Chapter 1
His eyes open; surely of their own accord, for he cannot imagine how he might have opened them himself.
There is an ache at the back of his head; he recognizes little else except for the pain and the unpleasant sharpness of consciousness.
Not the starched sheets drawn up to his chin, not the plaster ceiling, not the sterile glow of the hospital room and the chatter of the monitoring machines, nothing.
Not even the man who sits in the armchair across from the bed and seems to shed fifty years when he meets his gaze, the creases about the corners of his eyes and his mouth coming undone in an instant.
The man leans forwards over the bed, making as if to run his hand through his hair.
He stops halfway there, held back.
By what?
"Sylvan," he says tentatively.
So that is his name.
Sylvan blinks.
The man is wearing an oversized wool sweater that smells of mothballs, of coffee, of fear.
Fear.
For him?
Perhaps.
He dismisses the thought as irrelevant.
What matters is that sweater; it must be winter.
Winter.
Sylvan takes a moment to turn the word over in his mind.
Winter.
The ideas of cold and grey swirl into his mind.
Winter.
But Crestmont is always cold and grey, he thinks next, and then recalls that
Crestmont
is where he lives.
But who is this, he wonders, blinking again.
"Are you alright?" asks the man.
"How do you feel?
You gave us quite a fright, you know."
Sylvan is rescued from answering by the cry of the door.
A young woman rushes inside; she is a flurry of brown hair and crackling laboratory coat and pinched lips and worry.
She jerks to a stop at the rail of the hospital bed, and the man lifts a hand to the small of her back, making a soft hushing sound from the back of his throat.
Is she his wife?
"Oh Sylvan," gasps the young woman, and he realizes that she cannot be the wife of the man, not when she is already so helplessly infatuated with
him
; the panic in her voice and the flush that rises to her cheeks and the singing of her pulse when she squeezes his hand – tentatively, as if it were somehow precious or fragile – spell her heart.
"Oh, Sylvan!" she wails again.
"Thank goodness you're safe.
I came the moment I heard." She bites down ferociously on her lower lip.
Silence for a moment, fractured by the whirr of the monitoring machines and the labored come and go of the young woman's breathing.
Finally, the man shifts forwards.
"Mabel," he says softly.
"Mabel.
He seems to be just fine.
Trust me, I'm a doctor."
So this man is his doctor?
Impossible; he is not wearing a medical coat.
Coincidence?
Sylvan takes a brief glance at his hands.
They are brown and battered, the skin turned to sandpaper by calluses.
They must have once been often used in strong sun; perhaps they are so worn from tying stitches, or changing bandages?
Oh, what Sylvan would give to hear his name!
"Yes," he manages finally, and his voice emerges dry and crackling, as if his throat were covered in dust.
The man starts.
"I'm fine."
The man nods and shifts one of his hands to Mabel's forearm, rubbing up and down in an effort to soothe her.
She sucks on her lower lip; she is the type of girl who quivers with excess self-awareness even when standing completely still.
"It was very sweet of you to come," says the man eventually, "but I'm sure Sylvan needs his rest.
Besides, the hospital visitor hours are about to close." He stands, and one hand falls to his thigh, pressing for an instant.
An old habit?
But why?
"I should be going, as well."
Mabel nods and trembles from the room.
The man hesitates at the doorknob, glancing back uneasily at the hospital bed.
He is obviously grappling with indecision.
What troubles him?
Sylvan feels parched for want of knowledge.
"Goodnight, Sylvan," says the man eventually.
There is a curious scratch in his voice.
"I'll be back tomorrow."
Sylvan can only nod.
He does not trust himself to speak; he has not yet ascertained how people expect his character to react, how they expect him to look at the world.
The man does not seem alarmed; he only runs one hand through his hair and opens his mouth again.
"Trey?" Mabel startles them both.
"Trey, are you coming?"
So Trey is his name, then.
But still the question remains: who is he?
Or better: who is anyone?
\-
The next week brings a myriad of visitors.
There is the tottering Mrs. Pemberton; she must be his landlady, judging by how she prattles on about the state of
the flat
, wherever that may be.
There is Vane, the man with the silver hair and disgruntled expression, from whom Sylvan learns his own profession: an
amateur
detective, as emphasizes Vane's subordinate, a young woman with perpetually pursed lips.
They are clearly sleeping together; she takes pains to hide the marks at her throat, and he is too careful not to brush against her when they leave the room.
Sylvan treats them coldly, and they do not seem surprised.
He has also discovered the circumstances of his malady: apparently, he had been conducting a dangerous experiment when the chemicals reacted incorrectly.
He fainted from the fumes and struck his head quite badly on the edge of the kitchen table.
He suffered a concussion, explained the doctors, but nothing worse.
He has to keep from laughing when he hears this.
If only they knew that he can remember nothing.
The visitors come and go, a blur of unfamiliar faces twisting in concern or distaste, and yet he easily discerns the identity of each and every one.
Such seems to be his talent.
It is the man who stays, who dozes upright in the armchair at the side of the bed, who swallows the bitter hospital coffee in the morning, who argues with the doctors and checks Sylvan's pulse and forces him to eat, who confounds him.
Nobody will tell him who Trey Pena is.
And when he is allowed back to
the flat
, the situation only grows more perplexing.