The Haunting of Velkwood by Gwendolyn Kiste

Author:Gwendolyn Kiste
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: S&S/Saga Press
Published: 2024-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

I fade in and out, the darkness slipping through me, twining between my bones, at once weightless and crushing. I still want to run, but with my body limp on the plush carpet, it’s too late for that.

But someone else wants me to escape. A voice, distant and strained, calls out to me again.

“Talitha, come back.”

It sounds like Brett, like she’s returned for me. Like she never left me at all.

Except wherever she is, it doesn’t matter right now. Not with this shadow settling deeper inside me, its wicked embrace as cold as a Yule midnight. Sophie’s there on the floor, no more than ten feet away, but she doesn’t seem to care what it’s doing to me. She barely notices.

“Don’t worry,” she says dreamily. “It will be over soon.”

And maybe she’s right, because the walls fade out around me. I turn away, covering my face with both hands, and when I look again, everything’s resurfaced, shimmering and new. On the floor, Sophie’s vanished, but I’m still here, still in this rec room, a memory rising up inside me.

I see it again, the past as if it’s still happening, me and Brett and how we used to be, the two of us on the first day of summer break before our senior year. Other kids went to Myrtle Beach to celebrate, but not us. Our families never left this street. Another reminder that it wouldn’t be easy to escape this place.

“We have to get out any way we can,” Brett would whisper to me when we were alone. After what happened with Enid, after what never stopped happening with Brett’s stepdad—the way he’d leave marks on her body, ones the world could see and ones only his eyes could see—we didn’t have much choice. We needed to run and not look back.

But we couldn’t run, not yet. It’s such a strange thing to be seventeen. So close to freedom, yet a thousand miles away. The future was unfurling before us, but sometimes, it didn’t feel like our future at all. It felt like it belonged to someone else, someone luckier. Someone who didn’t live on Velkwood Street.

Only that day was different because for once, we weren’t thinking about any of that. We were only thinking of each other. After my mother left for work, I rigged up an old sprinkler that my dad bought back in the eighties. It was such a silly diversion, me and Brett out in the sunshine, running back and forth like we were kids again. Afternoon crept in, and we retreated inside, our swimsuits gleaming wet, our dark hair soaked through. Downstairs in the rec room, we collapsed on the floor, both of us nestling down together, our bodies stretched long.

Brett closed her eyes, her hand wrapped around mine. “Please don’t ever go away,” she whispered.

I smiled and pulled her to me. “Never,” I said, because back then, it honestly felt like a promise I could keep.

The day heavy in our bones, we started drifting off, the two of us in a tangle, her head rested on my chest, my hand on her thigh.

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