( Chapter Five ) — Pink Throat

           The dock was grim and the wind blew through it like it wasn't even standing. Jamie had folded away their umbrella beneath cover but as they lingered, watching the black water lap at the boats, an odd drop of rainwater would fall onto his or Susanna's head. Even through their layers of thick clothing a chill cut deep, reddening their ears and turning them goosefleshed. Standing and shivering, Jamie felt as if something had its hand to the small of his back. Cold, sharp fingers trying to guide him back and away from where Waylon Forge breathed his last terrible moments.

"There's not even a stain," Susanna murmured as she circled a wide spot beside a wooden beam. The area had been cleared, leaving a bare, conspicuous radius which sat out of place amongst the clutter. In a moment of novelty, Jamie whimsically imagined a crop circle. He wondered where their black fedoras and glasses were, bodies shrouded in tench coats as they staked out the nearest store that sold tinfoil. As soon as the image came to mind, he felt absurd.

"What are you smiling at?" Susanna's voice startled him. He blinked to see her squinting over her shoulder, defensive that his amusement was at her expense.

"I wasn't smiling." He was equally as guarded.

"Oh?" She was interested now, turning and planting her feet to face him directly. "You don't smile, so when you do I know about it. That was a smile."

In a self conscious effort, Jamie pressed his lips tightly together. "I just thought of something, that's all."

"Was it funny?"

He imagined Susanna in a trench coat, fedora and sunglasses, failing to look unobtrusive on a street corner. "A little."

"A pig must be taking flight somewhere." She swept away but Jamie glimpsed at the upturn of her mouth. Something had overtaken them that late morning, an uncommon gaiety that had followed them all the way from their motel. They had snipped at each other softly over coffee and standing outside the cafe smoking, Susanna had even said through a lungful of smoke that she was hoping the cigarettes would kill her before she had to write another report. The morbid liveliness wound round and connected them like elastic, bouncing and spinning them it until it would snagged and give them whiplash. Jamie wondered if perhaps they were finally going mad.

They walked around the dock quietly, heads together and hands making vague gestures as they spoke. To any other person passing through, they appeared an unassuming couple. Though by now, everybody in Forks probably knew their faces. They were outsiders in the town's little world and walking down the street, Jamie could feel the constant pressure of curious eyes.

It was when they reached a hush between them that Susanna asked for the time. Jamie, surprised to see on his watch that it was past twelve, stole a quick glance to the sky. The rain had stopped, a lull disturbing the usual rhythm of downpour, letting breathe the smell of damp wood and mulch. Though he wasn't shocked to see a churn of dark clouds on the horizon, a rising wind stirring the water.

"When was Bryant supposed to meet us?" he asked.

"Ten minutes ago," she said with irritation. In a flurry of movements she searched her pockets, unzipping her plain jacket to dig deeper into her layers. Soon, with her phone in hand and a loathing for tardiness, Susanna excused herself to the car with Bryant's number on dial. Jamie thought to follow her, but he would only feel uncomfortable if she began reprimanding the man on the other end. 'It's a small town, you could get here in two steps,' she would say down the phone, and Jamie would feel like disappearing.

He scuffed his toe on a raised nail, feeling it catch on his dress shoe. He couldn't hear Susanna and the dock seemed colder without her. He crossed his arms, pressing them tightly over his chest as he spun slowly on his heel, facing his back to the water. A chill rolled over him and Jamie walked closer to the support beams, trying to get out of the wind and found that he was comforted by the sound of his own movement. He stood there for a few long moments, silent and watching the dock.

He hated where he was. On the outskirts of a nameless town in a collection of moulding wood, looking at the death place of a man he felt as if he murdered himself. The was something pressing down on him, more than the hatred and the frustration and he realised dreadfully that it was fear; tenfold to what he had felt looking down at the words on his headboard. He suddenly surged forward, desperate to find Susanna and the car, legs stretching quickly in a half-jog.

There was a breath of wind behind him, cold against the back of his neck. Pain bloomed beneath the skin of his nape, slithering up to his skull. The migraine was as sudden as it was painful, and Jamie almost doubled over, reaching a hand out to clutch at the nearest support. He leaned against a stack of rope equipment as black shapes flowered in his eyes. He groaned, pressing a hand tightly over them, his cool fingers doing nothing to sooth the lurching ache.

The instant severity of it panicked Jamie, calling out to Susanna as he teetered on his feet. He tried shouting louder but every noise sounded like a drum to his ears. He felt his heartbeat in his temples, quick and rhythmless. There was another swell of wind, sweeping through him and prickling his skin. Though this time it brought on a different rush of pain. A heat that crashed over his mind, crescendoing like it was fire itself within his skull, searing his brain in waves.

Jamie collapsed. His knees hit the decking and the shock ricocheted through him, feeling as if his bones were splitting through his muscles as he cried out in pain. There was a moment, as sudden as the onslaught of agony, and he felt as if he was floating between currents. Pulled by magnets in separate directions, he was left to a will of strength beyond his control before he was flung backwards with the violent pull of a force he realised he recognised, his heart bursting with the lurch.

He saw himself, clear as day, his back hunched over with his head cradled between his hands. Quivering and pathetic, he felt an urge to take that head and squeeze it until a crack of skull. A hand, his yet not his, reached out. Fingers, spider-like and close enough to feel the heat of his back, curled in the air as they neared. Then tentatively, as if petting a fragile creature, a finger poked at the flesh of his nape. A shock of warmth lit his chest in delight, hand extending to wrap around the back of his own neck, resting as if to soak in the heat of mortality he could no longer keep within himself.

It was as if his soul was being wielded. Something sacred yet revolting as blind terror and pain merged with a sadistic joy, blurring the line between two creatures as one kept a spiteful intent to trap Jamie. There was a fraction of resistance, the eyes of the dead looking down with their watch faces glinting in the clouded sunlight. He watched the hands tick and the magnet released, sending him stretching back to where he was supposed to be.

With a strength only his heart possessed, Jamie whirred around, arm swinging to slap the hand away from his neck. It was gone and he only touched open air. He fell onto his back, the collision sending the breath from his lungs as he saw a figure standing above him, bending at the waist to loom over him. Jamie was shaking, shivering on the ground and his eyes squinted and blinked, trying to see past the red pinpricks to look at the face of the monster he had known since that gloomy day in Astoria.

There was a pause, a playful timidness weaving the air between them before those thin fingers were reaching out again. Hand nothing but a pale blur in the smear of Jamie's vision. That awful pull again, tearing his brain in two. He was in a powerful tide, splintering between agony and sick pleasure, two consciousnesses bleeding together as one, fracturing his sight between two pairs of eyes.

He thought that he was going to die, that his heart would give out from the pain before that teasing hand reached his body. He thought that he was going to die and spend the rest of his time behind those awful eyes, watching forever without the strength to pull himself out. The hand was too close, he could feel the wind pass between the fingers he almost believed were his own, feeling the sweat on his own back and the wet fabric of his shirt.

Then suddenly, as quick as a change in wind, an amused alertness of something else passing through the trees towards the dock. He could hear the water ripple, leaves swirling down from branches as pain ripped through him tenfold. The hand retracted and with a last goading glance that he could feel his own eyes moving with, the monster disappeared as if it wasn't even there in the first place.

Jamie felt tendrils of himself clinging to the creature's mind, trying to wrap his own thinning being over its eyes before he snapped back to the body on the ground. His muscles were seizing, his skin burning as his head felt like caving in on itself. Every heartbeat enticed a new quiver of torture as he convulsed with enough violence to bruise himself.

He pulled his eyes back from rolling into his skull, glimpsing at swirling gold as palms of heavenly cold cradled his head. Something soft was murmuring in his ear, mellow and gently hushing him, cool breath easing the heat beneath his flesh. His body was stilling and the pain quelling. The cold retreated and Jamie wanted to reach out to it. He felt a lingering presence, eyes flickering heavily towards it before it vanished backwards and remorsefully away.

He felt the footsteps. They were heavy and rushed, racing towards him in panicked falls. His eyelids finally closed, body shivering out the last of its convulses as his eyes rolled.

He heard Susanna and he finally felt safe enough to rest.

Author's Note: Merry Christmas you miserable bitches.