CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
The door to my apartment was open. It shouldn’t have been, I’d locked it that morning before I left for Dawnridge.
The keys were in my pocket, and the spare could only be accessed from inside where it sat tucked away in my bedside drawer.
Perhaps Auden had ventured outside and forgot to close it in his fevered state.
But there was an urgent voice in my head—a voice that wasn’t the Devil’s—that screamed wrong, wrong, wrong!
Greeted by an eerie, disorienting silence, I stepped inside and flicked on the light by the entry, listening for the familiar sound of the television from Auden’s bedroom. There was only an unsettling quiet.
Wanting to check on his fever, I wandered towards his bedroom, the hallway seemingly never-ending. One step forward only seemed to send me seven steps back. I blinked, quickening my pace, hand outstretched to grip the wall as the floor began to rise and fall like waves beneath my feet.
“Auden?!”
His bedroom door hung wide open. I paused amidst the waves, barely able to hold myself upright as the voice repeated wrong, wrong, wrong! Auden always had his door closed. He preferred the apartment divided into 'separate spaces'.
I peered through the doorway, dread humming through me as the single voice became several, all chanting wrong, wrong, wrong!
The bed was empty.
Bed sheets were sprawled along the floor—twisted, tangled, like tree roots in a dense forest. Abandoned food wrappings lay crumbled beside a pair of glasses and headphones, my gaze whipping around wildly in search of a light switch.
As a pale-yellow glow chased away the darkness, a scream threatened to tear through my chest. Blood spatters—dark, dried blood—painted the floor beside Auden’s bed.
It creeped along the bed sheets, a red trail leading toward a silver crucifix by his pillow, the sharp edge dripping with blood.
A bolt of recognition shot through me. Flames.
My mother in her white gown. A silver crucifix pointed toward me. But how did…?
Not real, not real, not real.
“AUDEN?!”
I reached for the crucifix in a panic. It was the only evidence that proved my mother had come for Auden. Joe must have told her of the visit, helping her track us down.
Joe is dead. You killed him.
That wasn’t real.
This isn’t real.
My fingers trembled around the crucifix. It didn't matter what was real. Auden was gone, and I would kill to ensure he was returned to me.