Chapter 5
Abroken sound slips out of me, strangled and barely recognizable.
“What just…” The words don’t make it past my clogged throat, thickening into a heavy, sticky knot at the base. God, I can’t breathe.
I can’t breathe.
Dax slips farther up the stairs, his form blurring into the dense fog swallowing the space around us.
There’s a ringing.
Shrill and high-pitched. Overpowering whatever’s being said behind me. My lips tremble, sluiced with salty tears.
Frantic thoughts scramble for another explanation, another version of what I saw that doesn’t leave my stomach sinking to my feet when a feather-like touch brushes my shoulder, cutting through the haze.
Manson.
Panic slams into me, and I lurch up the stairs in a blind rush, tripping over my feet.
An icy slickness races across my body as I catch myself against the iron-wrought railing, stumbling higher while every nerve in my body strains for any sign of Manson’s gait trailing after me. But I don’t dare look back.
Come on, I urge myself, dragging my limp body the rest of the way up. Darkness spreads in my periphery, and I furiously attempt to blink it away.
Blink again. Harder.
And then something shifts deeper in the house. A faint sound drifting down the dim, narrow hallway makes me stiffen to a complete stop at the top of the staircase.
Cracked lips part, my throat bobbing around words I can’t seem to dredge up.
Something is terribly, terribly wrong.
The tremor in my hands increases, snaking through my arms and sinking into my legs until it’s nearly impossible to maintain a steady step.
A moment later, the toe of my shoe snags on a loose floorboard, sending me stumbling sideways with a hiss as my shoulder clips the utility closet, something inside crashing to the ground.
That’s what finally makes him react.
Dax gasps, his deep, smoky baritone carrying from somewhere ahead.
For a split second, everything inside me stills. I squint into the diminished moonlight stretching across the long corridor.
“Who’s there?”
Foolishly enough, the pinpricks of anxiety ebb in my chest, if only by a fraction. He’s heard me.
Wordlessly nodding to myself, I latch onto the instant reassurances my mind spins up, weaving every event into something plausible and chalking up the parts that make no sense to anxiety and overwhelm.
That’s it. It’s dark and I’m exhausted. A trick of the mind is all.
The longer I stare, the more my eyes adjust to the oppressive dark, chest tight as he takes one long, hesitant step toward me.
Two shiny, ice-blue eyes materialize before me, mildly bloodshot as they blink at uneven intervals while fixing on me through the dark. He doesn’t say anything. We lapse into a tense silence.
Barbed wire laces my throat. Despite my best effort to ground myself, I shrink inward the longer he stares without uttering a word, his eyes fixed on me with terrifying precision. Then he pivots around as though I’m not even there.
My lips part, wobbling, but the words fail me. I try again. “Dax?”
The name comes out thin and uncertain, my muscles jerking with a sensation I can’t place.
He doesn’t hear me. Or can’t hear me.
Whatever fear floods my mind is immediately smothered beneath another rush of tears, and I pitch forward, desperately following him.
This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t…it just couldn’t…
I’m not crazy.
Something inside me cracks, a sharp, quick snap that leaves me disoriented, fumbling over my feet before my body gives out entirely and sends me plunging into Dax. My hands glitch and blur in front of my face, my throat scraping raw with a petrified shout at the sight of them.
Unable to break the fall, I topple into an open room ahead, scraping my knee hard against the heaved floorboards. Pain tears through me, but it barely registers against the pressure clasped around my throat.
I don’t understand.
How is this happening?
My hands keep flickering apart at the edges before smoothing back into place whenever I blink. I shake my head rapidly, disbelief clawing its way higher no matter how hard I try to force it down.
Panic sends me skittering backward across the floor, my eyes jerking back to Dax just a couple inches away. A raging headache spikes behind my eyes, warping his familiar smile into a fuzzy, swarming haze until it appears almost wolfish.
Bile writhes in my stomach as a brisk draft slips through the broken windows upstairs, stirring a high, almost human-like whine in the air before muffled laughter intercepts it.
The sound yanks my attention from the entryway to Blair, tucked behind the slightly wedged door, obscured just enough to avoid being noticed.
Desperate, I scramble toward her, still sprawled across the soot-covered ground, the cuts under my sheer tights stinging along the way. Lips trembling, my fingers hook around her ankle. “H-help.”
The skin over my hand thins.
Flickers.
Then loses all substance and sinks through her entirely.
My arm recoils instinctively as the last thread of denial snaps. The room tilts out of alignment. Everything feels weightless and unbearably heavy all at once, like I’m drifting further out of reach of the world around me while my body lags behind, dense and useless.
I try to inhale, desperate for oxygen, but my throat is an impenetrable seal, my hands clamoring at my neck as the shadows ahead of me swim and distort, twisting into shapes I can’t blink away.
I need to wake up—
—I need…to wake…wake up.
Tearing a hand away, I drag myself further back across the gritty floor, unsure of what else to do to make this nightmare end.
Why can’t they see me? Why can’t they hear me?
In my frantic backward crawl, my palm slams into a broken plank, the brittle crack splitting through the room, severing the silence.
A startled gasp breaks out beside me, followed by the groan of shifting wood. My head jerks toward the sound in time to see Blair stagger into the door behind her. It slams shut, rattling the frail walls.
Her shoulders hitch with a shallow, hiccupping cry before diffusing into silence.
I try to swallow the past, the abrasive ache lodged in my throat, wet lashes fluttering as I cling to the tiny bit of consciousness I still manage to find within myself.
My brows knit together. A clammy sheen gathers between them as I watch her press herself tighter against the door, raw fright tightening her expression before her gaze flicks around the room, skimming past me entirely.
Releasing a shaky laugh that sounds more strained than relieved, she turns back toward the door, slender fingers curling around the tarnished knob.
She twists gently at first. “D-Dax?”
Her other hand flies to the knob as panic creeps back into her expression. The muscles in her arms tense while she wrenches it harder this time, knuckles blanching with the effort.
The damn thing still won’t give.
Push past her. Do it now.
Run.
Instead, I calcify in place as the space between us turns impossible to cross. Then bedlam erupts.
“Blair?” Dax calls from the other side, his voice muted by the door, concern edging into it. “Blair, what’s going on?” There’s a knock on the other end. “Open up.”
Her head cranes higher, ear pressing against the weathered wood, flaking paint catching in the strands of her hair. “I can’t,” she cries. “I’m trying—”
She yanks at the stubborn knob again, brows pinched together when it refuses to budge. “Are you letting go of it?”
“What are you talking about?”
Blair’s voice pitches higher, unable to steady it. “Seriously, stop screwing with me.”
A dull buzzing fills my ears. Fills my head.
“I have no idea what’s going on,” he says, agitation bleeding into his voice now.
Outside, the rain begins to slow, the heavy patter suddenly going silent, allowing the door’s banging and the sharp squawk of metal to take over. The pressure builds in my ears until it peaks, then flattens into the distance as I’m pulled from the moment.
My focus drifts from her to the floorboards.
They slant beneath me.
Gnawing on my bottom lip, I bow my head between my knees, trying to relieve the dull ache in my neck, fingertips digging harder into the raised planks beside me. I squeeze my eyes shut. Open them again.
The world doesn’t settle back into place.
Looking up again, I try to focus on the long, tousled waves spilling down Blair’s back, but the teal strands only swell wider in my vision, blurring together as her body rocks with stifled tears that dissolve into distant shouting.
Through it all, the buzzing in my ears only grows louder, drilling deeper behind my eyes until the pressure turns unbearable.
Huddled in the room’s dark interior, I cringe as a burnt chemical tang begins to seep through the air.
My nose scrunches while I trace the scent toward the ceiling, neck protesting the movement until I notice thin ribbons of smoke twisting from the single exposed lightbulb in the center of the room.
Confusion knots low in my stomach.
There’s no way this place still has electricity.
Blair hacks out a sudden cough, stumbling away from the door once the acrid fumes reach her. One hand flails in front of her face while her eyes ping across the tight space, glossed with tears.
Slowly, she tilts her head toward the ceiling, eyes narrowing as the buzzing sharpens overhead. Smoke thickens around the exposed bulb, curling faster and faster until—
It shatters with an ear-splitting pop.
Strangled yelps burst from both of us, my arms shooting over my head as glass cascades across the room, fragments clinking across the scuffed planks just short of my knees.
When the sharp clatter tapers off, I crack one eye open through the cage of my fingers, staring at the scattered fragments glittering across the dreary, ill-lit room, dust motes floating lazily above them.
Then the old door finally creaks open, popping at the end of its arc.
Flinching, I whirl around just as Blair pivots toward Dax, renewed dread slipping down my spine at the sight of him shrouded in the doorway, his expression drawn tight. “Shit, are you okay?”