𝐎𝐑𝐏𝐇𝐈𝐂 | (adj.) "Otherworldly."
In an alternate version of present-day Britain, ghosts who are deadly to the touch have been rising from their graves for the past fifty years. Adults cannot sense the ghosts, but children can, so teenagers hav...
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𝐄𝐑𝐈𝐍 𝐖𝐀𝐒 𝐎𝐍𝐄 𝐎𝐅 those people who dreamt often, but when she woke the following morning, couldn't put a coherent string of words together to articulate what it was that she had seen. Her dreams were often a firsthand perspective of some escapade—at least, she assumed. Though unable to recall what the dreams were about most nights, she could remember how they made her feel.
Almost always, she was disoriented. She could be certain that she was aware of the fact that she was dreaming. It was what specialists called lucid dreaming, but Erin often wondered if it had to do somehow with her Talent. When one fell asleep, they couldn't be sure of where they went. Who's to say that dreams weren't a manifestation of the Other Side or what lay beyond that somehow? And perhaps that was why she couldn't recall what happened in them. Even so, the disorientation was always coupled with a weightlessness. It was as though she was suspended, looking but not really seeing. Nothing made sense—shapes were abstract, colors were off, and the world was flipped on its axis.
All of those feelings—the ones typically associated with how dreams made her feel—were how she felt at the moment.
Her eyes peeled open slowly against a strange force which, as she came to know her surroundings, she realized was water. Yet, she couldn't feel the sensations of it on her skin. Her clothes didn't pull or sag with the weight of it. It was clear and murky greenish-brown all at the same time. Surely, it had to be a dream. She would wake up in her attic bedroom at 35 Portland Row and this would all be a dream.
She thought this until her eyes focused much more steadily in front of her. There, floating opposite her in the watery void was a young woman. Her skin was ethereally pale, her long, red hair a floating mess around her face. She wore a printed, floral dress and in her hands was holding a bouquet of daisies.
As Erin focused on her, amongst the sounds of water sloshing in her ears, she could hear the distant murmur of a voice. It was just there, just behind her eardrum and if she listened hard enough, perhaps the words would become clear.
The woman moved her head, hair fanning and freeing her face for view. She was pretty—large, doe eyes and plump lips accompanied by a sharp jaw and cheekbones. Her features weren't exactly what struck Erin, however; it was the fact that this was most definitely the Visitor that they had just encountered at Mrs. Hope's home. As she was alive, of course, as there was no hint of the skeletal mass that they'd found stuffed in the chimney breast.
"Let go of me." The distant murmur grew clearer. Erin's brow creased as her eyes zeroed in on the girl's right hand, swathed in the darkness of the bouquet's shadow. She set the bouquet of daisies free, and as she did, the shadows left her hand, showing that her right index finger held that same ring Erin had taken from her body. "Let go of me." The voice in Erin's ears shifted. No longer was it the gentle pleading whisper of a woman. It had turned more frantic, distorting as the volume increased tenfold. "Let go of me." Though the voice in her head screamed, the lips of the girl in front of her never moved. "Let go of me!"
