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)
She’s trying to tell me something. Her eyes go back to normal, and they don’t seem as scary anymore. I’m starting to see the real girl underneath.
She steps out into the hall. It’s quiet except for the howling wind, and dark, with only the white emergency light on. The power must still be out.
Farida continues to stare at me, perhaps more expectantly than before.
She wants me to follow her.
My heart seizes up at the thought. The storm is still battering the lodge, rain pattering against the roof.
But I put one foot in front of the other.
She nods and keeps walking, going down the stairs.
And so I follow the dead girl once again.
We creep down the stairs and across the common room, where the fire is still roaring, but there isn’t a soul in sight, and then she opens the door and steps outside.
I’m immediately met with lashings of rain, my hair flying around.
Farida’s nightgown doesn’t even move with the breeze. She turns and walks toward the lab.
Oh no.
I stop immediately, too fearful to go on.
But she turns around and gives me a look, one that brims with intensity, and keeps walking.
I have to follow.
I have to know.
I hurry after her, glancing around wildly, expecting to see someone.
But it’s just us and the trees and the storm.
She walks to the door to the lab building and opens it, no key card needed.
I’m at her heels, scared to be inside but eager to be out of the storm. She walks down the middle of the learning lab, heading straight to the door at the end.
Just like before, she doesn’t need a key card to open it, and she steps inside the stairwell.
Oh Jesus, I think, stepping in behind her until the door closes with a soft click. I stare down at the flickering light at the bottom of the narrow stairs. I’m no longer afraid of the dead girl. I am afraid of this place. The real lab.
“What if Everly is down there?” I whisper to the girl. “Michael?”
She doesn’t say anything, just starts walking down the stairs.
Well, fuck. At first, I thought maybe this girl was trying to help me in some way or was trying to get me to help her.
Now I’m wondering if she’s leading me into a trap.
I’m still paused at the top of the stairs, too afraid to keep going, when Farida finally looks up at me from the bottom, her hand on the door to the left, the room I’ve never been in. She raises her finger to her mouth, a strange sight with her head at such a terrible angle, and tells me to be quiet.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I start walking quietly down the stairs, feeling like I want to throw up all over again. Every molecule in my body is frozen in terror, the feeling so palpable that waves of goosebumps constantly wash over my skin.
I’m shaking as I reach the bottom of the stairs, and she turns the handle and opens the door.
The room is dim, with only a light in the corner.
It’s an operating lab, just like the one I saw through the cougar’s eyes.
There are three tables spread out in the middle, all of them empty. Machines beep softly all around us.
And in the corner of the room, where the single light is, is another table.
This one has a body on it.
Clayton.
He’s lying there, strapped to the table. Various machines are hooked up to him: IVs and electrodes and oxygen snake in through his nose. Beside him is a ventilator that is on, the sound of the pump steady, but it isn’t attached to him. There are A-fib paddles beside him too, as if he’d just died of cardiac arrest and someone tried to revive him.
I slowly step forward, fear a knot in my throat, and realize that he’s not dead at all. His chest is rising slightly. The heart monitor shows a very slow and shallow pulse.
I come closer still, staring at him in horror as I realize that he was shot in the chest, a bloody bandage covering the area.
Even worse is when I look at his face.
His eyes are open, not blinking, staring at the ceiling.
At first, it doesn’t look like anything has been done to his head, but then I see the staples along his hairline.
I turn around to look at the ghost, to ask her what I should do.
But the ghost is gone.
The door is closed.
It’s just Clayton and me alone in the room.
Sydney, he says.
I gasp and spin around to see him staring at me.
You came, he says.
But his mouth isn’t moving.
I can hear him in my head.
“What the fuck?” I breathe.
He attempts a smile, but it’s crooked. His eyes start to water.
Suddenly, his face goes blank.
She’s coming, he says. Hide.
“What?”
Hide!
I hear someone starting to thump down the stairs, and I look around wildly for a place to hide. Oh fuck, oh fuck.