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Freya had appeared out of nowhere at my feet, hackles raised, bottlebrush tail at attention, mouth open in a ferocious yowl. The Gray Man withdrew his hand, took a single step back into the shadows…
I woke instantly, sitting up before I’d even opened my eyes. Heart pounding, cold sweat beading up all over me, I turned at once to the place the Gray Man had stood. Was it my terror still receding, or did the shadows in the corner of my room shift strangely?
I yelped at a violent hissing sound. I looked down at the floor to see Freya, just as I had seen her in the dream—arched defensively, glaring into the very corner where the Gray Man had just vanished in my dream. Without taking my eyes off her, I reached over to my side table and fumbled for the light switch.
There was nothing there, but Freya continued to glare into the empty corner. At last, after what felt like an eternity, but was probably only a few seconds, Freya relaxed. She seemed almost to shrink before my eyes before turning her glowing green eyes on me.
A wave of nausea rolled over me as the realization hit. It had been a dream, and yet, it hadn’t. Freya had sensed him, too. I dropped my face into my shaking hands, feeling the beads of sweat that had broken out on my forehead. I shivered in the breeze that drifted in the open window. Everything was cold, shaking… except…
My hand went to the only warmth I could find—the necklace, with its little velvet pouch, as warm against my skin as though it had been laying in the summer sun all day. I pulled the chain over my head and looked down at the pouch. Not for the first time, I wondered what was inside it. But now, it wasn’t an idle curiosity. It was a burning question that had to be answered, no less tantalizing because the gold thread that had been used to sew it up was slightly unraveled at one end, begging to be pulled.
I pulled it. The gold thread slipped effortlessly through the fabric, and the pouch opened. With violently shaking fingers, I reached inside and pulled out the contents.
It was a piece of paper, folded many times over, and tied with a piece of violet ribbon. I undid the ribbon and unfolded the paper, careful not to rip it. I smoothed it on my bed and stared down at it.
It was a child’s drawing, a collection of crayon scribbles that were nevertheless unmistakable in their portrayal of the very figure who haunted my dreams. It was the Gray Man. And I remembered drawing him.
It was as though the memory had been beating down the walls I’d constructed around it, and finally burst through at that very moment. It flooded back with such clarity, it was like a mental slap in the face.
I was in the water. The Gray Man stood beside me. The water lapped around me, swirling with foam, soaking the hem of my dress. And then a hand reached out and grabbed my arm, just as a familiar voice called my name.
“Wren!” Asteria turned me to face her, and I felt nothing so much as aggravation at seeing her there, her face alive with terror. She wasn’t supposed to be there. She was ruining the game.
“Wren, darling, what are you doing?!” Asteria gasped.
I turned to look at the place where the Gray Man had stood, but he had vanished. I felt the scowl form on my face.
“I was going with the Gray Man,” I explained.
I watched, mildly fascinated, as all color drained from Asteria’s face. She followed my gaze, staring at the emptiness as though it could reach out and snatch me from her. Then she gathered me up in her arms and ran.
We flew across the beach, over the road, across the garden, and into the cottage, as though Asteria’s terror had given her wings. We didn’t stop until we reached my room, where Asteria sat me down at the little desk, and put a piece of paper and a tin can full of crayons in front of me.
“Draw him,” she demanded. I scowled at her again and she closed her eyes, taking a steadying breath. When she opened them again, her expression was cheerful, her tone gentle and placating. “Couldn’t you please draw the Gray Man for me, darling? I’d so like to see what he looks like, and you draw such lovely pictures.”
“You should have looked at him on the beach,” I said, but her compliments had placated me, and I dug for a gray crayon before setting to work. Asteria watched in silence as I worked, until at last I threw down the crayon, and announced that I had finished. I flourished the paper and handed it to her, ready to be praised again.
“That’s the Gray Man. He found me in the garden. We will go into the sea together,” I said.
Asteria stared and stared.
“Don’t you like it, Asteria?” I demanded when my toddler-sized well of patience ran dry.
She blinked. “Oh, my darling, it’s wonderful. I love it. Come sit on the floor with Asteria, and we can draw some more lovely pictures together.”
I colored away happily with a plate of cookies in the middle of the floor, scolding Asteria for drawing on the floor—because crayons were for paper, that’s what Mommy always said, and demanding to know if she would hang my picture on the “fridgelator.”
“Oh no, dearest,” Asteria said, as she folded the paper up as small as she could. “I have much more special plans for your picture. And she wound the ribbon around it, muttering words I could not hear.
I surfaced from the memory, full of a fear so overwhelming, I thought I might pass out. I threw my legs over the edge of my bed, dropping my head between my legs, and forcing myself to take long, deep breaths, as Freya wound herself sinuously around my ankles.
All the pieces fell into place to make the most terrifying of pictures. It was real. It was all real. My dream wasn’t a dream at all. It was a memory. The Gray Man was real, and he had once tried to take me into the sea with him. Asteria had rescued me, then tried to protect me. She’d been trying to protect me all these years. Every year, she brought me a trinket—I bet every one of them had some kind of protective charm on it. Then she brought me Freya—not just a pet, but a familiar, one who would help to protect me. And hadn’t she done just that?
My mind flashed back to the afternoon Freya had appeared on the catwalk of the theater—the figure in the shadows… it had been the Gray Man. He had found me, the very day my grandmother had died, as though some protective spell had died with her, and Freya had chased him away. And then again, in the garden the night of the seance; that had been the Gray Man as well, come for me once again, a whisper away from me in the darkness, until Asteria’s warning expanded the protection of the circle to the entire garden. And finally down on the beach, the night of the bonfire—hadn’t I heard his voice calling to me out in the water as the phantom boy crumbled to sand in my hands?
He had come for me then. And he came for me now. And he would keep coming. But who or what was he, and what did he want?
* * *
