Chapter 1 Hannah #2
Then she shimmied down, and suddenly her lips and tongue were between my legs, licking and sucking and making the most tantalizing sounds.
In that moment, all our flirty, casual hangouts became something more.
I gripped the couch with white knuckles, reduced to a barely coherent string of “oh my God” as her tongue drew circles and her hands pushed my thighs apart.
She’d moaned loudly. Told me I tasted good.
Said dirty things I’d never heard before except in movies.
Gazing into the fire, I can almost feel her tongue again, and her lips moving hungrily against me. Heat pools in my belly, and I hate that my body still responds to memories of her.
But nothing in my life had ever felt so amazing. From that day on, every moment we spent together was a dream.
Until…
Until she stopped smiling at me the same way two weeks ago.
Until she began scowling every time she thought I wasn’t looking, flexing her fingers and clenching her fists like she was antsy, flinching when I touched her.
Until she stopped coming over and became someone I didn’t recognize, who abruptly ended years of love with a text.
I shake my head and open the journal, flipping through pages covered in Riley’s handwriting. Over the last year, she added a new poem every few weeks, with the most recent one being a month ago.
The inside cover always baffled me—some verse written in another language, maybe Latin, and not even in her handwriting.
Hic anima tenetur vincta
Donec victima libens
Se tradat toto corde
Vinculo quod infernum facit
Sic somnus frangetur.
The love poems overshadowed it, so I never asked what it meant. Probably meaningless decorative text, and anyway, it doesn’t matter anymore.
I fold my arms across the book, holding it to my chest. “I should get to bed. I’m exhausted.”
Dean nods. “Call me if you can’t sleep. We can watch a slasher movie or whatever you want.”
“Thanks.”
He strides over and wraps me in a hug, and I stiffen, not ready for the contact.
When he pulls back, he has that worried expression I’ve been seeing a lot lately. “You sure you’re okay? I can stay.”
“I’m fine. Just tired.”
He hesitates, then nods again.
I should be grateful he came over to support me through a breakup, but I just want to be alone. Opening my heart to other people never seems to end well, and I’m not particularly interested in doing it again, even for my best friend.
The moment he leaves through the side gate, a tear slides down my cheek like it’s been waiting there all evening. I wipe it away angrily.
I have to stop getting abandoned. If I keep letting people matter this much, if I keep giving them the power to destroy me, eventually there won’t be anything left of me. I should’ve learned this lesson two years ago when my parents chose traveling over their daughter, but here we are.
Never again. Nobody is allowed to make me feel this weak and vulnerable anymore.
I hold the journal out over the flames—these poems that meant the world to me. “Promise me you’ll always keep this close, no matter what,” Riley had said. “Even if we fight. Even if you’re mad at me. I know it’s just poems, but…they’re our poems.”
Fuck that. Maybe Dean is right that this book could mean something again one day, but right now, all it represents is an emotional tie I don’t need. Once I get rid of it, I’ll be free from her. I can move on and become a new person, and I’m never going to make the same mistake again.
Drop it. Just do it.
Every memory of her has to go. Every picture, every video, the smell of her clothes, the taste of her chocolates, the inner workings of her brain that she poured onto these pages.
“Good riddance,” I mutter, as if the words are an incantation that will sever whatever still connects us.
My hands shake as I hold the journal over the flames. The leather is warm from the fire’s heat, just like Riley’s body used to be when she’d curl against me.
“I love you so much it scares me,” she said one night that wasn’t so long ago. “I didn’t know I could feel like this.”
A sob bursts from my throat before I can stop it, raw and ugly in the quiet night.
I suck it back, holding my breath like I’m about to jump off a cliff…and drop my last and most meaningful piece of Riley into the fire.
It lands on a crumbling log with a crack. The noise echoes, filling the sky. Through a haze of ash and flames, I swear I see dark wisps of smoke curl around it like ghostly fingers rising from the earth.
And the fact that I’m now hallucinating is definitely my cue that it’s time to pack it in.
I rub my tired eyes and toss the empty box after it, waiting for the relief and freedom to hit me.
The sun has set, dusk turning everything gray, and my breath mists.
The Walshes’ lights are on next door, their TV flickering through drawn curtains.
The faint sound of their baby crying carries through the closed windows.
The reminder of familiar people nearby should be comforting, but it only makes me lonelier.
As the journal disintegrates into dying embers, I grab the broom I used as a poker and turn away, ready to get inside and warm up by the old wood-burning fireplace that’s been by my side since I was born. At least my house can’t abandon me, even if everyone in it has.
I take one step when the flame flares in my periphery. A blast of heat washes over me.
My breath catches, and I spin back to the bonfire.
It’s roared back to life, bright and blazing hot. It hisses and crackles, drowning out the distant cawing of crows.
My heart jumps, and I step back. Did I accidentally toss in something dangerous? Should I get the fire extinguisher?
With another whoosh of light, the flames turn green. The air shimmers around them, forming a haze between me and the treeline.
I cover my mouth and scramble backward. Shit, is the fire reacting to something toxic? Maybe it’s the ink in the poetry book or… Could there be traces of gasoline at the bottom of the cardboard box?
The flames reach higher, casting a green glow across the yard. The haze spreads, and a thick, earthy smell meets my nose. Strands of my hair lift in a gust of wind.
Oh God. Something tells me no household extinguisher or garden hose is going to smother this thing. I have to call the fire department.
But before I can race to the house to get my phone, the fire goes out like someone flipped a switch.
I freeze, holding the broom out as if it can protect me.
Smoke billows.
Silence engulfs me, so absolute that my ears ring.
Then, a rumble. It grows louder, sending a shiver up my spine.
The ground trembles. It spreads outward, rattling the chain link fence and making dead leaves dance across the grass.
A crack appears in the earth beneath the firepit, widening into a jagged line that splits the yard from the fire to the back fence. Smoke pours into the sky, the smell drying my throat and making me cough.
Run. Run. Run.
But my feet won’t move. My chest is tight, my breaths coming fast.
Forget the fire department. Something weird is going on, and this isn’t an ordinary toxic flame.
The smoke thickens, swirling upward in a column that gradually takes shape. It’s the outline of a woman.
In my next panicked breath, she solidifies, stepping out of the firepit.
Her presence seems to fill the entire world.
She must be about forty, with light skin and wavy brunette hair that catches the moonlight as it falls past her breasts.
She’s wearing a long coat that billows open, its dark fabric like a black hole in the twilight.
When she opens her eyes, they’re full of an intensity that makes my pulse quicken. I feel stripped bare, standing alone on the lawn with nothing but a broom. I can’t move. I can’t even tear my eyes away from her. I’m trapped in a nightmare, my legs shaking so hard I’m afraid they’ll give out.
Of all the confusion rocketing around in my brain and all the frantic questions I have, two facts are clear:
First, that thing I burned was not an ordinary journal.
Second…I’ve just unleashed something supernatural in my backyard.