Page 55 of Phobia
Was he alive? Is that why Dr. Corbin’s phrase didn’t work? Was he moments away from finishing me off while his son slept peacefully next to me?
Before I could summon the courage to try the words again, he lunged at me.
I screamed and threw myself to the side, out of bed, away from Larkin. The comforter tangled around my foot, sending me crashing into the corner where my dresser met the wall.
Larkin shouted my name.
Someone grabbed my arms from behind, spinning me around. I thrashed wildly. Larkin repeated my name, over and over, but it took a moment to realize it was him trying to help me up, not his father trying to kill me again.
“It’s me,” Larkin said, touching my cheek gently. “You’re ok.”
“He was here!” I screamed, looking past him frantically. “He was just here!”
“Who was here?”
“Him!Him! Your—the stranger!”
Larkin’s shoulders rounded as he let out a breath, something between a sigh of relief and an irritated exhalation. “That’s not possible, Jame.”
“I swear to God, he was here.”
He fixed me with a calm, patient look, but one that said, quietly, “I don’t believe you.” Taking my hand in his, he gave it a gentle squeeze.
Tears pricked my eyes and my throat started to close. Throwing my arms around him, I heaved a new wave of panicked breaths against his bare shoulder. With the anniversary of my near-death on the horizon and Larkin’s confession still ringing in my ears, maybe Iwasseeing things, or dreaming them. Maybe this was my subconscious’s way of dealing with it all.
Stroking my hair, Larkin whispered the same calming placations he’d used for almost a decade. As always, he sounded so certain everything would be ok, that I would be safe and he would make sure nothing happened.
Except, this time was different. This time my so-called gift had clashed with the trauma that brought it about in the first place and I couldn’t sort the supernatural from the psychotic. I knew what that silver glow meant because I’d been seeing it ever since that monster dragged me to the edge of death and Larkin pulled me back. But I also knew that face, that scar, and the fact the magic ghost words didn’t work on him.
“IknowI saw him,” I whispered once my breathing slowed down. “He was here, Larkin. In the room.”
“That’s not possible,” Larkin repeated, a little slower, a little firmer than before. It wasn’t disbelief that fueled his words, it was absolute certainty.
“Why? What didn’t you tell me?”
“He’s dead, Jamie. He can’t hurt you anymore.”
“How do you know he’s dead?” When Larkin didn’t answer right away, a shiver ran down my spine. I pulled back, eyes wide. “Oh my God… what did you do?”
“What?” Larkin frowned at me. “What are you—”
“Don’t. Do not come up with some bullshit to feed me right now. How did you get that cut on your hand? That wasn’t all your blood. It couldn’t have been.”
“I didn’t kill him,” Larkin said quickly.
“Then who did?”
Larkin laughed and gave a helpless shrug. “I don’t know. God? Maybe it was a heart attack. Maybe he ruptured something the last time we fought, when he tried to gut me with a knife. All I know is that when I went back to my grandma’s house—”
“He was at your grandmother’s house?!”
“—he was dead.”
“What the fuck was he doing at your grandmother’s house?!”
“Fucking with me.”
“So the night I saw him on campus, that was really him. I told you! I fucking told you I saw him!”
