Page 284 of Ominous: Part 1
Eden gasps in the seat beside me, yanking her hand from underneath mine.
“See a ghost?” I ask her, but my eyes are following her gaze, and I know what she sees.
It isn’t a ghost.
“Holy fuck,” Dom says, leaning closer between our seats, his head between them, and I smell the beer on his breath.
I reverse into a spot closer to the building, with its endless windows and a dingy, incidental aesthetic that probably only came about recently. I imagine this place, back in the day when it was still owned by the Anglo-Irish family it’s named after—facts Eden read off to me as we drove—used to be beautiful.
It’s like life, isn’t it?
Always decaying.
And then… then we slip into death, like someone could slip over the cliffside the hotel is built along, the thing Eden and Dom are fixated by.
I cut the engine after I roll up the windows.
I don’t get freaked out easily, but even after I scoop my keys from the console, I rest my hands in my lap, and don’t get out of the car, my headlights still on, automatic until I shut my door on the way out.
The view is kind of sinister.
Fog descends over the drop. The darkness of the night and our angle obscure the valley from sight, but judging by the climb we did up this hill, a fall from here would be fatal. Turning my head to look at Eden, I see past her, instead. There’s a white gate bisecting the parking lot from a low building I realize is an oblong pool house, and the pool is lit up even tonight, Halloween, a sparkling, clear blue out of place in the whites and grays and red of the building and the night.
“This place is already creepy,” Dom murmurs, like he’s lost some of his Adderall high.
“Let’s go look,” Eden says, and she’s clicking her seatbelt off, letting it slip across her chest before she grabs the door and flings it open, cold air filtering to the interior of the car.
“How far will she go?” Dom asks in my ear, awe in his words.
He doesn’t mean anything nefarious by it, but my skin crawls. I think of my mom’s obsession with Greek mythology as I watch Eden cross the parking lot without looking back once, heading into the sliver of grass which separates her from the peril below.
Icarus, flew too close to the sun.
Then he drowned after falling from a great height.
There’s no sun now, but as I open the door and get out of the car, too, I hear the rush of water somewhere far below.
I don’t know why, but something propels me to jog toward her, keys in hand. She takes another step closer to the edge, her hair blowing behind her.
In her black skirt, the black cross painted on her jacket, with dark hair and sun kissed skin, it’s almost hard to see her properly, like she blends in with the wildness of the landscape.
The hair on the back of my neck stands on end as I keep jogging to her, and she takes another step closer to the edge.
“Eden.” It’s a reflex, a kneejerk instinct to call out her name as my stomach cramps, watching her get so up close and personal with death.
She doesn’t look at me, and she doesn’t speak.
My heart races in my chest.What’re you thinking, Nightmare Girl?
She says nothing, only tips her chin, lookingdown.
I’m thinking I want to jump, just to see how it feels.
“This is creepy, and we haven’t even gone in yet,” Dominic mutters somewhere behind me, but I don’t look.
I don’t come closer to Eden. I don’t leave the pavement of the parking lot, even as her boots are planted over the soil, her fingers fisted in her skirt, raising it over her boots so she doesn’t trip. Instead of moving toward her, I try to see what she sees.
My eyes take in the fog, thick with thin stretches of transparency. On the other side of the drop is another slope of a hill, rising up and up into the darkness. If there were people on the other side, I wouldn’t see them. Nothing less than a large fire would draw our eyes to it.
