Page 43 of Ghost Girl

Blake was in the process of stabbing her repeatedly, the force of his movements harsh and aggressive. Typically, he was precise and careful with his incisions, almost delicate, like the doctor he was. His kills were like artwork to him. It seemed that poor Bianca had been subjected to his artistic tendencies before he’d lost his temper. Whatever was going on with him, it was messing with his murderous hobby to the point where evenIflinched away, despite knowing he couldn’t hurt me anymore. At least not physically. His mental and emotional torment would forever remain, likely long after he had died himself.

Bianca went silent, her body going fully limp as her last breath bubbled out of her in a bloody mess that leaked from her lips, and I was glad it was over for her. No one should have to suffer through something so horrific, soevil. I had seen it happen over and over again, but something made this time different. He was killing out of anger, his face twisted into something hideously monstrous. His careful composure was broken, and I didn’t know why. For the first time since he’d killed me, I was genuinely afraid of him.

Bianca’s spirit tore from her body with an audible snap, a sure indicator of her eagerness to depart the realm of the living. Blake kept stabbing, slicing, cutting away slivers of her flesh and gouging deep holes into what was left of her body. She was mutilated beyond recognition, and the horror on Bianca’s ghostly face had me springing into action.

‘Come here,’ I told her firmly, though not unkindly. ‘You don’t need to see it.’

Watery eyes met mine, and her face crumpled as she wailed for what was done to her. ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered honestly. ‘I don’t know, but you don’t have to watch. You’ve suffered enough.’

She averted her gaze, my words penetrating through the haze of her violently forced transition. When I extended my hand in invitation, she took it without hesitation, desperate to escape the grizzly scene before us.

‘Get me out of here,’ she begged, and I complied wholeheartedly, dragging her through the walls and outside in the blink of an eye. It was faster than I had ever moved before, but I didn’t dwell on that development. Instead, I focused on Bianca and her soul-wrenching sobs.

I pulled her to me, the urge to comfort her too strong to deny. No one had comforted me. Some of the girls would comfort the others when they passed over, but they were the ones to lose their minds the fastest. They didn’t offer me the same kindness, however, not after they had learned of my connection to our monster. I understood it after a while. I was their version of revenge. They couldn’t attack him, so they attacked me through their silence.

But the others had stopped caring now. Where the girls had congregated before at each other’s deaths, now they pretended like it was nothing. Like it wasn’t important. I didn’t want Bianca to suffer further for their apathy.

As I embraced her, she trembled against me. It felt less like a physical shake and more like a vibration of chaotic energy. She hadn’t settled. She likely wouldn’t for a very long time. She sobbed, screamed, lashed out, anything she could think of to relieve herself of her agony; she tried, and I held her through it all.

‘I’m going to make him pay, Bianca,’ I told her, stroking my hand over her hair. It was soft and pliant, like I was skimming the surface of a pond rather than her hair. Neither of us was tangible in any real way, but our energies seemed to make contact almost as if we were, but just barely not. A magnetic pullthat pushed away just before we could sink into one another and merge into something new.

She pulled back, her eyes shining with emotion, but not puffy and red like they would have been when she was still alive. Instead, they held a vast ocean of injustice and desperation, but also determination.

‘Do it,’ she told me, her voice wavering slightly but still firm. ‘Make him suffer for what he’s done. Take from him like he took from us.’

Those words snapped something within me, and I couldn’t stop what happened next if I’d tried. I wasn’t even sure what was happening, but I felt it the moment that thin shield that made us separate dissipated. The only way I could describe what happened when we touched was that shefellinto me. Her spirit latched onto mine, which sucked her in so deep that she became a part of me.

Memories and emotions that were not my own bombarded me. A smiling couple gazing lovingly down at me that I didn’t recognise, yet I did. A young girl was clinging desperately to my legs in a hospital room where that same couple were resting in consecutive beds, wrapped in bandages as plaster casts, hooked up to machines that beeped and oxygen tanks that whirred in a constant pattern. The scene morphed once again to an attractive young man pulling silly faces to make me laugh before leaning in to press a sweet kiss to my lips that quickly turned passionate. His face merged with another’s. A man with a hood covering his face, shadows obscuring his features, only for me to knock it off when he tackled me to reveal none other than Blake, gazing at me with cold, dead, evil eyes. And then I was looking at myself over his shoulder from the familiar position of being strapped to that damn bed in the basement, my expression grim and resigned as I met my eyes – Bianca’s eyes – before filling of fury as I glared at Blake’s back.

Then came the emotions. Happiness, fear, heartbreak and love, a lifetime of emotions compounded into one brief moment. The sadness, the helplessness, the terror. The pain she felt as Blake continued to mutilate her corpse. All of it was reminiscent of what I’d felt when it was me subjected to his instruments of torture.

Her energy continued to flood into mine with increasing persistence. What started as a gentle warmth when we first connected soon became a blazing fire as more and more of her essence merged with mine. Our emotions and memories tangled until I struggled to pick apart which ones were mine and which ones were hers. My head spun with the whirlwind of images I was bombarded with. Separate childhoods, opposing dreams, joyful moments interspersed with despair. I was being picked apart into tiny fragments and sensations that no longer made sense.

Who was I?

Why did I hurt?

Was I even hurting at all?

And then a chilling, otherworldly voice hissed in my ear. Eager. Wanting. Excited. ‘Yesss… Consume her. Take it all.’

Pain seared through every part of me, burning away the torrent of memories and emotions until my mind was nothing but a blank canvas, but it wasn’t peaceful. My every essence was being torn apart and reformed, reshaped into something new and unrecognisable. All I could focus on was the pain. The frigid burn, like I was being frozen solid from the inside out. It was unlike anything I had felt before, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it.

I couldn’t. It was too much. Too powerful.

So I did the only thing I could do and let it shred me to pieces, embracing the end of my existence as I knew it and faced head-on the abyss of nothingness.

Chapter 18

Mortimer

She did it.

She actually fucking did it.

I wasn’t alone anymore.

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