Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
Dalton, Georgia
Eighteen-year-old Dana Jo Glasser shivered as she watched the nightly news recap. Images of Midnight Ridge flashed across the screen, the story about a teenage girl named Minnie being murdered sending a chill through her.
The misty fog painted the mountain in ghostly images that reminded her of the monsters that plagued her at night.
Shadows hung in every corner of her room, made worse in her mind by the scary Halloween décor all over town that she’d seen today as people prepared for the holiday. Skeletons, zombies, ghosts, black widow spiders, bats, Frankensteins, werewolves and vampires.
Others celebrated the Day of the Dead, holding special ceremonies in the mountains.
And now a young girl about her age had died at Midnight Ridge.
The wind battered her bedroom window, a tree branch slamming against it. Thunder boomed outside, threatening rain and reminding her of lying on the wet muddy ground in the woods where the search and rescue team had found her that horrible day.
She glanced down at the scar on her right arm and her crooked pinky finger that had been broken, then tugged the long sleeves of her T-shirt over her hands. She’d been found in the same area where Minnie Benton had died.
Every day since had been a nightmare. Although police ruled her disappearance as an abduction, they’d never found the person who’d attacked her. She was terrified he’d come back for her.
She didn’t remember what had happened during the time she was abducted either. Sometimes she thought that was a blessing. Other times a curse.
At the hospital, doctors told her she’d been dehydrated, freezing and unconscious.
She’d sustained multiple injuries, including a severe concussion that had stolen her memory and left her with blinding headaches that, at times, forced her to go to bed for at least twenty-four hours.
Sometimes the migraines lasted for days.
Even when they passed, frustration lingered like a heavy dark cloud after a storm, refusing to allow in the light.
A sharp pain ripped through her temple, and she hurried to the bathroom to retrieve one of the pills the doctor had prescribed for the severe headaches that came on as quickly as lightning.
The pill bottle rattled as she uncapped it, the sound nerve-wracking like a hammer pounding nails into her skull.
With a groan, she plucked two tablets from it and tossed them down.
Tremors started deep within her and her hand shook as she filled a glass with water, yet she was trembling so hard she spilled half of the glass down her hand and arm.
Through blurred vision, she watched it trickle into the sink, the sound a reminder of the water running down the side of the mountain.
In the mirror, her eyes looked gaunt and red-rimmed, and the aura had already begun, creating a fog of blinking lights, making her head spin and nausea climb her throat.
Gripping the wall, she staggered back to her bedroom and collapsed onto the bed.
A knock sounded, echoing like a gong, and she pressed her hands over her ears to drown it out. Seconds later, light poured into the room as lightning zigzagged across the sky outside, and Dana Jo buried her face into the pillow to shut it out.
Footsteps echoed, then she felt her mother’s hand gently stroke her hair. “It’s happening again?”
She groaned a yes.
Her mother’s soft sigh was filled with worry. “I’m sorry, Dana Jo. I tucked Lou Lou in bed and read her two stories. I didn’t know if you wanted to kiss her goodnight, but I’ll tell her Mommy’s not feeling well.”
“I’m sorry,” Dana Jo whispered. God, how she hated this helpless feeling. Her poor little girl needed her, but sometimes she could barely handle life herself, much less be the mother precious Lou Lou deserved.
Thank God for her own mother. Dana Jo would have drowned in sorrow and confusion if she hadn’t helped her.
A wave of sadness overcame her, guilt weighing her down.
Her father had been so upset when he realized she was pregnant that he’d accused the boy she’d been dating of being the one who’d assaulted her.
Dana Jo had tried to defend Trevor and didn’t think he would have hurt her.
Instead, she sensed her attacker had been a stranger. And after a paternity test, she knew Trevor wasn’t Lou Lou’s father.
That her attacker was…
“Get some sleep,” her mother said softly.
A second later, the door closed and Dana Jo’s room was plunged into darkness just like her mind had been when she was found unconscious in the woods.