Page 6 of Haunt

Rigor mortis sets in, despite my death feeling far from here, I do not move, whimper, breathe. I strain my other senses, rapidly bat my eyelashes but nothing becomes any clearer past the scent of dying smoke in the air, the pounding in my chest. It is becoming louder, or, perhaps, I am becoming fainter. I wonder if I am going to pass out or throw up. Maybe it shall be both, but my stomach isn’t churning, and my head is suddenly no longer spinning, and I find my lungs slowing despite the dose of fear thrumming through my veins.

Turning my head slowly, I blink hard into the dark corners of the room. Staring hard through the humming inside my skull. I think I hear a whisper. My mind is playing tricks, but the softest brush of lips over the curve of cartilage in the top of my ear has me launching myself out of my sheets. My bare feet slap against the cold floor. The high ceilinged, concrete and stone rooms helping keep the space cool during the high heat of summer.

Back flush against the wall, palms splaying over the smooth surface beside the door. The door I have locked from the inside. The iron key to it on the table beside my cot. The one with the chamber stick holding the extinguished candle. One of my hands comes up, palming my throat before my fingers slip their way down my cool clammy skin, finding the tiny gold pendant between my breasts.

Fear lights through me like I have never felt before, nails biting into my palm as I curl my hand into a fist, squeezing the locket inside my caged hand. My sunshine-coloured nightdress blows gently around my knees, loose and light and eerie.

I do not feel alone in this room.

And I do not think the corpse I have kept hidden here is the reason for the heat lashing up my spine.

“Nellie,”it is hushed, too silent, too close, but my eyes widen, orbs large and pupils surely blown in the never-ending darkness.

I am still once more, but my body trembles with the unknown. The scent of smoke dwindling, something new taking its place. Earthy musk, sharp grapefruit. It is as familiar as it is foreign and I find myself squeezing my thighs tightly together, the urge to release my bladder overwhelms everything else inside of me as a slow creeping warmth begins crawling over my skin.

This isn’t real.

Nothing is happening here in the dark.

It is all inside my head.

My imagination running riot as it sometimes does.

It is why I am such a good liar.

I can make up a believable story about anything. Anywhere. Time and place. It is for survival, but sometimes I use it for pleasure too. Slowly, I release the tension in my thighs, sweat beading along my brow, but I am cold now, the heat I felt tiptoeing across my skin is all but absent. A distant memory I cannot even begin to claw at. I let my eyes roll open, drop my hands to my sides. Take in a shuddery breath that is all but redundant because it catches immediately in my throat.

A shadow, something darker than the rest of the room, the umbra of the space seeming to warp around it, the tall, wide figure perching on the end of my bed. I blink faster, my eyes stinging as they strain harder, but it is real. It is here. It is not the corpse reanimated from beneath my bed. He did not sit on it in this same way when he came into this room just this morning.

Lured by the innocent.

The forbidden.

Something divine and pure.

But I am really none of those things.

Which is why his stiffening corpse is now hidden beneath my bed.

I am silent. Unmoving. My insides vibrate with nerves. Excitement, I realise, washes over me as I let my spine curve back into the wall. The cold seeping through my thin, yellow, cotton nightdress, forcing its way deeper into the outer layers of my skin. It cools the sweat across my brow, the back of my neck beneath my thick waves of brown hair.

I try to breathe in again, catch the scent I forgot I knew. So similar to my own. We are somewhat connected by a higher power.

“You’ve been a bad girl, Nellie,” a man’s hard, deep voice punctures the stagnant air like a bullet does a head.

Heart kicking against my sternum, I lick my dry lips, try to calm my breathing once again. I am arid in my throat, tongue floppy and uncoordinated with the rest of my body when I try to produce words. My mind is a frantic mess, jumbled with fear and excitement. One far outweighing the other.

“What?”it is a whisper, a cracked, slow, drawn out word that feels as though it did not come from me, even though it did.

There is the softest, almost inaudible, huff of laughter, it is barely more than a puffed exhale, but I catch it like my own breath in my throat. It strangles me, the sound, something digging itself up in the very back of my skull. Claws and talons bursting up through consecrated ground. A steel coffin filled with rot and dread.

I am fearful as much as I am nervous. I want to be happy, but I am scared. I want to call his name. Whisper it into the dark, but I cannot find a thread of strength in my now trembling body to summon him.

I have been brave.

Forever.

Without him.

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