Tayce (working title)
an excerpt

The room with its whitewash walls and fluorescent lights faded away. The faces of the patients, and Cotter through the glass door, faded away. She entered a gray world; the floor seemed to be stone, the walls were stone, and the light was dim, coming from somewhere she couldn’t identify. She could barely see anything, but she was acutely aware that something was there. Every molecule in her body reacted to the presence of malice in this place; it was a dark, black cloak that settled around her shoulders, and it was coming just slightly behind her and to the left, but she didn’t want to turn. She didn’t want to look. She was afraid—oh god, the fear!—of what she would find there, of what was lurking in the darkness.
Sweat dripped down her back, over her spine, and caused her to shiver. The fear just kept rising, it was paralyzing, it was suffocating, and it was a lot of other horrible words that deserved to be italicized. There was a buzzing in her ears, the only sound she heard at first, and then she became aware of another sound: breathing. And panic washed over her, crisp and awful, tasting like pennies in her mouth. Something was here with her, something alive!
She felt prickles on her neck and she knew whatever was here with her was looking at her. She couldn’t pretend it wasn’t there anymore; she had to turn and look. Slowly, ever so slowly, as if it was a dangerous animal that may attack because of sudden movements, she turned. Goose bumps rose on her skin, even though she was sweating bad enough now that her hair felt damp and clung in wet tendrils to her neck.
And there in the corner was an inky shadow that didn’t belong, because it looked like someone had just thrown a bucket of paint against the wall, except it was flat and yet fluid like only a shadow could be. Tayce’s fear entered new heights of terror, she felt like a rabbit and she was just waiting for an eagle to pluck her up and tear her to shreds. She couldn’t run.
From the shadow, something was stepping out. Tayce’s eyes were widening, until they hurt and it felt like her eyeballs may fall out. She watched as two, long arms shot out of the shadow. They were white as a corpse’s, with a slight blue tinge underneath the skin. Tayce shuddered and twitched as the arms flexed and the hands spread against the ground, the fingers wide; it looked like those arms were trying to pull something out of that ink stain of a shadow.
Tayce was hyperventilating now. She was so afraid. Her bladder felt full and heavy. She wanted to cower in the farthest corner, but she couldn’t move because her fear was rooting her in place.
Slowly, inch by inch, what was being pulled forward was a very pale girl. She was short, skinny, and her skin looked dead. She wore a tattered shift that was dirt-streaked and blood-stained, and for some reason, this made it even more terrible. Her face was pointed towards the ground, so all Tayce could see was the back of her head; her black hair was the same shade as the shadow she was crawling out of, and it wasn’t until her midriff was out of the shadow that Tayce realized her hair was very long and trailed on the ground, but the ends were choppy, as if it had been even longer but had been cut without any regard for style.
Tayce was trembling badly now, so badly her teeth were chattering. Her muscles were clenched so tightly that they were beginning to ache. The buzzing in her ears had reached a feverish pitch, an orchestra that dimmed out even the pounding of her heart.
She was watching a girl with dead skin pull herself out of a black shadow.
The girl’s waist and legs came quickly, as if she had been pulling herself out of something viscous that had finally let go and she could slid out easily now. She came forward and Tayce gasped—she was breathing so quickly now she wondered if she would faint. The girl hadn’t moved like a human should, she had skittered, quickly. It reminded Tayce of how a spider moved. The girl skittered towards Tayce and Tayce really wanted to move backward. She strained against the fear, but she couldn’t move, and she wondered if she could manage to move, would she loose control of her bladder? It felt so heavy and hot in her body; she needed to pee, it was the only feeling she had beyond the fear and the panic and the sensation of her heart pounding in its chest and the sweat trickling down her body.
Oh god, oh god, oh god, she thought, because she knew what was going to happen next and she didn’t want it to happen. She prayed it wouldn’t happen. Please, oh god no, ohgodno godnogodno!
The girl looked up. Tayce looked into that horrible face and screamed. She had seen horrific, supernatural things—she had heard about the horrific supernatural things her father had seen, and others had seen—and she had never been so frightened. It hit her like a wave and she gasped in a breath and screamed again.
The girl’s eyes were sewn shut with ragged, thick black thread. It was still bleeding, and the blood ran in fat, crimson tears down her cheeks. Her eyelashes grew in tufts, in every direction, between the black thread. And at the center of her forehead was a perfect, round eye, lacking any eyelashes and even an eyelid. It stared at Tayce with its round, icy blue iris and a big, black pupil and it was horrible. It was monstrous. It made nausea bubble up in Tayce’s throat.
The girl was oozing malice. Tayce knew that the girl wanted her dead because the feeling was so strong. Looking down at the girl, the single eye twitched and then met her gaze.
The girl’s chapped, full lips peeled back from perfect, white teeth in a horrible grin. She said, “Soon.” It was a promise.
Tayce jerked back and sucked in her breath for another scream, and suddenly the vision was gone, replaced by Cotter’s face. He looked so worried. Tayce slowly came back to herself and realized that Cotter’s hands were digging into her shoulders—quite painfully, actually—and that the patients were quiet again and were being ushered out of the room by Melissa. She looked over her shoulder and saw that the bean bag she had been sitting on was still in the same spot. She looked back at Cotter.
“Tayce, oh thank god,” he said. “What happened?”
Tayce felt something dripping down her upper lip and Cotter winced, pulling out a pristine, white handkerchief, and then dabbing it to Tayce’s nose and mouth area. When he pulled the handkerchief back, it had a bright, red stain. Tayce, who was getting more confused by the minute, pressed her fingertips to her nose. They came away smeared with blood. She was having a nosebleed; she’d never had a nosebleed before.
She looked at Cotter and said, in quite an undignified way, “Wha…?” and then she fainted.