Billy's gone.
Ruby Buckley's world ended with him.
But Hawkins isn't done with her yet.
When strange deaths begin again, Ruby is pulled into the heart of the storm. Between shadowy nightmares, the town's newest outcast, and someone she was never s...
( songs for the chapter ) dream a little dream of me // ella fitzgerald, louis armstrong i know it's over // the smiths
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The song continued on.
Look into his angel eyes, One look and you're hypnotized.
Ruby sat at one of the round tables near the edge of the gym, fingers worrying at her nail polish. She peeled a thin strip of red from her thumb, then another, careless, automatic. A habit she'd never managed to break.
She checked her watch.
The second hand ticked forward. Once. Twice. Too loud.
Time wasn't moving the way it should.
Her leg bounced beneath the table, knee knocking lightly against the metal support. She pressed her heel harder into the floor, trying to still it.
Breathe. Just breathe.
The gym smelled like sugar and cheap perfume and polished wood.
Balloons bobbed gently above the tables, white and silver, catching the soft lights strung across the ceiling.
For a moment, just a moment, everything was normal.
Then a balloon burst behind her.
Ruby gasped, the sound tearing out of her as she jolted upright, chair legs screeching against the floor. Her heart slammed violently against her ribs as she spun around.
The balloon lay in tatters on the table behind her.
It wasn't air that spilled out.
Blood soaked the white tablecloth, dark and glossy, dripping over the edge in slow, deliberate rivulets. It pattered onto the gym floor with a wet, intimate sound.
Her stomach dropped.
She stumbled backward, chair tipping over as she retreated toward the center of the gym, eyes locked on the spreading stain.
"No," she whispered. "No, no-"
Every balloon in the room burst at once.
The sound was deafening, sharp cracks echoing off the walls as red rained down. Ruby spun in place, breath coming fast and shallow, tracking the explosions as panic clawed up her throat. Blood splashed across tables, the chairs, the floor.
Her vision tunneled.
No, no, no, no, no.
She backed toward the DJ booth, the sole of her shoe catching on something sticky.
The record on the turntable warped, the pitch bending grotesquely, the melody stretching until it sounded wrong. Diseased.
