His jersey shirt sticks to him like a second skin.
Rylan reaches up to his bandage and smoothes it back over his skin, sweat soaking his hair and eyebrows. The crowd is loud, the sound muffling like rushing water in his ears. He can feel the cursed eye under his bandage flutter and flicker, feeling the pressure of the game.
He brushes the sweat from his face with the back of his hand. The dirt from the diamond sticks to his skin, creating a dirty brown film on his already brown skin and stinging his eyes. It's been a long game, and yet a good one, with both teams fighting tooth and nail in every single inning.
They're up by one; all the team needs to do is keep the opponents from scoring more runs.
He taps his bat on the plate before getting into position. He can do this.
When he looks up, the pitcher's face is a void, filled with glimmering lights of purple eyes. If there's anything the curse loves to do more, it's making him nervous. Making him flinch. But he won't let it win. Not today.
The pitcher winds up, his eyes on his skin, blinking and flickering around in random patterns. Some even stare at Rylan directly. Rylan raises the bat, his breath catching in his throat.
Before he knows it, the ball is flying towards him, and his body goes into autopilot.
A loud crack, the sound of the crowd cheering, the sound of wind rushing past his ears, and his shoes stomping along the dirt of the diamond bases beneath them. It's a thrill, a sparkling sense of hope, and yet, it's short-lived.
The curse won't let him have fun. Not that easily.
Black, veiny lines slither into his vision as he strides towards first base, which stretches outward at every heartbeat. The plates, the basemen, the crowd...it all goes dark. He clenches his teeth, pushing farther towards the plate. He just needs to be safe. He only wants to be safe.
His cleats scrape against the dirt as he rounds second, his vision only showing a minuscule amount of the area around him. Rylan starts to panic. He doesn't know when to stop or where the ball is. He can't mess this up now, not when he's close to leading his team to victory. He can't let the curse ruin everything right as he's feeling hopeful.
"Damn it," he curses under his breath, his mutter enveloped by the intensity of the crowd. He feels like he's running somewhere and nowhere at the same time. Like a hamster in a wheel, running as fast as he can...but he feels like he's going nowhere at all. He can feel that familiar knot starting to tighten in his stomach, a wringing, pulling pain.
He can't focus on the game and the curse at the same time. The game is too fast...too chaotic, and the curse is being obnoxiously persistent in getting his attention. He's suffocating between them both.
He should stop. Say something. Anything. But if he does, the family curse won't be a secret anymore. Everyone will know. Worse, it'll know it's winning. He has to keep going. No matter what.
***
The locker room is empty, the only resounding sound being the rustling of fabric, the sound of footsteps, and the low buzz of the fluorescent lights. Rylan is putting his clothing back on, stuffing the damp uniform into his bag, before sliding the strap over his shoulder.
As he sits against a wall and lets his still rapid heartbeat slow down, he reminisces about the last play of the game.
Rylan's vision had been completely blacked out at that point, and he was using the rest of his senses to try and get to home plate. And it was just his luck that he managed to run fast enough in the right direction.
They won. He doesn't know how, but they won. He should feel proud. They're going to the playoffs for once. But the thought barely registers through his head, as if it doesn't matter at all. He's exhausted. Physically and mentally. And now that he's played the game, he only wants to go home.
...He hears the ringing of chains, and he can only imagine the interrogation that's coming. He winces. Of course she's here...
"Hey, Rylan," Ravana says, a mischievous smirk on her face. She has her notebook open, pen in hand like usual.
Rylan's face scrunches up, but he's too tired to make up a retort to express his disdain.
"Wow, tough crowd," she quips. "Anyways, just want to tell you everything I found out while I watched the game."
"Oh yeah? What did you find, Ravana?"
"There's something under that bandage, isn't there?" the girl asks with that signature smirk. Has she figured it out?
Rylan deflects quickly. "It's a bruise from practice. I got hit with the ball, it happens all the time."
"Things heal after a few days. Unless you're getting the face in the same spot every pitch—...which would be impossible since you're good at baseball, aren't you?"
Silence follows. Rylan's hand tightens on his bag strap. She's making it sound like she's made up her mind already. Like she already knows, and she's waiting for him to spill.
He forces a breath through his nose. "You're looking too hard into this," he mutters, shaking his head. He turns on his heel and drags himself towards the door.
But she steps in front of him, a more stubborn glare in her usually smug gaze. "Take off the bandage, if it's just a bruise."
Rylan closes his eyes, a frustrated noise escaping him as he tries to walk past her, but Ravana, once again, blocks him off.
She saunters towards him. "I'll stop pestering you if you show me what's under the bandage..."
"Hell no, move out of the—" he says, trying to push her out of the way.
Before he can dodge, he feels the bandage tear from his skin, the eye flickering around in every direction before locking onto Ravana, the violet iris gleaming with malice undescribed. She doesn't speak. She doesn't move. She just...stares.
Rylan can see her eyes widen. Her fingers clamp down on the bandage, desperately trying to find something to hold onto. Like she's trying to figure out if this is...real.
"R-Rylan," she mutters. "What i-is that? That's n-not—"
"Yeah, I know it's not normal. I thought that was your whole thing," his dry, bitter tone interrupts, snatching the bandage from her fingers. He tries to see if the bandage's adhesive still works, but the sweat and dirt collected on it have ruined it. He breathes hard through his nose, rummaging through his bag for a new one. "It's a family thing, and I don't want to talk about it, so just leave me alone."
The eye on his cheek narrows judgmentally at her, causing her to shrink back a few steps. Just enough so that she can still study.
"What do you mean, a family thing?"
"If I try and tell you, it'll shut me up, or it'll make it worse," he mumbles, his voice still low. "So I can't tell you."
"So it's aware, too." She's back in her researching mode, her scribbling fast, her eyes focused. She doesn't even blink between looking at the eye and writing her notes. "Does it force you to do things?"
He doesn't answer right away, still trying to apply the band-aid to his face. "No. But it likes attention. And it'll do anything to get it," he says, applying the band-aid over the wriggling eye. When he's sure it's covered completely, he shoulders his bag again. "That's why I've been trying to hide it."
"What is it? Do you know what it is?" She crosses something off in her notes.
"If you want more answers, it's better if I don't answer that question." He says, walking towards the door. "I don't feel like answering anything else. It's been a long day, I'm tired, and I want to go to bed."
"Wait, Rylan—"
The double doors slam behind him. The conversation's over.
Ravana stares at the door for a moment, as if expecting him to come back.
But he doesn't.
She sighs heavily before writing a note in big letters.
Club meeting Monday; BRING RYLAN.
This investigation became much bigger than her, but she's too far into it now to just let this opportunity slip away. Her initial interrogation didn't gather the results she wanted. Now?
Now she has too much.
***
Rylan slowly drags his feet as he walks home. He's tired, but his heart is beating out of his chest.
What does Ravana plan to do with all the information I just gave her? Is she going to expose me? Turn me into the school's next spectacle? What would the curse do if everyone found out?
He tosses up the baseball in his hand again. The thud is reassuring, and it calms him down for a second. He starts to think rationally. He did tell her what giving the curse attention would do to him. He's warned her. She won't reveal anything she knows will get him into trouble...or worse.
...He takes a deep breath. For now, he can give her a little bit of trust. But if she pushes too far...
"What if she pushes too far, hm?" He hears a voice beside him, sounding worn out, just like he is. It's...his voice.
Don't give it attention. Just ignore it.
He knows the doppelganger is here again.
"Don't act like you aren't afraid of what's gonna happen. She'll tell the whole school. Hell, even the...whole town." The doppelganger stretches, slogging its body like it's been running all the innings all game.
Rylan, again, pretends not to notice, continuing to toss the ball into the air. The smack of the ball hitting his palm grounds him, until the sound becomes wet, like he's caught a ball of ooze. The residue sticks to his hand, cool to the touch, sticky, and viscous. The texture makes him flinch and look down...
It's a mess of black ooze and eyeballs, all staring at him. Watching for his reaction.
Rylan quickly recoils. "Shit!" he yelps, slamming the ball into the concrete. The black substance seems to sink into the concrete of the sidewalk, leaving only the baseball behind.
"...Sorry. That was mean of me. Should've...let you know about the whole baseball thing," the doppelganger finishes. It looks towards the empty street in front of them, its movements scarily identical to Rylan's own. "Just thought it was...funny, I guess."
"What do you want?" Rylan snaps, his mouth moving faster than his mind. He told himself not to interact, but this curse is just too persistent. "What do you want from me?"
"I don't actually...know yet," the double shrugs. "I'm just doing what I do best. Keeping eyes on me."
It stops, making Rylan do the same.
"I want to be seen. Not understood. I've always hated when your family dug too deep. Once you understand what you're looking at, you're used to it. You can give it a name...and it's more like...a nuisance rather than something to be afraid of."
It points at Rylan's bandage, its face splitting open into a grin Rylan hasn't seen in...forever. "That's probably why you're trying to hide me with those bandages. Because you think you're used to me. You can keep me quiet and keep me hidden."
The thing begins to laugh, finding the whole situation funny. "You're slipping, and she caught you! Don't act like—"
It stops, as if randomly... touched by something that isn't there. Then it reaches up to touch its eyes. When it pulls away to look at its fingers, they're covered in black. "...Huh, I wonder why that's —"
The double's face starts to slough off, dark, oozing flesh falling off its face. The eyes peppering its skin seem to spin in all sorts of directions, like keeping its focus on a rapidly rotating spiral. The substance starts to puddle at their feet.
Rylan steps back, noticing the doppelganger's face falling into ooze at his feet. "What the hell are—"
It starts to cough.
The coughing turns to choking. Gagging.
And then, it gets worse. There's gurgling, the sound of something coming out of the thing's throat. The body convulses and twitches as Rylan desperately tries to move. But he can't.
He can only watch in pale fear as fingers...
No. Not just the fingers. It's a hand.
No...now there's even more coming up. Is...is that...an arm?
It forces its way out of the doppelganger's throat, reaching up towards the sky. The wiry, inky fingers and arm try to find purchase on something solid. A long, skeletal body tugs. Pulls. Freeing itself like a grotesque butterfly removing itself from its cocoon of flesh and inky, syrupy blood.
The doppelganger gags, but it almost sounds like a throaty, coughing chuckle, before falling away.
There's nothing human left on its body. Just that towering, skeletal, raven-skinned creature, with a giant, unblinking eye, that wicked, too-wide smile. Its tendrils reach up, almost touching the bulb of the street lamp above them.
It chuckles, noticing that Rylan is frozen stiff, unable to move from his own fear. "You should think carefully before speaking about me, boy. You don't want to end up like that, do you?"
The creature leans down to his height. "I suggest you keep that secret of yours private. Your coverings might be the only things keeping you alive."
Rylan tries to step away, but it feels like his feet are bolted to the concrete. He can only recoil slightly, his body leaning backward to get any space between him and the curse.
Run, he tells himself, move your legs and run.
Somehow, he gets his legs to move, working just enough to get him sprinting home. He doesn't need to look back. Because it isn't following him. It doesn't need to.
He makes a beeline for the front door, slamming and beating his fist against the wood. "Ma! Open the door!"
He keeps rapidly pounding on it when he gets no answer. "C'mon... c'mon!"
When the door swings open, he pushes his mom aside and closes the door, making sure it's locked.
"Rylan! What's wrong with you?! Don't you know how late it is, boy? Why are you banging the—" She stops her scolding when she sees the panic on his face. "...What did you see?"
She runs to the window, peering out into the empty street. Rylan has to take deep breaths just to get a word out. "I...I saw it again. The...the thing..."
He pulls out the journal, flipping to a page with a drawing of the curse, its body and face taking up the entire page. He taps against the page with his finger.
His Mom's face softens, then darkens. "... Where?"
Rylan looks around. "It was messing with me during...the game...a-and then just now while I was walking home...it started to look like me, but then it..." He's too disgusted to finish the sentence.
She walks over, pulling up his hair, and looks everywhere around his neck. She sees an eye there, but it seems to be asleep. For now. "Did it touch you? Show you anything?"
Rylan shook his head. "It just d-decided to...talk to me. Basically...told me not to tell anyone what it is. But it's hard when everyone keeps...digging."
"And when they start digging, it won't be them who gets punished for it... It'll be us. You can't keep letting things slip, God forbid it starts to pick one of us off... again..."
She looks away, as if thinking about something. There's a long silence between them before she lets out a long, tired exhale.
"Promise me. Promise me you'll keep this to yourself. Until you graduate, at least." She grabs onto his shoulders, her face changing into a stern, but not unkind stare.
Rylan hesitates. Can he really make it through another year of this? Handling the curse and school at the same time?
He looks at her, taking in her expression. It's one of desperation, anxiety, and exhaustion. He can see it in her eyes and the lines in her face.
He scrubs his face with his hands, feeling the exhaustion of the game coming back. The calluses on his hands scratch his face like sandpaper, keeping him grounded for just a bit longer.
He wants to give up. Drop out of school. Stay cooped up in his room until the curse decides to finally take him. But he can't let his family down.
He hesitates for a minute. "Alright...I promise... I'll try to keep this to a minimum..." he says, taking off his jacket. "Emphasis on try." His mouth feels dry after those words come out. He's not even sure if he can keep his word for a few more weeks, let alone another school year.
His mom gives him a pat on the shoulder. "Good. That's all I ask." She steps back. "There are leftovers on the stove. You can eat when you're hungry." She turns around, heading back to her room. "And take a shower..."
He watches as she walks away to her room and waits for the click. He turns back to the journal, flipping through it. Looking at pages he hasn't read through before, looking closer at the pages of blotchy, dark drawings. Anything he can.
He's looking for a name to match the face he saw. At least one of his family members had to have written down a name...or at least part of it.
...He squints his eyes, trying to read the small, swirly handwriting. He notices parts of a word, but not the full one. For some reason, no matter the context, it seems covered and hidden. There are even some instances where the word seems to be written, but the person is yanked away at the last moment. It starts; J-I-C-—
And then the line dragging away from the page, the opportunity stolen from them.
He turns to another page, to find a few more letters left uncensored by the large smudges of black on the page. B-A-—...
He's putting the pieces together. His mind's fuzzy, but he's got an idea. It's a game of Hangman.
The J-I-C goes to the front. That's a given. B and A go towards the back. But there are some letters in between and at the very end that he can't find anywhere in the journal, not even in the messy drawings.
The smell of the brittle paper is making him sick. It doesn't seem right to be digging for stuff like this when everything outside just happened to him.
But he needs to know what he's fighting.
***
He wakes up, but all he sees is black. All he feels is...cold. He tries to move and... he's swimming? But this. This isn't water.
He opens his eyes. Above him, just barely, is a dim violet light. Not a good sign, but it's the only thing he has left to swim to.
Rylan tries to push his way through viscous, black ooze. Until he surfaces. Looks around. Calling out for help.
"Hey! Can anyone hear me?!"
He doesn't even know where he is. The fatigue isn't making it any better. It feels like the "water" is pulling him back in, hands and tendrils wrapping around his arms and legs, tugging him back with every movement.
He tries to flail, swinging his arms around to find purchase on something. But he finds nothing. Not even a bottom. Flailing only makes the fluid tug him under further, making him choke on the burning, rusty-smelling liquid. He coughs and sputters, his body reacting violently. As if the ooze around him is...wrong.
He tries his best to steady himself, stilling his body until he's upright again. The last thing he wants to do is die before he knows what's going on.
It smells of copper, like blood, but something is... wrong.
He tries to look farther out. He sees people walking in a group. They seem to be walking somewhere. Their eyes are straight forward, and their expressions are neutral, walking mindlessly to a singular goal.
Rylan reluctantly starts to get through the lake. He's always hated swimming. But standing still means drowning. And he wants to get back out of this stuff as soon as possible.
Eventually, after what seems like hours, he manages to make it to shore. The area around him is grayscale. No color whatsoever, as if the world was drained of its color. Just a gray dirt road. And people walking down the path.
He walks up to one of the figures. A woman. A woman who looks like him. Eyes are peppering the woman's skin, their irises that sickening shade of purple. He looks at some of the other figures. Family members...some he's met, some he hasn't. His mom. His Nana Lori. They're here too.
He runs up to his mom, standing right in front of her, walking backwards as he tries to get her to snap out of it.
"Ma," he calls, "where are you going?"
Silence answers.
He tries to lightly slap her awake. No response. She just keeps marching on.361Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡCsWaSmWK3a
The only sound resonating throughout the air is the synchronized beat of footsteps.
... It's better to follow them. See where they're going. It's not like talking to them will do any good.
He watches as his family passes him by. His throat tightens with the feeling of hopelessness with every figure that does. But he has to keep walking.
... It's starting to get dark. Too dark to see. A dark fog has started to set in. Almost like...
Rylan tries to pull his mom away from the cloud before he loses her, but she doesn't budge. She's walking right into it.
"Ma! Ma! Wait—!"
He's dragged in...and then it all goes black.
... Faintly, he hears his name being called. Frantic. He feels his limp body being shaken. He feels something dribbling from his mouth and onto the pillow below. His nose feels clogged, and the fluid dripping from his nose.
It's all blurry. All he can see is light. Is it morning...?
"Rylan! Rylan, get up!"
It's his mom. She's shaking him.
He starts to breathe, choking on the ooze, gasping for whatever air he can get into his lungs. Everything comes into focus. His ceiling. The poster of his favorite baseball player is in his room. His mom, still trying to wake him up.
He sees something out of the corner of his eye. The dark, lanky figure, leaning over his bed. "Maybe next time," he hears it whisper. When he blinks, it disappears.
Rylan finally lurches forward, coughing and sputtering. His mom jumps up, gasping and caressing his face. The pain immediately hits him, and he flops back down onto the bed, groaning.
His mom pulls him close. "Rylan, baby...you were so still...I couldn't wake you..."
Rylan tries to speak, but the substance coating his throat almost chokes him. "W-What...was..."
"Rylan, sit up for me, sit up," his mother tugs at his shoulders, pulling him up into a sitting position, one he can barely hold onto without getting dizzy. She wipes at Rylan's face with her thumb, around his eyes, his nose, his mouth. He can see the black ooze smudged around her fingers as she tries to clean him up.
He lets out a shaky cough. Opening his eyes a bit more, he can see the eyes perched on his mother's neck and shoulder, watching him as he escapes from the curse's grasp once again.
"...Ma..." he shakily points at one of them.
"I know they're there. They're where they usually are." He can hear the dejection in her tone, like she'd given up a long time ago. "Just don't give them any attention. Keep your eyes on me."
He nods, looking out into the hall outside of his room. Nana's room, on the other side of the narrow hallway, stays closed. She's still sleeping through all of this...?
"You want some water?" she asks, pulling away from him.
He nods, his mouth and throat still dry, even when it's coated in the remnants of his suffering. She gives his shoulder a firm rub, keeping him awake. "Okay. I'll be back. Try not to fall back asleep."
Her frantic footsteps fade away into the hallway in front of him as she turns the corner into the kitchen. He leans up against his bedframe. He can almost feel his brain swish around his head, and he can hear his heartbeat running through his ears. The light from the window is too bright to look at, yet his head feels too heavy to move.
...Quiet fills the room, his ears ringing as if to fill the silence. All the more to get him thinking about the dream he just had. He remembers swimming, seeing his family members all walking in sync like an army in formation, and then...darkness. He was racking his already tired and disoriented brain to figure out what it meant, if it meant anything at all.
Why did I have it in the first place, he asked himself, and why did I wake up like...this?
He's just about to look for the journal when he hears his mom's footsteps returning to his room, as well as the clinking of ice against the glass she was carrying.
"Here, drink it slow," she says, handing over the glass.
He manages to get a few gulps in, the coolness getting him more awake. The fog in his head clears. So does his throat. He takes a deep breath. Better. For now, at least.
"Feeling better?" His mother asks. He nods. "Good," she replies, before stepping away again. "Breakfast'll be ready in a couple of minutes. Go check on Nana, make sure she's up. And then come back to bed."
She takes the remote from his bedside table to turn on the TV, letting the blaring noise of Saturday morning cartoons fill the air. He takes a moment to drink another sip of water, before going across the hall.
He massages the back of his neck with one hand while he knocks on Nana's door with the other. "Nana?" He hears her shifting in bed. "Breakfast is almost ready if you wanna eat."
No response. It is pretty early, he thinks, maybe she's just not ready to wake up yet.
Still, he opens the door a crack to check on her. The blackout curtains on the other side of the room block out most of the morning light, giving the room a more dreary, monochrome tint. Rylan can see her form under the quilt, her chest slowly rising and falling. She's breathing. That's good.
He decides to let her sleep. His head is starting to spin again, and that water his mom was offering him seemed to sing his name. He stumbles back into bed, flopping back onto it face first. His body starts to sink into it, as if gravity were trying to pull him through it.
He reaches around for the journal again with soft pats around his bed, feeling around for it. If I'm going to be in bed all day, I might as well find something to do. He feels cotton, fabric, until something solid. He can even hear the rustling of paper as he taps it with his palm.
He pulls it from his blankets, more of the pages becoming dog-eared from all the shifting. It's open to a new page. There's something freshly written on it. So fresh in fact, the ink is still wet, bleeding through the thin blanket.
There are only two words written there. It's big, scratchy, as if someone were using their fingernail instead of a pen.
STOP LOOKING.
Rylan's breath catches. He flips through the rest of the empty pages, before flipping back to the cursed one. This isn't a hallucination, one that dissolves when he looks away. The curse had spoke to him. His eyebrows furrow in defiance. He decided to write back, finding a half-used pen in his bedside table drawer, and writing his response on the next page.
What happens if I don't?
Suddenly, after he puts the pen down, the curse responds. But not on the page.
There's a sharp pain in the crook of his neck. It's a familiar pain, one he always associates with...
He walks up to the mirror. There's an eye right where he felt the pain. Wide open, its pupil shrunken. It gives off an angry aura, almost pulsating with anger.
"You're getting mad because I'm figuring things out, aren't you?"
His reflection responds, slamming its fist against the barrier between them. "You're getting too close, Rylan. You know what happens when you try and play by your own rules." He hears a creak from Nana's door. But he doesn't keep his eyes away from the mirror. "You wouldn't."
The reflection's expression darkens. "Try me."
Nana's door opens wider. Rylan eyes narrow. "If you really wanted to, you'd do it already. So try it." The staring contest continues for moments too long. Another short creak. "Go in there...and I'll kick your ass." He says, almost too quickly.
He hears the door shut. "That's what I thought."
The reflection sneers. "You're lucky your mama woke you up before I could finish what I started." It slams its fists on the mirror, this time, a crack splitting the glass in two. "Keep your nose out of places it doesn't belong, boy."
Keep your curse shit where it doesn't belong, Rylan thinks. He walks away from the mirror, scooping the journal from his bed and stuffing it into his bag. His legs almost shake from the tension, and yet, he doesn't feel scared. No, instead...he feels resentment. Anger.
He's going to find out what this curse is. Find its name.
Even if it kills him.
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