He moves closer, shadows twisting the darkness around him as he closes the distance—a great beast of the night that turns nightmares into reality. His hand reaches for me. I’m not sure whether to be frightened and run, or find out what’s happening. Either way, I can’t get my body to comply.
Warmth grips my jaw. A single touch and then everything ceases to exist.
I feel like death.If death had a feeling.
An ache. A constant drain. A foreboding hollow in the center of my chest as it feels like a void is sucking my very essence from me.
Is this how Ella felt?
It happens again: thesnapof my neck followed by a soundless cry. But the world is different. There are hairline cracks over my vision, but much of the fog has cleared to reveal hints of color—muted greens and traces of reds. Hard lines are crisper, and the world holds texture, like the grains in the wooden floor and the fibers of the carpet.
My limbs still feel… I don’t understand how they feel. Solid mist. Like they’re there but not exactly.
Movement to the side catches my attention. It takes too long for my brain to catch up with the rest of my body as I slowly turn my head and blink at the figure. A man. Familiar again. How? One doesn’t forget a man who looks like that.
He’s like mist too.
No, like unknown matter that hails from the aether.
The space around him seems to vibrate, humming a tune that my ears can’t pick up. And his eyes—they’re blue, abnormally so. A crystalline color that looks like they’re glowing silver.They’re a source of light on their own, as strong as the threads of moonlight seeping in between the manor’s boarded-up windows.
I open my mouth to ask what’s happening, but still nothing comes out. My tongue refuses to curve around the syllables, like the air in my throat is barbed with blades.
“You’re dead.”
Dead? No, that’s not right. I’m here. I can see. My fingers—I can move them. Toes too.Not dead. I can’t be.
He storms closer, and this time, my body complies. Barely. I inch away from his raised arm, but become weightless the moment he drags me onto my feet and spins me round so he’s at my back.
My stomach sinks to my feet. There’s a body on the floor. It isn’t moving. I can’t see the rise and fall of her flesh beneath the sweater, or any hint of color in her pale skin. Black hair fans out over her face and onto the floor, the silver strands at the front of her head spilling over the black like a makeshift halo.
That… that’s me.
Mysweater.Mydyed hair.
This can’t be right. I look down at my hands then at the woman on the floor. “I… I don’t…”
The man huffs beside me. “Come on. Get it all out.”
“Understand…” I blink hard, willing my mind to make sense of what’s happening.
It can’t be me. I’m here, and he…
He mutters something I don’t catch, storming up to the woman. “As I said: dead.”
I watch, frozen, as he kicks the lifeless body. She rolls to the side with athump, and the hair falls from her face—myface. Round cheeks, full lips parted in a perpetual gasp, and empty, brown eyes staring back at me. Dead.
I’m dead.
Heat stings my eyes.
“No.” I shake my head, staggering back from—fromme.
No, no, no, no, no.
With each unspoken word, my movements grow more frantic. He’s wrong. Can’t he see that I’m right here? He sees me. I can’t be dead. I—I have to be alive. My—mythings.Ella’sthings. I can’t lose them. They’re the only things I have of hers.
If I’m dead, someone could take them.
