Page 28 of Sightwitch
Then they were gone. Just like that. No more ghosts, no more furious memories—only the resounding quake of their final howls to shimmer in the air.
I knew in an instant that this was bad. Whatever could scare away ghosts had to be bad, bad,bad.
Gulping in air, I shoved myself to my feet and thrust out the lantern. Left. Right. Nothing but shelves, stone, shadows, and tomes.
“Ryber,” trilled a voice behind me. High-pitched and singsong.
I lurched around, light streaking. Pulse keening. But there was nothing.
“Ryber,” called a second voice, slightly deeper and from a different direction.
Again, when I twisted toward it, I saw nothing. Only swaying beams of lantern light.
“Ryber,” came a third. The highest tone of them all and coasting toward me from behind.
I didn’t want to look, but I knew I had to.
I turned. I saw.
Three women glided toward me. Solid. Real. And so very, very wrong. They wore silver tunics, their bare feet peeking out from the bottoms …
Feet that did not touch the ground. They hovered. Theyflew.
And where there should have been faces, there was nothing at all. Just black skin, brown skin, and pale skin.
It was their arms and hands, though, that were the most unnatural. Stretched to their feet and with fingers three times as long they ought to be, the women’s hands scraped over the stone as they floated toward me.
“Ryber,” they harmonized in a minor chord. “You should not have come here, Ryber.”
Every muscle in me shook with the need to move. To run. Yet it was as if ropes held me down. I could not look away. I could not turn or move or do anything at all.
“Why did you come here, Ryber?” Closer, closer. “This is not where you belong.”
No, I thought,it isn’t. And with that one thought, my body finally ignited.
I turned. I ran.
The women followed.
Not that I could see them. Forward was all I saw, pack clanking and lantern light bouncing. Shelf after shelf, rough tile after rough tile.
But I heard the women, chanting my name over and over, all while their fingers scratched louder across the floor.
What the blighter were they? And how theblighterwas I supposed to get away from them?
“Ryber, you don’t belong here. Ryber, Ryber, you’re not one of us.”
Somehow, in the panic that spurred my legs ever faster, I came to the conclusion that if I could just reach Level 10, these creatures would stop their chase. That some barrier would keep these … these Death Maidens locked on this floor of infernal ice.
In hindsight, I don’t know why I assumed this. Desperation, I suppose. An incentive to keep sprinting toward—a goal to reach.
I hit the stairwell and dove in. Two bounding steps at a time I rounded down. My name skittered after me. My pack banged against the wall, the ceiling, my back. This tunnel was even narrower than the one before. Twice I stumbled. Twice my ankles popped and I had to bounce off the walls to keep upright.
Stillthey chorused my name.Stilltheir fingers clawed across stone.
Then I was there. To the balcony of Level 10.
Out I shoved, and thank the Goddess I did not slow. Not yet, at least.
