Part One
HAUNTED
Prologue
NORA
This can’t be real.
My parents taught us to live and breathe like any day could be our last. The way they radiated joy and love and hope no matter what happened around us was something I’ve always admired.
Standing on the shore with Olivia’s trembling hand in mine, I feel it happening almost in slow motion—my life falling apart. The light and happiness my parents embedded within me slowly drains away as darkness reaches out and wraps its tendrils of despair and suffering around my mind. There is no more light, only shadows and pain.
The frigid air against my skin sends goosebumps crawling up my spine, and the midnight hour lays a blanket of darkness across the scene. My sister and I huddle together, blurry-eyed and heartbroken as the rescue crew works on pulling our parents’ car out of the lake beneath the lights of the Mackinac Bridge. Cars rush past overheard between Michigan’s upper and lower peninsula oblivious to the horror unfolding before us.
I stare blankly as the paramedics perform chest compressions. The sound of cracking ribs splinters through my ears and a scream escapes my lips. My cries tear through the air as I let go of Olivia’s hand and rush to their lifeless bodies, my voice breaking until it dissolves into desperate sobs. An officer wraps his warm arms around my middle and pulls me back, holding me as I kick and scream and try to escape his hold to be by their sides. When my body is too numb with shock and exhaustion to move, the man lets me go. I collapse to my knees. Tears burn my cheeks and my chest rips apart, knowing it’s too late. They’re already gone.
Shadows flicker and sway as the flashing red and blue lights bring the area around us to life. The paramedics are still now, as still as time seems. They stare down at my parents’ pale bodies and then at me, their eyes solemn and depleted. It’s over. Nothing will ever be the same.
As they die here, I die with them.
I can’t pull my eyes away from my parents’ bodies, their damp clothes clinging tightly to their pale skin, and the thick, black substance splattered and dripping across the visible parts of them I can see between the paramedics’ bodies. What the hell is it? The officer helps me stand, leading me over to them as Olivia walks beside us. A moment to say goodbye. To identify them. To accept our fractured realities.
“What’s all over them?” My voice is hoarse and weak as I point down at my parents. “That isn’t blood. What is it?” I stare down at the paramedic kneeled beside their bodies, eyes wide and heart racing.
His eyebrows scrunch up as he gazes down at me blankly, as if the words I’m saying make no sense. “I’m so sorry,” one of the paramedics tells us, shaking his head as he stands and finishes packing supplies into his bag before walking away.
“They made it to shore, but they were too far gone by then. I’m sorry, girls.” The chief of police steps back, leaving us there to say our goodbyes.
Why aren’t they answering me? I can’t be the only one who sees it.
I can’t speak as Olivia wraps her hand around mine and squeezes tightly. All I can do is stare down at them, the sound of waves crashing and police radio chatter becoming muffled and far away. Everything except for my parents and their cyanotic lips and their damp, wrinkly skin fades away. It’s just them and nothing else. My body feels weightless and empty, like I’m just floating and lost in space, stuck in a nightmare that can’t possibly be reality. None of this is real…
I’m not even real.
Something hangs in the air that I can’t decipher, not the metallic scent of fresh blood from the gash on my mother’s forehead, or the rising feeling of hopelessness that engulfs me. It’s something else. Something wrong. Something evil and dark, like ancient death and rot has been here lurking along the shoreline. Hazy tears trace lines down my cheeks, but I swipe them away and my vision clears. Now that the paramedics and the chief of police have walked away and I have a clear view of my parents, I gasp quietly, and I no longer know if what I see is real or imagined.
My hands shoot to my mouth as I take in the deep claw marks in jagged lines of three, and the bite marks like sharp needle points covering both of my parents’ bodies. The thick, black ichor is everywhere. It stains their skin and drips from their limbs and blank faces onto the algae-covered rocks scattered around them. It can’t be real, not when no one else seems to notice.
Olivia leans her head onto my shoulder, but the warmth of her touch and the affectionate, gentle reminder that she’s here with me doesn’t bring comfort the way it normally would. It feels suffocating. Everything does.
I pull away from her, gesturing down at their bodies. “This was no accident.” I sob, unable to contain the heartbreak and confusion any longer. “What happened to them?” I whisper, my eyes darting around in the darkness, a sudden paranoia taking hold of my thoughts.
Whatever did this to my parents might still be nearby, and from the looks of the damage, it isn’t something any of us have ever seen or experienced before. What the hell could it be? Doesn’t she see what I do? It wasn’t an accident. It can’t be real. It’s a fucking nightmare; it has to be.
“I know this is hard, Nora. I-I don’t even know what to say or do. I’m a wreck. But they drowned. There’s no other explanation.” Olivia sniffles next to me. “They tried to make it back home to us.” Her frantic sobs grow louder as I bend down and touch my mom’s cheek, wanting to feel the blackness smeared angrily across her face, to feel that it’s real.
It cannot be real.
I let out a hiss as I wince in pain, pulling my hand away instinctively. When the substance meets my fingertips it burns like molten lava—like acid that could rip and sear away flesh in an instant. My sister bends down beside me, her trembling hands gently closing our mom’s eyes and then our dad’s. As my world falls apart, my mind shattering to pieces, she stands, sniffling and wiping her flushed face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt.
Why can’t she see the darkness splattered across their bodies, or feel it on her skin? Why hadn’t the paramedics? God, why can’t I just wake up?
She swallows thickly. “Are you okay, Nor?”
“No,” my voice quivers. “Not even a little bit,” I tell her, unable to tear my eyes away from my mom.
The necklace she always wore, the one she promised would be mine one day, is gone. She never went a day without wearing it, and yet her neck is bare now. The obsidian crystal always glowed with an otherworldly light, the purple, pink, and blue colors swirling and hypnotizing me whenever I gazed into it. It was a part of her. How the hell can I get through life without her? Without them?
