CHAPTER NINE
Ash.
Thick clots of serrated barbs that cut, scraping down my throat. Burn my eyes. I’m choking even before I pry my eyelids open.
There is no light in the forest. No fractured fingers leaking through knotted branches. The clearing is a well of encompassing darkness that echoes with the hiss and snap of the fire.
I scramble onto all fours, gaze searching the dense cluster of shifting shadows pushing in all around.
“No...” I whisper.
“Rina.” His voice is a whisper, urgent and pressing, yet thunders through the silence with the ferocity of a bomb. “You need to let me in.”
Shaking, I push to my knees and up onto my feet. My temper coils with the hard wedge of fear lodged in my throat.
“I don’t have time for this right now,” I snap into the void. “My boys are in danger. I need to go back.”
Like a malicuri birthed from darkness, he materializes before me. A monstrous tower of raw, masculine strength bound by shadows. He’s a looming force that bows my neck back as I’m forced to squint up into the tangle of branches overhead for his face.
“You need to let me in,” he says again in a shredded snarl that washes through the clearing. “You’re in danger.”
Hot, gritty air sweeps around me. Stings my eyes until they burn with tears.
“What’s happening?”
In the distance, something shrieks. A high, piercing wail that spears through me.
“You need to say my name, Rina.” Knees bend as he drops to one and still his face is lost in the murky depths of night. “Say it!”
Breathing hard, I shake my head. “I don’t know ... what’s your name?”
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I jolt awake, coughing.
The gritty soot of fire is replaced with the damp chill of an icebox. The dirt beneath me is rough concrete, moist to the touch and sandy. It scratches my palms as I push off my back and try not to inhale the grimy scent of mold and wet. Just wet. Damp, muggy stone and stagnant puddles.
I’m in the middle of a yellow pool of light. The dingy bulb creaks on its chain overhead. Beyond the border, shapes scuttle. Steel hisses against stone.
“Hello?” I whisper stupidly like every idiot in every horror movie.
A low, deliberate scratch of nails, but no response.
Carefully, I push to my feet. My hands dust my backside as I survey the faint outline of shapes beyond my sanctuary.
I think I’m in the basement. How I got here is beyond me, but I need to find my way back upstairs. I need to find Roan, Lukan and Kellen.
The whisper of chains scatters my thoughts.
Their clink and clatter dragging across the cement has the hairs at the back of my neck lifting.
My heart stutters, even as the tempo increases to a deafening crescendo.
It takes everything in me not to shut my eyes and ignore the slithering thing stalking my tiny circle of protection.
“Rina...”
Instinctively, I flinch at the hollow whisper of my name brushing through the room with iron spikes.
I whip around, expecting to face unimaginable horror, but there’s nothing.
Just the rolling darkness stretching far into nothingness.
Still, the thing just outside the halo of light continues to circle. Toying with me.
From the corner of my eye, I catch the faintest flicker of something thick and scaly sweep in and out of the circle. It happens so fast that I almost think I imagined it. But it happens again on my other side.
I can’t even pretend this is a dream anymore.
I can’t fool myself into thinking I’m imagining it.
My brain no longer has the capacity to make excuses for the things I’m seeing when I’m trapped in a cellar with something that doesn’t walk, but glides across the stone.
Something tall enough that their outline reaches the rafters.
I am trapped in a nightmare, and I don’t know how to get out.
If I even can.
I will. I have to. There is no other choice. I need to find my boys.
My fingers bunch into fists at my side. A feeble attempt to portray strength when I know I am not strong enough to fight whatever is stalking me. Still, I’m going to try. I’m going to put everything I have into getting away, even if it means—
“Rina!”
My heart leaps at the sound of my name right before a square of light punches through the darkness. But it’s the figure silhouetted on the threshold that has my muscles stiffening.
“Mom?”
She reaches inside and flicks the switch. I hear the click from my place below. Followed by several more rapid clicks.
“Rina? Are you down there?”
My relief at seeing her is immediately overshadowed by the fact that there is a monster loose somewhere down here with me and she has no idea.
“Mom, you need to get away from here,” I shout.
“What? I’m not going anywhere. Get up here. Why are you down there in the dark?”
My ears strain to hear the chains. The slow slither of something heavy moving across the concrete. But there is only silence.
“Rina? Let’s go.”
I run.
I run the way you do when you’re in the basement and need to get up the stairs before the monster gets you. I bolt my butt up two steps at a time to the landing and practically throw myself into the kitchen.
Mom slams the door shut and turns to me.
She’s still in her coat and boots. Her thick, black hair is knotted over one shoulder in a heavy braid contained by a green elastic. Her blue eyes stare into my face, wide with confusion.
“What happened?” she demands, rushing over to put her warm hands on my arms. “Are you okay?”
Relieved to be out of there, so happy to see her, I throw myself into her arms and nearly sob when she closes them tight around me.
“I’ve had the weirdest night.” I sniffle into her shoulder. “You won’t believe...”
She shushes me gently, fingers stroking through my hair. “It’s alright now. I’m here. Everything is going to be okay.” She pulls back and cups my cheeks. “Let’s go home.”
I don’t need to hear a single thing more.
I’m ready, except...
“What are you doing here?”
Her eyes roll. “Why do you think? After we got disconnected, I started to worry that something happened so I came to get you.”
That is something Mom would do, but still.
“You left Dad?”
Her dark brows pull together between her eyes. “Rina, I am not letting you face this weather alone. Now, let’s get out of here. It’s almost Christmas and we have a million things we need to prepare for.”
I don’t like that she left Dad alone when we both made a pact to always be close by, but I know she wouldn’t be able to sit comfortably at home while I was out in this weather without a way to get a hold of me.
That’s all conversation for later.
“I can’t leave yet,” I tell her, remembering why I was in the basement. “Kellen, Lukan and Roan are here and they’re trying to get some book away from Aunt Laura’s ghost upstairs.”
Mom blinks. She stares at me like I’ve lost my mind, and maybe I have.
“Honey, Aunt Laura’s dead and ghosts aren’t real.”
Mom has always had a strange belief around the supernatural. She believes in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, everything else kind of falls into the fiction realm of things. But I don’t have time to explain.
With her shouting after me, I hurry through the kitchen. My feet slap across wood as I round the corner and jog to the foyer. On a whim, I peek at the clock — nine — but I don’t stop as I scramble up the stairs.
Mom grabs me on the third step. Her hands fist into my cardigan and pull me forcibly back. I nearly crash to the floor as my feet slip out from under me.
“We don’t have time for this,” she barks through gritted teeth. “The storm is getting worse and ... think of your father.”
I stare into her soft, round face with a mixture of confusion and annoyance.
“My boys are up there,” I tell her firmly. “I need—”
She blinks and I realize my choice of wording is about to start a conversation.
“Rina, you can’t trust them. They have been lying to you.”
It’s my turn to stare.
“What are you talking about?”
“Get your hands off her.”
Kellen, Lukan and Roan stand at the three points of exit.
Kellen at the top of the stairs. Lukan in the doorway leading to the dining room and Roan on the threshold of the sitting room.
None of them look pleased. There is a pluming darkness coiling off them that seems to fill the air.
It tangles with the light, stealing what’s left filtering through.
“Now,” Kellen orders, moving down the stairs with slow, booming thumps. “Or I’ll make you.”
Outraged by his behavior, I straighten and put my arm out across Mom, shielding her. “Hey, that’s my mom—”
“Baby, come here,” Roan murmurs gently, but with a firmness that leaves no room for disobedience.
“What’s going on?” Mom cries, clutching my arm. “Rina? Don’t leave me with them.”
The situation is spiraling out of hand. They don’t remember her and probably think she’s something creepy from the house.
“Guys, it’s okay. It’s just my mom,” I try to explain.
“No, sweetheart, she isn’t,” Lukan murmurs.
“What’s going on?” Mom grips me tighter, terrified. She’s scrambling back, taking me with her and I can’t blame her.
“You’re scaring her,” I snap. “Of course it’s my mom. Look at her.”
“Rina, there’s a storm outside. How would she get here?”
“He’s lying,” Mom whispers. “You know nothing would stop me from getting to you.” That’s very true. “Don’t let them hurt me, Rina.”
I put a hand up when Kellen takes his final step off the stairs.
“I think we just need to calm down,” I attempt at reasoning. “We should—”
“She’s lying to you,” Kellen says sharply.
Mom presses deeper against my back. Her fingers tighten into my sweater. My arm. Her nails are digging through the wool to bite into skin.
I flinch.
She doesn’t notice.
“Am I the one lying to her, though?” Mom cocks her head as if in challenge. “Have you been honest with her, Kellen?” The way she hisses his name sends a chill down my spine. “Have you told her why you’re here?”