SHADE

SHADE

"An empty black face save for pale grey pinhole eyes, staring up at her, meeting her wide-eyed gaze with utter impunity. A  smudged charcoal sketch of something vaguely humanoid, limbs long and spider-thin. It sat there for a moment, boneless in the seat beside her; it blinked languidly, lids like shutters sliding over those hard grey eyes."

"It lurked there a moment, barely visible but there, and when it finally came into the light - tentative, as if it might burn - she knew what it was. An oil-smear of a creature; the awful distortion of something almost human, crawling slowly on four long matchstick limbs. A narrow, elongated head bobbed limp on a thin neck. Pale eyes flickered open like newly-lit flames."

"The skin of it peeled back, the space below the eyes opening like a shutter to reveal  a gleaming lamprey mouth: a perfect circle of bright, needle-sharp teeth."

"The only solid facts I know is that the Shades are actually real, that I started seeing them after the bomb, and that they've been following me about ever since."

Laura Mauro, Naming the Bones