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Ford wakes up in a haze and shakes himself off, assessing his surroundings. A dimly lit room lined with shelves stacked with all sorts of books, a single lightbulb hanging off of a chain in the center of it all.
A diagram of unfamiliar symbols drawn on the ground around where he’s sitting.
He stands up and catches himself on a shelf as his body protests the movement, sudden lightheadedness knocking him off-balance.
He shakes it off and a new sensation shoots through him, a sharp pain in his left arm that radiates all the way to his shoulder. He searches for the source and finds a large tear in the sleeve of his jacket.
And beyond that, blood. Seeping out of a wound he has no recollection of occurring.
The area is practically numb. He needs to act quickly. He snatches a random shirt and tears it into strips to wrap around the wound.
In several minutes, the bleeding has slowed down to a manageable amount and he’s able to take a closer look at the drawing on the floor.
The strong copper odor emanating from it makes him blanch.
It’s been three weeks since the occurrence, something that Ford chooses to store in the back of his mind without a second thought.
The wound has healed to a gnarled, misshapen scar that runs the length of his forearm, swollen and discolored. His sense of touch in that area is dimmer than it should be, but he pays it little attention.
Bill continues to move in and out of his mind, causing little stress on Ford’s part. Fiddleford gives him looks as if he’s losing his marbles every so often, but aside from that, their partnership continues in the fashion it always has.
And in the middle of a blustery November night, so windy that Ford’s house shakes and creaks for hours, he falls into the same trance he’s become so accustomed to over the last few months.
Half-conscious, he notes the way the room seems to shift into something infinitely darker than it was a minute ago. Shadows swell and echo, and the single candle at his desk blows out. His eyes dart around, trying to piece together what exactly is going on, before his body starts to move of its own accord.
There’s a knife in his right hand.
He looks on in horror as the wound on his left arm is sliced open again, following the exact line of the previous scar. Blood spurts out of the wound, frighteningly bright in the void of the room, and he bristles at the motions that his body performs automatically as the sigil, symbol, rune, whatever it is, is drawn on the ground again.
He can’t feel the pain, which is somehow more terrifying than if he could. He tries to push Bill out somehow, but he can’t feel him at all. He tries to shout and his mouth doesn’t move a centimeter.
The blood loss is clearly having an effect on him, the way his body stumbles around, crashing into tables and knocking pictures off of walls.
He watches, helpless.
And like the switch of a light, he’s back in his body, Bill so distant his presence doesn’t register anymore.
He does what he can to stifle the bleeding, more difficult this time with the flesh underneath the surface not quite healed from the first time.
From then on, he keeps bandages tucked away in specific corners of every room he meditates in.
He patches over the same rip in the jacket enough times it begins to feel fruitless.
His arm never quite gives out, and the feeling never quite comes back.