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Again.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. It hurts.

But the wood gives with a heavy crack. The door flies open, and I stumble out into the cold October air, gasping, half-collapsing onto the wet grass.

The sun is starting to bleed through, giving the blood moon an eerie bath of yellow and orange mixed with the red. I can’t believe it’s already dawn.

Looking up, I notice something. That bitch ghost is standing at the threshold, her hands clawing at empty air like there’s a wall there only she can see.

She’s trapped.

Just like the ghost stories I used to read in the dark when I was younger—spirits that never crossed over are bound to the place where they suffered the most grief until something finally lets them go. This manor is her prison.

I force a shaky, bitter laugh even as blood soaks through my shirt and covers my hands.

“Guess evil doesn’t always win,” I yell to her, voice hoarse. “Enjoy the rest of eternity here in whatever charred remains are left. See ya, wouldn’t want to be ya.”

Then I turn my back on her and this wretched night, and I run.

The woods swallow me whole. Branches claw at my arms and face. My entire body throbs in time with my heartbeat, but I don’t slow down. Freedom is somewhere past these trees. The road. Help. Anything that isn’t that cursed manor and the monsters inside it.

Almost there. Almost free. Almost—

Fuck.

Pain explodes across the back of my skull, and the ground rushes up to meet me before I even register I’m falling.

Something, or someone, just hit me. And now they’re standing over me—I can feel the presence. A vague shape, blotting out whatever dawn light my exhausted eyes could once see.

Who? How?

I never get my answers before the darkness claims me as its own.

21

Blair

Antiseptic light stings my eyes when I finally drag them open.

Ugh, too damn bright.

Everything aches—a cavernous, marrow-deep agony that lingers beneath my skin, twisting my stomach until nausea rises in my throat. When I try to sit up, cold metal bites into my wrist.

What the fuck? I’m handcuffed to the bedrail, my wrist chafed raw already like I’ve been fighting demons in my sleep.

Great, just great.

First I don’t know where the hell I am, and now I can’t move out of this bed. The only thing going for me is this plush and soft mattress against my aching muscles.

“Hello!” I call out. “Is anybody there?” Yanking on the handcuffs, I try again. “Hello?!”

The door opens with a creak. A woman in a white lab coat steps in, middle-aged and brunette with a clipboard in hand.

She doesn’t look at me.

“Where am I?” My voice comes out hoarse and crackly. I’m surprised I even have a voice after last night. “What happened to me? Why am I—” I yank on the cuffs some more, and the metal is starting to dig deep. “Why am I restrained?”

Still, she doesn’t look at me. Just writes something down on the clipboard and eyes the monitor.