Ethan – or is he Patrick? – whatever the hell his name is, he is one scary, off-his-rocker, lock-up-the-padded-room-and-throw-away-the-key bloke.
Danny had told them once that he lost his little brother to the anomalies, and Connor had been genuinely sorry to hear it. He knew personally how much it hurt to lose someone close to your heart, how crimson it made a person turn. He never, not in a million years – or rather, several million, depending on the era – would have imagined that Danny's little brother would actually survive the anomalies and the creatures. Or that he would turn out to be a raging psychopath.
Because Ethan's colours are black. Not a dark grey, not a deep indigo or a very dark violet. Black. And not the good kind, like licorice or a night sky. This is the thick, sluggish, sticky blackness of used oil, the colour of absolute madness, with jagged spires of burning scarlet and seething yellow hissing and spitting in that darkness like burning coals in a pit.
Connor sees Ethan for the first time, and he nearly has a panic attack. Because he's only seen that kind of darkness twice before in his life. Once was in Helen Cutter, she had that oily black oozing through the cracks in her ruby colours. The second was when he was a child. There'd been a string of murders across West Yorkshire, a serial killer on some kind of demented spree. The man was responsible for the deaths of 28 people. Connor had been nine years old, and he had seen the man and known instantly who he was. Because his colours were that same complete and utter black, like tar and oil, the sticky, clingy darkness that'd drag a person down and never let them go again.
That was what Ethan Dobrowski's – he's not Patrick Quinn, Patrick Quinn died a long time ago, swallowed in the blackness – colours were. Connor sees him and can only think of a saying he heard once, a quote he read somewhere. He doesn't remember who said it, but the words still appear in his mind when he gets his first real look at Ethan Dobrowski. If you gaze long enough into the abyss, the abyss will also gaze back into you. That's what Ethan is. An abyss, a gaping void with no bottom, full of nothing but that sickly, raging darkness, sticky tendrils always reaching, searching for a new victim to seek out and strangle.
Connor is quite happy to see him go.