Page 17 of Hallowed & Haunted
The white apparition at the end of the hallway moves, and the temperature plummets. Sander’s breath condensates, and frost begins to form on the walls around him. It’s like walking into an ice rink on a balmy summer day—shocking and wrong.
“Come to me, beautiful one,” the figure whispers, and she’s closer now, drifting toward him like a cloth floating in a current. She’s shrouded in a faint glow, a young woman, maybe Sander’s age, with long dark hair that moves like it’s underwater. Her dress is white and flowing, reminding Sander of period dramas. The perfect Halloween costume.
Maybe Henrik has convinced his new girlfriend to dress up as a ghostly white lady?
“Who—who are you?”
Sander’s teeth are chattering, the cold seeping through Niillas’ flannel shirt as if Sander were standing outside on the coldest winter’s day.
The girl smiles at him with horrible blue lips.
“Marta,” she says, as if that explains everything. “Come. Come with me. We need to hide.”
“Hei, Marta.” Sander struggles again with the floorboards, but his movements are becoming sluggish as the cold spreads through his body. “Who are you hiding from?”
She kneels down beside him, or more like flows into a position resembling a crouch, cold radiating from her skin.
“The thing in the woods.”
Horror crawls up Sander’s spine as he gets a closer look at her face. Her skull looks like it’s been caved in at the side as if something extremely heavy crashed against her head. This isn’t make-up. Sander feels like he might be sick.
“You’ve seen it, too.”
He did. Oh god. He did.
“What did you see?” Sander asks through chattering teeth. He needs to keep talking. “When?”
“Karo barked at it. My poor Karo.” Her translucent fingers hover over Sander’s face, not quite touching but close enough that he can feel the deadly chill radiating off her skin. “Come with me. We have to hide.”
“From what, Marta?”
She leans closer.
“The troll.”
“What?”
“Karo barked at it.” Her lips twist into a dreadful smile. “Your hair. It’s the same color as his fur.”
Her cold is making him dizzy, his vision blurring at the edges. He can feel himself shutting down, his body trying to preserve what warmth it has left. But he forces himself to keep talking, some survival instinct telling him that as long as he can keep her focused on conversation, she might not drag him to whichever horrible place she came from.
“My—my friend is still downstairs. We can’t leave him behind.”
Sander just hopes he’s protecting Niillas from the thing outside—the troll, the girl called it—and not condemning him to die by Marta’s hands.
“No.” Marta’s face twists, and frost creeps up Sander’s sleeve. “He’s one of them.”
“He’s what?”
Her hand is in his hair, her touch spreading a numbness in its wake.
“He’s different. Not like us.” Marta’s ghostly voice takes on an agitated edge. “He can’t hide with us. You can. We can be cold together.”
“I can’t—I have to—”
“Shh. It only hurts for a little while.”
Drowsiness overwhelms him. He can barely feel his trapped leg anymore, can barely feel anything except the devastating cold that’s turning his blood to slush in his veins.