This chapter contains scenes of violence
Lysander jumps awake. His hands tremble as he clutches at his chest, feeling his heart pound and his breathing come quick and ragged. His hair sticks to his forehead with sweat and his sheets lie in a heap from a night spent thrashing unconsciously.
He will not sleep again tonight.
Sounds of screaming invade his dreams. He sees fists raised and more hands protecting an unseen face. Bruises. So many bruises. One figure turns his back but the punches follow him. A bloody lip screams "stop," but the pain continues and pleas for help gradually become feeble whimpers.
It's not a dream but a vision. What he's seeing is not something his subconscious fabricated from his thoughts and feelings, this is either the present or the future, it's somebody's ghastly existence.
He doesn't recognise the voices, but he feels that if he's experiencing a vision of these people, he either knows them or will come to know them. And over the coming weeks, the voices and the people behind them grow more familiar. Lysander lives out his days anticipating another glimpse of cruelty.
He knows these people now, not their names but their lives. One is old, large, and almost always angry. The other is younger, smaller, calm, and obedient. The younger one does whatever he can to appease the older one, to keep him content, but he's never in a good humour for long.
Lysander is easily distracted by his abilities during the course of his everyday life. If he's not pulled away from the moment by a vision itself, he's busy staring at people's hands for signs of bruising or violence. He makes eye contact during conversations, but only to look for black-eyes that may have been covered by makeup. When he sees cracked lips he never knows if it was caused by the cold Winter air or by someone's fist.
He's in class when he gets the last of these series of visions. He sees a finger pointing, hand gesturing wildly. A voice booms about nothing in particular but the words are dark and cruel. The same hands, those of the older man, reach out and push the younger man by the shoulders. The young one is thrown against the wall and the picture frame above him rattles with the force of the blow.
Lysander's mind's eye looks upwards to the photo in the frame. It's an ordinary looking family with two kids, a son and a daughter, everyone is all smiles. He recognises them, it's all become clear.
Nathaniel.