I slapped my other hand over my mouth and ran, slipping over the waxed tiles to the sink. Cranking the hot water lever as far as it would go, I held my hand under the steaming stream. The inky shadow mixed with the steam, one swirling around the other, a cyclone of hot and cold. The heat returned to my skin in an agony of needles as vessels rapidly dilated and burst.

When all the black had washed away or turned to smoke, I breathed again, panting through my tight throat, a high whine echoing off of the sterile walls and steel cabinets. The battery taste of the toxic smoke mixed with the chlorine cleanliness of the clinic.

My fingertip swelled white like a maggot soaked in water. The back of my hand blistered with red, angry burns.

I groped the darkness. The air swarmed thick with shadows that flowed and eddied on unseen currents. My stomach burned as I swallowed the acrid cloud. Black smoke poured from Alice’s face, billowing up as if from a chimney, burning the fuel of the darkness inside her.

With my good hand, I grasped the bar of the gurney and shoved her back in the cooler, slamming the door shut.

I swept my hand in front of my face, trying to clear a path through the shadow. It sighed as my hand cut through it, swirling back in to fill the space, caressing my cheek and whispering.

My legs crashed though steel carts of equipment on my way to the back door. I pushed out into the air. The daylight split through me, savaging my eyes, the setting sun hot on my burned hand. Lying on the pavement, I coughed shadow from my lungs.

I pulled my phone from my pocket to call the front desk and tell them to seal the clinic.

There was a text message from Dan, from that morning.

Not waste, eggs. Faces are spawning. Get me out. Nine hours ago.

I rolled over, forced myself up, and rushed to the clinic van. It was just a mile down the road—a mile and nine hours too late.

***

Darkness filled the windows of the funeral home. Pulling up to the back entrance, I turned the headlights on bright and pulled a flashlight from the glove box, using it to break the grimy window by the back door. Wisps of shadow licked the jagged edges of broken glass. Reaching in, my injured fingers fumbled to unlock the door latch, my armpit scraping against the sharp glass.

The high beams penetrated three feet into the darkness and hit a moving wall of shadows. Shapes appeared in the shifting darkness. Faces and shoulders and hands and thighs emerged from the cloud, beckoning. I walked into the middle of it all.