Page 22 of Whispers From The Dark

And her discontent tastes sour.

Slowly, the child’s mind expands, connecting the dots between the Petra I conjured and his own memories of her.

They’re sitting on the same futon he sleeps on now, and he’s leaning over her shoulder to watch her play a game on her phone. I’m both watching and part of the scene, and I catch Petra’s ocean breeze scent.

“Come on, you just need one more⁠—”

“Dang it!” Petra shouts, and the child laughs.

“My turn, my turn!” She hands the device over.

It’s entirely bland and familial. Boring.

The dream continues like this until the boy falls asleep on her shoulder, well into the night. When that dream melds into a new one of him playing a board game at what I can only assume is his school with a friend, I redirect him once more, letting Petra’s laugh ring out across his psyche.

“Petra?” he asks.

And with the dream taking hold of his subconscious, she answers. “Jack? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I just had a bad dream.” He’s standing in the dim light of the kitchen as she takes off her shoes after what I assume is a shift at Last Drop. He’s smaller, voice less confident as he speaks.

“What about?” she asks, patting the futon beside her. He walks over, a little less sturdy than the previous dream.

“You leaving again.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Jack,” she says, heaving an exhausted sigh.

“But you did.”

“I promise. I’m not leaving. I’m sorry I went away for a while, but I’m back, and I won’t leave again.” Furrowed brows and earnest concentration age Petra by a decade. Her lips lift in a smile as the boy gives her a hug, nearly knocking her over.

Boring.

I want to discover what Satanus found worthy of his consideration. Whatever wrath he saw within her is hidden well, and I am desperate to know this secret part of her.

The Petra I have conjured in the child’s mind begins to yell. At first, I don’t have words for her, waiting for the child to decide what she’s yelling about. Certainly, for her to be wrathful enough to garner Satanus’s attention, she’ll have taken it out on her loved ones in some way or another. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

But it’s their mother’s voice that rises higher than Petra’s, and the scene shifts. Jack somehow becomes even shorter, and the dream becomes a memory, hazy and unclear. He’s standing at the end of the hall, watching Petra lean into a bedroom. Their mother is shouting, impeded by a hacking cough, the phlegmy wetness indicating some sort of chronic lung disease, but she manages to scream about Petra being a disappointment and a whore. I can’t quite make out how Petra responds, but her mother’s retort about wishing she’d aborted her seems to strike a nerve. Petra glances at Jack behind her, then shuts the door as she steps into her mother’s room.

This moment must be what Satanus chose to mark her as one of his creatures. I’m eager to witness the spark of promised violence my brother believes her to be capable of.

There’s a loud smacking sound on the other side of the door, and it brings me no small amount of joy, despite the wailing of the small being beside me.

Honestly, I wonder how it’s standing and blubbering on while being so short. Shouldn’t it be in a crib at this age? I suppose he can speak and remember this event, so he must be more developed than an infant, but I can hardly imagine anything more helpless.

I remove myself from his frame of reference, preferring to watch the scene unfold from across the room.

It’s quieter this way.

When Petra finally walks out—a lifetime later or perhaps only half a moment, as dreams are unknown to the rules of time—I am dismayed to see her cheek is stained red. The color is quite pretty against her light skin, but the mark is blotchy and imperfect.

It was not her wrath after all.

Petra isn’t crying, but her eyes are clouded with something that looks like grief. She goes into the room that now belongs solely to her brother, finding that they share it in this memory. A small bed, modeled to look like a racecar, is shoved against one wall, and Petra’s twin bed is on the other side. She shoves things into her bag, and Jack toddles after her, crying far louder now.

The sensation of my eye twitching is inescapable, even as a shadowed form within a dream.

Petra doesn’t flinch or comfort him. She doesn’t react at all. In fact, she moves as if she’s in a daze, packing as many things into a duffel bag as she can.