Chapter 16
Istumbled through my front door, ready to tumble into bed and collapse into a deep, exhausted sleep.
My cunt was throbbing and sore, my legs wobbled on each step, and the leftover haze of alcohol pounded at my skull and dried my tongue past the point of being bearable.
And I didn’t want to think about any of that right now.
The memories and feelings were too fresh, too loaded.
How could that man slip into my mind, my body, and leave splinters of himself behind? It would leave me in turmoil trying to decipher what just happened. How wicked, and rushed, and quick, and… and exhilarating.
Damn him, the frustrating, tantalizing bastard.
Stewing in my frustration and fatigue, I stomped to my room and tossed my purse onto my vanity. Something clattered on the floor, halting me on my mindless path. I blinked groggily, trying to make heads or tails of what I was seeing.
My purse had knocked my hairbrush to the floor.
Which made me stop short. I couldn’t remember leaving my hairbrush on my vanity. Hadn’t it been in the bathroom after I’d showered earlier in the day?
Yes, I’d certainly left it in the bathroom.
The air wavered around me. Something felt off kilter and cooled my blood.
“Hello?”
I glanced around the rest of my room, squinting at every nook and cranny.
There was something just off about the space, the air, as if something had passed through and left invisible traces behind.
A phantom leaving a plague in its wake. My sluggish heart pounded faster, and faster.
Each breath sawed through my lungs, hitching higher in my chest until it clogged the base of my throat.
All the drawers in my dresser were shut when I left earlier. It was something I was picky about. It itched under my skin if the drawers weren’t shut properly. Yet the top drawer wasn’t quite closed. It was open enough for hints of lace to peek through a narrow gap.
“…the fuck?” My shoes got in my way, partially tripping me as I rushed to the drawers. There didn’t seem to be anything missing, but with my mind clouded and a load of clean laundry in the dryer, it was hard to tell for sure.
In my rush to leave, I must have forgotten to shut the drawer and put the hairbrush back in the bathroom. That was all. Right?
Right.
God, get a grip, Ophelia.
The fluttering in my chest continued, a furious pounding that didn’t relent. Things were too weird lately, and I needed to get ahold of my sanity before it slipped through my fingers like sand in an hourglass.
Moving cautiously, I went about my nightly routine, righting the hairbrush and shutting all doors and drawers along the way.
I double-checked that all the doors to the house were locked, and perhaps it was the fading alcohol fueling my paranoia, but I put my vanity chair in front of my bedroom door.
Still slightly shaken, I tucked myself into bed.
It made me feel a bit childish to leave the lamp on, but my nerves wouldn’t settle without the soft glow.
As exhaustion rose higher from the darkness to claim me, I relaxed infinitesimally.
The unsettling experiences lurked in the corners of my mind, and my thoughts flitted between racing and paralyzed.
I pulled the blanket over my head and buried my face in my pillow.
A distinct aroma filled my nose. One I had been drenched in not even an hour before. The same scent that lingered on my skin after an illicit encounter at the bar.
Sweet tobacco, earthy with undertones of a woodsy vanilla.
My heart plummeted into my guts and sizzled to a pulp in my stomach acid. Tendrils of horror swept up and wrapped around me, keeping me too terrified to fall asleep. My thoughts were a thorn snagged under the skin, and I spent the night scratch, scratch, scratching it bloody and raw.
Had someone been in my room?
It was 4 AM, and I still felt the echoing pulse of him in my core. A satisfied ache cradled inside me like a nest of warmth. And I was hollow, so empty and alone. The heat he had pounded into me now sat as a bittersweet pit opening wide beneath my heart.
In the silent hours of a too-early morning, I slunk into the shadow-draped kitchen and poured myself a cup of coffee. It didn’t quench my thirst or ease the lethargy settled in the marrow of my bones. Hot, bitter, acidic, it churned through me and turned me inside out.
I added vanilla sweet cream to the second glass just to choke it down. Normally I loved the taste, the aroma, the ritual of drinking from a large mug that warmed my fingers. But a bad taste clung to my tongue after last night and I couldn’t seem to scrub it away.
Draped in a burgundy chunky-knit sweater and black jeans, I escaped the house half an hour before the Kilbride library opened. I stored a thermos of sweetened coffee in my bag along with my grandfather’s mystery journal.
Since I was completely caught up on all my assignments at the moment, I was taking the liberty of spending my free time on research.
Not that I expected to get far with the nonsense layered on every page.
But it was easier to turn my focus inward and think about the past rather than dragging up anxiety with thoughts of the present.
An escape in every way possible.
Fog spread in the predawn hours like a sluggish creature crawling across the lawn.
Dead leaves crackled and crunched as ghosts walked across the campus.
Lamps hung in the gloom as round and silver and miniature moons lining the path to the old library.
It was a glorious ode to gothic architecture, and I loved every inch of the library, from the detailed windows, the pointed spires, down to the layer of moss highlighting the darker corners of the stone.
It felt like a victory to be the first person of the day to sign in.
The excitement of stepping over the threshold and into an atmosphere of knowledge beat away the leash of fatigue collared around my throat.
Wide-eyed and suddenly bushy-tailed, I savored the timeless energy suffusing my skin, blood, and bones.
And the smell of old wood, aged leather, and history washed over me.
I didn’t visit the library as often as I would have preferred. Assistant hours with Professor Quinn had taken up more of my time the past month than I’d expected out of my senior year. Not that I hated spending time in his presence.
Visions of being fucked over a dingy bar sink flashed through my head. I shook those thoughts out and exhaled a heavy sigh.
“Okay, focus!” I whispered to myself.
The two-story library yawned before me like a monstrous gullet filled to the brim with books and tomes instead of bones and flesh.
A mouth of wooden banisters for teeth and isles stretching wide in a smile.
Spiraling staircases on opposite ends of the bookish haven twisted toward the mezzanine level, and tables and chairs were set at intervals sprawling across the center of the first floor.
Instead of claiming a central table on the first floor, I climbed the back stairs and wove through the stacks until a hidden table in the corner emerged.
It was a secret spot my grandfather had told me about so long ago I’d almost forgotten about it.
And now my favorite spot whenever I found time for the impressive university library.
Though as much as I wanted to plop down into the chair and sip on another gallon of coffee, I had a pressing need to find resources first. My mind wouldn’t let me even think about sitting down until I had scoured the shelves for books that might hold clues.
Though clues for what, I couldn’t say. I was lost in the dark, trying to understand what my grandfather might have been involved in. Curiosity was getting the best of me, as usual.
Even though I refused to say his name out loud, I turned inward to that first meeting in Professor Quinn’s office weeks ago.
History had ties to many strange events across time, and lately part of me agreed that there could be kernels of truth to some myths and legends.
With the way my reality had bounced between occult nightmares and inexplicable sightings, it was time to put my research skills to the test.
I left my bag on the desk and went on a hunt through the stacks. The perfume of ink and moldering parchment filled my nose. Low lights guided me aisle to aisle, and the pile of books in my arms reached my chin before I returned to the table.
“Let’s see what you were up to, Grandpa Hunter.” Coffee in one hand, journal in the other, I got to work spreading out my materials. Several books on mythology joined a few on the occult, spread open like butterflies on display.
It made my stomach sink, but there on paper, written in my grandfather’s writing, was an ancient language alongside doodles of owl parts.
A language professor would have notebooks and lesson plans on the materials he taught, but this wasn’t an official book for the school.
Nothing like the old journals that were donated to the university when he passed.
Logically, I tried to reassure myself that monsters weren’t real, and I wasn’t legitimately going insane.
Weeks had passed, and I’d repeated an internal mantra that it was merely a mental break with all the stress affecting the chemicals in my brain.
But if that were true, my grandfather wouldn’t have sketches of the same damned owl creature that had chased me.
What the fuck did any of it mean?
The strange symbols would have to wait. First, I set about the task of translating the language Grandpa Hunter used for the journal. Hours of frustration passed before I realized my failings were because he’d used more than one language across the hundreds of pages.
By the time I finished the coffee, I wondered if I should skip the translating and jump straight into decoding the mystical glyphs marked in ink.
Supposing it wouldn’t hurt, I moved on. Time passed without notice, my stomach grumbled in protest, and a new sort of ache spawned behind my eyes as I referenced occult texts on runes.
It would take ages to dual-translate and untangle the web of scrawled nonsense. Because it was exactly that—nonsense.
There were things about my grandfather I was discovering, and I wasn’t particularly happy about it. Leave it to Hunter Ashcroft to write his mystery journal about an owl monster in a secret made-up language. Couldn’t he have just had an affair or a secret family like a normal grandfather?
Frustration, with undertones of grief and fear, tore through me. It was like climbing up a ladder only for a snake to spit venom in your eyes when you reached the top.
Undeterred by the dilemma of my family history, I worked straight through the daylight hours.
As it often did, my mind hyper-focused on the act of reading, scribbling, jotting notes and little thoughts, and spinning in a frantic whirlwind until the swelling sickness in my body drop-kicked me out of my obsessive studying haze.
All the downstairs voices had vanished. The lights had dimmed.
My body was screaming at me for going—I couldn’t remember how long—without eating or drinking a single drop of water. My heart raced, and my head drummed a painful rhythm. I cursed under my breath, fighting dizziness as I returned books and shoved my research into my bag.
I hadn’t noticed the time passing. It was as if I had been dropped squarely at the end of the world with a terrifying vortex trying to gobble me up.
And I wasn’t any closer to the answers I needed.