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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"She's finding out too much."
Penelope prowled through the forest, zooming between trees, sucking in every ounce of their natural energy. She breathed in the nighttime air and drew from its power, filling herself with the strength she'd be needing for the next hour.
"They are finding out too much, too. It's... not good."
She blew out of the woods and shimmied down the highway, farther from the house and closer to the motel. Like last time, she'd smelled their fear and used it to track them, though she had no trouble remembering where the hotel was. Never would she forget its run-down exterior, its flickering light showing VACANCY, and its parking lot with faded delimitations and pot-holes and clusters of trash overflowing from bins. Such a shitty choice of a lodging for someone who worked in the FBI, but who was she to judge? She lived in a furniture-less, ancient building covered in cobwebs.
The closer she got, the more she sniffed in the blood. Benny's blood. Its coppery stench drenched the atmosphere and resided in Penelope's nostrils, causing her to sneeze. She wasn't a fan of it, yet it was her best means to figure out which room he was in because that part, she'd forgotten.
Before entering the hotel, she paused at the entrance, hands on her hips, hesitant. "I can't let them return to their homes with so much knowledge. The toilet trick didn't work, and I have a bad feeling the scratching didn't either. So..." She shrugged, huffed, and zoomed through the doors. "Only death will fix this. Again."
The front desk clerk was half-asleep before a TV screen, feet propped up and hands resting behind his head. Penelope wavered past him without a second glance, and followed the trail of Benny's blood, still tinting the air with its nose-wrinkling stench. The halls were dark, their overhead lights twinkling, about to extinguish. Only a few muted sounds escaped under thresholds—coughs, a moan, television screams.
She whooshed into Benny's room and found him sound asleep on his stomach. "Already?" She pursed her lips. "I would have expected him to be up, typing a report, checking out his scars in the mirror..."
Supernatural beings in this dimension tended to lose track of time, so she had no idea how many hours had passed since he and Kylie had left the house. No clue how many minutes she'd wasted with Arielle, explaining things she shouldn't have.
Was she too late? Had Benny already sent over the evidence? Or...
She snorted. "Kylie has it, doesn't she?"
Penelope floated above Benny's bed, wishing she could see through the covers and the bandages—her masterpiece. She'd never dug so deep into a living being's flesh, never drawn so much blood and agony and horror. She hated to admit Arielle had been a great help. All the confusion she harbored and the feelings she repressed were furious energy sources, and Penelope had enjoyed taking advantage of those.
Yet as she let her gaze wander over Benny's near-lifeless body, watching his spine move up and down as he breathed, Penelope backed away. "No... not him."
