by Dan Rix
This was it. My last chance to turn back, to divert him, to lead him somewhere else instead.
Inertia propelled me forward.
I pulled aside a fistful of weeds as my pulse rose into a terrifying crescendo.
And there she was.
Ashley Lacroix.
Wedged in the valley between two spiky bushes, hastily covered in sticks and dried brush. Through the gaps, a white fabric gleamed in the moonlight, her pajamas.
Emory brushed past me and fell to his knees, then began flinging the sticks aside—they had been bushy green branches when we covered her, but not anymore. A fetid, musty smell swirled up from the pile as she came into view.
But most of the rotting had already occurred.
The dirty pajamas clung in ragged, stained strips to her corpse, which sagged like a deflated blowup doll, as if her flesh had liquefied and oozed off her bones. The skin had caved in around her eyes and mouth, forming sunken black pits. Parts of her were just gone, just bones half-buried in what looked like black ash. Parts of her were still there, the leathery skin mummified into something not even maggots could eat.
This was what I’d done to his sister.
He unearthed half her body before he began to sob.
I cowered to the side and hugged my knees to my chest, something screaming deep in my brain. I’d buried this memory so I would never have to see it again, never have to face what I’d done to her, how I’d dragged her like a piece of meat through the wilderness and left her here to rot. Now it tore out of its hole and reared its hideous head. My abs clenched painfully, driving bile up my throat. I held it in, choking out a pathetic whimper instead.
Not here.
Not in front of him.
I’d showed him what I needed to show him. While he wept over his sister’s body, I crept away through the branches so I could puke out of view, then I put distance between us as fast as I could, heading nowhere . . . just anywhere but there. Eventually, I doubled back to the trail.
Then I ran.
It was finally done.
I jogged all the way home, pushing myself until my feet surely bled. Only when I collapsed on my front lawn, coughing and wheezing to catch my breath, did I process what had happened.
I’d shown him.
I’d shown him her body.
Something I could never unshow him.
Only a matter of time now before they traced it back to me, arrested me, threw me in jail. Yet I felt a lightness in my lungs I hadn’t felt in months. I breathed easier. Because I had begun the process of atonement.
I had shown someone my secret.
Not all of it, but part of it.
Enough for now.
I rolled onto my back and sighed with relief, gazing up at the stars, the full moon, the vast reaches of the cosmos.
Outer space . . . out of which was delivered my salvation in the form of a meteorite soaked in dark matter.
My salvation . . . or would it be my undoing?
Tonight, the night sky humbled me. Where had it come from?
Curiosity. Another emotion I hadn’t felt in a while. With the weight of Ashley’s death off my chest for the moment, it was like I had permission to be me again . . . curious.
But as I lay naked on the grass, lungs heaving from the run home, my buzz began to wear off. The chill seeped in.
Still invisible, I slipped inside my house, briefly noting I’d accidentally left the door open. Couldn’t blame myself considering how preoccupied I’d been on the way out.
Feeling more like I was floating than walking, I wandered into the kitchen and filled a glass of water, getting a kick from how it appeared to hover in front of me. I chugged the entire glass, quenching my burning thirst. Out of curiosity, I peered down to see if it would pool in my belly.
I couldn’t see it.
How the hell did this stuff work anyway?
My sweaty back itched after lying in the grass, and I gave in to scratching it, filling the glass again with my other hand. Something nagged at me, something crucial I had been too distracted to think about before.
It came from outer space . . . they were collecting it . . . they were building a ship . . .
My eyebrows drew together. Emory had mentioned something about his dad. His theory about what it would be like if they ever came.
How the war would be over before we even knew what hit us.
The war . . .
Chewing my lip, I continued to scratch. Water continued to pour into the sink.
What had really happened to Sarah? If those weren’t her ashes interred at the Forest Glade columbarium, then where was she? What was she?
Help me.
That was the message she’d left. Just help me.
The more I thought about it, the more this all seemed really creepy.
Suddenly, my skin felt dirty, and my fingernails sank deeper into my back, like there were bugs crawling under my skin. I wanted the stuff off me. I reached for my nose and tried to find the seam to pull it off, but hesitated. My gaze flicked to the windows. Blackness outside.
Not here, not where someone could see me.
In my room.
Before I could move, a sound pricked my ears.
A creak of a door on hinges. I snapped to rigid attention. My parents? I quickly set the glass down and shut off the faucet, in case they came into the kitchen.
They didn’t.
Stepping lightly, I slunk back toward the foyer and peeked into the hall. At the end my parents door was shut.
But not my door. My door was open a crack.
A sliver of light spilled from my bedroom into the dark hallway.
Hadn’t I closed it? I crept forward, unease beginning to stir. Now I couldn’t remember. I’d probably forgotten all my normal routines before going to Emory’s house. I tiptoed up the hallway, took a calming breath, and pushed the door in all the way.
There was someone in my bedroom.
A girl.
This time I recognized her.
Her long blonde hair rolled down her shoulders, longer than I remembered it. Her blue eyes flicked to mine, and my heart gave a terrifying jolt. We stared at each other with blank expressions, and for a moment my lungs forgot how to breathe. I forgot all about the dark matter I needed to get off.
This time I knew.
I knew, because I had knocked her picture off the wall earlier tonight.
But this was impossible. I had seen her decayed body two hours ago, she’d been missing for three months, she was dead.
Yet here she stood in my stark, furniture-less bedroom in jeans and a T-shirt, waiting for me. Alive.
Looking at me.
Seeing me.
Ashley Lacroix opened her mouth and whispered, “Avenge me.”
To be continued . . .
Click here to begin book two in the Translucent saga.
Of Starlight
It has been three months since Leona Hewitt dumped the body of her crush’s younger sister in the woods, praying he would never find out who did it. It has been three hours since she led him back to her rotting corpse.
And three minutes since she showed up in Leona’s bedroom, alive.
The culprit is a living substance secreted by a meteorite that can make people invisible . . . and apparently bring them back from the dead too. But something is terribly wrong with the girl claiming to be Ashley Lacroix. She doesn’t sleep. Sometimes, when she thinks no one is listening, she talks to someone who isn’t there. She says her soul has been eaten. She says Leona must die.
Now, evading an unseen enemy, Leona must dig up the startling truth behind Ashley’s death before an insidious creature claims its next victim. Only the truth may be more chi
lling than she ever could have imagined. And the next victim may be herself.
Click here to begin Of Starlight, the chilling second installment in the Translucent series.