Page 22 of Halloween Haunting
The pirate grumbled before quickly hoisting her off of her feet. The world spun and Grace squeezed her eyes shut out of fear of vomiting across her rescuer’s costume. She remained in his arms till there was cold air slapping her across the face, beckoning for her eyes to open.
Bryant set her on the only chair on the balcony and crouched, his warm eyes never once leaving her own. The haunting images of her vision came flooding back as the evening greeted her. Grace succumbed to the fear instantly, the tremors rattling her to the very bone. She stared into Bryant’s gaze, her bottom lip beginning to tremble.
“Breathe first, Grace,” Bryant murmured. Impatience looked to be his strong suit, but he never once wielded it as a weapon against her. He put his hands over her arms, rubbing up and down till the sensation of his touch was no longer unfamiliar. It felt oddly natural, almost surreally normal. “Then talk.”
Grace counted to ten as she inhaled; she counted to ten with her exhale. “I-I keep seeing…things.Moments. Images. Thingsthat –” she paused, swallowing the embarrassment when she realized what she was about to say “ – haven’t happened yet.”
He nodded. “And?”
“I –” she glared pointedly at him. “And? I say I’ve been seeing glimpses of the future, and all you have to say is ‘and’?” Her hands flew up before slamming down on her bare thighs. “This place is going to be the death of me, I swear.”
Bryant’s lip twitched. “Tell me what you saw.”
The magical alcohol still clung to the corners of Grace’s vision as she watched him. At any other given time, Grace might’ve found herself leaning into his chest, enamoured by his scent and murmuring foolish things about golden specks in his chocolatey eyes. But there was nothing – nothing at all – capable of taking that vision away from her.
“There was a library,” she whispered. “With domed ceilings and rugged floors and books everywhere.”
He hung onto her every word she said. “A-And then I saw them.”
“Who?”
“There was a man in a dinosaur costume and he was on the floor and there was another person on top of him and there was blood and a knife and his hand fell and he was dead and all I could do was watch and I –”
Bryant’s hands clasped around her face once more. Intensity burrowed in his eyes as he searched through Grace’s gaze, as if there was something he was looking for. After another beat of silence, he straightened, and lifted Grace along with him.
“W-Where are we going?” she blurted as he pulled her behind him, diving back into the dim halls of the mansion. Music pulsed in the distance as Bryant left the door to the patio wide open, the wind following at their heels. “Bryant –”
He paused to only retrieve a sleek handgun from the layers of his pirate costume, the bronze handle catching the strayfragments of light and reflecting them across his face. Bryant’s eyes found her once more, the dangerous glint only growing more prominent. “I know where the library is, and we’re going to see whether or not your vision was right.”
Before Grace had a second to refuse, Bryant was mercilessly dragging her through the dark mansion. Fear strung through her heart as they drew closer, the anticipation of whatever they might find enough to almost force her to dig her feet into the ground below. Bryant’s hand around her own was firm and constant, though she wasn’t quite sure if she would find it reassuring. He was insistent on getting to the library – whether it was out of her own safety or his responsibility as the Sheriff's Deputy, she had no idea. Either way, she was full of dread.
Tall double doors stood at the end of a shadowy hallway. The door on the left was hanging ajar, but it was obvious that there wasn’t a drop of light within. Bryant stuck his gun through the sliver and nudged, eyes narrowed and suspicious. After a few moments, he moved the door wide enough to slip through, pausing to look down at Grace once more.
“Stay here,” he firmly ordered. “I’ll find the light.”
Grace prided herself in how much of a good daughter she had grown up to be, who always did what her parents instructed her to do. But in that moment, with darkness looming back at her on every corner, Grace couldn’t imagine standing there on her own. In fact, she couldn’t imagine doinganythingin that mansion by herself.
So when Bryant disappeared into the eerily quiet library, Grace found herself following.
She stumbled blindly through the library’s entrance, knocking her knees into wooden chairs and bending over tables. The room itself smelt like a plethora of books – something she knew very well. Despite that one familiar thing, nothing could stop Grace’s heart from slamming against her ribcage.
“Ahh!” Grace suddenly tumbled over something long, her foot hooking beneath and forcing her to land face-first against the ground. Something wet squelched beneath her frame as she rolled, her breath already coming out in pants. Slimy droplets of a warm, thick liquid stained her hands as she desperately tried to back away, a strangely uncomfortable smell beginning to fill the air.
Iron, rusty, metal –like a hospital.
The light snapped on.
Bryant stood across the room, one hand on the wall, where he flicked the switch.
Laying limp at Grace’s feet was the same man from her vision, dressed in a cheesy, brightly colored dinosaur costume. The face within the costume was once youthful, perhaps, before life had been drained from him. Blonde ringlets surrounded his cheeks, the ends tinted with scarlet. An expression of fear and pain lingered on his face, eyes wide and perpetually stuck on Grace.
She looked down at her hands.
Blood.
Horror crept through Grace as a sudden truth rocked her to the core. Not only was another one of her visions right, but it was the last thing she ever wanted to see, to know, toexperience.There was only one thing she was capable of doing at that moment.
Scream.
