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Pocus fixes me with a sarcastic look, and I know what he’s thinking. Of course something is wrong, look where we are. But he doesn’t understand my meaning.
“It’s Hex,” I whisper. “We have to go, he’s in trouble. Or he will be soon.”
Pocus finally listens, looking at me in horror. He looks around, suddenly very aware of our friend’s absence.
“This is a trap,” he whispers darkly.
We slip out of the pew and silently exit the church, looking for our friend.
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
Iscream, but no one hears me. Of course, they don’t, I’m dead. Or half-dead at least. Without Hex around, no one can hear or see me. It doesn’t matter how loudly I scream. It will only fall on deaf ears. I’m lost in a dark room with the silence hanging around me in a dense fog. I fear the weight of it will crush me.
My ears ring and my eyes try to catch the faintest glimpse of light, but there’s only darkness. This must be what hell feels like. I scream and scream for Hex, but he can’t get to me. He’s not coming to save me. No one is.
I run in all directions, but my feet make no sound. I expect to run into something, anything, but the room is an endless nothing. I can’t feel the ground beneath my feet. I can’t feel anything. Before, I was aware of my surroundings. I felt the air on my skin and the cold floor beneath me. This place, though, this prison is the absence of everything.
I’m crying, but I can’t feel the tears against my face. I can’t sense the familiar pressure of weight on my legs. It’s like this room has no ceiling or floor. I’m weightless with nothing tethering me to earth. The horrific thought occurs that someone has probably killed my body. This must be what death feels like.
It shouldn’t surprise me. Death was always coming for me. I should have died that night with my parents. This time I’ve had with Hex has been a gift, and I refuse to see it as anything else. Even if someone has been using me as a pawn, I have to thank them for bringing Hex to me. I would’ve died without ever feeling that kind of love.
In the dark, I think back to the night on the playground when we played like children. I think of the way his cheeks flushed as he chased after me. I remember the way his eyes lit up and a weight seemed to visibly lift off him. I have to believe he was as grateful for me as I was for him.
And now I’m truly dead. I should feel sad or afraid, but I’m ready to get it over with. I’m tired of being stuck with no hope of being set free. I’m ready to be with my parents in whatever afterlife exists. A small light comes from somewhere in the room, and I feel hysterical. It’s a literal light at the end of the tunnel.
This is the choice Mama was talking about. I can choose to run toward that light and be free from this miserable existence. I’ve been living as an untethered spirit for who knows how long, unaware that I wasn’t alive at all. It was an unfair and cruel curse placed on me, but now is the moment I can take my life back. I can run toward the light and be free of this darkness.
Then another, sharper light overtakes my senses, causing my head to seer in pain. What was nothingness is now an overwhelming feeling in every fiber of my being. I scream, the pain ripping through me like nothing I’ve experienced in my life. It’s like a fire set ablaze in every cell. My lungs burn from the screaming, and my throat is raw.
I feel it so sharply, so suddenly that it nearly incapacitates me. I’m not lucky to pass out. Why should anything good happen to me now? I feel like I’m being dragged through hell.
When the pain subsides, I’m sitting in a bright, sterile-looking room. My hands are tied behind my back, and the rope against them hurts. It digs into my skin, and I’m so aware of each strand of material. I haven’t had such physical awareness in who knows how long. Not since the accident.
I’m experiencing everything so sharply and deeply. The light is too bright, the air too cold. I briefly wonder if this is how newborns feel when they’re born. As terrifying as the darkness was, it was more comforting than this place. It was a safe cocoon, a place to finally rest my soul.
This place is a stark reminder that I’m not in control of my fate. It feels like I’ve been reborn somehow, but there’s no welcoming doctor to greet me. There’s something pressed up against my throat, and I lift my eyes to see an unnaturally beautiful woman standing over me. She sneers at me, her hand against my throat. Not her hand, something colder and sharper.
“Welcome back to the land of the living, sweetheart.” She laughs wickedly. I instantly dislike her. My eyes sting with tears, and I feel them fall against my cheeks, hot and wet. In all the times I’ve cried in the last few weeks, it hasn’t felt like this. This is real. My mind finally catches up to my reality.
I’m alive. I’m somehow back in my body.
“We’ve been waiting for you to wake up,” the woman says with a sick glee. “Your boyfriend will be so happy to see you in the flesh.”
Is she talking about Hex? I may not remember much about the night my spirit was ripped from my body, but I do know for a fact I didn’t have a boyfriend. She must mean Hex, and it’s clear from her tone that she wants to hurt him. I’m the weapon she plans to use to inflict the most pain.
A deep voice keeps repeating a chant over and over again, and I want to shout at him to shut up, but I realize belatedly I have a gag in my mouth. I’d been too distracted by the other sensations to notice. I look over, past the woman, and notice a dark figure in the corner, a book open in his hands. He’s the one talking, repeating the words. There’s something familiar about him, and the answer stabs at the corners of my brain, but I can’t place him.
Everything is too much. How could I have ever thought I was alive before? As I strain against the rope, I almost want to laugh. I’d thought I was depressed. I thought that accounted for the numbness. I was drunk all the time, I was barely aware of life happening around me.
But that hadn’t been the case at all. It wasn’t depression or inebriation; I hadn’t been fully alive. Because this hurts like hell. There’s a pain in my chest, both physical and emotional. My entire body feels stiff and heavy, and I briefly wonder where these people have been keeping it, me, all this time. What have they done to me?
I close my eyes and imagine that dark room. Even with the fear, it was preferable to this. Because now I know without a shadow of a doubt that I’ll die here. These people have brought me back to kill me. Mama was right. All this time, I’ve been a pawn in someone’s game. Who could do this? Why me?
A loud, crashing sound breaks through my hopelessness. I startle, opening my eyes in time to see Hex breaking through the door of my prison. My heart aches for him, and I know without a doubt this is a trap for him. I’m the bait, and they’ll make him watch as I die.
“Don’t come any closer,” the woman hisses at him.
He glares at her, so much hatred and fire behind his eyes. There’s something else, though. Terror.
