Page 92 of Two Sides of Sin

I rounded the corner into the kitchen, my grip white-knuckled on the brass lamp.

The room was empty.

I let out a shaky breath, lowering the lamp. “You’re losing your mind, Sage,” I muttered into the empty space.

But as I turned to head back to bed, a cold, damp breeze brushed against my bare legs.

I stopped. I looked towards the back of the kitchen, where my sliding glass door led out to the small fire escape. The end of the curtains were shifting gently in the wind.

The glass door was slightly open.

I frowned, a deep, unsettling prickle of unease washing over me. Hmm. I closed that, I thought, staring at the small gap. I distinctly remembered throwing the latch after the rain started this afternoon. Didn’t I?

I walked over, pulling the curtain back. The city outside was quiet, the wet fire escape gleaming under the yellow streetlights. There was no one out there.

I slid the heavy glass door shut, the metal track grinding softly, and flipped the heavy lock downwards until it clicked into place.

The second the lock engaged, a massive, jarring wave of goosebumps erupted down my arms. The sudden, crawling sensation of being watched was so intense, so physically overwhelming, that the air in my lungs seized. I spun around, my back pressed flat against the cold glass, my wide eyes scanning the dark corners of my own kitchen.

I felt exposed. Like there was a predator standing right in the room with me, studying me in the dark.

I stood there for a long time, my heart hammering in my throat. But the shadows remained perfectly still. The silence stretching on.

I rubbed my arms, shaking off the lingering dread. It was just the movie. I had spent the last two hours watching a slasher flick in the dark, and my brain was playing cruel, paranoid tricks on me. That was all…

I double checked the lock one more time before hurrying back to the safety of my bedroom, totally unaware of the monster standing just out of sight on the fire escape above.

I jolted awake with a gasp, my hands clawing frantically at my throat.

My chest heaved, my lungs burning as if I had been suffocating in my sleep. I was tangled in my sweat-soaked duvet, shivering in the cold air of my bedroom. The horrific images of the nightmare I just had were still vividly playing in a loop in my mind.

I had been standing on the edge of an unfamiliar, bottomless pit, paralysed, forced to watch myself die. Over and over again. In the dream I had been sinking slowly into a thick, suffocating pool of bubbling black tar. I couldn’t scream or move. I had stayed frozen as the sludge swallowed my chest, my neck and my chin. But right before I went under my eyes suddenly ruptured with black snakes, twisting and writhing down my deathly pale cheeks before the tar swallowed me completely.

I scrubbed my trembling hands over my face, pressing hard into my skin to wipe away the phantom feeling of scales and suffocating sludge.

The morning sun did nothing to chase away the lingering dread from the night before.

I barely slept. Every time I closed my eyes, I kept listening for the sound of the sliding glass door opening, or the nightmare to replay. By the time I dragged myself out of bed, the storm had passed, leaving Emeralds Grove draped in an overcast sky.

I made a cup of black coffee and carried it over to my studio corner in the living room, desperate to ground myself in something. I just needed to focus on my art and count down the twenty-nine days I had left until Julian got here.

I set my mug down on the cluttered wooden table, reaching for my paints.

I froze. My hand hovered mid-air.

Sitting dead centre on my drafting table, resting carefully on top of my closed sketchbook, was a piece of art I had no memory of painting.

I frowned, a cold prickle of confusion washing over me. I set my pencil down and carefully picked it up. It wasn’t painted on my usual pressed canvas. The paper was incredibly old—thick, yellowed, and fraying at the edges, smelling faintly of dust, aged oil paint, and something that I couldn’t quite place.

It was a breathtaking piece of art. The brushstrokes were meticulous and haunting.

I carefully flipped the thick paper over. In the bottom right corner of the back, there was a faint, faded signature written in elegant, cursive ink.

I squinted, holding it up to the morning light filtering through the window. Jane? I tilted the paper. No… Joan? “Hmm. Weird,” I murmured to myself, rubbing my thumb over the dry ink. Maybe one of my professors or a classmate from the university had slipped it into my portfolio by accident? Or maybe someone had left it as a strange, anonymous gift?

I turned the painting back around, trying not to think too much about how it had actually gotten onto my desk, and let my eyes trace the image.

It was a sprawling, dark gothic manor sitting high on a hill. The stone architecture looked ancient and imposing, surrounded by a labyrinth of overgrown, red and white rose bushes. The colours were incredibly vivid, the heavy greens and crimsons contrasting sharply with the stormy sky painted above.