Page 86 of Some Kind of Haunted

At first, I tell myself it’s just a dream. Like I usually do.

But I take in the freezing cold air against my skin, making goose bumps break out all along my exposed arms.

The creepy warmth of the blood splattered around me.

A gross, familiar dichotomy that makes me want to throw up.

I’m afraid to take a breath, but I need to. I need to look around. I need to do something other than stare at the blood on my feet.

Because what I learned last time was that here in Midas, these aren’t dreams. Here in the dark, things really can hurt me. Here in Midas, anything is possible.

Which means my precarious spot crouched on the flood wall is not good and I need to figure out a way to get down. This is complicated by the fact that this will almost certainly involve crawling down the narrow length of it.

“I figured out a way to get up. I can figure out a way to get down,” I tell myself. I breathe in and ignore all the different scents assaulting my nostrils when I do. I’m too high up, and the wind is too cold. I need to get down, and fast, so that means I need to survey my surroundings and figure out what’s actually going on.

It’s a very dark night, with the suggestion of clouds scudding across a black sky with no stars. The moon is nowhere to be seen. The town of Midas is behind me when I shift around to look, with tiny pinpricks of light shining from what I assume are windows, but there’s very little of that. Mostly, I see shadows and what I know must be the old, narrow buildings clustered together.

I don’t hear any slurping. This should be a good thing but somehow, I find the silence in all this wind that much more terrifying. But I know where Midas is. I know where the river is. Which means all I have to do is get to one of the ends of the flood wall. That’s where I’ll find the ladders bolted to the wall.

But as I look around, trying to determine which side is closer as I cling to the narrow top of the wall, I have to contend with the fact there is nothing but a long stretch of blood-smattered cement either way.

I don’t really want to think about the blood. I tell myself I must have cut up my feet again, though they don’t hurt. And the longer I stay where I am, the more the blood gets to me, demanding that I figure out where it came from—which I would be happy to do later, somewhere warm, with light. Not here in the scarily quiet darkness where anything could be watching me.

I try to estimate the distances again, but both ends of this forbidding wall seem interminably far away. But one ladder will take me down closer to Main Street. It will lead me closer to Jack.

And I would do a lot to be closer to Jack right now.

I start inching that way, crawling slowly.

I don’t make it very far when a gust of wind takes me off balance. I teeter alarmingly, scrabbling to hold on to the narrow top of this wall, but I come down hard. My arm scrapes down the side and I slam into the flat part I’m crawling on, but that’s a good thing. It helps me stay upright instead of toppling over and plummeting off the side.

Which would be an unpleasant drop. I think I’d probably live. But would I want to with that many broken bones?

For a moment, I simply press my cheek to the cold concrete beneath me and breathe. There’s no blood here. No stains. Except what I’ve brought with me, of course, though the gradually more intrusive thought that it isn’t my own is terrifying.

I push myself back up straight on something like a sob, because my arm is aching now, throbbing everywhere from my wrist to my shoulder. But I didn’t fall. I didn’t fall.

But someone did.

My eye catches on something below me. Down on the other side of the wall where there should be no light at all because it’s outside the town limits and the night is so dark, a light illuminates a figure all the same—but I can’t worry about light sources right now.

Crumpled on the cold ground is a woman with dark hair, matted and tangled. She’s folded in angles that don’t make sense and it takes me too long to understand why that is, what that means.

She’s bloodier than I am. She’s bloodier than the section of wall I left behind me and anything around me. She’s unrecognizable—

Except I know those Doc Martens on her feet.

I feel my stomach plummet.

“Cleo.” I whisper it first. And then I yell it.

She doesn’t move.

“Lexi.”

It’s Jack’s voice. But from the town side of the wall, so I have to look away from Cleo’s crumpled form back into Midas. I can see him running toward me, toward this wall—toward Cleo on the other side.

“Jack, she’s . . . She’s—” I can’t say the words. I can’t catch my breath.