Page 6 of The Shadowed Oracle
“Go back to the bar, kid,” he said to her. “He’s not worth it.”
“Doesn’t mean it wouldn’t feel good,” Ingrid whispered half-heartedly, and placed a hand on Franky’s shoulder, giving a rare physical show of gratitude as she turned to leave.
“Fuck you!”
The shrill scream hooked itself on her ear, tugging her back.
Ingrid turned to face the sound and said, “What was that?”
“You heard me. I saidfuckyou, bitch!”
Kyle Twyker transformed the half-second before the words left his mouth. It was just like that night he’d gotten drunk and made a scene. Such an enormous shift in such a short amount of time. In a heartbeat, all of the ugliness inside of him came barreling out in a psychotic string of curses.
“You bitch! I’ll fuckingkillyou! You…you evil whore!”
Two of the larger male bystanders stepped closer, and with their help, Franky began shepherding the madman out the door. All Ingrid could hear was the tone of the screams, not the actual words as she casually took her spot behind the bar again. Back to her constricted comforts.
She grabbed a bar ticket and examined it—vodka soda, lime—and went to work like nothing had happened.
This was her safe place, herhome, she repeated to herself.
This is your home.
While she could, she would cherish that.
She looked to the clock hanging next to the wine glass rack and did the math.Four hours. Four hours until close. Four hours to drown in the chaos of the crowd. Four hours before shehad to lock up, go home, and face the real challenge still standing in her way.
It wasn’t over.
The mystery man on the other side of the phone, the man behind the digital curtain, he was sharper than this thin-skinned cretin. That vague, backwards way in which the stalker terrorized her, making himself seem like the concerned one, the savior, that didn’t seem like Kyle Twyker at all.
And so, when those precious four hours were up, and the third strange message arrived late that night, Ingrid wasn’t at all surprised.
“I’ll take care of him,” she read aloud, quietly laughing to herself as she scanned the strange message over a second time.
“I’ll take care of him.”
It was too ironicnotto laugh.
The stalker was not Kyle. The stalker was going to “take care of” Kyle for her. Maybe he’d “take care of” a few of the other undesirable patrons of hers, Ingrid thought, make her life that much easier while he was at it. Maybe she could turn this to her advantage.
She laughed louder this time, filling the emptiness of her apartment. It was all she could do. She was no longer angry. She was numb to it. Numb as when first sustaining a blunt injury, before the nerves caught up and the bruising set in. Before the real pain began.
It wasn’t over.
Later that night, Ingrid sat crouched in her bathtub with the shower running, eyes closed while the warmth from the water was massaging her head. Gentle scents of peony permeated theair and the repetitive pelting sound on the tile acted as white noise.
It was a routine she’d created when the waking nightmares became too real. Too relentless. Too close. Her shared bathroom in the group home was perpetually occupied by the other girls, but almost in mercy, the worst of her torment came in the dead of night. She’d sneak out of bed, careful not to wake the young ones stacked in bunk beds next to her, disappearing into the dark corridors until she reached the bathroom furthest from the nuns’ quarters.
Whether it was the fluorescent overhead lighting, the calming sound of the water, or the fact that Ingrid was so confident in the process… it worked. The shadowy creatures would slink back into the darkness, and the visions that almost always came with them would become fuzzy.
Go away.
Go… away.
But the onslaught continued that night, more aggressive than usual.
The strange messages seemed to amplify the nightmares, altering her mental state enough to create something harder to fight off.
