Death. What happens after it? What lies beneath the surface?
Poor Arielle Daniels stumbled through dangerous hoops to figure this out. She wakes in a new place--the Void--and discovers that what waits after death are layers, dimensions, and sadly...
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Lights flashed. Roaring reds and boisterous blues, flickering faster and faster, dizzying. Sirens swirled through the air in rhythm with said lights—deafening and dreary, as if fifteen different screams echoed in a spiraling circle of darkness. Voices joined the symphony—gruff, grumbled, garbled, their words muted but their volume incessant and loud.
Then there were the cries. Someone sobbing, someone screeching, someone addressing a crowd with soft, reassuring sentences that made no sense. "Death... murder... suicide. Can't determine... can't figure out. No further questions."
Hushed discussions took place; and they repeated, over and over, like a hammer on a nail that just would not go into a steel-lined wall.
"Cause of death: mirror shards piercing through skin. Reason: unknown. Victim's name: Arielle Daniels."
The sharpest of migraines sliced across Arielle's head, reaching from one temple to the other. Its agonizing throbbing prompted her to blink her eyes open, to reach out her arm, hoping to find a bottle of Ibuprofen to soothe the ache—
But all she felt was... nothing. Breeziness, as if she were floating in mid-air and swinging her arms around to propel herself higher. Had she miscalculated where her nightstand was? Or was she in someone else's bed?
Damn, these nightmares keep getting worse.
Eyes widening, she stared at a high ceiling covered in cobwebs, at beams nearing breakage, at a color, a faded, sepia-toned maroon she wasn't familiar with. Her bedroom didn't have high ceilings, nor would she have any webs in it, as she was terrified of spiders.
This was not her house.
"What the..." as she spoke, she pulled her chapped lips apart, and a metallic tang lingered in her mouth. Had she gotten drunk the night before? Bit her lip or her tongue? Knocked a tooth out?
She stretched her arms, again feeling the weightlessness, the nothingness on either side of her. And as she thought of it, she realized she felt nothing beneath her, either. Was there such a thing as a mattress that gave you the impression of flying?
Maybe she was high; she rarely did drugs, but with all that had happened lately—
"Whoa." She stilled, as her brain lurched to life and filled with memories in disarray, coming at her like a swarm of angry bees about to prick her skin.
Mom, Connor, Rachel, Jade. Ghosts, hunting, prisons, school parking lots, haunted Ouija Boards, the ocean, a lighthouse, death. House fires; Stella, Stella, Stella.
"St-Stella?" Her voice was croaky, as if she hadn't used it in months. "The other stuff is true, but Stella? What the..."
More flashes seeped into her head—flashes of herself tumbling down stairs, gyrating into a black hole, as a girl with raven hair snickered and sneered at her. Then she was driving, speeding along a highway, parking at a rest-stop, following a gust of wind into a forest—
