Page 1 of Devious Delusions

PROLOGUE

DELILAH

Knock, knock.

I can see it clearly. Yet, I still re-read it.

One repeated word has my heart racing, attempting to beat out of my chest.

The messages show that this is real.

The figure is real too.

He’s standing there now. Watching me watch him.

But I don’t run. Not yet.

I stay fixed at the window, staring at that ghostly image. He escapes the harsh rain by staying within the tree line surrounding the deserted cabin I’ve found myself in. The clouds are too thick, too heavy to allow any sunlight through them. But I watch, my muscles shaking from the cold as water drips from my hair against the thick cardstock clutched in my numb fingers.

Two words.

It’s always been two words in the months since I’ve been experiencing the strangeness. There’s no other way to describe it. One moment my life made sense, then it didn’t and all I haveare two words: knock, knock. Those same two words are on a card embossed with a shiny floral pattern on the other side.

The rain falls in sheets, distorting the figure watching me. I don’t realize how close I’ve gotten to the window until my nose hits it, and the glass instantly fogs as my lungs allow air into my body.

Moving a step back, I hold my sanity—the card—tighter as I slowly turn my head, taking in my surroundings. The wooden walls of the cabin make everything smell like pine, but none of it is familiar. A loud clap of thunder is followed by harsh angry light illuminating the wall to my right. I freeze. There on the mantel is a photo that doesn’t belong. It stares back at me, projecting a false image of something that never happened.

“It’s not real,” I mutter to myself. To convince my mind to stop making shit up when I’ve never been in this place before. I know I haven’t, and I repeat the facts to myself as though the voice in my head is a tangible being who will argue back.

“I got a call to go to the hospital. Ruby and Scarlet were in an accident and then I broke down.”

But my feet move at odds to the part of my brain that knows who I am. The card is still clutched in my fingers. My sopping hair drips with each slow step I take until I’m standing in front of the unlit stone fire.

My nape prickles with awareness as the rain echoes around the inside of the cabin, blowing a draft through the aged building. Deathly cold washes over me as I stare at the photo from Asher’s birthday.

The last day we were together.

The background shows my grandparents’ vineyard, but we never visited them. A tremor takes over my hand as I lift the photo frame and make sure that I’m looking at the correct brother.

“Asher always wore his chain,” I repeat as I search for it in the image, “and Kane’s grin can’t be copied.”

But Asher died,my mind whispers back,and it’s all your fault.

A violent clap erupts from the sky and the frame slips between my fingers, the wood splintering on impact against the floor. Creaking fills the cabin before multiple loud ripping noises echo from outside, followed by a thud that shakes the building.

I turn, looking in the direction of where it came from, and the tree that the man stood beside is cut in half. There is no lone figure hiding in the rain. For some reason, worry takes over me. He’s tormenting me with the notes, but I’m worried that he’ll stop.

Retracing my steps that are puddled against the floor, I go back to the window. I make it two steps when there’s another noise.

Knock.

Knock.

All the blood in my body sinks to my feet at the two thuds against the cabin wall. Not the door. The knocking is at my right, beside the mantel.

Sweat beads down my spine and I stare at the wooden cladding as though I can see through it. No other noise comes from that direction. It moves further away. Two more knocks directly behind me.

My survival instincts seem to work in reverse, and I run out of the cabin to go back to my broken down car. The rain weighs me down, each droplet attacking my skin as it turns the ground into a mudslide. My feet sink into it and the wet earth tries to pull me back with every step.

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