Hansel woke up like he always did.
Badly.
He rolled over and stared at the ceiling for a good minute doing absolutely nothing, which was his version of a morning routine. The ceiling didn't have anything interesting going on but that was fine, neither did he. His room was his room. Sable Street was doing its Sable Street thing outside the window, he could hear Mr. Petition arguing with a delivery guy about something that was probably not worth arguing about but Mr. Petition had strong feelings about most things so…
He sat up.
And that's when he felt it.
It wasn't pain or anything dramatic like that. It was more like.... have you ever been reading a book and you turn the page and something feels off and you realize the next page number doesn't follow the last one? Like a page got ripped out somewhere and the story just kept going without it? That's what it felt like. Like his morning was page fourteen but his last memory was page nine and somewhere in between those numbers something had happened that he couldn't read.
He sat on the edge of his bed and tried to figure out what was bothering him.
Couldn't.
So he got up and went to brush his teeth because standing in his room being confused about nothing wasn't going to get him anywhere.
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Morvane was already in the kitchen which wasn't surprising. Morvane was always already in the kitchen. Hansel was pretty sure the man didn't actually sleep, just stood in the kitchen overnight waiting for morning so he could make coffee and have opinions about things.
"Morning," Hansel said, dropping into his chair.
"Morning." Morvane was pouring coffee, back turned, cane leaning against the counter beside him. "How'd you sleep…"
"Deeply and mysteriously," Hansel said. "Like a man with no problems."
"You have many problems."
"Deeply then. Just deeply."
Morvane set a cup down in front of him and that was normal, that was just breakfast, except Hansel noticed something that he immediately told himself he hadn't noticed. Which was that Morvane set the cup down like he was being careful. Not clumsy careful, not blind-man careful, just.... careful in the way people are when they're thinking about something else and making sure their hands don't give them away.
Hansel looked at his coffee.
Morvane sat across from him with his own cup and the blindfold gave nothing away like it never did and the morning was just the morning.
"You're staring at your coffee," Morvane said.
"I'm communicating with it."
"Just eat something before you leave."
"But I'm going to be late."
"Then be late and fed instead of on time and dead."
Hansel did a quick "Hmmmm" and ate something.
He kept waiting for Morvane to say something else but he didn't and breakfast was just breakfast and when Hansel picked up his bag and said he was heading out Morvane said don't be late and Hansel said never am and the door closed behind him and that was that.
Except he stood outside his door for just a second before heading down the stairs.
He couldn't tell you why. Just stood there for a second like he was waiting for something. Then he went downstairs.
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The walk to Merrick Central was the same walk it always was and Hansel did the same things he always did, which was walk too slow for the first five minutes and then make up the time by walking too fast for the next fifteen. Caldwell was doing its morning thing, Denner Road was doing its Denner Road thing, all very normal, all very Merrick.
He was somewhere in the middle of the Pale, that weird in-between neighborhood that couldn't decide what it wanted to be, when he saw something.
Or he thought he saw something.
It was at the very edge of his vision, like just past the corner of his eye, and it was there for maybe half a second before it wasn't. It didn't look like a person exactly but it didn't look like not-a-person either. It looked like something that was figuring out how to be visible and hadn't quite gotten there yet.
Hansel stopped and looked.
Nothing. Just a guy walking his dog and a woman on her phone and the regular morning population of the Pale going about their regular morning business.
He stood there for a second.
Huh.
He kept walking.
It happened twice more before he got to campus. Same thing both times, same edge-of-vision flicker, same nothing when he looked directly. By the third time he'd mostly convinced himself it was tiredness or the sun doing something weird or just his eyes being dramatic because sometimes eyes did that.
He was almost convinced anyway.
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John and Mary were outside the humanities building when he got there and seeing them made him feel better immediately because that's just what they did to him even though he would never in a million years say that out loud.
John was studying. Of course John was studying. John studied the way other people breathed, just constantly, automatically, looking slightly irritated about it.
Mary was talking with her hands about something and her hands were very busy so it must have been important.
Hansel was about to say something genuinely funny about whatever Mary's hands were doing when he got close enough to see their faces properly and something stopped him.
It wasn't anything obvious. It wasn't like they looked scared or upset or anything he could point to. It was more like.... both of them looked at him for just a second too long when he walked up. Like they needed a moment to confirm something before they could move on to the normal version of seeing him.
Mary's expression did something fast and complicated that she covered with a smile.
John's pen stopped.
It lasted maybe two seconds total and then John said something about Hansel being almost late which was rich coming from someone who was early enough to study outside and Mary laughed and everything snapped back into the regular shape of them.
Hansel smiled and made the joke he'd been planning and it landed fine.
It landed fine.
It just didn't land the way it usually did. Usually when he made John and Mary laugh there was this feeling like something connecting, like a key in a lock, and today the key went in but the lock was.... further back than usual. Like there was a door behind the door and he was only getting the first one.
He told himself he was being weird and paranoid and that he'd obviously just slept badly and everything was fine.
Everything was fine.
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The occult club room in the basement of the humanities building was exactly what it always was. Yellow light, questionable shelf organization, four unlit candles that Mary kept in the same spots for reasons she'd explained once and Hansel had mostly followed. He dropped onto the floor against the bookshelf like always and pulled a text off the shelf pretty much at random like always and settled in.
Mary was presenting something about ley lines. John was interrogating the concept of ley lines with the focused energy of someone who found them personally offensive. This was normal. This was exactly what this room was supposed to sound like.
Hansel read his text and half-listened and felt okay.
Then he looked up at the four unlit candles on the shelf.
He didn't know why he looked at them specifically. They were just candles. They'd been sitting in those same four spots since Mary decided they belonged there and that was that. Nothing interesting about them. He'd sat in this room a hundred times with those candles exactly where they were and never thought anything about them.
But looking at them now gave him a feeling he couldn't explain. Not bad exactly. More like the feeling you get when you hear a song and you know you know it but you can't remember where from. Like the candles were trying to remind him of something and the something wasn't available.
He looked back at his text.
A few minutes later something moved at the edge of the room.
Same as this morning. Same edge-of-vision thing. Gone when he looked. Except this time in the basement of the humanities building there was no sunlight to blame and no tired eyes excuse that really held up and the cold that sat in the air of the room for just a second afterward felt less like imagination and more like a thing that had actually happened.
Neither John nor Mary seemed to notice.
Hansel didn't say anything.
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He walked home slower than usual.
Not for any reason he could name, just didn't feel the urgency of getting anywhere quickly. Merrick in the evening was nice actually when he wasn't rushing through it. The light did that thing where it came between the buildings at the right angle and made everything look a little more considered than it actually was.
He walked through the Pale and across Denner and into Caldwell and Caldwell received him the way it always did which was without ceremony or interest, just the neighborhood being itself.
Mr. Petition was in the window of the corner store when Hansel passed. He raised a hand. Mr. Petition nodded without looking up from whatever he was arranging. Normal.
Hansel stopped at the corner of Sable Street.
He stood there and looked up at his building and tried to figure out what was wrong with him today. He'd been off all day. Not sick-off, not sad-off, just.... misaligned somehow. Like he was himself but the self was sitting slightly to the left of where it usually sat. Something in his vision kept moving that wasn't there. Something in the club room had tried to remind him of a thing he didn't have access to. Something behind John and Mary's eyes hadn't let his jokes all the way in.
And Morvane with the careful coffee cup.
He stood on the corner of Sable Street in the evening light and tried to pull at a thread that he couldn't find the end of.
Nothing.
He tried making a joke to himself. Something about the day, about the general strangeness of it, something sideways and warm that would make the feeling smaller. It came out okay but there was nobody there to receive it and in the empty air of Sable Street it just sort of.... sat.
He put his hands in his pockets.
Whatever was walking home with him today, he couldn't see it directly. Every time he tried to look at it it was just past the corner of his eye, not there when he turned.
He knew that feeling from somewhere.
He just didn't know where.
He walked home.
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End of Chapter Five: A Skipped Day