Page 7

Kali

W isps of untethered energy whip around me. Chasing. Running. Taunting. Challenging. They brush against my skin, tug at my hair, poke and prod at me, and still, I am unable to do anything but float here and take it.

Because it was progress.

For the first time, I had made it all the way to the edge of the property, the road in my sights even if it was still just that little bit too far out of reach. I pushed again, desperate to make it at least that far, but the pushback was more powerful this time. That was as much progress as I was making today.

When I felt like the energy’s resistance was too strong, like it was draining me dry and shrivelling up my well of power that was keeping me tethered to this realm, screams drifted to me from inside the cabin. The girl’s voice had become so hoarse she no longer sounded like a person. It was like an animal had gotten itself caught in a trap and was bleating for help, agony slicing through them, yet no one was coming.

No one except Blake, but even he hadn’t been back for days. The girl was starving, dehydrated, and rapidly losing weight and energy. Her reserves were depleting faster than she could keep up, and she was only exacerbating the issue by expending more energy with her attempts to break free and call for help.

When I first started watching the girls he brought here, I had thought that their attempts were admirable. Their fight, the fire burning in their eyes, was something that I craved. I wanted it for myself, so I could go back in time and defeat him before he destroyed me. Now, though, all I felt was pity. No one was coming to save them. If anything, they should fight harder, weaken themselves faster, because then it would be over sooner. If they were too weak to keep fighting, their deaths would become much easier. Smoother. Less painful.

They could slip away in their sleep as they dreamed of happier things.

But, in the end, it didn’t really matter. We all still ended up dead. Our bodies, sawed into smaller pieces, were scattered beneath the soil in deep graves with animal corpses as gravestones. Our souls, still connected to our dismembered bodies through the trauma of our deaths, remained stuck in this limbo nightmare. Somehow, despite our spirits attempting to find freedom from his torture and captivity, Blake still managed to trap us.

Though I was going to make damn sure it wasn’t for all eternity.

I had been a pushover in life. He was going to get one hell of a shock to realise what he’d unleashed in my death. He thought he was the monster here? Ha! I’d show him that no matter how big and bad he thought he was, there would always be something bigger and badder, eager to devour him in ways his puny little brain couldn’t even begin to conjure up.

Another scream ripped through the atmosphere, vibrating through everything in its path like an earthquake of rage and despair, and digging up more memories of the last dregs of my life. A knife slicing through my flesh. Digging deep into my organs. Tearing through layers of muscle, fat, and tendons so my innards would spill out. I only wished I could say that disembowelment was the worst of it, but he’d made sure the remnants of my agony stuck with me even in death. Even now, a dull throb pulsed through my incorporeal form, like I was expanding and shrinking at the same time in the exact places he’d caused the most damage.

He had carved my scars so deep they had punctured my very soul.

I collapsed, as much as I could without a physical body for gravity to pull down, as the energy left me again. Each time left me strangely bereft, like I was missing a piece of me that I didn’t realise I had until it was gone. Without conscious thought or effort, I drifted back to my unmarked grave and hovered over my remains, once again taking strength from them. I didn’t know how it worked or why, but the longer I spent with my physical form, the stronger I became. I’d learned that the hard way when I’d avoided the spot at all costs. Now, I couldn’t fathom not having access.

I hoped that, if anyone ever did find us and removed our bones, whatever connection we had was to them and not this place. If I was stuck here forever, I didn’t know what I’d do. Nothing good. I’d probably go insane.

Actually, there was no ‘ probably’ about it. I would go insane.

As I lay there, staring at the sky, contemplating how far I’d come and how far I still needed to go, a new sound drifted to me. Voices. Male and female.

Familiar.

Chance…

And Ashe. Gloria, too.

They’re here, somewhere close by. After all this time. Have they finally found me? Do they know what Blake did? Is doing?

When it was quiet for too long, I began to question if it had all been a figment of my imagination, but no… There it was again.

Laughter. Teasing. Chance grousing.

It’s them. It really was them.

I wanted to move, but I couldn’t. Doubt niggled at me, itching and persistent. How much did they know? Were they in on it? Was Blake with them?

My emotions were a wild thing, clashing inside of me like bone-rattling thunder. Hope, fear, loss, longing… all of it was so intense that I couldn’t grab onto just one. They slipped through my control much the same as the power I was attempting to harness, like trying to cup water through splayed fingers. Instead, it became a tsunami of rage, grief, and frustration.

I wanted so badly to believe that they had finally come for me. Too late, but still searching. I wanted so badly to believe that they were good, that they didn’t know what Blake was, that they hadn’t seen beneath the mask. Yet, I couldn’t. That was even worse. I couldn’t let myself believe anything, because I didn’t know .

I wanted them to know, because I cared enough to want them to be safe, yet a large part of me hoped that they were just as ignorant as I had been, if only to validate my stupidity. Blind trust. That was what I had given that man. My love, my body, everything I’d had to give, he’d taken as if it was owed to him.

How could I have been so blind?

That question haunted me ever since. Yet, I still had no answer. No matter how many times I thought back on the life I’d shared with him, there were simply no signs that I was married to a psychopath. Which begged the broader question: if I had missed the signs with Blake, how could I possibly know I hadn’t missed them with anyone else?

That, I had an answer to, whether I liked it or not: I couldn’t.

So, I stayed put, straining my senses as I let the swarm of emotion overwhelm me. All had gone quiet again, the only sounds those of the girl in the basement was making. Desperate and pleading, she still hadn’t tired herself out. She was lasting longer than most. The others had given up by now, accepting their fate even if only subconsciously. This one was a fighter.

Blake’s favourite.

Mine, too.

Suddenly, the sound of tires crunching over the gravel driveway added to the screams, which only increased as the girl must have heard the approaching vehicle, too. Except her screams wouldn’t be useful now. They were only going to make things worse for her because it wasn’t a saviour rolling up to the front door.

Blake was back.

His boots scraped against the gravel like he was dragging his feet, which was unlike him. I couldn’t see him from my grave, since it was around the other side of the cabin, but I could hear him grunt as he lifted something. But what? What could he have possibly brought here that was so heavy?

It couldn’t have been another girl… Right? He already had one.

I would have to use my other senses to figure out what was going on while I replenished my energy reserves. Frustration became the primary emotion, overwhelming all the others as I was stuck resting on top of my bones, the key word being ‘stuck’. It didn’t matter that he was no longer starving me, carving into me, or taunting me with fake promises of false affection. I was still trapped and at his mercy, even in death.

And that just fucking pissed. me. off .

It was my turn to scream. I felt my jaw drop farther than should have been possible, if only I’d had bones. My mouth gaped open as I released a wail that, by all accounts, was the most terrifying thing I’d ever heard. Frustration, rage, all of it was channelled into that one single scream as I fought to maintain some semblance of control over my own existence. It was the yell of a scorned woman, a betrayed wife, a trapped soul.

Through that single shout, I released it all out into the world. I’d been holding onto it all for so long, using it to motivate me, to give me purpose. But it was moments like these where I was forced to acknowledge to raw, unadulterated truth. I wasn’t better than the other girls who haunted their graves. I wasn’t more powerful or more cunning. I wasn’t different or special. I was simply an angry spirit yearning for revenge, yet incapable of leaving this cursed land.

How the fuck was I supposed to make Blake suffer for his crimes if I couldn’t do more than cause a chill or rustle some hair in a supernatural breeze?

Energy pulsed from my in wave after wave of sheer emotional turmoil. The trees bent at odd angles, roots barely clinging to the soil. Birds and other animals skittered away, fleeing my destructive rage. The earth rumbled, a warning of what was to come, dislodging the foundations of the cabin and bringing it crumbling down. And yet, in the living realm, nothing moved. One blink, and the world righted itself like nothing had happened.

Fuck!

Silence.

A flicker of a shadow out of the corner of my eye.

A dark, bass chuckle.

One second, I was lying horizontally on top of my grave, and the next, I was vertical and scanning the treeline for the shadow man. Another flicker of darkness had me spinning to face the western forest, the trickle of the Little Deschutes hidden inside it the only sound I heard for a while. I squinted my eyes as I tried to pinpoint the shadow man’s location, but the sun was setting fast, the shadows stretching longer and further until the lights from the cabin switched on to cut through the darkness. They cast slivers of light over the lawn, the tip of one just barely grazing the edge of my grave but stopping before it reached my toes.

A vicious shout reverberated through the atmosphere from inside the cabin, pulling my attention away from my search. The girl was giving Blake what he wanted, it seemed. The fight in her was strong, and he was going to enjoy snuffing it out. He always did like a challenge.

Blake’s laughter ran through the air, the sound so light and excitable that it was jarring against the chilling events.

‘Eat up,’ he told her, his voice muffled through the walls, but still far too loud as it echoed around me. Taunting me. Mocking me. ‘I like your fire, sweetheart. I want more of it, and you’ll need your strength if you want to keep up.’

‘Please, just let me go. I swear I won’t tell anyone, just please ,’ the girl began her begging.

I could picture what he was doing right now, because he did the same with me. With all of us. His finger would be stroking gently over her jawline, his thumb brushing tenderly over her cheek, but that softness was all an illusion, another way to prove his dominance, to stroke his ego, when she was putty in his hands. A form of mental manipulation he enjoyed using on all of his victims to confuse them. All the while, his hand would be positioned possessively, keeping her eyes on him even if she tried to look away, tilting her chin up so he could gaze upon her fearful expression with open admiration.

Another tendril of smoky blackness darted out from the corner of my eye before promptly blending into its surroundings, once again invisible. The shadow man was taunting me just like Blake, and I wasn’t going to stand for it. Decision made, I pointedly ignored the newcomer, drifting away from my grave towards the house. His answering chuckle followed me as I phased through the walls, like he thought my dismissal was cute rather than the threat that it was meant to be.

But he could stay out there and burn for all I cared. I had other things, better things, to be doing than playing someone else’s sick games. The only games anyone would be playing were my own as I stripped them of everything that held meaning to them.

For Blake, that was his god complex. He felt like he had the ultimate control over everyone at any given moment. The girls, when he held them captive, tortured them, made them beg and plead, then he’d watch as the life bled from their eyes, revelling in his power to take it. At work, when he was saving lives, cutting out the rot and stitching them back together so they could live long and healthy lives. That helped play into his role as the doting husband, the do-gooder, the man everyone loved to love.

It was all one giant con created to stroke his ego, to make him feel powerful and important, even when he moved in the shadows. But it was my turn to move in the shadows, to watch him fall apart at the seams as his entire world imploded. I wanted to peel away every layer for the world to see who he truly was beneath all the bullshit. I wanted him to panic, to realise there was nothing he could do as his nightmare came to life.

And then I wanted him to feel the physical pain. I wanted him to drown in his blood while I tore his organs from his body and forced them down his fucking throat. I wanted to mar his perfect features, the ones he used to trick people into believing he was some sort of saviour, so the outside matched the inside.

I was going to fucking win.

As I entered the basement through the ceiling, I found him exactly as I’d imagined: hand cupping her face, pretending to be gentle and adoring. It was all part of his mindfuck games, and I could tell from the girl’s glare and the way she grimaced at his touch that it wasn’t working. Yet.

It would, eventually. Given enough time, the Stockholm Syndrome would eventually set in, and that would be when he’d finally strike. No more kind words. No more hot meals. No more soft touches. Just endless pain and the desire for the blissful nothingness of death.

As if death would ever create such peace. Even that was a lie.

But dammit, I was taking him down with me, no matter what it took.

And the entity who caused the ice-cold prickle on the back of my neck as he watched from the deepest, darkest shadows of the room. His gaze was like drowning in a frozen lake, all-encompassing and suffocating, but calm at the same time. The kind of calm only a predator could achieve while lying in wait, patient and still. I’d take him down, too.