Prologue
Third-floor walk-up • Rain on the fire escape • The ping of AOL IM
The city breathes through cracked windows and rain gutters. It’s October 31, 2001. In a third-floor walk-up that leans toward the street, Shane “Dio” Morrissey sits before a flickering old monitor, blue light carving his cheekbones. He smells like Marlboros and patchouli, like a secret someone forgot to keep.
The apartment is too cold; the radiator died weeks ago. The walls sweat with the noise from the bar below, each bass drop shuddering through the floorboards like a pulse the building can’t shake. The place reeks of old beer, stale cigarettes, and the sour tang of old urine. The air is heavy, thick with years gone stale, and something else too, ghosts too tired to leave, lingering in the corners like smoke that never quite clears.
Dio sits hunched in the blue flicker of an ancient monitor, the AOL message pulsing like a heartbeat he doesn’t want. Come to the party. You won’t regret it. He tells himself he doesn’t care. Lies come easy in the dark.
His mother hasn’t left her room in days. He leaves a sandwich outside her door in an old Tupperware container so the mice won’t get to it, pretends it counts as taking care of her. Sometimes she calls out when her bottle empties, asks him to try to scrape together enough change to pay for a refill from Vinny, the bartender. He always promises Vinny he won’t tell a soul, and Vinny pretends to believe him.
Beneath the mess of clothes, accessories, and half-forgotten items he’d swiped from corner shops and thrift racks, a sketchbook waits, pages heavy with the things he can’t say out loud. The art books he smuggled from the library feel like relics from a softer version of himself, a boy who once wanted to make something beautiful and buried that version years ago.
Outside, the rain slicks the city until it almost looks clean again.
Almost.
He stares at the blinking cursor as the AOL IM box pulses at the bottom of the screen, bright red text whispering its promise: Come to the party. You won’t regret it.
Rain needles the glass. He looks toward the window, telling himself he’s only checking the weather, but across the street under a busted streetlight a figure stands. Same jacket. Same stance. Like someone sketched him and then stepped out of the drawing. It doesn’t move or breathe. It only watches.
Anger sparks low in his chest. Is this some idiot playing games? Someone from the bar messing with him? Or is it his own imagination twisting shadows into something that isn’t there? He can’t tell, and that makes it worse. What is this guy’s deal?
He turns back to the monitor. The IM box waits, pulsing like it has its own heartbeat. He tries to focus on the message, tries to make sense of who sent it and why, but every few seconds he glances back at the window to see if the figure is still there.
It is. The cursor keeps blinking, impatient. The streetlight flickers. The figure never moves.
He should go out. Both the screen and the street pull at him, demanding an answer.