Chapter Thirteen

Three hours later, Aubrey and I sat at my kitchen table amidst an array of flashcards, textbooks, and containers of Chinese takeout. She was helping me study—or at least, trying to—and I was scarfing down a bowl of flat noodles. However, there was considerably more eating going on than studying, and I was interrupting Aubrey between definitions and mouthfuls to explain more about my newly discovered sister.

“So all this time, you never knew about her?” She regarded me with a look of intrigue, shuffling through the flashcards for a new term.

I shook my head. “Nope, nothing. Which is weird, because you'd think I'd have heard something from someone.”

Nodding slowly, Aubrey made an affirmative sound. “Ethnocentrism,” she said, reading off another lined card.

“Something about....central ethnicity?” I guessed. She sighed.

“'The idea that one's own cultural, national, or religious group is superior to or more deserving than others.'”

“Close enough,” I declared, pointing my fork at her.

With a withering glare, Aubrey put down the stack of cards on the table in front of her and reached for her glass of water. I continued eating guiltily, already steeling myself for the lecture that I knew was about to come.

“Parker, have you studied at all?” she demanded. “You've only gotten two right out of twenty cards, and your midterm is tomorrow. How do you expect to pass this if you don't even know the vocabulary terms?”

I shrugged, letting a smirk gloss onto my lips. “With sheer brilliance and my incredible supply of raw talent?” Instead of the laugh I was hoping for, Aubrey fixed me with a dry stare. I let a long breath escape my lips. “Well, I've kind of had a lot on my mind, you know?”

I forked another layer of noodles, driving little holes into the food. It was true; I had had a lot on my mind. Maybe nightmares and creepy men and dead relatives weren't enough to validate failing my exam, but at least it gave me something resembling an excuse.

“At least try to do well, okay?” Aubrey said. “I'm only doing this because I genuinely want you to pass your classes.”

“I am trying,” I muttered. “I'm trying to finish my dinner.”

Aubrey rolled her eyes, releasing a reluctant snort and pushing her dark bangs out of her eyes. She stood up from the table, grabbing her empty plate and heading for the sink.

“On a scale of one to ten,” she said casually, “how badly will your mom kill me for feeding you greasy takeout?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Eleven, probably.”

“Then let's not tell her about it, yeah?” She leaned against the counter and began to rinse the evidence off her plate.

“Weeell,” I dragged out, biting my lip in mock consideration. “I suppose I could keep my mouth shut...if I get a study break. Which, might I add, is well deserved.”

Aubrey turned to me, hands on her hips and eyebrows raised. “You conniving little blackmailer,” she gasped, masking a chuckle. “Fine, thirty minutes. But that's it, and no telling.”

“Mhm, 'course,” I mumbled through a full mouth, “mum's the word.”

Thirty minutes, of course, quickly turned into forty-five, which turned into an hour, which eventually turned into me and Aubrey chilling in my room, talking about Rosemary.

“Are you sure you didn't know her?” I asked Aubrey, probably for the hundredth time. The two hadn't been the same age, but they were closer in years than me and Rosemary. I touched the mirror and chain around my neck, staring up at the ceiling.

“Absolutely certain,” Aubrey affirmed. “I'd never even heard that name until you told me. And since you and Logan weren't friends back then, I didn't know your mom, either. Maybe my mom did...but I obviously can't ask her that now.”

I nodded, chewing absently on my bottom lip as I hung, upside down, off the side of my bed. Something felt off to me about the fact that, in sixteen years, no one had let it slip to me that I had a sister. It was almost as if she was buried, forgotten, and everyone was trying to keep her a secret.

Even from me.

But there was one person who still seemed to remember Rosemary Elway, and she was the one that we all called crazy. Old Edith Hummel, resident town kook. She appeared in my dreams; she cooked with the spice that bore my sister's name. She knew Rosemary, and she might have been the only person not willing to forget.

“I need to visit Mrs. Hummel,” I said, snapping up so quickly that my bed frame shook. Zipper jumped off, looking miffed.

“Mrs. Hummel?” Aubrey said dubiously, peering at me from her perch on my desk chair. “You really think she'd do anything?”

I scrunched my eyebrows together. “I don't know, but she knew my sister. She knew that someone was coming to kill Rosemary, and she warned her.”

Aubrey shook her head slowly, disappointment reading in her brown eyes. She ran a hand through her hair as she scooted the rolling seat tediously across the carpet and parked herself at my iron footboard. I gave her an odd look, momentarily confused.

“Parker,” she said, “I don't mean to sound like a fart, but you hardly know anything about that woman. Aren't you studying criminology? You don't have to be a mystery buff—which I know you are—to know that little girls being murdered is not something you mess around with. What if, I don't know, Mrs. Hummel is actually in league with whoever killed Rosemary? She warned you about things that she shouldn't know, things that involve you being in danger, according to her.

“Now, I don't think she's right about someone coming to get you. It's hard to get around unnoticed in a town this small, and someone coming implies that the person is from somewhere other than Callery. But that doesn't change the fact that Mrs. Hummel was involved with Rosemary, and the poor girl died. I'm not saying that the same thing will happen to you, and heavens above I hope it doesn't, but you can never be too careful.”

Having said her piece, Aubrey leaned back against the chair and regarded me as if daring an argument to fall from my lips. I crossed my legs, then my arms. If things were normal, I know she'd have been right, because Edith Hummel's involvement was suspicious from an outside perspective. If things were normal, I would know that. But they weren't normal, or even anywhere close to it. I didn't know what it was, but there was something going on with me, and with Callery, that was astounding in its complexity. And even though I hated the idea with every rational cell in my body, I couldn't help the word supernatural from slipping into the front of my mind.

It took me too long to respond, and by the time I had an answer on my tongue, Aubrey was speaking again. “Look, it's getting late,” she said. “You have a big test tomorrow, and a little sleep would probably do you good. So try to get some rest, okay? I'll be in the guest room if you need me.”

Then, like a middle-aged mom trapped in the body of a twenty-two-year-old girl, she sidled and over and ruffled my hair. I made a face.

“Goodnight,” Aubrey called.

Zipper barked as I muttered, “'Night.”

In the mirror of my closet door, my hair was a frizzy mess.

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Zipper slept in my room that night, mostly because she wouldn't budge from her spot on the floor by my bed, and also because I couldn't be bothered to haul ass downstairs and put her in the sun room. Twelve steps and a trek through the kitchen are surprisingly daunting when you're stressed and tired.

All my textbooks lay dormant on my desk, their closed covers imploring me to come and study. I could have. And maybe I should have. But I decided that Aubrey was right, and it was in my best interests to get some shuteye before the midterm slaughtered me in the morning. I didn't once think, what with everything weighing on my mind, that another nightmare would plague me as I slept.

But it did.

And this time, it wasn't just a nightmare.

It began in the usual way: I opened my eyes, I couldn't move, I couldn't breathe, my room was dark. The omnipresent weight was resting heavily on my chest, eating away my air with invisible gulps. But this time, there were no shadows.

In the last few nights that I'd had the waking terrors, the billowy figures had been there unfailingly, standing at the foot of my bed in all their terrible glory. Now, though, as I strained my eyes in their sockets to try and spot them, I realized that my room was devastatingly empty.

That, in a strange way, almost frightened me more than when I could see the creatures. It meant that they could be there, invisible, out of my sight until they saw fit. I knew them. They would shield themselves from me until the moment when they could scare me the most.

Cold panic wracked my body. If I could have moved, I would have been crying, shaking, curled up into a ball in utter horror. I briefly thought of the papers Dr. Hennessy had given me, stacked up neatly on top of my dresser. I wonder if anywhere in them, those researchers had mentioned the fact that a bout of sleep paralysis could make a person die from their fear.

I lay very still for a very long time. It felt like hours; I remembered reading about episodes of paralysis that could last for that long. But maybe it was just minutes, and my shriveled mind was too addled to properly gauge the passing of time.

After some eternal moments of blank perplexity, something in the air before me began to shift. It was barely perceptible at first; just a shimmer in the darkness. But gradually, I realized the air was thickening; certain parts of the darkness where coming together to form a human shape.

A low whine drifted up from the floor. Zipper. I couldn't see her right away, because of her position at my bedside. But after an ephemeral moment, she came into my view. Inch by inch by inch, my dog filled my peripherals, until I caught sight of her whole, snow-white body creeping across the floor.

She was moving.

Zipper had not stood up. She was not walking. In fact, it looked like she was still asleep. But she was moving, head first, as if someone was pulling her away by her collar.

No, I thought. No, no, no. This is not happening, this isn't real, this is just a dream—

My eyes chose that very moment to avert back to the dark figure by my bed, and a silent, airless gasp tore from my lips. The humanoid figure had its hands steepled beneath its chin, its fingers long and spindly. Pianist fingers. Except that it wasn't just a figure anymore.

It was a young man with ebony eyes.

He looked like all the others: penguin suit, cruel smirk, abysmal eyes. He was younger, though, not more than a couple of years older than me, and so devastatingly handsome that, in any other scenario, it would have swept my breath away. But I had no breath, and he was a murderous stranger lurking in my room in the middle of the night.

And my dog had been dragged out my bedroom door.

I wanted to scream, to shriek until my lungs were raw and everyone came running in from the neighborhood. My lips wouldn't even part. The scream was all inside me, bouncing off the inside of my skull in petrifying rhythm.

I heard a thunk, thunk, thunk as Zipper went down the stairs, and the man—the boy—matched it with three heavy footsteps. I heard them; they were real. This was not a dream.

A whispering began in each of my ears, quick and insistent. Parker Elway Parker Sage Elway Parker Elway Elway Sage Parker Elway: my name, playing on repeat in a rough susurration. The boy stepped closer, moving with terpsichorean grace, until I could see the shining peak of his dusty auburn hair.

He paused alongside my bed and I lay there, frozen, vulnerable. His eyes roved over my face, then paused at a spot just below my chin. He was looking at Rosemary's necklace; I knew that for sure. And as he appeared to recognize it, his lips curled into an expression of disgust that made my stomach bottom out in fear.

But no knives flashed in the darkness; no match set my blankets on fire. Instead, the boy shook his head, his auburn hair shivering, and when he stilled, his face was neutral again. He leaned toward me, bending at the waist in a macabre bow. He swept through the darkness, a human pendulum, and rammed his lips to mine.

I didn't have time to react, because his kiss was a weight that pinned me in place more than paralysis ever could. His lips, icy as the snow falling outside my window, sent an intolerable chill flooding into my mouth and through my veins.

And suddenly, I was moving.

Like a beetle taking its last breaths, I flailed wildly, my limbs lashing out at empty air. I was Sleeping Beauty, and the terrible boy had awoken me with a frigid kiss.

This was not a dream. I had known it before, but the reality struck completely when I realized that I was mobile. And there isn't a word for the kind of fear I felt at that moment—an uncharted, clueless fear because I knew that everything was absolutely real.

Just when I was sure that I couldn't take any more, that my lungs would burst from his frozen breath, the boy drew slowly back. His lips peeled away from mine, leaving them feeling bare and used. I slapped a hand to my mouth, springing upright. The boy, leering at me, was still only inches away.

He's going to kill me, I thought. It doesn't matter what I say, I'm dead, I'm dead—

A high-pitched, primal screech from down the stairs cut off my frantic thoughts. Zipper. With a hideous smirk that marred his handsome face, the boy drew back. A glint flashed through his eyes, black as pitch, and a smirk played on his lips, cold as ice. The boy blew me a silent kiss—and then he was gone.

I immediately leapt from my bed, a furious scream erupting from my lips. “ZIPPER!” I cried, charging out of my bedroom on sock-clad feet. My fear was forgotten as the sound of my dog's shrieks resonated in my head. I pounded down the stairs, still shouting, and the sound echoed through the house. Maybe outside, too. Up in the guestroom, I heard Aubrey waking up, calling my name in a sleep-shadowed voice.

I could not respond.

In the living room, I slipped on the hardwood floor and slammed my right arm into a side table. I collapsed to the ground, limb pulsing, but quickly clambered back to my feet and resumed my sprint. Through the kitchen, with the little light above the fridge. Into the sun room. Past Zipper's food, past her bed, and to the patio door that hung slightly ajar.

I threw myself outside without thinking, my body hardly registering the frigid air and biting wind. My eyes darted around deliriously, scanning the white expanse for my dog.

“Zipper!” I screamed.

And there, to my left—a barely audible whimper. I whirled and peeled my socks from the frozen ground to drop down by my dog's side, a gasp tearing itself from my throat. Because there she lay, barely breathing, in a thick pool of blood that seeped scarlet into the snow.