Hour of the Dragon - Heather Killough-Walden Page 0,16
and looked again. Clouds of gray and black puffed and swayed, lifting from rubble past the core of the trauma. For a moment they parted again – and again, Anna gazed upon the wing of a plane.
Chapter Three – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Randall Price brushed his sleeve over his forehead and cringed when another sharp spike rose from the base of his skull to his right eye. His head hurt. It always hurt. Every single day. The migraines were a part of him now, an unseen assailant that had attached itself to him like the ghost of a cookiecutter shark.
He looked up to shuffle through the books on the shelf so he could find the empty space he needed. A black and white, flashing zigzag shape had begun to form at the bottom of the right side of his vision. On instinct, as he always did, he tried to focus on it to get a better look. As he re-focused, it moved. He looked up again toward his boss, who was waving him over at the end of the street. Again when he re-focused, the zigzag shape moved along with his line of sight, maintaining its position at the bottom right-hand side of his vision.
Great, he thought as his patience dwindled. An aura. He rarely got them with the migraines; normally they came along separately, either the day before or the day after. This was new. But what if it wasn’t? What if it just meant that this migraine was going to last more than a day? Or go away and then come back tomorrow?
He swore internally.
Little bits of Randall were left behind every time, pieces that it grew more and more difficult to find and glue back together. His head felt like a mess of scars on the inside, its wounds invisible and exhausting. He waited and longed for the time when it would be scar tissue entirely, because scar tissue itself couldn’t transmit pain the same way undamaged tissue could. And he wished they were at least visible on the outside. Then people would empathize. He hated it when pain was invisible. It did nothing for the sufferer.
Randall slipped the second-to-last book in his arms into its proper place on the shelf and nudged down his glasses so he could pinch the bridge of his nose with his now-free hand. He closed his eyes just as the bell on the library door sounded, signaling a customer’s arrival. Then he took a deep breath through his nose and let it out between his teeth. Maybe he should close early today.
He glanced down at the last remaining book he had to re-shelf and read the title. “The Redhead Murders: A Case Study of the Infamous Unsolved Serial Killings.”
He dropped the book.
At the end of the aisle, two patrons stopped and peeked around the stack in his direction. “Oh, hi,” said the woman, who was clearly mother to the young boy whose hand she held. “Forgive me, but do you work here?”
Randall blinked, pushed his glasses back up his nose, and reminding himself that the customers couldn’t see his pain, he pulled himself together. “Yes. Yes, sorry.” He bent and retrieved the dropped book, which made his head feel as though it would explode. But he winced and weathered it, then stood and made his way to the end of the aisle to join the newcomers. “What can I help you with today?”
The woman smiled. “I was wondering if you could maybe track down a specific book? I came earlier today and looked through the catalog on the computer, but I think I was searching for the wrong thing and my lunch break ended before I could get help.” She laughed a little sheepishly and dropped her head. Randall had that effect on women sometimes. He knew it was his eyes; they were green, which was rare. The glasses amplified their size and color, and his gaze was sharp.
“So I figured I’d come back once I got off work,” she finished with a shrug.
Randall smiled back, then broke eye contact to spare a little of the smile for the child, who ducked behind his mother’s body as if to hide. Randall knew all about that behavior. People hid a lot of things from strangers.
“It’s no problem,” he assured the woman. “Let me just re-shelf this one, and we’ll see if we can’t find your missing volume.” He brushed past her to head to the True Crime area of the library. The woman and