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“Don’t,” Drew cut in, and Sean knew immediately that he was talking to him. “It’s not worth it, I can sort this out. And besides, if you used such a large amount of energy now you would fade out. I still need you around.”

“Who are you talking to?” Hayden asked abruptly, agitated.

“I told you, Sean’s soul. I know it
sounds kind of unbelievable but-
”

“STOP LYING,” Hayden roared, and it was obvious that there was no use trying to reason with him. “My brother’s GONE, you killed him, so now I’m going to do the same thing to you.”

Sean had known Hayden his whole life. He thought he knew
his strange yet ultimately kind-hearted brother well enough, so it was the last thing he expected when the boy he had always respected pulled out a gun and pointed it at Drew. Where he had gotten a gun from, Sean would never find out. All he knew was that
it felt like
his heart had jumped into his throat to try and bludgeon his windpipe to death
while at the same time a voice in his head was saying
‘you never had a heart in the first place, and you certainly don’t have one now’
.

Drew did not move from his spot, but Sean could see the shock and fear etched into every part of his face. The emotions reflected his own, while at the same time disappoint
ment
crept somewhere in the back, because he had always thought that Hayden was the sort of person to stay level headed no matter what the situation.
He’d always thought that he knew his brother, but now he realised how mistaken he was.

“Are you really going to kill me?” Drew whispered, and the desperation in his voice hung in the air like a bad odour.

Hayden looked uncertain, and his hands were shaking badly, causing the barrel of the gun to rattle. “I should, I want to,” he said. “It would be so easy. You’re defenceless here, no
one to protect you, all I
have to do is pull this trigger and you’ll be gone.”

“How would you explain killing your own brother to the world?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Hayden shook his head, as if to clear away his own doubts. “I need to do this.
”

“Sean would hate you for it you know,” Drew continued, and his mask of indifference was back up again and stronger than ever. “I don’t think he would want to see the big brother he respects killing out of vengeance.”

“Maybe, but he’s not here anymore to see it.”

“Stubborn, aren’t you?” Drew shook his head in exasperation. “No matter what I say you won’t believe me, so go on then. Shoot me.” He put his hands up in surrender and Hayden pointed the gun at him, the metal clanking with the weight of his trembling hands. It was obvious that he wouldn’t be able to do it. Even if he fired, he couldn’
t
aim straight.

“What colour are your eyes, really?” Hayden repeated the question, quietly, but Drew heard it and smirked.

“You sure you want to know?” Without waiting for an answer he reached up and discarded the pair of contact lenses
he was wearing
, letting them drop to the ground
.

“
You
…” Hayden stumbled back from shock, dropping the gun in the process, and Drew took this chance to leap forward in one swift
, fluid
movement
and hit the side of his head. Glazed, blue eyes widened for a moment, but then closed as his legs buckled and his body crumpled to the ground. There was a deafening silence, and Sean wanted nothing more than to scream and shatter it. Shatter something. He felt on the verge of a panic attack, but tried to reel in the last of his self control and stay calm, think rationally.

“He’s okay,” Drew assured him. “I didn’t hurt him too
much;
he’s just unconscious right now. He’ll wake up in a few hours.”

Even though he didn’t need the air, Sean took a long breath to try and clear his head. “Was that really necessary?” he forced the words out, trying to appear calm even though he felt anything but.

“No, but it was more convenient.” Drew wasn’t looking at him anymore. Instead he was ru
mmaging through
the
drawers, searching
for something. “We’re leaving, Sean.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know about you, but I’m not so keen on being here when he wakes up again,” Drew nodded in the direction of Hayden’s immobile body.

“Where are we going to go?” Sean asked.

The burgundy eyed boy finally seemed to find what he was looking for and pocketed the small object
, locking his fervent gaze onto Sean’s. He sighed. “There’s just something I need to take care of, and I need you with me for it.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Remember when we first met, I told you that you had to wait and see? Well, the waiting’s over. It’s time to do the seeing part now. Come with me
.”

Sean knew he had no choice. Maybe, ever si
nce he had lost his body, he’d
had
no choice in anything. Maybe Drew had just planned it all out to happen this way and Sean had
always
been powerless to do anything about it. But even so, there was sincerity beneath Drew’s words that made Sean somehow trust him. It was an irrational trust, but this time he didn’t question why.

And so the two boys, both not quite alive and not quite dead, ran into the night.

Chapter 15
:
To see

Run. Run. Run, keep running, don’t look back, don’t think about anything else except for the sensation of moving forward. Don’t stop or you’ll be left behind.

Sean had never found running as hard as he did now.
They had taken
a bus first, gotten off at some obscure stop, and then Drew had started to run. Sean had
had
no energy left to question it and followed obediently, because for him running
made no difference. In fact he liked it, even if he couldn’t feel the wind on his face anymore.

They ran well past the usual clusters of housing estates, past the modern shops and int
o the more rural area outside the main part of
town. Here the houses came a lot fewer and far between and there were only small high streets packed with old, run-down grocery stores that had be
en there for decades. A
fter another twenty minutes, even these small settlements faded into trees and grassland. It became darker as the far away city lights grew dim, the only light being th
e occasional streetlamp and the
glow of the moon.

Finally, Drew stopped running and collapsed to the ground, panting from exhaustion. Sean took the time to look around the place where they had stopped, taking in the beautiful scenery. It was a large clearing, enclosed on all sides by a foliage of trees, but the main attraction was the lake.
It lay, silent and still, a large puddle of liquefied moonlight. The water was black, but tinted a delicate silver, like an expensive satin or a wolf’s fur.

“Nice, isn’t it?” Drew, having recovered, stood up again and it was hard to make out his expression
in the dark. Sean had a sudden
sense of déjà vu.

“Why are we here?”

But Drew ignored his question and in
stead stood quietly
, as still as the water. “This is the place where I died,” he
suddenly
said.
Sean paused, surprised, unsure what to say. “I told you once
that I drowned, didn’t I?” he
continued. “I drowned in this lake. Not a bad place to die really.”

“Brian told me
that you were murdered,” Sean said quietly.

There was a strange look in the other boy’s eyes. “Maybe I used to think t
hat, but not anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

Drew began to stumble closer
to the lake, and Sean followed
uneasily. He’d
always been uneasy around water, so
mething else he wished he knew
the reason for. They stopped right at the water’s edge, where it met the rounded pebbles that made up the bank. “Do you want to know
how I died?” Drew asked
. “Do you want to see
the truth
?”

Sean
tried to shake off the feeling, but it was hard to ignore the foreboding sense of unease that settled in his stomach
. “
If it explains things, then okay,” he
hesitantly agreed.

“Good,” Drew said. “Now m
ake your hand solid and put it into the water. Your body, both of our souls, it should work.”

“But won’t I fade out if I do that?”

“Just trus
t me this once, it will work
.”

And
really it was hard to go against Drew, so Sean
obliged and ghosted his solid hand over the
surface of the water cautiously
, while at the same time Drew dipped his fingers into it.

“You think I can swim in there, Drew?”
He was twelve again, young and naïve and excited by the mere prospect of swimming in a lake.
It was such a pretty lake too, especially in the sunshine when the water glittered like that.

“
Sure, it looks fine.” The older boy was sitting on the bank, reading.

“Is it safe?”

“You can swim, right Sean?”

“Well, sort of. But I’m still not very good.”

“Then go
swim if you want to.
Just don’t drown on my watch.
”

“But-
”

“Seriously, go. You’re starting to get on my nerves.”

It was cold, so cold, and the water was like hundreds of knives piercing into him. He kicked out, but then suddenly he couldn’t feel anything beneath him and he was underwater, lost in a dark and murky world. His oxygen was escaping in st
r
eams of bubbles and he didn’t know which way was up or down anymore, just that he was surrounded on every side b
y darkness.
His lungs burned for air,
pain and adrenaline coursing through his body and forming a deadly cocktail. He was oddly awa
re of a ringing sound in his ear
s. Was that his ear drums bursting from the pressure, or his own terrified screams?
He tried to kick
, flailed helplessly, but he just kept sinking.
Why did the light keep getting farther away
?

Suddenly h
e felt the hands grasping for him, seizing his arms and coiling themselves around him. He felt them pulling him in one direction, hopefully up, but he was beginning to feel light-headed and thinking was just too much of a strain.
The pain was ebbing into a much more bearable numbness, the same way that darkness was
permeating
his mind and placating his previous hyste
ria. He felt almost comfortable, the body pressed against his providing a sense of security.
Leaning
into the
reassuring
warmth
of the arms that were around him,
he gripped as tightly as possible onto whatever he could reach in his half-conscious state,
not wanting to get left behind, not wanting to let go and
give in to the invading darkness
.

“Do you understand now?”

Sean came round to the sound of Drew’s voice, pulling him out of the memory, and his mind was suddenly blank. He couldn’t speak, or move, and the only thought that went through his head was
“It was me.” He somehow felt it necessary to voice that, as right now it seemed like the most important thing in the world.

Drew just smiled sadly. “I saw it too, but I’ve always known. I didn’t
lose
my memory like you.
The doctors said the amnesia
was from post-traumatic stress. I was there, listening to them when they said it.
”

The words didn’t register. “It was me,” Sean said again, mostly to himself. “It was me. I killed you.”

“Yeah, you did.” Drew’s admission somehow made it final,
and there was something in the back of his mind telling Sean that he should be having a mental breakdown right about now,
but he couldn’t feel anythi
ng. I
t wasn’t the same as the numbness he felt when he had first bec
ome an I
mprint
. It was the feeling of being truly and utterly empty.