Fear's Touch: A Darkworld Novella (The Darkworld Series) (13 page)

Goose bumps prickled my arms, even though I’d turned the heating to its highest setting, and though I’d locked my window, I felt a cold draft against my skin. The light-headed feverishness persisted.

Focus!
I skimmed through my notes for the thousandth time as the clock ticked away the remaining hours until morning. Every time my eyes flickered shut, the scene in the assembly hall replayed like a video clip. I knew I could never rest until I found out what the hell happened.

I got out of bed, took up my usual place in my swivel chair, and logged onto my laptop. The bright background image—a screenshot from Final Fantasy—was jarring against the images in my head. I launched the browser, tapping my fingers on the keyboard.

I realised pretty soon that I could spend hours on the Internet, trawling through hundreds of obscure websites, and get absolutely nowhere. Googling “ghost” brought up a thousand fake photographs and videos of hauntings, ranging from floating orbs in old English pubs to transparent figures in family pictures. On the more sinister side, I found images of exorcisms and Ouija boards.
Bad idea.
In the dead of night, every creak of our old house made my nerves jangle. Okay, I’d seen
The Exorcist
before, during an ill-advised horror movie marathon with Cara. Why should this be any different?

Because it might be real.

Browsing occult websites only made my terror more acute. People in forums debated the existence of demons, ghosts, and spirits. Some claimed to have been possessed. Others claimed to be in cahoots with Satan.

What am I even looking for?

I typed the word
demon
. Seemed as good a place to start as any.
If in doubt, trust Wikipedia.
But I found no mention anywhere of violet eyes or living shadows.
Maybe I should do a medical search for hallucinations instead. Or see an actual doctor.

What, and get locked away? I’m not mad!

Institutionalisation wouldn’t do my academic career any favours.

A lot of professors are mad.

Oh, be quiet.

Talking to yourself, now, are we?

I groaned. Enough Internet for me.

I caught sight of the pale spectre of my reflection in the window behind my desk.
Cara has a point. I do look like a zombie
. Or a ghost, watching through shadowed eyes…

It started out as yet another exam dream. I sat in the school hall, looking at an unfamiliar paper as all the other students wrote with frantic enthusiasm, pens racing down the page.

I didn’t revise this at all
. Panic rose within me. I twisted in my seat, glancing from side to side. Everyone else scribbled away. The clock ticked, seconds passing. Minutes.
Shit.

I felt a familiar surge of dizziness, the same chill as during the assembly. My breath stuck in my throat, and my heart pounded. I stared at the back of the seat in front of me, which wavered and shimmered before my eyes, turning to blackness.

From out of the darkness, a face grinned at me. Sharp teeth formed a malevolent smile. Violet eyes stared at me, unblinking. I could see nothing but the smoke, which obscured everything before my eyes.

My chair tipped of its own accord. In slow motion, it leaned back and teetered for a moment. The demon grinned as I sat there, powerless to move. The panic inside my chest spilled over, and I tried to cry out. But I couldn’t move my jaw, couldn’t open my mouth. I was frozen to the seat as it hit the floor with a soundless thud.

I couldn’t move.

I couldn’t feel anything.

And I couldn’t speak, couldn’t scream.

I lay on my back, and, around me, people continued to write, like robots programmed to scribble endless pages. No one spared a glance for me. I was trapped on the floor, and no one even knew.

The eyes blinked then vanished.

My heart restarted with a jolt, hammering in my ears. I fought to escape the trap. My eyes felt as though something heavy weighed them shut, but I managed to force my eyelids apart. The sight of my digital alarm clock greeted me, sideways. I’d fallen asleep at my desk, my head resting on my laptop, the cold edge digging into my face.

I tried to lift my head, but I couldn’t. I tried to open my mouth, but my jaw remained locked.

Impossible. I’m awake.

Not a muscle in my body responded to my pleas. I couldn’t feel my hands, but I knew my right one rested under my chin, where I’d used it as a pillow. I couldn’t feel my face, either. I’d lost all feeling in my entire body, as if an invisible presence lay on top of me, pinning me down.

I tried to cry out, but not a sound escaped.

Move!
I thought, the weight continuing to press on me. One of those web sites I’d browsed had mentioned poltergeists that sat on people in the middle of the night, leaving them unable to move. Terror washed over me, cold and merciless.

Every short breath hurt my chest.
Let me go. Please. Please! I’ll do anything. Just let me move.

“Anything, Ashlyn?”

That voice.
There’s no one there,
logic screamed at me, but it went against all the evidence of my senses. A thousand invisible hands gripped me all over, numbing all sensation. At the edges of my vision, I thought I saw dark shapes, but there were no eyes, no mouth to match the voice.

What do you want from me?

It didn’t respond.

Are you a demon?

“Yes, Ashlyn.”

Finally, the messages between my brain and nerves seemed to hit home, and I managed to raise my head, to lift my arm an inch. Slowly, I regained feeling in my limbs. I shifted, twitched my hands, my feet.

There was nothing in the room. No demons, no staring eyes.

But even then, I knew they watched me.

That day, the fear began.

ne month later

“Ash! You’ve got something in the post!”

Groaning, I pulled the covers up over my head.
Not now. Any time but now.
I knew the rejection letter was coming, but that didn’t make it any easier to deal with.

“Ash!”

I sighed and pushed the covers back. Thirty days to the day of that disastrous interview—and here was my future, signed and stamped in a shiny envelope. I went through the motions of pulling on clothes and getting ready for school, dragging it out as long as possible. When I stepped out of my room, Mum hovered near the door.

“Later,” I told her when she showed me the
three
large envelopes, all addressed to Miss Ashlyn Temple. “Why three? Isn’t one rejection letter enough?”

“It might not be a rejection,” Mum said, trying to console me. “This one’s from your Aunt Eve, anyway.”

“But it’s not my birthday,” I said. “She’s either five months too late or seven too early. Can I go to school now?”

“I’m not stopping you.” Mum stepped back into the kitchen, a touch of reproach on her face.

“Right. Sorry.”

I
was
sorry, but God, was it hard pretending to be a normal daughter when “normal” had disappeared down the rabbit hole over a month ago. Besides, I ranked today’s exam next to the Oxford interview in the enjoyment factor category. At least I had Milton down now.
No light, only darkness visible.
How appropriate.

I saw another one on the way to school—a dark space, as I called them now. A square-ish patch, no more than half a metre either way but enough to block my path. And within, a pair of eyes glinted. Purple, as usual. Bigger than human eyes, narrowed, with vertical pupils like a cat’s―and watching me.

Closing my eyes, I tried to ignore the prickling fear. I shivered, feeling the customary coldness intensify as it always did when I saw a dark space. Sometimes I felt like I could never get warm again.
Nothing’s going to stop me from passing this exam. Not even evil manifestations of my subconscious.

Drawing in a deep breath, I opened my eyes and veered across the road like I’d intended to walk that way all along. Ignoring them didn’t help, but it made me feel a little better. Talking back to one would bring me to a whole new level of crazy.

A car horn beeped as I narrowly avoided walking right into it. The driver swore colourfully, jolting me back to reality. My feet hit the pavement on the other side. I resisted the urge to turn back and check if the dark space was still there. Maybe my luck would hold, and they’d stay out of the exam hall.

Yeah, right.

Mum and Dad wanted to send me to therapy. Like that would help.
I think I have a problem. Is this a demon I see before me?
Not that they knew about the demons, of course – they thought my nightmares and constant jumpiness were caused by stress.

If only it was that simple.

I didn’t see anything else unusual on the last of the walk to school. I glanced at the clock as I entered the school building. One hour to fit in some last-minute revision in the library.

To my relief, the library was open. My phone buzzed as I made my way between the shelves. Cara had sent me a text saying she’d join me in a bit. “It’s bad luck to revise on the day of an exam,” she scolded me.

I like to think I’ve already used up my bad luck quota for today.
First a rejection then the demon. Now all I needed was―

I swore under my breath. There was a dark space in the library, too, right over the table where I’d intended to sit. A piece of reality cut away, and within it… those eyes.

“Hello, Ashlyn.”

“What?” I dropped my revision notes.
Did that demon say hello?
I put my trembling hands behind my back.

Aside from that first dream, none of the demons had ever said a word to me. This one watched me with its sinister violet eyes. Coldness seeped into me, and my heart pounded against my ears.

Great. Now I’ve insulted it. Or something. I don’t have time for this.

Fear warred with common sense, and common sense won. I scrambled to pick up my notes so I could get the hell out of there. Why did they have to keep watching me like that?

Thud.
A book fell off the shelf, narrowly missing my foot.

“What the hell?”

Another book fell with a
thud
, a hefty volume of the Oxford English Dictionary. This time, I couldn’t put it down to the library’s old shelves falling apart.