Page 1 of Hold Me Before You Go

Prologue

Carrie

You know me.

You know me.

You know me.

Carrie.

Carrie.

Carrie.

I will find you.

I will find you.

I will find you.

My eyes fluttered open and I was surrounded by darkness. Voices floated through the blackness like haunted spirits, and a chill slithered down my arms. I tried to lift my head, but I couldn’t.

Dizzy. So dizzy.

The darkness and the voices around me began to spin. I felt my stomach twist and bile shot up my throat, threatening to spew. I closed my eyes once more, swallowing down the nausea.

There.

That was better.

When I closed my eyes, everything felt better. The headache faded and the dizziness disappeared. That was it, the solution to my multitude of problems. I just needed to go back to sleep. A small voice in the back of my mind commanded me to open my eyes again, though, to fight.

But I didn’t want to fight anymore. I’d spent my entire life fighting a war I didn’t cause.

Sunshine.

Sunshine.

Sunshine.

A deep voice echoed in my mind, concealing the small one, overpowering her. The voice was nothing like the haunted ones in the dark, and it only came to me when I was asleep. I felt my body rise and slam back down onto the hard surface below me, pain shooting through my hip and shoulder. There was nothing I could do. I was helpless.

All I could do was sleep.

Suddenly, I was in my kitchen, surrounded by my colorful dishes, shards of them sticking out of my hands, bright red blood trickling down my skin.

“Carrie.”

My eyes lifted slowly to find a shadow of a man standing in my living room. I couldn’t see his face, only his dark andtwisted soul. All at once, the pain in my hands and body didn’t matter anymore. I wanted to know about the shadow staring at me. I opened my mouth to greet him, but nothing came out.

Huh.

I guess in this dream, like my nightmares, I didn’t have a voice. It was weird, because this didn’t feel like a nightmare. The shadow man wasn’t going to hurt me. I don’t know how I knew that, but I did.

“Carrie.”

I blinked, looking back down at the broken glass in my hands. I’d made a mess of my beautiful little life, and now, I didn’t know how to clean it up.

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