New Horizon [Morganville]

Chapter Twenty

Claire spent a while in the bathroom, deciding if she was going to be sick or not. She shut her eyes tight as she sat in the empty bathtub with her head in her hands.

Eve had knocked on the door, asking if Claire was all right. Straight away, Shane had declared that it was Eve’s cooking that had made her sick.

Claire waited in the bathroom for a few more minutes, not trusting her sick stomach and her shivering body. Her eyelids felt heavy, and she began to feel them close. Blinking, she tried to pull herself out of the bathtub, but she felt herself sinking into sleep. When she opened her eyes again, the whole room was dark. Her eyes shut again, and she heard the bathroom door open.

When she opened them for the last time, she wasn’t in the bathroom.

It was dark, and Claire frantically searched for a light switch. Her hands ran over slimy rocky walls, and she instantly felt herself gag.

Claire took a step back and turned around. Darkness was all she saw, it was all she could feel.

She felt something lightly brush against her leg, and she jumped up with a loud shriek of fear.

“Claire,” The voice echoed throughout the pitch-black darkness. Claire shivered and wrapped her arms around her body as the callous, looming voice called out to her. “Where are you, Claire? I need to find you.”

She felt a wet, and slippery hand touch her skin, its nails drawing patterns on Claire’s shoulder.

Claire battered at the hand and stumbled away from it. She spun around in the direction of the voice, but the darkness wrapped around her. Suffocating her in a thick layer of isolation and panic. She backed up, and her back hit hard against a rocky wall. She cried out in pain as her head hit against something sharp and solid. Her hands eagerly searched the jagged surface as she felt hot breaths on the back of her skin.

“Don’t you see Claire?” The woman’s voice continued in the same lifeless, and evil voice it had before. “Your blood is the cure to saving Morganville. I can’t let that happen.”

Claws like iron dug into Claire’s skin, and she screamed. The darkness faded away, and light replaced it. Claire could finally see where she was.

The sticky, slimy stuff she had touched before was the colour of dark red. It was splattered all over the room. It was blood. Claire looked down at herself, seeing the muddy red blood all over her. It was on her clothes, and it trickled out of gashes in her skin. The blood was hers.

The claws dug in deeper in Claire’s back. She felt her spine break.

Her ear-spitting scream echoed throughout the room.

She collapsed into a lifeless pile on the blood-spattered floor.

* * *

Claire tried twisting out of her sheets only for her legs to get tangled in the process. She shivered violently, and cold tremors ran up her spine.

She swallowed and wrapped her quilt around her thin frame.

She felt cold and lost as she stared out into her dark room. Recalling her dreams, she lent over and switched on the small tiffany lamp.

A golden beam of light faintly lit up the room, causing a short feeling of security to close around Claire. It was early in the morning, and no one would be awake.

Well, that was what Claire thought until she heard the familiar relaxing sound of Michael’s guitar playing down stairs. Slowly and unsteadily, she let herself lay back down into her bed. She closed her eyes, and let herself fall asleep to the sound of Michael’s guitar.