Double Vision

Chapter Six

                  I stopped.

                  I stared.

                  And then my jaw dropped.

                  All at once, a second round of dizziness came over me; the room was toppling to one side again, threatening to offset my balance completely. I felt ready to start swaying on my feet – and maybe this time I wouldn’t be able to stay upright.

                  Closing my eyes, I held my head in both hands and tried to steady myself. There was something seriously wrong here, and I was willing to bet the problem lay within the confines of my skull. So soon after Mitchell had made me feel sane again, even if just momentarily, I was already going out of my mind.

                  You’re imagining things, I told myself, in a much firmer voice than anybody should’ve had to use inside their own head. Don’t even think for a second this is real.

                  I repeated the words at least ten times over, frozen in the doorway of my bedroom, making a frantic attempt to believe them. I told myself I believed them, at least, if only because there was no rational explanation to what I’d just seen. And yet I was still too scared to open my eyes.

                  As my orientation faltered once more, I stumbled in the vague direction of my bed, blindly navigating the few steps it took to cross the room. Every muscle in my body was trembling, and I couldn’t muster up the courage to open my eyes. I was too terrified to see what sat near the opposite wall.

The entire house was eerily silent, and I could hear nothing: no indication that swung either way. About this, I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or not. Did I want to hear the steady rhythm of Reese’s breath six feet away, when I knew full well she was supposed to be in a hole in the ground? As much as I’d previously longed to see my sister again, this was in a whole other league.

                  I fell back onto the mattress, feeling it sink beneath my weight. There, at least, I felt more steady, and keeling over would be a lot safer on the duvet.

                  Holy shit, I’m hallucinating.

                  I was perched on the edge of the bed, knees spread, half-tempted to place my head in between them. That was what you were supposed to do to stop yourself fainting, right? And I certainly felt ready to, each time I thought back to the face I’d seen across the room thirty seconds ago. A face that, for all I knew, might still be there.

                  It hadn’t looked like a hallucination, but then again, was it possible to tell? There had been something about it, a strange quality that just seemed real, more solid than anything my mind could’ve conjured up.

                  And that was perhaps what had me keeping my eyes shut for so long.

                  I knew I had to open them eventually. I couldn’t sit there forever, my entire body shaking in terror, driving myself crazy just wondering. Even if I fled the room and closed the door, there’d come a point when I would have to open it again. I couldn’t evade it forever.

                  There was only one thing I could do.

                  There won’t be anything there, I recited as convincingly as I could. You’re drunk, and you’re not thinking straight. You didn’t see anything. Just open your eyes.