Chapter 5 #2
After locking the doors, I turn off my dome light and plunge the car into darkness. Sleeping with a bag of salt feels weird, but you know what, it’s not the weirdest thing to happen to me in the past twenty-four hours, so I prop the bag open in the cupholder of the door in case I need easy access.
I close my eyes, but every breath sounds so loud in the quiet of the car. Every noise outside sends a stab of adrenaline through me. This is ridiculous. I’m going to drive myself insane.
Minutes drag into hours as I force my eyes to stay closed, doing a breathing exercise Mom taught me. Bob’s warm weight against my ribs helps. His breathing evens out into tiny snores, and I focus on matching my rhythm to his.
My body finally surrenders to exhaustion around two in the morning.
I wake to scratching on my stomach.
My eyes snap open to darkness. I can only see shadows, but something’s scratching at my stomach through my T-shirt.
“Buddy?” I peel open my sleeping bag. Bob snaps his head up from where he was just asleep with his head on my shoulder, the cone tilting.
Something glimmers farther down in the bag, like my phone screen is on and buried deep in the fabric. But my phone’s on the dashboard.
I yank the bag up all the way.
A translucent hand reaches up between my legs through the bottom of my sleeping bag, one finger tracing along my stomach.
Oh fuck—
I reach for the skillet under my seat, but I’m not fast enough. The arm reaches upward, each inch revealing more dense smoke that glows white in the darkness. Its fingers spread wide.
The hand plunges down.
Into my stomach.
Agony explodes through me like someone just reached inside and grabbed my organs with frozen claws.
I can feel fingers wrapping around my intestines, cold seeping into organs that should never know cold.
I try to scream, try to get any sound out at all, but the pain crushes the air from my lungs and all I can manage is a pathetic rasp.
The hand grips.
And pulls.
Using my organs as leverage, the ghost hauls itself up through the bottom of the car. The pain hits, and nothing else exists outside of it. I’m gasping, choking, trying to pull in air. The thing forces its way through inch by agonizing inch, using its grip on my insides to drag itself into the car.
It slithers over my body until it hovers above me. A man’s face peers down at me, his features shifting and reforming from wisps of luminescent smoke. He has gaunt cheeks. Skin like paper stretched over bone. His eyes are milky voids, and his mouth hangs open so wide I can see his back teeth.
He slides his fingers out of my body with a wet, sucking sound.
I can finally scream, a guttural sound ripping out of my damaged throat. But the ghost’s eyes lock onto mine, and my scream cuts off into a whimper.
I try reaching for the skillet again, but my arm won’t move. Why won’t my fucking arm move?
I beg my arms to swing, try to get my legs to kick, but nothing responds. It’s like someone cut the wires between my thoughts and my limbs. I’m trapped inside my body, conscious but unable to move.
“Pretty girl,” he says. The ghost in the library was barely intelligible, but this voice rings clear inside my head, bypassing my ears. “Let’s see how long you stay that way.”
Bob is going ballistic, but he might as well be miles away for all the good it does me. The ghost touches a long finger to my cheek, then pushes deeper through my skin.
Into my face.
He adds another finger. Then another, until his entire hand disappears into my mouth and then travels down to my throat until I can feel him blocking my esophagus.
Salt. I need to reach the salt, but how am I supposed to reach it when I can’t move my fingers?
I try as hard as I can to curl my fingers, but it’s like trying to lift a bag of concrete mix with my pinky. The ghost’s eyes bore into mine. Something cold and wrong spreads through my skull like liquid nitrogen. I push against whatever invisible force is holding me down. My pinky twitches.
I pour every ounce of willpower I have into my right hand. My fingers brush the plastic of the salt bag lying open in the cupholder. The ghost’s mouth widens, and drool drips from the corners and evaporates before it reaches me.
Come on.
I hook the edge of the bag. I force my fingers to close around a tiny pinch of salt, and with everything I have, I fling it at that face.
The ghost’s head snaps up like someone just yanked on an invisible leash. Whatever force was pinning me to the seat releases all at once, and I grip the entire salt bag, grabbing the biggest handful I can manage, and throw the whole thing at the ghost’s face.
The ghost screams so loud that goosebumps rise on my arms. Where the salt hits, the smoke of his body hisses and sizzles, dissolving into nothing like acid eating through paper. His face contorts in agony, those milky eyes going wide with what might be shock, or rage, or both.
Then he’s gone, seeping through the floor of my car like water through a drain, his scream fading away.
I draw in a breath so deep it sends me into a coughing fit, doubling over as my lungs remember how to work. I scan my backseat, expecting him to come lunging back up, but there’s nothing else in here except for a dusting of salt covering everything I own. And Bob.
“It’s gone.” I reach for him, but he presses against the seat away from me, which makes me feel like absolute crap.
My stomach lurches.
I lunge for the plastic container I keep my toiletries in, dumping its contents onto the passenger seat just in time for me to vomit into it.
I heave until tears drip from my eyes. Some clear substance stretches between my mouth and the container.
I stare at the gooey strands hanging from my lips because that’s not supposed to be coming out of me.
I retch again, this time bringing up what looks like a jellyfish put through a blender. I can only stare at it.
What is that? Did the ghost put that in me?
The clear goop is stringy and iridescent, catching the streetlight like oil on water. Bob whimpers from the backseat, and I want to comfort him, but I can barely hold myself together right now. I press my palm against my stomach, expecting to find holes, but there’s nothing.
I hurl up more slime. Tears stream down my face, mixing with the snot running from my nose.
This is too much. This is all too much.
Did I really think I could just salt my car and go back to my normal life? Who was I kidding? There’s no normal life anymore. Not when things like this can reach through the floor and violate me while I sleep.
What was I doing, saying no to those guys, anyway? What was I trying to prove? That I was tough enough to handle ghosts on my own? I’m clearly not.
I choke on a sob, pressing my fist against my mouth.
Bob needs me to be okay. I have to be okay, but I’m so tired.
So tired of pretending I can handle things when everything keeps getting worse and I don’t know what I’m doing, and I just want someone to tell me it’s going to be fine even if they’re lying.
Every few minutes, I’m doubled over the plastic container again, heaving up more of that disgusting jelly substance that shouldn’t exist. I have to dump it out onto the pavement every time I puke because the coppery smell makes me heave even when I’m not actively throwing up.
I want to scrub my skin off. I want to burn this sleeping bag.
I want to go back in time and accept Donny’s offer immediately instead of being stupid enough to think I could handle this alone.
The tears won’t stop either. They just keep leaking out like my body’s decided to purge every liquid it’s ever contained, mixing with the slime on my chin until I can’t tell what’s what anymore. I can’t stop shaking and I can’t stop crying, and Bob keeps licking my face like he can fix this.
By the time the sky lightens, I’m curled in a ball with the empty container clutched to my chest, just waiting for the next wave of nausea. Bob’s pressed against my stomach like he’s trying to protect the parts of me that ghost touched, and I love him so much it hurts.
But I’ve had enough.
I clutch Donny’s business card, gripping it so tightly that some slime smears across the cardstock.
It’s barely sunrise. Too early to call. I’d never call another person this early in any normal situation, but I’m still leaking slime out of my face from my 3 AM violation by Casper the Unfriendly Pervert, so I’d hardly call this a normal situation.
“Is this Eden?” Donny’s calming voice answers, and I close my eyes, relishing how safe hearing that voice makes me feel.
“I’m sorry I told you no yesterday,” I say, pressing my hand to my mouth because even though my throat is feeling marginally better today, just the act of talking is making me want to throw up again. “If you’d still have me, I really want that job.”