It might be attractive by day, when it just registered as an impalpable hint, but it was damn sinister in the dark! It wasn't much, but it was there—unless the flashes were inside his head and he was projecting them ... blue ... something called the Purkinje effect? ... but then Vivian had actually seen ... oh, damn!
Suddenly he wildly looked around, a little like a trapped animal. Why did it always have to happen in the bathroom, he asked himself—the bicarb, the flame, the blade (if that counted), and now this? Could there be something wrong about the bathroom, something either in the room itself or in his childhood associations?
But neither the bathroom walls nor his minutely searched memory returned an answer.
It was dark in the hall outside and he almost bumped into his sister. He recoiled, stared at her a moment, then threw his hand over his eyes, darted into his bedroom and shut the door.
"Is there something wrong, Ernie?" she called after him.
"Wrong?"
The door muffled his voice. "How do you mean?"
"I mean about your eyes."
"My eyes?" It was almost a scream. "What about my eyes?"