Throwing herself backwards away from the book, she tripped over a chair and crashed into the floor. But the darkness that was emerging from the book was spreading like wildfire. Faster than she could process. Unstoppable.
Tendrils, like the limbs of some deep sea monster, were crawling along the walls—like shadows cast from monsters she couldn’t see, from light sources that didn’t exist, spreading over the floors and the ceiling.
She couldn’t breathe. Sidney was screaming her name from her phone, but Sasha couldn’t respond. This wasn’t fake terror. This wasn’tplayfear. This wasn’t making herself afraid of pretend ghosts on the screen and squeaking at teenagers wearing rubber masks.
This was real.
One of the tendrils snapped around her throat and cinched tight.
She couldn’t even scream as it cut off her air.
It lifted her in the air.
She had told her twin Sidney that the book wasn’t going to eat her.
But as it pulled her toward the center of the darkness, the empty nothingness where the book had been only moments before?
She knew she had been very, very wrong.
