I removed my hand from his arm and stepped back, and my hand felt cold. I shivered as a chill traveled up my arm and down my spine.
“It’s hard to explain,” he started. “First it was the small things. Minor shop mishaps. Tools going missing. Things of that nature.”
“Sure, that sounds pretty normal,” I responded, confused.
He shook his head, frustrated. “It didn’t stay that way. Things got worse.”
“How so?”
“Things just started to get bad. Really bad. Everywhere I went. I don’t know how it happened, but somehow, I became this… this bad luck charm.”
“Bad luck charm,” I stated. “I don’t understand.”
He gritted his teeth and ran his hand through his hair, mussing the strands. “I don’t understand it either, Fiella, but I know what I saw. The town was falling apart because of me. My friends were getting sick. My family’s business was suffering.Everyonewas suffering. So I left. I fled. I was hoping that if I left, then my family and my friends would be spared from whatever curse was following me.”
I took another step back, feeling slightly woozy. “Okay…”
“That’s how I ended up here. I crossed the Barren Lands because I wassurethat the bad luck wouldn’t be able to follow me. But somehow, some way, it did.” His cheeks reddened, and Icould hear his heart thumping from across the room. He stared at me anxiously.
I leaned forward, my hands on my knees. My vision began to darken at the edges, panic trying to claw under my skin.
He had somehow become the harbinger of bad luck, setting off an unfortunate chain of events wherever he went. He fled Sunhaven to spare his family and neighbors from further tragedy. He traveled to Moonvale to try to escape the misfortune.
He brought the bad luck here with him.
He believed he was the cause of my shop travesty. My massive financial loss. The destruction of my livelihood.
He believed it was all, somehow, his fault.
For probably the first time in my life, I was speechless.
“Oh…kay.” I let out a massive breath, my cheeks puffing out.
“Okay. Okay. Hey, it could just be a huge coincidence,” I said, though I wasn’t sure if I believed that myself. I forced myself to straighten up and breathe.
One incident, or two, or three, could be explained as a coincidence. What he was describing sounded like much more than that.
He did arrive in town right before everything started happening…
I had crossed paths with him right before…
I tried to hold back the wave of anger and resentment that threatened to wash over me. I tried to stop the claws of panic from piercing their way into my mind, my chest. If what Redd was describing was true, then maybe the worst incident of my life really was his fault.
I didn’t want to blame him, but I couldn’t stop my thoughts from spiraling. I didn’t know what to think.
He stared at me for a long time, a crease between his brows and his hands folded together in front of him. “You know what,maybe I’ll just go. I’ll come back tomorrow, and we’ll wrap this up here,” he eventually murmured.
“That’s probably for the best,” I choked out. “Thank you.”
“I’m sorry, Fiella. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.” His voice quaked slightly.
I didn’t respond, my eyes glued to the floor. When he turned to face the door, he froze in place, gaping at the window.
While we had been absorbed in conversation, we hadn’t noticed the shop slowly getting darker. Had night fallen already?
No, that wasn’t night. What we saw out the window was absolutely nothing. Blackness.
“Well, fuck,” Redd proclaimed.
