“Gabe,” I cry. Oh my God I can’t believe he found me. But he keeps walking despite my cries. I pound on the glass and he keeps walking. He’s walking and he can’t see me.
Oh god, that’s it, he can’t see me.
I run to catch him up and start pounding hard on the glass screaming and hitting out as hard as I can.
He can’t see me though and he can’t hear me.
“Gaaaaabeeeeee, Gabe! Gabe…” I wail and I cry and I scream with everything inside me. He can’t hear me though, he can’t hear me at all. He has a flashlight and he’s walking. He’s looking at something on his phone. He stops, shakes his head and turns up a path in the opposite direction.
I start rushing forward and tears blind me so badly I can’t see before me.
I stumble on something and trip, falling to the floor, just as he turns up the path and disappears.
Emotion takes me whole and I’m about to crumble when I see the thing I tripped over wasn’t a thing, it’s a person. It was a person.
Tessa.
Tessa the realtor.
She’s lying slumped against the floor dead. She’s dead. Looks like she’s been dead for weeks. She has been. It’s been weeks since I last saw her. A month.
It’s her. Her clothes are torn and she’s still wearing the same pantsuit she had on the last time I saw her.
Tobias…
He killed her.
He killed her!
I back away on my elbows and get up to run. As I make a sprint around the corner I stop short when I see what’s ahead of me.
There are dead bodies everywhere. They line the whole path. There are so many of them, too many to count.
“Oh my God…” I scream and bile rises in my throat.
It rises and instantly I vomit.
I can’t help it. I vomit and it feels like I’ve brought up everything I’ve ever eaten in my life. The smell and the sight of the people keep me retching and I back away, the way I came, passing Tessa again.
Once I get back to the section where the windows changed I slump down with my back against the wall, floods of tears take me and I hear it...
Laughter.
Laughter that seems to come from everywhere but nowhere in particular.
Tobias’s laughter.
He’s laughing at me, and if he’s laughing at me, he can see me.
“Very resilient my pretty.” Booms his voice which surrounds me everywhere and makes my skin crawl. It’s coming from an intercom in the walls. “You weren’t supposed to come up here my pet. Dogs were meant to keep you safe while we stop over for the rest of the game. Did they scare you? Ha, ha, ha. How about you be a good little slut and stay right there. I’ll come and get you once it’s over. I’ll allow you the chance to see your dead lover if there’s anything left of him.” He laughs again, harder.
My soul weeps and shudders.
Gabe… he’s going to kill Gabe.
Tobias is going to kill him and I’m just supposed to sit here and wait.
The tears take me whole and I break down.