Inside Evil

Chapter 15 - Part I

*Inside Evil and its sequels are available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks*  

The next few days flew past without Roberta quite realising how fast she was approaching her deadline. The new addition to their household settled in well, and within hours of its arrival the other cats had returned to normal and once again began to nuzzle and show affection towards Roberta. The little white kitten with a tiny black speck on the end of its tail had been named Faithful as, after running intently around the house, sniffing at every corner, investigating every crevice and discovering the house top to bottom, he stuck to Roberta's side like a limpet.

Nothing had been furthered on her riddle. Sam spent every waking moment hunched over his laptop scouring the internet for something of help. He'd long since given up on the ancient book that Mrs Peacock had supplied him with as, after carefully going through every single page, there was nothing but pale pink and blank parchment. Now, he spent every coffee fuelled hour at the table, trying to gather as much information as he could on Gathin and Roberta's ridiculous riddle.

Meanwhile, Roberta herself sat quietly on the couch contemplating her end. Though Faithful's presence had helped clear her mind a little, she still predominantly thought of Susan Lingly, trying to quell the burning hatred inside. Roberta feared leaving the house because she knew that her feet would only take her towards Best Books, even if she might try and restrain them. It took all the strength she had to control herself, and though she knew that she should be helping Sam, Roberta found that every waking moment was taken by the battle going on inside her head. As much as she wanted to sit with Sam and work together on saving her own life, she just couldn't. Roberta found that she could focus momentarily on questions or thoughts Sam put to her, but as soon as she started to grasp hold of an answer it drifted off in the fog of her mind. She wrote the riddle onto multiple pieces of paper, over and over again. Not as a way to solve it or ingrain the words into her head, for every character was burnt into her mind, but as a simple solution to stop the inner conflict for a few short minutes. It helped to scrawl out the letters of the riddle, to think of the moon and the path she'd been set. The only problem Roberta found with this was that she had to continuously think of her journey through the mirror and the figures that she'd seen. Was she to die and end up like the form of Vanessa she'd seen? Looking like herself but with her soul taken by demons? It was the largest fear she had and yet, she replayed the path over and over again.

When not fading away on the couch, Roberta wandered around the house aimlessly, always cheered up by Faithful, but never quite with it enough to snap back into her old self. She'd glance in the mirror occasionally, hoping that Mrs Peacock would appear and offer her words of advice, but there was never even the flicker of movement within the mirror's frame. Roberta expected to die in this house, and she knew that the only way to save Sam was to remove him from the picture altogether.

*I will be posting one or two scenes a week as the story builds. However, if you can't wait that long, Inside Evil is available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks.

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