would ask with a tired sigh, and he would complain that the blankets were too itchy or that his throat was dry or that the room was too hot or too cold.

This time, however, when that light came on at the nurse's station, nobody came to his aid.

So he pushed the button again and again and again.

Finally, after the tenth push, the door swung open with a loud creak. The man sat up and peered through the open doorway, seeing nothing but shadows and flickering lights. But there was someone there. Although his eyes were blind, he could feel a dark, ominous presence lurking in the doorway.

It was watching him.

The man's eyes widened in terror. "Help!" he shouted as he frantically pushed the call button. "Help! I need help! Nurse! Nurse! They're coming for me! They're coming!"

His voice weakened as a bitter chill came upon him, making all the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. It was at his bedside now. If he focused his eyes and his mind, he could almost see it: the shape of a man, with blood-red eyes.

"Who are you?" he asked the shape. "What do you want from me?"

The shape didn't move, and it didn't speak.

"What do you want?" he shouted. "What do you—Hmmph!"

All of a sudden, he felt the crushing weight of a pillow against his face, slamming his head against the bed with great force. In vain, he struggled. His body violently thrashed back and forth. His long, feeble legs kicked and pushed against the mattress. His hands flailed above him, clawing at the invisible arm which had him so tightly pinned. A deep groan erupted from his throat as his toes curled tighter and tighter, tighter and tighter.

He choked on his last breaths, and his body went limp.

Moments later, the shapeless man gave the pillow a quick fluff before neatly tucking it beneath the sleeping man's head, and then he pulled the blankets over him so that he could rest comfortably.

As the man lay there, his face paling, mouth fixed in a silent scream, his lifeless brown eyes captured the last sight they would ever see: the image of a man in black leaving the room and silently closing the door behind him.