Castle by the Sea by JG Faherty

Author:JG Faherty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
Published: 2014-05-06T04:00:00+00:00

A bright light stabbed at Jason’s eyes when he tried to open them. Groaning, he covered his face with his arm and tried to see past the glare. Faces hovered in the darkness, illuminated in ghostly fashion by the reflection of the light off his arms and the water.

Water? How… I was in the hallway…

“Jason?” One of the pale faces dipped closer.

Erika! He reached a hand up to her.

“Oh thank God! For a second, I thought you were dead.” She threw her arms around his neck and squeezed, cutting off his air but he didn’t mind. At least she was awake and not…

“Wait.” He pushed himself up to a sitting position. The light moved away, revealing itself as a flashlight held by a man dressed in jeans and a sleeveless T-shirt, which was stretched to its limits over his broad chest and shoulders. A jagged scar down one side of his face twisted his mouth into a permanent scowl.

“I was chasing you down the hall. In the castle. And then something hit my head. Where are we?”

Erika frowned, but before she could answer, a new voice spoke up, this one deep and masculine and filled with a dark humor completely inappropriate to the situation.

“Well, you certainly did hit your head, Mr. Phillips. You’ve got the lump to prove it. But you were nowhere near either of our two castles. You’re in the Tunnel of Love, remember?”

Jason turned and his breath caught in his lungs at the sight of the gaunt, oddly dressed man standing to his right. Easily seven feet tall, he was so thin his fingers looked like skeleton hands and his face like a skull. Moon-white skin added to the corpse-like appearance. His outfit was just as peculiar—an orange topcoat, yellow pants and a red shirt with a green tie. Topping everything was a stovepipe hat perched on a bald head, a bright orange sunflower tucked into the band above the brim.

At any other time, the man would’ve drawn a smile, or perhaps even laughter.

But something in his eyes froze Jason’s guts worse than eating a pound of ice, and made him think of dead bodies hacked to pieces and stored in a refrigerator to be eaten later.

Evil. He’s evil and wants to kill us!

The man smiled and winked, and the feeling of impending death disappeared. The impression of evil, however, did not.

“I am terribly sorry,” the man said, sounding anything but. “We’ve never had an accident in the Tunnel of Love before. Years, decades…” Hairless eyebrows furrowed. “You did have your safety belt on, didn’t you?”

“Safety…what…I don’t understand.” Jason rubbed his hand across his head and yelped when it touched the tender lump on the back of his skull.

Tunnel of Love? They were back at the carnival? How had they gotten back?

Or did we ever leave?

Suddenly, it all made sense.

None of it was real. I dreamed the whole thing. The castle, the storm, all of it. How freaking crazy is that?

They’d been in the swan boat. That much he remembered.

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