Alive (Book 1)

Ten

My leg didn’t end up getting an infection. August had done a bang-up job with the patch work.

It was the boredom, really, that got to me. The mundane similarity of every single day. And I had never really known true boredom, being forever on the run and everything, so it was a strange feeling.

August seemed more distant than usual. He brought back clothes and food, and mostly kept to himself, uttering words to me only when necessary. It wasn’t a comforting thought, that we had reverted back to the way things were just out of Yale.

One afternoon, while August was out doing who knows what, I took up the crutches he procured for me and left our temporary shelter. I was starting to get cabin fever holed up in the middle of the woods somewhere in New York, often by myself, with shoddy cable. It wasn’t that I wanted to look around, because there probably wasn’t much to see anyway, but I just needed out.

I hobbled my way through the woods, nothing but the sound of leaves rustling and animals scurrying in the underbrush around me. It wasn’t long before the familiar shape of the rotting shack loomed into view, with it horrid memories that would now haunt me for the rest of my life, along with the others. I hardly thought it fair, that so much bad could happen to one person.

Probably against better judgment, I entered the shack, looking around. It didn’t look so lethal, now, than when Jake and his crew were occupying the space and I was tied to the pole. Even the pole, still spotted with dried flecks of my blood, looked harmless.

I dropped the crutches, falling to the moldy floor of the shack. And then I just sat there, in the insidious silence, the walls closing in on me. My eyes slipped shut. Sometimes you could feel the darkness of a place, and the residual evil of Jake clung to the air. I was extra sensitive to those kinds of things, the auras normal people didn’t register. A chill crawled over my skin.

“Ellie.”

I froze, looking wildly around the small space for the source of the voice. Unease slithered down my spine. “Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”

“Ellie.”

That time pain spiked through my head, fire spreading from the base of my neck down my spine. My body recoiled and then tightened, everything inside clenching up, like I was electrocuted.

“Ellie.”

It occurred to me, then, by the elevation of pain in my head when my name was spoken, that the voice wasn’t around me. It wasn’t a physical essence.

It was in my head.

“No,” I whispered pleadingly, unable to move. “Please, no.”

“Too late for that.”

And that was really when all hell broke loose inside of me.

Things were happening that had never happened before. Familiarity was like an old friend to me, and leaving my comfort zone was worse than death; indeed, it could actually result in death. That was why the fact that I was experiencing visions all of a sudden, and seeing people die, frightened the hell out of me.

Now this--whatever this was--only served to worsen that fear.

It was almost impossible to explain, because I was me, just not me. The world around me had a fuzzy edging to it, like when a TV show switches to a flashback. I had no idea where I was, and everything felt like a dream.

“Hello?” I called, voice sounding echoey. “Anybody there?”

Silence was the response, and I tiptoed further down the dank corridor. It was constructed with stones, cold to the touch of my feet. I trailed my right hand along the wall, insurance just in case I got lost.