GHOST PORTAL (#1 GHOST PORTAL series)

SEVEN

She woke drenched in sweat, sheets clinging to her arms; which would have made sense if she didn't have air-conditioning, but she did.

Jessamine plucked her phone from her nightstand and glared at it, wondering why her hands were so clammy, why her forehead was on fire, why her heart wouldn't stop thrumming to the fastest hardcore punk rhythm she'd ever heard.

Then they came to her—flashes of the nightmares she'd had. The ones that she hadn't been able to wake from, stuck in a daze wandering down darkened corridors of cobwebs, following glowing orbs that led her to big globs of red smoke that hovered in front of her, overpowering and pungent-smelling. Could one smell in their dreams?

She snagged a tissue and swiped it across her forehead, removing as much perspiration as she could. She cringed at the thing coming back soaked.

"What the fuck?" Sure, she'd sweated a lot under other circumstances—a rough hike, a jog, a good work-out, an athletic round of sex—but never after waking up.

As she sat up and threw the covers off—which were also saturated with her sweat—more visions vaporized into her head. Voices low and thick with spite, muttering words she didn't understand, reverberating from one side of her skull to the other, rattling within it like dice in a cup.

"Ugh, screw this." She heaved up from the bed, stretched, and stripped from her damp clothes before hurrying into the shower. She had things to do today and couldn't let these weird sensations—chills, chills, and more chills dancing up and down her spine—block her from her chores.

Of course, while in the shower, enjoying the warm water as it caressed down her shoulders, her arms, squeezed into crevices and tickled her, she couldn't quit thinking of these dreams. Nightmares, more like. The orbs, the red globs, the voices—it all felt so real, so vivid, as if she'd lived it and was reliving it as she slept. Still, she couldn't put together what those voices were saying, though as she lathered conditioner onto her lengthy strands of hair, she was hit with the memory of one word she'd heard repeating. One word that didn't make sense to her: demon.

"Demon?" She spat out some water that had sloshed into her mouth. "No, nope, not possible."

She'd been an atheist for a long time and had never had dreams—or even vague daydreams or imagined scenes—of anything religious. Demons, gods, afterlife, all that stuff was myth and unproven to her, and her subconscious had, until now, agreed with her.

"Afterlife." She snorted as she rinsed off. "Him. It's his fault." She turned the water off, exited the tub, wrapped herself in a fluffy towel. "Avery and his bullshit show, ugh. Never watching that again."

He'd spoken about the afterlife in "Paranormal Chasers", and not just in the intro. Throughout the episode, and before he'd gotten weird and sinister, he'd been discussing his beliefs with Amy. He hadn't come out and said it, but he sounded religious, made it seem like he believed in a higher power and all the other nonsense that came with it.

"Shame," she said, towel-drying her hair, glimpsing herself in her mirror. She was tired, and she looked it—her skin was paler than usual, and the dark circles under her eyes were more pronounced than they'd been in the past few days. She'd get questions about them later, she knew. And those eyes were a washed out, watery basil shade, laced with redness, giving her the airs of someone who hadn't slept at all.

She made a fuss about it, putting in a few anti-redness drops, smearing concealer under her lashes, teasing said lashes to be halfway decent. Then she got dressed and headed out the door, and down the street to the Westgardens Community Center, where she taught a dance class twice a month. She was part of a community outreach program for young girls. She'd signed up years ago and though she'd never pursued her brief dream of becoming a professional dancer, she still wanted to put her talents and passion to good use.