Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 565(@200wpm)___ 452(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
“You going to be okay?” she asks me as I sit on the edge of my bed, the smoke from the match wafting across the room.
“Are you tucking me in?”
“No,” she says with a wink. “But I’m going to take advantage of having the power out.” She wags her brows suggestively, and I know that Rav is on her agenda again.
I also think she wants me to stay put and not go looking for Kincaid. I don’t blame her for that. I don’t even know what I would say to him. I’ve said so much to him already, and he always has an answer.
It’s in your head, he’ll say.
The wild animals I know he’s seen.
He probably knows exactly why they are that way.
But me, throwing up mycelia?
Me, seeing the secret lab through the cougar’s eyes?
He’ll just tell me it’s all in my head.
And maybe it is.
Maybe everything is truly in my head.
But I trust myself to figure it all out before he does.
“Take it easy tonight, okay?” Lauren says as she walks to my door. “You’ve looked better.”
“Thanks,” I say sarcastically.
She sticks her tongue out at me, but in that last second before the door closes, I see the gravity in her expression, how much she truly worries.
Leaving her behind will be hard.
But it’s necessary.
I sit on the side of the bed for a while, watching the candles flicker, my thoughts going nowhere and thinking everything. Then I decide to pick up my diary, flipping through the entries, of which I only remembered to write in every couple of days. Everything I thought and felt is recorded, and reading it reminds me that if anyone were to find this, they would only think I’m crazy. This reads like the rantings of a lunatic, not someone to be taken seriously.
Maybe even I shouldn’t take myself seriously.
Still, I pick up my pencil and start writing down everything that happened today, forcing myself to relive it, forcing me to record every detail. I fill pages of it.
Finally, after what feels like hours, I get to my feet and grab the candle, walking it over to the mirror, wanting a good look at myself.
Woof. Lauren wasn’t lying when she said I’ve looked better. My face is as pale as a ghost, purple bags under my eyes, my lips cracked and dry. I stand there, staring at myself, the flickering candles creating light and shadows to dance on my face.
They dance until my appearance changes.
My nails are long and black.
My hair brown.
Then it goes back to blonde again, and Kincaid appears behind me, hands on my shoulders.
I glance down. My shoulders are bare. He’s not here.
And when I lift my head again to look in the mirror, there’s no one there.
I’m alone, dressed as I was before, my appearance the same as it ever was.
I reach up and touch the tips of my hair just as a cold breeze blows at my back, snuffing out the candles in the room.
Plunging me into darkness.
I shriek and turn around, checking to see if I left the window open a crack.
But instead, I see a figure in my room.
Standing in the corner.
Wearing white.
Oh my god, no.
Not her, not again.
The girl’s face is dark in the shadows of her long black hair that hangs to the side like a sheet.
Her neck is broken, at an angle.
It’s Farida.
White eyes glow from the darkness, staring at me.
“What do you want?” I whisper. My body starts to tremble all over, my mouth tasting like pennies. Dread seizes my bones, paralyzing me with a sense of helplessness so acute that I might just pass out.
The girl doesn’t say anything.
She just stares.
The air in the room thickens, feeling oppressive, filling with smoke from the snuffed candles. I feel like I can’t breathe, like I’m suffocating.
Then she takes a step toward me.
A gasp chokes in my throat, and I drop the candle, wax spilling onto the floor.
She takes another step.
She’s going to kill me, I think. She’s jealous I’m alive, and she’s going to kill me.
“Please,” I plead. “Please don’t hurt me, I’m not your enemy.”
She pauses at that.
Then slowly tilts her head to the other side.
CRACK, CRACK, CRACK, goes the vertebrae in her neck, the awful sound filling the room.
I pinch my eyes shut, hoping that maybe she’s not real, maybe it’s in my head, maybe I can convince my brain to get rid of her. Make her disappear, poof.
I open my eyes.
Her face is inches away, eyes bugging out, mouth stretched impossibly wide in a silent scream.
Fuck!
My own scream chokes me, rattling in my throat.
I almost collapse to the floor.
Then the girl turns away from me, and I feel her arm as it brushes past mine. I feel it. Cold, so fucking cold. And I watch in terror as she walks toward my door. She opens it and looks back at me, her head still at a horrible angle.