Hers

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Eighteen

Pollocksville, North Carolina.

My pointer finger lingered over the enter button.  The little line blinked inside the search box, waiting for me to make the next move.  I took a deep breath and pressed down on the button.  The screen morphed and almost instantly thousands of search results came up.  Journal articles appeared mostly, all with grisly titles.

Local girl commits suicide in Blackbeard’s Park.

Teen boy and bleach means five deaths in small town.

Another suicide in Pollocksville.

In the past month there had been seven suicides in Pollocksville alone.  Each in a different way.  One with a knife, one where the person jumped off a building, bleach, pills, hanging noose, toaster in a bathtub, and now a car accident on the railroad tracks.

I selected a random article.

“The first victim was named Nicole Hensley.  She was only nineteen years old when she decided to take her life.  But was it really her that made that decision?  Nicole was everything a girl wished she could be.  Beautiful, smart, a complete sweetheart.  She would never have hurt anyone, especially not herself.  Her family suspects that the pressures of school and work were beginning to mount on her, causing her to slit her wrists that night in Blackbeard’s Park.  But why there?  Why that night?  Her roommate says that Nicole had been acting strange the weeks following up to her suicide.  Nicole was apparently talking widely about a man with green eyes who she had to please.”

Suddenly, I remembered a conversation I had with Ace.

“You only see what we want you to see.”

“An illusion,” I remembered Satan’s words.

“Exactly, we put it up so you can see us and not be terrified.”

“And the waitress wants to see you with blonde hair?”  Ace nodded.

“Just like you want to see me with black hair.”

No, that couldn’t be possible.  Ace wouldn’t kill someone.  He wasn’t capable of something like that.  Was he?

“Since Nicole, there have been six other suicides all focused in the Pollocksville, North Carolina area.  Coincidence?  I don’t think so.  In three of those “suicides” there were mentions of a man with green eyes.  He was either a lover or a tormentor in each case.  The police are convinced that these string of suicides are merely teens being overly dramatic and making stupid decisions.  They disregard all clues that point to a murderer.”

The website went on to give the victim’s names along with details of how they died along with a number to call for suicide prevention as well as a warning sheet for traits of people who may be suicidal.

I closed the blog webpage and made my way back to the search engine.

Shadow people.

I clicked on the first link.

“Many religions often describe a shadowy figure that belongs in the realm of the underworld.  These are often the cause of medical and psychological conditions such as sleep deprivation, sleep paralysis, or may also be a side effect to several medications.”

There was no way these shadows could just be in my head.  They chased me.  They touched me.  I wasn’t taking any medication and I didn’t have any psychological conditions.  This had to be because of Ace.  There was no other reason.