Haunted Rayne

22 | Memories of the Marked (part 1)

Hillary Berkshire's high heels chase the ticking clock of the corridor. Her golden ball gown appears tarnished in this realm, patches of corrosion eating away at the tulle to unveil a greenish underbelly. "Please, wait!" she cries, tears burning her cheeks.

In the distance, Vincent Davenport hurries around a corner. "I can't do this anymore," he says, and his voice echoes throughout the empty halls. The finality of his words hang over her, a cold breeze to a quivering flame. Hillary trembles.

Memories resurface. She recalls a time when her confidence and assertiveness, which had once been her armor, had become her undoing. She was the sassy daughter of a wealthy family, manipulated into a web of deceit by a cunning classmate. The scheme involved a romantic entanglement with an older executive, a competitor to her father's business, whom she was meant to blackmail. Unfortunately, their plans were discovered. Instead of elevating her status, the scandal led to her expulsion and placement in Maria J. Westwood, the reform school for America's elite. There, amid the privileged and the broken, she met Davenport, who became both her tormentor and the object of her ill-fated affection.

She had never meant to repeat a pattern.

But old habits die screaming . . .

Hillary sobs, trying to expel the memories, when suddenly, Bianca appears before her, eyes glowing with a green, preternatural glaze. She charges Hillary. There's a dagger, glinting in Bianca's hands. Panic seizes her, and Hillary staggers backward, raising her arms instinctively overhead. Why, Bianca? Why!? The corridor seems to ripple around her. Time, as she knows it, fractures, ripping her away from the danger and into a different moment, into another dimension.

When she opens her eyes, Hillary is no longer in the vast hallway. She is standing in the present. Her eyes survey the somber spectacle that is her own memorial. It is horrifying. Spread out across the Maria J. Westwood soccer field, she sees tearful eyes. Bianca, in particular, is on her hands and knees at the edge of the field, her body convulsing with sobs. Guilt radiates from her in oppressive waves, and Hillary longs to comfort her. It's not your fault.

She extends her hand, her arm passing through Bianca's shoulder, just as she whispers, "I'm here." But the words are swallowed by the void, lost in the chasm that separates the living from the dead. Forever unable to reach Bianca's ears.

Suddenly, the ground beneath Hillary gives way, and the soccer field vanishes. Hillary plummets back to the darkness of that awful, dreadful night. Her final moments replay, like a macabre film reel, each scene etching itself deeper into her spectral consciousness. The weight of those seconds—when life slipped from her grasp—clings to her, dragging her back, again and again and again, to that terrible night.

With the dagger held high above her, Bianca's eyes widen with horror, dropping its hilt as though it had scalded her. The electric green of her possessed irises fade, revealing the dark brown eyes that lay underneath—eyes which are now overflowing with tears. Bianca's cries grow louder as she turns to run, her footsteps echoing the hall like a death knell.

Confusion swarms Hillary, until . . . a cold invasion floods her bones.

Hillary is no longer herself.

She is a prisoner to her body, a marionette with strings pulled by something dark that twists her limbs against her will. It forces her hands to lift the dagger from the marbled flooring. Hillary wants to scream and cry, but her body smiles, pressing the blade against her skin. The terror is all-consuming, but she is too drained, too broken to fight back. Davenport had taken everything from her—youth, power, innocence, and now, life itself. Her scream is silent, trapped within her throat as the knife finds its mark, and then . . . nothing.