The Haunting of Sunshine Girl

Chapter 27

Sunshine really, really doesn't feel okay. She's really — she's really upset. It throbs in her chest and poisons her mind and God, she can't get away from it, she can't get away from any of it. How did she go from being a normal, haunted (as normal as that can be) teenage girl to — to being a cultist?

And now she has to decide whether or not she wants to be sacrificed or have a demon-possessed mother for the rest of her life. Good options, right? Ugh. Why couldn't Kat have just sacrificed her when she was a young child?

Maybe she should write down the pros and cons of each option.

Sunshine grits her teeth. She's annoyed. Part — part of a cult? Really? That's what her life has come to? A cult? A demon? Seriously.

Oh. Victoria's test — it'll apparently help Sunshine face the truth of the situation. As if it isn't horrible enough. She's gonna try and give her mother the test as soon as possible, whenever she really can.

She's a little comforted that shit like this really exists, so perhaps she's not the only one with a possessed mom.

Sigh. She really needs the medium back. She believes Alistair now — maybe he'll come back by, or give her some words of wisdom and share advice on what to do. Unlike LeMaster.

Yeah. That's a good idea. She should call him.

Sunshine purses her lips and flips out her phone, dialing the number. The ring muffles the speakers and tingles her senses and she grunts. She'll be pretty annoyed if he doesn't pick up. She wonders if he'll know it's her calling.

A woman's voice splutters through. "Hello?"

She perks. "Hi! Is... Alistair there?"

There's a drawn silence before the woman speaks again. Her voice breaks. "No. Alistair is not, here, um —" The woman crackles through the phone, voice low, raspy, and dripping with emotion. "..who is this..?"

"Sunshine," she answers, biting the inside of her cheek.

"Oh, Sunshine, um —" The woman breathes in and cries out. "I'm sorry, I don't know how to tell you this but.. Alistair... passed away yesterday."

Blood. It runs in her ears, pushing away any other thoughts. It drowns Sunshine in a pit of darkness that she can't seem to crawl her way out of. Her eyes widen and she chokes. "He — he what?"

A sniff. "Alistair's gone. He — he said that, that all of the hauntings you had told him about, and everything he had seen with you, it — it was just, it was just too much."

Sunshine begins to shake.

"I've actually never seen him like that," the woman croaks. "He — he couldn't sleep, so he started taking sleeping pills because he was having nightmares, and.." The woman sobs. "He took too many. And, he, he's gone now."

Sunshine tries to return a heartfelt apology but she keeps speaking. "And I must tell you, you, you need to be careful, that's what he said, that you need to be careful. Please please be careful."

She doesn't have an answer. Any words die down in her throat. Sunshine closes her eyes and pinches her nose, gasping in. "I — I'm sorry, I have to go, I'm sorry for your loss, I — goodbye."

She hangs up the phone and the beep rumbles in her ears. A horrible, sickening feeling wrenches itself between her chest and grasps at her heart with curled, bony fingers. Sunshine cries out and falls to her knees, hands flattening over the carpet. The darkness consumes her mind and tears her open. Blood welts from her skin and she pierces her palms with her nails and sobs and sobs and sobs.