Page 3 of Amnesty

I was drowning.

He was drowning me.

I was going to die in this lake at the hands of someone whose face I’d never seen.

My fingers dug into the arms holding me, my fingernails cutting into them, even through the fabric covering his skin. Forcing my eyes open, I stared up at the hulking dark figure, water making everything blurry.

With another rough yank, I was above the surface. I blinked, gasping. “Wait!” The word ripped out of me, and whatever he heard in my voice gave him pause.

“Look at me,” I gurgled.

Still keeping that impenetrable hold on my shirt, he ripped the fabric back from his head and stared down.

I jerked, eyes wide. “No!” I screamed, struggling anew. “No!”

“You wanted to die,” the voice, which was mine, insisted.

I shook my head.

The girl—me—gazed down with short, dark-blond hair, freckles, and brown eyes, which I never thought of as evil until this very moment, and threw back her head and laughed.

“It’s time to finish the job you started,” she told me. “It’s time.”

With force I had no idea she even possessed, she shoved me back beneath the brown waves.

All this time I’d been running from that dark, faceless figure… a stalker. Someone who lurked above the waves, waiting for me to drown.

All this time, I’d been running from the person who tried to kill me.

I’d been running from me.

A huge gasp shook me from the lifelike dream. My body lifted with the force of it as I grappled at my throat with my hands, clawing at the skin as if that would somehow make it easier to breath. Reality came forward as the room around me came into focus, and my fingers gentled on my body. Slumping forward a bit, I breathed a sigh of relief. My entire body trembled, skin slicked with sweat. Every part of me was flushed and uncomfortable. The horrid pictures I’d just dreamed still flashed in the back of my mind as though they weren’t quite ready to let me go.

It’s just a dream.I assured myself.Just a dream.

A terrible, terrible dream.

With a shuddering breath, I looked beside me where Eddie was sprawled against the mattress, blankets around his waist, bare chest on full display. I thought of burrowing against him, letting him wrap his arm around me. I wanted to. Almost desperately.

I didn’t.

I wasn’t sure I deserved the comfort.

Tossing aside the covers, I winced slightly when the bottoms of my bare feet came into contact with the cold floor. Moving as quietly as I could so as not to wake Eddie, I crept down the hallway and into the kitchen. It was the middle of the night, still dark outside, with no promise of day yet.

My hoodie was on the end of the kitchen counter, and I snatched it up as I unlocked the door and let myself out onto the small porch. Once the soft fabric of the sweater enveloped me, I leaned my elbows on the railing and glanced across the yard, down to the water.

The sound of the waves lapping against the shore was comforting, even though it was endlessly dark out there on the surface. The water looked impenetrable, like an unmatched obscurity that concealed a veiled threat. The stars that usually dotted the sky were hidden, and the moon was currently dulled behind a cloud.

The bare skin on my legs was no match for the cold air coming off the water, my toes even less so. But I didn’t retreat inside. Instead, I ignored the cold, huddled a little farther inside the shirt, and stared out over the landscape, eyes scanning the enigmatic water.

My empathy was dwindling.

I knew the widow of Rumor Island (was she even really a widow?) suffered. It was clear in the physical injuries I witnessed on her body. It was evident in the words she hurled at me with hate. And then, of course, when she attacked us. Now she sat catatonic in the hospital.

I got the feeling she was somehow brainwashed by the man who I partially remembered. The one who tortured me—and probably her, too. It made me wonder if I was brainwashed, too, you know, before my brain forgot it all.

Did that make us sort of kindred? Victims of something horrible, of the same man? Is that why, after everything, I felt sorry for her? Because really, no one should have to endure what she did, whatIdid. I wouldn’t wish it upon anyone.

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