Page 10 of The Nightmare King

“How is this happening?” I whispered.

Finish the rest of your water bottle, eat your protein bar, put your key in the ignition, go to work.

His demand was soft authority woven through my mind like an echo through an empty room.

Do as I say, he urged.

“I hate driving,” I whispered to myself, to him. The closest I’d come to admitting what happened.

I know, he answered softly.

I obeyed his instructions.

At work, I made small talk with Brandon, remembering my stupid promise to watch old zombie shows with him.

I scanned organic apples as conventional for the nice people.

I scanned conventional oranges as organic for the mean people.

And Mare… he didn’t speak again.

Work was dull. My headphones muffed my ears, an audiobook telling me a story as I absent mindedly scanned groceries.

“What are you listening to?” one nosey customer asked.

“Marked by Cain, by A.R. Rose,” I replied, avoiding eye contact as I arranged the old man’s boxes of pasta and ice cream in a paper bag. “It’s filthy,” I added as I handed him his bag.

He gave an uncomfortable smile and departed quickly. Sam and Dr. Truman would be proud— I shared about myself. I was proud because I did so, and it scared a man away. It was a win-win.

Two co-workers caught my glance as they whispered in my direction. The girls’ faces flushing when they noticed me staring before they quickly busied themselves with arranging their tills. They were talking about me. I turned up the volume on my audiobook.

Finally untying my apron felt like unleashing a dog as the cool wintery air chilled my lungs. Nearing my car, a woman was hunched over on the ground, gathering items from a broken bag. The credits rolled on my audiobook, leaving my brain uncomfortably silent as I knelt and helped gather rolling oranges.

“Oh, thank you, dear,” she said, reaching for a jar of cinnamon and spilling the contents of her purse on the pavement. Ornately decorated cards splayed atop the white parking lines behind the tires of my Honda. “Well, would you look at that? I believe a spirit is trying to talk to you.”

I froze, meeting her hazel eyes for the first time. “What did you say?”

The old woman’s long white hair swooped over her shoulder as she ran wrinkled fingers over the cards as we remained kneeling in the moonlit parking lot. She pointed to each card with furrowed brows. “The Devil, Death, and The World Card. An eerie reading, if I’m truthful.”

“What does it mean?” I dared to ask, hating the silence that rang in my ears with the absence of my book or music or just something blaring into my mind. Somehow, I was on the ground with a bundle of oranges and someone who seemed like a modern-day witch.

“Honey, I feel there is a devil of sorts haunting you, plaguing you… death… it is all around you…”

My jaw tightened, and I fiddled with the buttons on my headphones. “Well, thanks—” I said, standing.

“But wait,” she said, using my car as support as she stood, bag in tow. “If you defeat the devil in your mind, if you let him die, the whole world awaits you. The world… it is the luckiest card.”

I bit the insides of my cheeks, pushing the unwanted emotions away. She offered me her jar of cinnamon. “It’s the first of the month, dear. Blow some cinnamon into your doorway to keep the evil spirits out.”

Not attempting to fake a smile, or hide my unease, I shook my head. “Keep it.” My car beeped as it unlocked. “I don’t want to keep the evil spirits out. I want to let them in.”

As I slowly pulled out of the lot, I glanced in my rearview, and she was gone. There were no cars behind me, no one standing in the empty grocery store lot. Not the phantom I’d wanted, but the phantom I’d got, I guessed. Or maybe she’d been a figment of my imagination. Or, she was abnormally quick for an eighty-something-year-old. Whatever the reason, the chill bumps on my arms didn’t subside until they met the hot water of my warm shower.

Slipping under my blankets, my shoulders relaxed, I exhaled, closed my eyes… and I waited.

I waited for my devil.

Finally, I met my bed again.

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