Page 78 of Hallowed Bones

The tingles under my skin shift to a low hum. The individual pinpricks of sensation combining together to form a dangerous sensation of energy building.

“Baby, are you running from Mommy?”

I freeze in my tracks. I knew that voice, but there’s no way that I heard correctly. It would be impossible. Female laughter echoes into the darkened hallway, but it’s not coming from behind one of the doors. It’s out in the open, and it’s a husky sort of sound, the same exact laugh that my dad used to tease my mom about. It had been her voice that asked the unnerving question.

Pop! The sharp sound of a light bulb cracking as it goes out interrupts my thoughts. As if there’s too much electricity in the air and it overwhelmed the bulb’s ability to conduct light. My eyes land on my bedroom door a few paces away. The knob to safety hovers mere feet down the hall, a destination that promises to provide safety. It’s a lie. I know that.

“Look at me,” the voice cajoles, calling to me. My eyes burn and my nose twitches as I fight back the urge to cry. Why do I hear her voice? Why now?

I don’t want to look back. In fact, I tell myself that I shouldn’t, but I can’t help it. I have to know if it’s really her—maybe her ghost? Can witches see ghosts? If they can, maybe this is a blessing and not the curse it feels like. Slowly, afraid to startle the sound of my mom’s voice into disappearing, I turn and glance over my shoulder.

Pop! Pop! Pop! A few of the lamps down at the opposite end of the hallway go dark in sharp bursts. Each one in response to the correlating sound of something breaking. Glass fractures. Pop! Pop! More lights are snuffed out. There’s no sign of who could have spoken. No evidence that it’s really my mom.

Icy fingers drag down the back of my neck, similar to the ghostly hand that touched my cheek when I’d woken up at Bishop Manor. That experience feels like it happened a lifetime ago when, in reality, it was only days prior.

“Haven.”

I drop the caddy, and it clatters to the floor beside my feet. The burst of sound resonates through the closed-in space. No. The burning in my eyes increases tenfold at that low, familiar, masculine timbre. It’s torment to hear them. Their voices—my mom’s and my dad’s—are both a balm to my shredded soul … and another knife to the chest. No matter how real they sound, it can’t be my parents. They’re dead.

I remind myself of that fact as I force my spine straight and pivot to face the dark hallway.

A small voice that has nothing to do with the ones hovering above me in the gloom of the dorm hallway urges me to hurry back to my room and shut the door. I should run. My dorm room is seconds away. If I sprint.

The old me—the girl who wants to pretend like none of this is real, like it’s not happening—demands I do exactly that. It won’t do any good. I can’t just lock myself in my room and pull the covers over my head like I used to. Those were the coping skills of a scared child, a child that died the night my parents did.

Monsters don’t wait for you to be prepared. They don’t care if you’re vulnerable or not at all. And they don’t need to see you to torment you.

“Sweetheart, why didn’t you wake us?”

I blink faster, trying to assuage the tears threatening to spill over. Mom sounds like she’s talking to a younger version of me. Her tone isn’t chastising but calm with a hint of confusion, if a bit curious—as if I’ve done something she doesn’t understand.

“Ugh.” Pressing my palms into my eyes, I groan as they grow hotter and hotter with the need to cry.

Why didn’t I wake them? Did I try? The night of their deaths is somewhere in the maze of my memories. I wind around and around like a broken toy, jolting through the thick shrubbery of all my thoughts as I search for the answer.

The fire hovers in the distance, the red-and-gold glow of the flames licking over the reflections of glass windows on our neighbors’ houses. How did I get outside? Where are Mom and Dad? Did I … leave them?

“Haven, answer your mother.” Dad’s voice is low and even, not angry but also expectant and authoritative. I can’t … remember. It’s there, in the back of my mind, but … no matter how I circle the maze or pull at the weeds and vines surrounding the closed-off section that is the worst night of my life, there’s no hint to how I got out and they didn’t.

Tears break free, sliding down my cheeks and wetting my hands still pressed to my face. I’m the verge of answering them when another sound breaks the spell.

Skrrt. Skrrt.

A light, erratic skittering noise echoes in the hallway—closer than the pops of the lamps going out. Quickly lowering my hands to my sides once more, I blink past the tears. Both the burning and the tears are gone in the next instant. My sight clearing as the corridor appears more visible than before—despite the fact that more than half of the lights are out.

Everything from the walls to the ornate ceiling is a dull gray, and the darkness beyond is no longer opaque. I blink and stumble back a step when I see what’s there. The creature that had been making those sounds.

It curls low with its belly hanging to the floor. Each of its limbs is pressed flat to the ground as it creeps forward—one leg at a time. Its elbows—are those elbows?—are bent nearly in half and pointed toward the ceiling. Big, sunken-in sockets for eyes stare back at me. Its lengthy nails scratch at the floor as it shifts its unwieldy body. As the creature passes yet another light, a pop! sounds and it goes out.

I stare at it for several moments as it draws nearer. The creature’s body moves as if its limbs aren’t quite in sync, and I can only imagine that it must be incredibly painful for the monstrous thing that has its sight set on me.

Pity overwhelms the urge of fear. Pity and … sorrow? This poor creature shouldn’t exist. I don’t know how I know that, but just looking at it, I’m sure it’s true.

The monster’s skin is sallow and pale, a bluish-yellow hue that denotes sickliness. Its eyes are hollow and empty, nothing but sockets that even without actual eyes still convey an exhaustion that I can practically feel in my bones. My gaze falls to its legs or arms or whatever the hell its limbs are. They’re too big and lengthy for the creature’s somewhat small and short body. Its head is nearly half the size of its actual torso with a mouth full of flat, childlike teeth and twin slits for a nose.

Skrrt. Skrrt. Skrrt.

Faster, it comes toward me. Crawling with a speed that shouldn’t be possible considering the ungainly state of its body. That has to hurt.