Page 4 of Ashen Souls

Eventually, the daylight outside my window faded into indigo. I closed the book, blew out the candles, and lingered at the window, watching the shadows stretch across the wet street. Vesbridge altered after dark. It grew older, crueler, shrugging off its tame daytime manners.

I traced a line through the condensation on the glass.

“Come and get me, then,” I murmured to the deserted street below.

It was a stupid, exhausted joke. The kind of thing you say when you’re utterly convinced you’re alone.

I expected the hum of the radiator to cover the sound. Instead, the appliance clicked off, plunging the apartment into an airless quiet.

The emptiness behind me hadn't just shifted. It felt like it had taken a physical step closer.

I turned away from the window, forcing myself through the dull arithmetic of a normal evening: rinsing my mug, twisting the deadbolt, straightening a stack of books.

I retreated to the bedroom and slid beneath the covers, drawing them up like a shield.

Sleep wrenched me under. A vicious undertow that stripped away the bedroom and dumped me into choking, pitch-black depths, robbing me of sight, sound, and breath.

I was paralyzed.

Then the mattress sank, the springs shrieking as an immense, unyielding weight caved in beside me. The still air in the room burned off, swallowed by an invasive heat.

I couldn't scream. I couldn't even flutter my eyelids.

The duvet started to slip. It scraped slowly across my chin, peeling back over my collarbones, pulled downward with mocking slowness.

Something touched me.

A scorching palm pressed flat into my bare stomach, right below the hem of my shirt. The touch didn't hurt. It coaxed. The unseen hand prowled upward, mapping the curve of my ribs with patience. As it crept higher, brushing the sensitive skin just beneath my breast, my panic fractured into something different.

A thrill coiled low in my belly, leaving me shamefully desperate for the contact to continue.

With a ragged gasp, the paralysis shattered. I lunged upright, tearing the dark apart, my heart frantic in my throat.

The room was frigid. Empty. I sat there shivering, clutching my knees, trying to blame it on a glitch in my brain.

I looked down.

The thick covers weren't just kicked away. They were piled on the floor at the foot of the bed.

And on my pale stomach, right where the unseen fire had trailed across me… four distinct red welts were slowly fading into the skin.

A cold tremor crawled up my spine.

But deep beneath my ribs, a defiant warmth answered it.

3

♫ CROSSES—VIVIEN

Ihadn't moved from the headboard. My muscles were cramped, locked tight to fight off the threat of sleep. Every time my eyelids had started to droop, the memory of that invasive touch had jerked me awake.

I shoved the hem of my shirt up.

Nothing.

The four red welts were gone.

It wasn’t my first experience with sleep paralysis. I knew the clinical mechanics of it: your brain wakes up before your body, trapping you in a purgatory where a panicked nervous system conjures a phantom pressure pinning you down. Tactile hallucinations were standard. A mind could easily manufacture the sensation of hands, of heat, of a malicious presence in the room. I’d had episodes before.