The Year of Shadows Read Online Free PDF Page A

like they were nothing—I struggled not to pass out from the cold that squeezed my insides.
    Together, Henry and I stumbled away, trying to run, before I realized the gray shapes were herding us toward the basement. Toward that shadow thing with its pointy black fingers. The shadow shrank back as we approached it. Then, it shrieked .
    “What is it?” Henry clapped his hands to his ears.
    I couldn’t answer, watching the shadow shrink back down the basement stairs, in full retreat. Its awful screams wedged beneath my fingernails, in my teeth, shaking me to the core.
    The basement door slammed shut.
    Silence, except for the orchestra playing.
    The shadow was gone.
    The four gray figures, suddenly alone, flitted away likescared rabbits—one into the ceiling, two through the wall, and one—the original gray man—sinking through the floor. Right before he disappeared, he winked at me.
    Henry and I jumped to our feet and ran, shoving each other to go faster. Soon we were outside, tearing down the wide gray steps that led from the Hall down to Arlington Avenue, and then we were almost getting run over by a cab.
    The wail of its horn brought us to a halt. The wind of its passing tires shot goosebumps up my arms. Suddenly, we stood in sunlight and skyscrapers. The spice of a nearby food cart stung my eyes.
    “Watch it!” the cab driver shouted out his open window.
    Henry put his hands on his knees, catching his breath. “What was that?”
    I smoothed my fingers over my arms. Little red lines marked my skin from where the cat had clawed me. Then I felt something weird, a rough patch of skin. I turned my arm over and saw the black spot.
    Right where the cold thing had slammed into me, knocking me to the ground, a splotchy black mark glittered in the sunlight. It almost looked like a burn, dark as that shadow by the basement.
    “What the . . .” Henry inspected a similar black spot on his right calf. “Olivia, what is this?”
    I probed the burn mark with one finger. It sizzled, colder than ice against my fingertip, the skin rough and scratchy.
    “Olivia?”
    Henry watched me expectantly. A new light shone in his eyes that I didn’t like. I recognized that look. A few brave souls last spring, mostly new kids, had sometimes approached me in the cafeteria with that look in their eyes. They would think, “Could this be a new friend?”
    One look from me was usually enough to dispel them for good.
    Shadows, after all, don’t have friends.
    Especially not friends like Perfect Henry Page.
    I gathered myself and drew down the shades. That’s what I called it when I hardened everything about me from my eyes to the way I was standing, so people would leave me be. It’s like when you draw down the shades of your window to keep out all the sunlight.
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said to Henry.
    “Are you kidding me? We just saw—”
    I shrugged. “I didn’t see anything.” Then I walked backstage alone. Henry didn’t follow me. Maybe he was too scared to come back inside.
    But he was right: We had seen something. For the rest of the day, I caught myself drumming my fingers against the burn. It stung when I touched it, but I couldn’t stop messing with it, like when you just have to keep wiggling a loose tooth even though it makes your gums sore.
    Something had left its mark on both me and Henry. And another something had saved us from whatever lay beyond the basement door.
    I didn’t know what this meant, but my sketching hand itched to find out. My head swam with images of shadow fingers and gaping black mouths.
    What had happened? What had we seen?
    One word kept whispering through my head as a possible answer:
    Ghosts.

I DIDN’T SLEEP much that night. The next morning I’d have to go back to school, and I wasn’t sure which was scarier to think about: school, or the ghosts.
    Every time a sound rustled through the cracked door of my bedroom, or Nonnie shifted in her bed, I sat up, listening