GHOST PORTAL (#1 GHOST PORTAL series)

TWENTY-THREE

Left alone in her apartment, Jessamine packed for what she anticipated as a hasty hike through darkened woods with little to no idea where they'd be going. She fetched an old backpack from her closet, and threw into it a few crumpled and possibly expired bags of chips and peanuts, a change of clothes, a flashlight so rusty and dusty it was a wonder it worked at all, and a few bottles of water. And finally, dumped in the contents of her purse.

She shrugged on thick leggings, a thick wool sweater, and good sneakers, assuming the forest would be cold at night. And also presuming she'd be overcome with violent shivers the second she got close to Louise's cabin again.

"No," she said to herself, proceeding to pace about her living room to test the comfort of her shoes. "No, this is insane. It's unreal. No, I shouldn't be doing this."

Since the moment Avery had dropped her off, her temperature had been vacillating between below zero to a volcano boiling with lava. She couldn't sit still, or shake off all the flashes of her nightmares, or quit panting and shaking and resisting the urge to run away and hide so that Avery wouldn't spot her and wouldn't make her do this.

But he wasn't making her, she knew deep down. She'd consented to this; to his help in retrieving her memories in return for him being able to use those memories to locate Amy. And now, Jessamine sensed that by finding Amy, she'd discover Landon and Angela's whereabouts, or at least find out what happened to them. She hadn't thought of them in so long, but in the end, knowing their fate might complete hers, might give her some closure, and might aid her in moving on with her life.

Yet it was all so senseless, so crazy; why was she so tethered to all these events? Why her? What was it about her that made this being, this entity—that was what Avery would have called it—stuff itself inside her and fuck with her recollections and bar her from seeing them, from understanding them?

What had happened after she'd found that house with the others?

She gritted her teeth as pain prickled across her forehead, stinging at her temples. "Shit."

It was as if her internal questions had provoked this thing into hurting her, into revealing the truths she'd been fearing yet had needed so direly. Its fingers were massaging her brain, and it dug its claws into the membrane, ripping through neurons and veins and unleashing hell into her head. It held her stomach in its hands, tickling it, loosening up all sorts of queasy sensations that made her stop pacing. And her heart—the creature within was squeezing it, as if to extract every last trace of life from her, and then to guzzle down all the juices fueling her.

She cried out when a set of flashes jarred through her. Those bloody bodied corridors sprang to life in her mind, and there was more growling, the sound so deafening it felt real, present, in her apartment. Followed by visions of that blue being clinging to her, somehow hauling her outside of the house, whispering "go now, you are safe."

Wait, so that thing was benevolent? It was what got me out of the house?

The flashes were intense, yet remained blurry in places, cutting off, as if there were parts missing. Yet each vision shattered through her, ripping her insides in the process. She could barely breathe, and worried she might have been bleeding on the inside, poisoned by a foreign entity who fed on her organs and controlled the things crawling about her mind.

Too weak to stand up, she collapsed to the floor, hitting the hardwood with a thump that, had she heard it happening to someone else, she'd have assumed they'd have broken a few bones and twisted a few limbs.

Her own limbs were writhing in pain, extremities curling, chills roaming up and down every bit of her as if to swallow her whole.

Through the plaguing flashes and the torment, she heard a knock on the door, but couldn't move to respond. She couldn't get up, coiled up on the floor, fighting her captor and its cruel means to torture her with recollections of her past; recollections she'd wanted access to, after all. It was only giving her what she and Avery wanted.