Page 125 of Phobia

And then it dawned on me.

Judah would know what to do. I hated his father, but Judah was a friend, and he always knew what to do.

He would definitely know what to do now as well.

Chapter 2

The night was alive with the sounds of screams painted in the colors of broken promises and a thousand sorrows, as Devil’s Night descended upon us, beckoning the wild, wicked creatures of this town into its embrace. My eyes latched onto the entrance to the asylum, seeinghimcasually walking around, his hooded eyes focused on the people coming in and out, looking for his next victim. I would’ve given everything to drown in those blue depths. The crimson dreams that haunted my life this past year, and this night, this place, were the only reprieve from the dull, fucked-up life I led in front of other people.

But not anymore.

Not after tonight.

There was a game to be played on this hallow night, where the saints hid behind the closed doors and the demons ruled the city. The wicked painted the streets in a crimson color of despair, of forever existing depravity, letting loose on this one night when the games of terror and panic were all any of us knew.

A white coat of fog surrounded me as I walked through the wrought iron gate, leading me into the cemetery where I could be me—I could let loose. My limbs trembled, ready to unleash the force of the monster that lay hidden for an entire year, only to be free for one night, licking its lips while it studied the victims rushing around, unaware of the monsters crawling through the night.

An electric current danced on the surface of my skin, burrowing deeper, pushing me toward him, and like a moth to a flame, I gravitated right where my monster stood, his eyes twinkling underneath the moonlight, welcoming the men and women into the embrace of his dark kingdom, where he allowed us to play only once a year.

They didn’t know him, but I did. I saw him and the shadows he played with, the wicked smile slipping every so often when he thought that no one paid enough attention. I saw under that Victorian style mask he wore every October 30th, letting the sickness run over these unholy grounds he considered home.

My steps never faltered as I pushed through the crowd, with only one goal in my mind—to finally make him mine. As if he knew, as if he could sense me among all these curious little people who came out here, trying to peep into the life of the one man they could never figure out, his eyes moved from the two girls hurriedly rushing toward the stairs leading to the house, and landed on me.

His gaze felt like a scorching fire on my body, as he lazily dragged his eyes over my bare legs, toward the high-waisted shorts I wore, then over the viridian-colored corset covered with black lace, and finally landing on my face, his eyes narrowing when the mask I wore obstructed his view of me.

My lips parted from their own volition, hungry for more than a simple look from him, but I could be patient. I’d been patient for three goddamn years. Ever since that night a year ago, I hadn’t been able to shake off the feeling that this was where I was always supposed to be.

This place.

This hell he created.

This wicked fantasy he allowed us to be a part of.

He felt like dark magic—forbidden and alluring, my dark, blue sea of memories both lost and found, and I yearned for his waves to pull me into the dark abyss where I could wrap my arms around his soul, binding him to me for all eternity.

And I would.

On this Devil’s Night that belonged to us, to outcasts, to those who sought out oblivion in the darkest pits of Winworth, I would take what was always supposed to be mine.

And Lazarus Morass belonged to me from the first moment I laid eyes on him.

Chapter 3

One Year Ago

The days bled into one another, the suffocating stillness of Winworth stealing every last ray of sunshine from my life. Everything was the same, over and over again.

The same people, the same monotone lives, created just to pass the time, to fill in the void spreading like a disease in their bodies, and I didn’t want to be a part of it. I didn’t want to be just one more person who went to school, then to college, got employed in a company that couldn’t care less about me, only to spend my entire life there, too afraid to move on to something better, something more exciting.

I’d spent my entire life fighting, trying to do better, be better, and for what? For some rich prick to steal my idea and accuse me of cheating on my final exam?

Sometimes it felt as if I was just a bystander, looking at my life as it went, unable to change a single thing. I was tired of standing still. Did you ever have that dream, a nightmare really, of you running and running and running, but no matter how much you ran, how heavy your breathing became, you were still in the same spot, surrounded by the same people, fighting the same demons?

I was constantly on this treadmill of life, pushing and fucking pushing, but nothing ever came of it. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I fought, it was always the same. I would always be just a little girl who dared to dream too much, smothered by the current of life, unable to change a single thing.

And now, at nineteen, when my life was just supposed to be starting, I was back in Winworth, paralyzed with fear from what happened just a couple of months ago in Seattle, because I was a naïve woman who’d trusted the wrong person.

“Are you planning to get out of your bed today, Eleara?” my mother asked, her hair already styled in a neat bun on top of her head, and the blue eyes so similar to mine, shining with dissatisfaction. To say that my mother wasn’t happy with how I was dealing with things would be the understatement of the year.