The Unlikely Resident of Room 313

Chapter 12

Fear gripped me like a python. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, or move. A tortuous sorrow and breathtaking hollowness filled me from top to bottom. The shriek gave way to a brutal moan and I sank to my knees, overcome by despair.

Something cold wrapped around my torso and I jolted, a scream lodged in my throat as I fought against its iron grip. What felt like movie scenes flashed before my mind's eye in fragments of color and sound: sparkling blue waters, hearty laughter, an American flag waving from the mast of a white and yellow sailboat, red cups and glass bottles and someone screaming to drink faster—

"Asteria," Roy whispered in my ear as I thrashed against him. The scenes vanished in an instant, almost as though a shutter fell to silence them. "Asteria, it's me. It's me."

"Let go of me!" An invisible force dragged my gaze to the cliffs, mind frenzied. Part of me didn't understand why something inside of me needed to see the cliffs, who was there, why they felt so fractured. Why I was overpowered—no, possessed—by an instinctual desire I didn't understand. "I need to see!"

"No," he said, firmly. "Don't look. I swear to God, don't look. If she sees you. If she knows you can hear her..."

As I lifted my head, Roy sunk into the sand and turned me towards him, his chest blocking my line of sight, causing me to fight harder. The wall behind my mind's eye quivered and a familiar scream broke through. But it was lost to the woman's screams from the cliff, and my body tensed when I realized it was much closer now, the thought confirmed when Roy's arms tightened around me.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck," he muttered. "Out of all the times for you to be drunk."

A tendril of icy air wrapped around my ankles, colder than the chill that radiated from Roy, an Arctic blast compared to a snowy New England winter. Roy said something else. Something my mind couldn't comprehend, too focused on three things: the way the darkness quivered around us, the ice binding my skin, and then her.

With her limp, mousy brown ringlets and a blood-red, heart-shaped mouth. The last time I saw her, her cheeks were sunken and pure white like marble. Now, they were marred with thick black and red gashes, pieces of skin and muscle ripped away to reveal black holes where bone should have been. They matched the crude holes in her dress, her torso, where most of her shoulder should have been, arm hanging unnaturally crooked by her side from the small bit of it that was still intact, legs dangling like a rag doll as she hovered in the air.

Olivia Saint James.

This time, she didn't look surprised to see me.

No.

Through pure white eyes, she stared at me with murderous rage as the clouds pulled back and the sparse light around us glowed brighter. Her delicate mouth opened in a snarl, and she hissed in a million voices, "How could you do this to me?"

"I didn't do anything," I said, tongue feeling heavy in my mouth.

Her face contorted in sorrow. She hiccuped a sob that rattled her loose arm to the ground. "Out of all of the people you could have! Why him? Why?"

My eyes swiveled around to Roy. Was it possible for ghosts to look paler than they already were? Could they hyperventilate? "I don't understand," I breathed. "You can have him. Please."

Tree branches rattled around us as she exploded with icy rage. "Why did you take my James from me, Catherine?" Olivia's sobs grated my ears and skin like shards of glass. The wind picked up into its own howl, sand hitting my face, coating my tongue, and Roy's fingers pulled on my skin. "You have everything in the world! Why take the one thing that belonged to me?"