Terri Garey - Nicki Styx 01 by Dead Girls are Easy

Author:Dead Girls are Easy
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2011-12-20T14:53:24+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Nothing happened.

An uneventful evening of listening to rock music and flipping through magazines. Of turning off the music to read a novel in bed, trying not to jump at every imagined sound. Around midnight I finally felt safe enough to close my eyes and try to sleep.

Scratching woke me at 2:43 in the morning. The bedroom was bright as day, the lights still on. I’d moved a few extra lamps in earlier.

Scritch scritch.

Something was scratching at my window.

The tree didn’t reach the house, and the bushes were trimmed. I stayed in bed, listening.

Scritch scritch.

A pause. Scritch.

There was a drawn-out deliberateness to it. Someone wanted me to hear, to know it was there.

Use your mind, girl. That’s the only place she is

?that’s how she draw her power.

Granny Julep’s words came back to me, and I realized what she meant. If I allowed myself to imagine what horrible creature might be scratching at my window, trying to find a way in?

The scratching became a rattle, as if something tested the strength of the window frame. Then came a tapping against the glass, quick and urgent.

I fingered Granny Julep’s beads beneath the covers while I forced myself to breathe, to be calm, to ignore the noises at the window. I squeezed my eyes shut and snuggled deeper beneath the red sheets, trying to think of other things. Of safe things.

Like Evan and the store. Like our annual shopping trip to New York every spring. Like maybe getting a puppy. Having someone to come home to wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

The noises stopped, and I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe I’d won, after all.

But I wasn’t gonna push my luck by dwelling on it. To stay distracted, I thought about Joe.

Why had I met him now? Was there some kind of cosmic joke I didn’t get? I’d been offered a glimpse of eternity and then sent back, though I’d happily have stayed. I was a believer now?God had made His point. He didn’t need to punish me.

I didn’t want to talk to the dead. I didn’t want to fall for a conventional, respectable doctor. I didn’t want to have a twin sister who was married to the doctor.

Is

married to the doctor.

A sister. Someone who could’ve taken the place of the stuffed animals I’d had as a kid, the ones I’d whispered my girlish secrets to and snuggled against so I didn’t feel so alone.

I was drifting in that place between asleep and awake when I heard the drums.

Far away and steady?regular as a heartbeat but faster. The sound came in waves, like gentle ripples on a pond, rising and falling. The drums lured my dreams, beckoned my thoughts, urged me to hear nothing but their rhythm.

“No.” I opened my eyes and rolled onto my back, staring at the ceiling.

The drums got louder. It was so comfortable there, listening to those drums. They were in my mind, and all around me.

“No,” I said again, and sat up.

The drums were insistent, ruthless in their staying power.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.