Page 42 of Northern Escape


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No moon. No stars. No light.

You need to go back.

He turned his head to look at the staggering trail he’d made in the snow.

Go back now.

Okay.

Okay, yeah, fine. Although he wasn’t sure about the wisdom of listening to his hallucinations, he could take a hint. What did he have to lose at this point?

He clambered to his feet and listed sideways. A hand shot out and grasped his. It was small and at first, he thought it belonged to Bree, but a little boy stood next to him in a dirty Superman costume.

“Damian.” His throat clogged up. “You’re not real. You’re not here.”

“It’s okay,” Little Damian said with a gap-toothed smile. “I’ll protect you, El. I’m Superman!”

“You gotta take that thing off, kid. It’s disgusting. We need to wash it and you need a bath.”

Damian’s face scrunched up. “Superman doesn’t take baths.”

Someone else tugged on Ellis’s free hand. Nate. Not as he was now as an adult, but how he’d been at eleven when Ellis left for boot camp. Skinny and gangly. Hair more red than blonde. Too-serious blue eyes behind glasses. A dusting of freckles over his nose.

“Please don’t leave us, El. We need you. Dad doesn’t know how to take care of us.”

“I’m sorry.” That clog in his throat thickened, making speech almost impossible. “I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have left.”

“Ellis doesn’t love us.” This came from Damian, who had grown out of his Superman costume into the difficult, angry nine-year-old he’d been when Ellis left. “He’s never loved us.”

“That’s… that’s not true.” God, but it had been at one time. When he’d left on the bus to boot camp, he’d been happy to finally shake free of them. They were only half brothers, after all, and the half they shared was the one he hated. They were responsibilities he didn’t want. Responsibilities that shouldn’t have been his, all because Dad couldn’t keep his pants zipped after Mom died.

“Except it is,” Nate said. He’d grown, too, and now looked like the young man he’d been the last time Ellis had seen his brothers. New college graduate, beard just starting to grow in. “You never wanted us.”

“That’s not… Goddammit, you weren’t my responsibility. I was only seven when you were born, Nate. Only a kid. You shouldn’t have been my responsibility. You were Dad’s.”

“We are your brothers!” Damian shouted, his words slurred.

Ellis swung around in time to see drunk, twenty-one-year-old Damian, fist on a collision course with his face. He dodged the blow, stumbled sideways, and landed on his ass in the snow. He stared up at the younger versions of his brothers as they loomed over him.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I fucked up. I knew you needed me, and I left anyway. Is that what you want to hear?”

But they vanished, blown away in a gust of wind and snow.

Not real. He drew his knees up and rested his forehead on them. He’d known they were hallucinations, but it hadn’t mattered. He’d liked having them with him. Talking to them, he’d forgotten about the cold, but it came roaring back now.

He wasn’t going to make it.

The thought should scare the hell out of him. It didn’t. He was too exhausted.

When he heard the familiar jingle of dog harnesses, he figured it was another hallucination. He was the only living person out here. The only man left alive in the whole icy world with nobody but figments of his imagination to keep him company.

The jingling stopped. Boots crunched over the snow. “Ellis!”

Bree?

Except, no, she wasn’t real. Just like the moose, his dad, and his brothers. It had all felt so real, just as her gloved hands now did on his face.

Hell, was he even real? He didn’t know anymore.

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