Page 391 of Phobia

Grass crunched under my shoes as I searched for Bastien. I walked the entire perimeter of the graveyard, but there was still no sign of him.

An hour of circling graves had passed. My stomach dropped. Perhaps something horrid had happened to him. Maybe he had run into Papa and they’d had a row. Bastien was far stronger than Papa, but maybe Papa had pulled a knife on him.

Panic set in and I ran to Bastien’s tree, the one he always sat against. Pacing back and forth, I tried to steady my pounding heart so I could think clearly. Unsuccessful, I plopped my ass onto the ground so my heart didn’t have to work so hard to circulate blood.

“Ouch!” My tail bone had knocked onto something hard. I moved aside to see what it was.

Stone?

Covered in moss and grime, it looked like an old steppingstone. I had never noticed it before when Bastien would sit in this very spot every night.

I dug away at the caked-on dirt, soil sticking under my fingernails, until I eventually revealed letters etched into the stone, but I still couldn’t read them through all the sediment.

I wrapped the fabric of my skirt around a finger and rubbed the letters free.

Ornate etchings bordered the slab of stone wedged into the earth and there, a shallow, faint carving turned my blood ice cold.

Bastien Lyon Baron

1589–1625

“No. No. No.” This couldn’t be right. I was seeing things...hallucinating. I had gone hours of physical exertion without hydration or nourishment. Surely, my eyes were giving out. I rubbed my palms against my closed lids.

I scanned the letters over and over, hoping I had read them wrong. But each time yielded the same message.

Bastien couldn’t have been dead!

Bastien was real. I had seen him with my own eyes. I had felt his touch. I had tasted his lips.

Maybe it was another Bastien Baron...someone else’s Bastien. My mind raced back through all the times I had touched him...and felt coldness instead of heat from his body. Even his breath had always carried a chill cool enough to make me shiver. Had I ever heard his heartbeat in his chest?

“God, no!” I wailed, tears streaming down my face. My shoulders shook from my sobs as I pushed on the headstone, as if that would somehow wake Bastien up from his eternal slumber.

I was imagining dead men and loving them like they were mortal.Oh, God.I had gone stark raving mad.

This was fucking crazy. Had I been dreaming this whole time? Sleep walking? Had Papa really even kicked me out of the house?

Neurons fired one after another searching the database in my brain for any details that would prove reality false.

I drove my fingers into the hair at my scalp and yanked, letting out a blood-curdling shriek so loud that a murder of crows squawked in response.

Deeper and deeper into darkness I sank, the cold hands of insanity pulling me under.

I had created a whole reality in which I was loved by a man who was an outcast just like myself. Desperate to be accepted and wanted, I’d conjured him with my sick mind and given myself to my imaginary lover. The townsfolk were right, I was a freak—a freak who belonged with the dead.

And the ironic part was, I was more alone, and unloved, now than I had been before, when I had lived amongst the living.

Chapter 10

Something was not right.

I started each day the same. After rising from bed, I lit a fresh stick of anise-infused incense and filled my lungs with the licorice smoke, letting it purify my first breaths of the morning. The ritual grounded me, and the resulting sense of calm lingered as I went about my daily tasks.

This morning was different. I watched the flame consume the head of the stick, before eventually dying out and leaving a bright orange ember in its wake. Trails of smoke wafted before me, swirling into my nostrils.

But their scent wasn’t inviting like it had been yesterday and the day before that. Bitterness burned my nostrils and tears clouded my eyes. Hacking coughs wracked my ribs.

Then everything went black, and a vision appeared.