Page 3 of Zylus

“Whooooo.” Oh my god. That sounds exactly like every ghost in every scary vid I’ve ever seen.

When the bedroom door opens and closes, my blood feels like it’s stopped pulsing in my veins. Maybe I hallucinated the whoo-whoo, but I didnotimagine the vibration of the door slamming.

“Wh-who’s there?” Panic slices through me. My fists ball and my eyes widen, as my body flies into terror-mode.

The dim room fills with mist, almost obscuring the scant moonlight filtering in through the filthy windowpanes.

I scramble to a sitting position, my back against the headboard, my knees scrunched to my chest as I tuck the covers to my neck. I’m tempted to close my eyes, but I’m too terrified. If something lunges at me, I want to see it.

There’s a jangling clash of metal coming from the far side of the room. Is that hangers banging together or a ghost honing his knife before he plunges it into my heart? The bathroom door opens and closes again and again. The strident banging is relentless, then stops, only to be replaced by one of the windows opening and closing. I can’t think of a single natural explanation for what is happening. This isn’t the effect of drafts. It must be a ghost.

I’ve never been this panicked. My breath is rasping, my eyes are bugging out of my head, and my body is quaking in fear.

“Whooooo, whooooo.” The ghost’s voice is deep and quavery. If ghosts have a sex, this is definitely male. “Get out of my house!” he shouts.

The mist increases in a burst so powerful, for a moment it obliterates the watery light drifting in through the windows, plunging me further into darkness. Slowly, it dissipates as the hangers quit jangling in the closet.

“Holy shit,” I whisper, then hope I don’t hear a response.

Something was in this room with me. And as surely as that was real, I’m certain it’s now gone.

My heart is still racing a hundred miles an hour. I’m shivering so violently I’ve bitten my lip. I clamp my fluttering hands over my mouth, hoping the smell of blood doesn’t call some other devilish being into existence to terrorize me.

I sit as still as I can until my nerves are calm enough for me to get out of bed, then get dressed while under the blanket. After quickly throwing my nightshirt back in my suitcase, I hover it down the stairs and to thefront steps. I won’t be getting any sleep tonight, and there’s no way in hell I’ll be waiting inside for whatever made all that racket to return.

Chapter Three

Misty

It’s dawn, and I’m sitting on the front steps, my suitcase packed, as I wait for someone, anyone, to drive by. I’ll flag them down, play on their sympathy if necessary, and beg, borrow, or steal my way into town since I still have no signal. From there, I’ll book a ticket back to Earth, and this little jaunt will be nothing more than a terrifying memory that robbed me of all my savings and convinced me ghosts are real.

Counting myself lucky to be alive, I control my irritation that not a single vehicle has hovered by all night in the long, dark, cold hours I’ve been waiting out front.

Looking down, I’m surprised my fingers aren’t still trembling in fright after last night’s visitation. I’ve been conducting an inner debate for hours, trying to convince myself I wasn’t haunted by a ghost.

I still believe the noises, clanking, and moans weren’t produced by the little teal creature I saw standing in the kitchen as I left in the middle of the night. Far from being intimidating, he looked at me with big, hungry eyes as if he were waiting for scraps.

A thousand times last night I tried to convince myself the mist-creature in my bedroom wasn’t real. If only one thing had happened, I couldexplain it away, but when you add them all together—the mist, the moans, the door shutting over and over, and the threat to “get out”—I don’t think I overreacted.

My thoughts are thankfully pulled from last night’s perilous experience when a blue hover-truck turns onto Zo’rel Place. I practically sprain my ankle sprinting to the edge of the sidewalk, waving my arms to catch the driver’s attention.

Wow. I know I should keep my mind on job number one, which is to get to town and book a flight out, but I’m literally struck dumb when I lean close to the passenger side window to speak to the driver.

I still can’t tell a Frain from a Vucillian, but whatever species this guy is, he has to be the most handsome male in the galaxy. Shimmering green skin, long black hair, sparkling white fangs, sexy retractable claws, and features gorgeous enough to make the statue of David jealous.

When he rolls down the window, I finally untie my tongue and ask if he can take me to town.

“Why didn’t you comm for a hover taxi?”

When I look at my comm, there’s a signal. Did the ghost’s presence somehow block my signal all night? I shake my head as another shiver runs down my back.

“My comm must be glitching. It wasn’t working until this very minute.”

A look of confusion crosses his face, then he asks why I’m here. One thing leads to another as I tell him my story. Well, not the part about the ghost visitation, but the rest of it.

His face turns to granite. He’s completely inscrutable until I finish talking.

The logo of a hammer and a house on the hover door I’m leaning against, as well as the lumber in the back of his truck, are dead giveaways the guy is in construction.

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