The Space Between Them by Campbell Lindsay

Author:Campbell, Lindsay
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lindsay J. Campbell
Published: 2023-12-30T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 27

COWBOY JACK’S – DOWNTOWN MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA

ME

My eyes flutter open and I’m lying on the floor in the storage room. I’m not sure how much time has passed but the lights are on again. It takes a few seconds, and the memories of what happened resurface.

I sit up from the floor, pushing my body up and against the wall. Breathing in and out, I look around the room, searching for the Phantom. There’s no trace of a floating, faceless, body anywhere in the room.

A single tear falls from my eye and down my cheek. Slowly, I count in my head how many times something strange has happened to me, and I lose track.

Whispering, I ask, “What is happening to me?”

While the high-pitched sound is gone, another voice is heard. My head turns sharply towards the direction of the sound.

Sitting beside me is Emma. Dressed the exact way as before, she looks up at me innocently. Surprisingly, she says, “Are we going to be okay, Hayley?”

Immediately, I forget all about the Phantom. I scramble away from her on the adjacent wall, staring at Emma in fear as she continues to look at me.

Those are the words. The words that Emma had just said to me are the words she asked me the night she died. I remember them finally.

“Go away!” I scream, covering my ears.

Quickly, I look away, sheiling my ears and pushing against the wall. When I open my eyes, Emma is gone and standing in the doorway is a woman. Keys dangle from her short pockets and she looks at me with concern.

Silence bounces between us. We make eye contact but I don’t speak. I can’t speak.

As if all at once, flashbacks and fragments from my childhood fill my mind. The woman in front of me disappears from my vision. First, I see my younger self in the temporary house that David, Kate, and I stayed in after the night of the murder, which was weeks later after I physically healed from the fire–leaving me burn marks on my neck. We are all silent around a dinner table.

The next memory is of David and I, sitting together on a couch and he’s begging me to speak to him, to say something to anyone. But I remain silent, disassociating from him and the world around me.

Then, another memory comes, this one is of me staring at the walls in a psychologists’ office, memorizing all of the lines and curves around the room instead of answering her questions.

All of these memories, they’re all the times I didn’t speak to anyone. Instead, I kept the words in my body. As if I was storing everything inside.

Finally, I come back to reality when the woman touches me. Instantly, I jump, looking at her with wide eyes.

She asks me if I’m okay again, explaining that she’s one of the bartenders. Meeting her eye contact, I convince myself she’s real and not a hallucination. “I-I need to leave,” I whisper.

“Leave? What happened?”

I don’t answer her. Instead, I scramble to my feet and rush past the woman.

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