Page 32 of Ghost Girl

So, I did. I had learned enough from observing their conversation, so I shifted through the shadows one more time until I was just outside the office we had just vacated. She was pacing back and forth down the length of the hallway. Fingersclutching anxiously at her clothing and her single thick braid, teeth dug into her full bottom lip, and her breaths came in heavy pants like she had just run a long distance. Her face was flushed with anger, but it was obvious it was an internal battle more than an external one. She had lost the argument in the office, and now she was throwing a fit about it.

How… immature.

She hadn’t noticed me yet, despite the shivers racing up and down her skin, likely attributing the goosebumps pimpling her arms to the propped-open front door. The breeze was tepid, cooled by the darkness of the interior of the building rather than the soothing warmth it had been when it had entered.

I decided to simply continue observing for a moment, to gather as much information on this woman as I could. I hadn’t seen any indication that she was one of the monsters I typically hunted, but if she was going to insert herself in my business, in the business of the dead, then I would ensure she had the right to. I wasn’t adverse to altering my rules to get rid of a nuisance, but only if it became a necessity.

She was muttering beneath her breath, her words loud in the stillness despite the sounds of the others’ voices filtering through the closed door. She didn’t have very nice things to say about me, and I found it immensely amusing. This puny, insignificant mortal woman had caught on to my dark energy and wanted to flee. Now that I had experienced death for myself, it baffled me how people were so afraid of what came next. The veil between the living and the dead was thin at best, their ability to sense us an innate ability within each of them, yet they ignored it. Purposefully. As if that would make it go away.

But that ignorance turned into a fear of the unknown, and even when an individual had accepted the ability to touch the veil, theystillfeared what was on the other side. It was a ridiculous conundrum, but one that I used to my benefit.

The conversation inside the officer was over before I could have any fun, the door opening to expel its occupants one after the other. Finally sensing me, though too late for me to truly enjoy teasing her, the psychic woman immediately latched onto the tall man. It was more amusing to watch them squirm when they were on their own, because human beings were pack animals and drew strength from another’s presence.

Pity, but there would be time for that in the future. For now, I would simply watch and wait. I wanted to gather more information before I acted, because it seemed like these mortals were my ghost girl’s loved ones, and if I hurt the people she cared about, I doubted she’d stick around willingly.

I paused, mulling over the shock that revelation caused. I had never cared about another’s willingness, not since before I died. So, why was this time different? I could have bound her to me, hunted her through any realm she tried to hide in, but though the idea of hunting her appealed to me, it wasn’t the same sort of appeal I was used to in my prey. This one was… different. Complicated. Complex. I could have collared her, kept her as a pet, but that didn’t fit the shape of these strange feelings burning through me.

I wasn’t used to burning. I was used to the cold bite of the shadows, the numbness of death. I wasn’t sure what this urge was, but I knew it needed to be mollified or else I would spend eternity wondering, plagued by unabated curiosity. I refused to let something like this pass me by, even if I was clueless about whatitactually was.

I would just have to figure it out.

Chapter 13

Kali

The tangy, metallic scent of blood permeated every nook and cranny of the basement. It was hot, acrid, and stifling. I couldn’t escape it. It had been one of the worst parts of my own torture, forced to endure the scent of the blood of all the girls before me, mine dripping down to soak into the concrete, mixing with theirs. It was a foreboding precursor to when I did join them, my body rotting away beside theirs in the dirt behind the cabin.

It was yet another method that Blake used to taunt me, to prove that I wasn’t getting out of this basement alive.

You’re just like them, Kali. You could have been so much more, but you just had to poke your nose where it didn’t belong, and now you’re nothing more than a bloodstain blending in with all the others.

Sometimes I would forget that those were his words to me. Lately, my mind had been adopting my own voice whenever I remembered them with increasing frequency. Some part of me had always agreed, even when I reminded myself that it wasn’t my fault my husband was a killer. I’d only followed him that night because I thought he was cheating on me. Never in my wildest dreams could I have ever imagined he’dbeen kidnapping, torturing, mutilating, and murdering girls in the basement of a cabin he’d secretly acquired before we had even married. Still, he’d bought it sometimes during our years together.

It was why I was still so suspicious of his family’s involvement. Surely, at least one of them had to know about his psychosis. Chance was my first guess. Mallory had always doted on Blake, oftentimes leaving Chance out of their family bonding moments because Calvin had never really liked the fact that he wasn’t his own flesh and blood. A reminder of Mallory’s love and loss from before him.

Ergo, my second guess was Calvin. While Blake and Chance had always been close, Calvin exuded the sort of calm, simmering anger that never really went away. It was always present, in the background of every interaction, every business deal, every disciplinary action taken against anyone who had stepped out of the net of control he had painstakingly woven.

It had been hard living up to his ideal of the perfect wife for his favourite son. One of my biggest regrets from the life I’d lived was pandering so much to the man when I could have been living my life the way I’d wanted to. Mallory wasn’t the only one of my in-laws who micromanaged. Even down to the way I wore my hair or my career. Eventually, I’d given up on my dreams to support Blake through his.

I’d thought that was enough for me, which was one of the biggest reasons why my suspicions that Blake was cheating had hurt so much. I thought I’d given up everything for a man who hadn’t respected me enough to remain faithful.

Not for the first time did I wish I’d run in the opposite direction.

The girl’s screams drew me out of my thoughts, and I turned back in just in time for the begging to start. Blake ran the tip of one of his knives over the curve of her neck, nicking a small cutjust above her collarbone. He watched, enraptured by the little bead of blood that welled to the surface. It was too small to drip, a tiny mark of colour against her alabaster skin. He had a type, it seemed. All of us were as pale and close to pure white as we could get. Our skin tones, our hair, even our eyes. He wanted to dirty us up, destroy our purity, starting with our looks.

I had always suspected he did this to them because of me. I was almost certain the killings began after we had started dating as teenagers. It was like he was killing these girls because he couldn’t kill me, not without drawing too much attention to his after-dark activities. I assumed he only made me one of his girls because I’d given him no choice, but I hadn’t been able to confirm my theories. He never let any of us know why he was this, or why us. It was merely a conjecture I had made through piecing together the pieces of the puzzle I had managed to collect. There were still large chunks missing, but it didn’t really matter, did it? He was going to pay, regardless.

‘Please, don’t do this,’ she begged, tugging on her restraints and pulling herself closer to the wall, but there was nowhere to go. Nothing could save her from his evil now. ‘I swear I won’t tell anyone. Just let me go, please. I promise, I won’t be any trouble. I won’t say a thing. Please.’

Blake merely tutted in response and sliced a larger, though still shallow, cut in her shoulder.

‘Please, I have a family. My boyfriend will be wondering where I am. I have a little sister who relies on me, and sick parents who need me to care for them. I’m a person. I have a life. I’m needed. Please, don’t do this. Let me go.Please.’

Ah, bargaining as well as pleading. She was trying to appeal to a side of him that would see her as more than a victim, but it was clear to see she was only making things worse. Helikedthat he was taking her from the people who loved her. Helikedthat she was begging because it gave him a sense of power. The controlhe wielded over her life was a drug to him, singing to him like a siren’s song. Her words only made him hard inside his jeans.

She noticed.

‘No, please. Please, don’t.Please.’

---