The Runaways

Chapter 10

Hailey

I was beside myself—very literally, beside myself.

I didn’t know exactly how it happened; but there I was, Hailey-the-see-through doppelganger, standing next to my pale, unconscious body sprawled out on the slaughterhouse floor.

I’d never believed in spirits, and I’d never believed in ghosts until the shock of the sheriff’s death turned me transparent.

Had I been in my actual body, I would’ve had a full-scale panic attack; but, I wasn’t, so physically blowing a gasket was on hold for the time being.

“Spirit” me was strangely calm, eerily calm—one of the few side effects of being “ethereally detached”. I looked over at my actual body with the kind of tragic pessimism that police officers did when they filed through pictures of deceased kidnapping victims.

I wondered if I’d die before the day was out—if Liam would put eighteen-years to rest with a stolen gun or dip me in a vat of battery acid so my parents couldn’t find me.

Maybe he’d stab me, strangle me, or leave me in a field where the German Shepherds would have to sniff me out. Either way, my odds of getting back home were slimming by the hour.

I didn’t know if God could hear me where I was or if the prayers of missing people went missing along with them; but if He could, I hoped He was listening.

Rusty’s death ate away at my sanity a piece at a time. Ten minutes ago he’d been standing, talking, laughing—alive. He would’ve helped me; I saw it in his eyes and in the way he smiled through the seriousness of our circumstances. He could’ve been my loophole, but Liam destroyed all that.

He destroyed everything. It wouldn’t be long before he destroyed me.

My feet tingled at the tips. The fact that I was feeling again meant the harshness of waking up to a living, breathing nightmare of a day was seconds away. The weaker parts in me wished for death and hoped for the promise of escape it provided. But it didn’t come. Heaven or hell wouldn’t save me from this place.

Pins and needles crept around my ankles, up the back of my calves, washed over my thighs, and spurted out at the top of my spine. My nervous system fired a few warning shots across my body, unpleasantly reminding me of the cuts and bruises blemishing my skin.

I heard Caleb shouting at someone loud enough to steal my attention. I scanned the room from the floor to see who it was, but everything within twenty feet of me looked like shapeless smudges on a windshield.

Someone else was in the room—someone who didn’t want me immediately aware of their presence.

Heavy, hurried footsteps headed towards the slaughterhouse door, and a final muffled exchange between the unnamed stranger and Caleb faded out of earshot.

The room settled back into silence. I blinked until the world blurred into focus and found Caleb sitting across from me. We were alone. The sudden solitude was unnerving.

        “Get up.”

His voice sounded harsher than any other time I’d heard it. His eyes darted back and forth between me and the slaughterhouse door.

I sat up and fought through waves of dizziness while my body gained its bearings. The back of my head throbbed from where I must’ve hit it against the floor. My eyes swam in their sockets from the pain and gradually wandered over to Caleb.

His attention stayed fixed on the front door. Rusty’s blood seeped into the slaughterhouse from the outside and shined bright red in the afternoon sun. A creeping sickness crawled across my skin at the sight of it, and I clamped my mouth shut to keep what little was in my stomach down.