Page 22 of Tempt Me

‘Six years, wife, and massacre.’

I blinked, taking the paper and turning it over to try to read more, but the back was filled with annoying ads for lawn services. I sighed, bringing up my camera and clicking a picture of the crumpled paper.

“Whatcha’ reading?”

I screamed, nearly jumping out of my skin, the paper floating to the ground with my outburst. A strange redhead stood beside my tree, her eyes wide and unblinking. I swallowed, realizing I was pretty far away from the college.

“Uh, a scary book,” I answered and stuck my shoe over the parchment to block her wandering, eerie gaze.

“Hmm. Scary is objective! What you find scary may make me laugh.” She giggled, and the sound was like that of a warped doll in a horror film.

I forced a smile, joining in her weirdness if only to get the fuck away from these woods and their unnatural inhabitant.

“You wanna know something fun?” She giggled again, twirling her dress and dancing on her toes. “We’re not far from the new asylum they built. The last one magically disappeared with bulldozers, but this one is so close sometimes you can hear the cries of the Reaper’s victims.”

I looked around the wooded area, not seeing so much as animals nearby. This lady creeped out even wildlife.

She pointed into the distance, and I could see a prominent fixture. It was dark, a building without any light coming from it.It looked from here as if it were floating in the dark rain clouds above.

The girl kept laughing, her creepy melodic voice singing some horrible song.

“Tick-tock. Another drops.”

The words made me shiver, spreading goose bumps on my exposed arms.

“Riiiight. Well, I should be going. I need to get back to school. I have my professor waiting on me.”

I spread out my arms in a lazy gesture and started walking backward. The woman tilted her head and scowled at me.

“Don’t you wanna be friends?” she said, a pouted lip jutting out.

Fuck no, I didn’t want to see this lady again, but I didn’t put it past her wondering gaze to bash my head into the tree…

“Of course…girl,” I blurted a bit too enthusiastically. “I just need to get myself back to class now. Before I get in trouble, ya know’?”

She didn’t seem convinced. I held up my camera to her and snapped a photo, her wicked red hair practically glowing in the picture. She blinked rapidly and stepped back, waving her hands in her face.

Oh fuck…I just pissed off this nut job.

She had said that the asylum was close by. Maybe she was an inhabitant of it. I wouldn’t put it past her, especially with her never-ending smiling and giggling.

She belonged in a horror movie.

“Yeah, sorry. Beep boop, and something droops?” I tried to recall her creepy song, and her curiosity got the better of her.

Before I knew she was up in my face, mere inches from my eyes.

She tapped on my forehead with her bony fingers and said, “No, no, no, look at me now. Watch me.”

I stared at her weird expression. Her eyes were so bright in color that I felt a weird pull to them. She was singing that song, and it felt like it was scratching chords in my brain. I tried to look away. The feeling was uncomfortable and foreign.

“Tick-tock,” she said soothingly, holding onto my head with her cold hands like a plug of electricity.

“Tick-tock,” I repeated mechanically.

“Another drop—”

The weird pull to her broke, a tether snapping string with one barked command in the distance.