down the stairs to the theatre’s side door. There were bathrooms in the area under the stage, and it was those he headed to, passing many-legged animals made of stacked old chairs, strange silhouettes of stage-set trees, and depthless oceans of black curtain hung over everything. The hallway was dark and close, the walls horrors of chipped green paint, and with one hand cupped over his eye, Adam found it distorted and unnerving. He recalled again the picture of his skittering hand.
He needed to do some work with Cabeswater, he thought, and figure out what was going on with that tree.
The bathroom light was switched off. It was not an obstacle at all – the light switch was just inside the door – but still, Adam didn’t quite want to put his hand into the blackness to find it. He stood there, his heart a little too fast, and he looked behind himself.
The hall was close and dark and unmoving under sickly fluorescent light. The shadows were inseparable from the stage curtains. Big swaths of black connected everything.
Turn on the light, Adam thought.
With his free hand, the one not covering his eye, he reached into the bathroom.
He did it fast, fingers pressing through cold, through dark, touching something —
No, it was only a Cabeswater vine, only in his head. He slammed his hand past it and turned on the light.
The bathroom was empty.
Of course it was empty. Of course it was empty. Of course it was empty.
Two old stalls made of green-painted plywood, nowhere near up to proper accessibility codes, nowhere near up to proper hygiene codes. A urinal. A sink with a yellow ring round the drain. A mirror.
Adam stepped in front of the glass, his hand over his eye, looking at his gaunt face. His nearly colourless eyebrow was pinched with worry. Lowering his hand, he looked again at himself. He saw no pinkness around his left eye. It didn’t seem to be watering. It was —
He squinted. Was he slightly walleyed? That was what it was called when your eyes didn’t point in the same direction, right?
He blinked.
No, it was fine. It was just a trick of this chilly green light. He leaned in closer to see if there was any redness in the corner.
It was walleyed.
Adam blinked, and it was not. He blinked, and it was. It was like one of those bad dreams that was not a nightmare, not really, that was just about trying to put on a pair of socks and finding they suddenly wouldn’t fit on your foot.
As he watched, his left eye slowly sank down to look at the floor, unhitched from the gaze of his right eye.
His vision blurred and then focused again as his right eye took dominance. Adam’s breath was uneven. He’d already lost hearing in one ear. He couldn’t lose sight in one eye, too. Was it from his father? Was this a delayed effect of hitting his head?
The eye rocked slowly, like a marble sliding in a jar of water. He could feel the horror of it in his stomach.
In the mirror, he thought the shadow of one of the stalls changed.
He turned to look: nothing. Nothing.
Cabeswater, are you with me?
He turned back to the mirror. Now his left eye was travelling slowly around, wandering back and forth, up and down.
Adam’s chest hitched.
The eye looked at him.
Adam scrambled back from the mirror, hand smacked over his eye. His shoulder blade crashed into the opposite wall, and he stood there, gasping for air, scared, scared, scared, because what kind of help did he need, and who could he ask?
The shadow above the stall was changing. It was turning from a square into a triangle because – oh God – one of the stall doors was opening.
The long hallway back to the outside felt like a horror gallery gauntlet. Black spilled out of the stall door.
Adam said, “Cabeswater, I need you.”
The darkness spread across the floor.
All Adam could think was that he couldn’t let it touch him. The thought of it on his skin was worse than the image of his useless eye. “Cabeswater. Keep me safe. Cabeswater! ”
There was a sound like a shot – Adam shied away – as the mirror split. A sun from somewhere else burned on the other side of it. Leaves were pressed up against the glass as if it were a window. The forest whispered and hissed in Adam’s deaf ear, urging him to help it find a channel.
Gratitude burned through