Page 42 of Ghost Girl

Yes. This was my path, and it would always have ended like this. There was no existence without Kali in it, and I would follow her anywhere. My only regret now was that I hadn’t done so already. Soon, I would rectify that.

I couldn’t wait.

Chapter 17

Kali

My heart was so torn. When I first heard Chance and the others in the neighbouring campsite, I hadn’t heard them again, so I thought I’d just imagined it. Wishful thinking, or something like that. But no…

Seeing Chance again was tearing me in two different directions. Part of me couldn’t believe that he would have had anything to do with my murder, or any of the girls Blake kidnapped. And yet, there was no way to know for sure. Not without some digging. I just couldn’t make sense of anything. How could henotknow, but also, howcouldhe know?

I wanted to scream.

So I did.

I released my warring emotions in the loudest, rawest yell I could muster. It echoed around me, scaring off the ghosts of the other girls as they lingered by their graves until it was just me, my rage, my sadness, and my confusion.

I just wanted everything to make sense for once. I wanted answers before I went insane searching for them. I didn’t want to end up like those poor girls’ spirits that slowly withered away into nothing, their minds no longer capable of keeping theirforms in one piece. I’d watched a few of them slowly lose their grip on reality and blow away in the breeze.

That was not my fate. I couldn’t let it be.

Shadows twitched in my periphery, and I knew I was no longer alone. I ignored him. I was in no mood to deal with the shadow man’s cryptic antics, not when my entire being throbbed with my emotional torment.

‘You are upset,’ he stated. I almost acknowledged him in my shock over him breaking the silence first, but I caught myself at the last moment. Instead, I pointedly gave him my back and floated away. My grave was calling my name. I needed peace right now, or at the very least the illusion of it.

‘The silent treatment is beneath you, ghost girl,’ he taunted, following close by. I still refused to acknowledge him, but it only made him release that now-familiar dark chuckle. I didn’t have the energy the respond or argue with him in any way. I still didn’t know what he wanted from me, but I was losing the will to care. He was insignificant in my quest to seek the truth and my revenge.

‘Or perhaps you are not the woman I thought you were,’ he mused, a tendril of shadow snapping out to flick at my cheek. It was almost like a caress, if it didn’t feel like half of my face had been frozen solid from the contact.

‘Immaturity is so… tediously unattractive,’ he continued, but I wasn’t stupid enough to take the bait. He usually left when he got bored of waiting for me to bite back. I wasn’t capable of adding him to my list of problems right now, though, so I stared down at the grass that blended into the rest of the lawn, successfully hiding where my body was buried.

‘He’s coming, ghosty,’ he finally said after sitting in the silence for a while. ‘Perhaps he will help to loosen your sweet tongue.’

I felt his presence leave, like the sun had come out to spread its warmth after a cold, dark night. It was an odd sensation, butI couldn’t say it wasbad. I would never admit it out loud, but it was almost soothing. There was so little to feel here in the realm of the dead, so there was a sort of solace to be taken from any physical sensation to be had.

Not a moment later, the wheels of Blake’s car crunched over the gravel again. He was coming and going more often than usual, but since Chance and the others were around, it made sense. His attention was being pulled in multiple directions, and it was clear as he stepped out of the vehicle, grumbling under his breath, that it was starting to get to him. He didn’t seem to be mumbling any words, just nonsense noises to express his frustration. That, combined with the slamming of doors and the stomping of his feet, told me that he would be taking his anger out on the poor girl in the basement.

When her first screams reached me, I knew that she was in for a terrible night. From the sound of things, he might actually end up killing her tonight. Probably sooner than he planned, since the more he killed, the longer he liked to draw it out.

I was proud of her when she didn’t beg. Her screams were involuntary, a survival response she couldn’t refuse. None of us could. Yet, she was accepting her fate, embracing the pain. She didn’t cry. She didn’t plead. She knew there was no way out, and she was ready for the killing blow.

Eventually, her screams became so hoarse that her voice finally gave out, and I figure she might like a familiar face to greet her when her spirit separated from her physical body. I knew how disorienting it could be, especially with a dead as brutal as ours. It was incredibly jarring to find oneself hovering over the man dismembering your body, especially when you hadn’t quite processed the fact that you were dead, and watching the horrific scene from beyond the veil. For me, I could still feel it. Every cut, slice, and break, the rendering of my flesh. He was still somehow torturing me from beyond the grave.

And when he’d buried me, I’d felt every shovel-full of dirt as he chucked it on me until the weight became suffocating. It took me even longer to figure out that I didn’t need to breathe, or that I was no longer connected to my physical form.

For all the girls that had come after me, I had never once tried to ease their passing. Perhaps it would make a difference.

As if I had summoned him with my thoughts of doing something kind for someone else, like the very idea was appalling enough that he needed to see it for himself, the shadow man returned. This time, he didn’t bother letting me ignore him. He appeared right in front of me, the shadows writhing like a mass of snakes to shield his features, but I could still see the way he tilted his head to the side as he contemplated me.

‘What?’ I snapped tersely. ‘What do you want now?’

I immediately regretted giving in when I sensed more than saw his lips spread wide into a pleased grin. ‘I want to see what you will do.’

And then he disappeared again, but not completely. He was still lurking in the shadows, but he had somehow made it inside the basement before I could even think of moving from my spot.

I rushed to follow, stopping short as soon as I entered the dank space at the horrors I’d just waltzed into. Blood was sprayed on every wall, every surface. It even dripped from the ceiling like an upside-down puddle. Bianca wasn’t unconscious, but she wasn’t present, either. Her moans of pain were barely more than whispered whimpers fighting to escape. Her chest rattled in that familiar death rattle we all made right before our bodies gave out.

But it was the way he used her intestines to tie her up like some fucked up form of Shibari that truly caught my attention. He had gauged deep grooves into her flesh that he had used to wedge the length of her internal organs into, twisting and tyingthem until she was trussed up like a pig with her own innards as the rope.

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