I ran to follow the ambulance. But just as my foot touched the street, an invisible barrier knocked me back, and I crashed into Elijah.
At the contact, white light exploded in my vision like the blinding flash of a camera light, and the world tilted on its side. Elijah and Amelia dissipated with the breeze, bleeding colors and textures, blending into the landscape that too started to melt away.
I tried to fight the fading scene, scrambled back as the grass fell away from my feet, but I couldn't escape it. Ambulance sirens echoing in my ears, darkness swallowed me whole. I didn't fall, however. Instead, the darkness undulated, and then quivered, seemingly alive.
"Where am I?" I called.
Laughter echoed from the darkness.
Through whorling shades of black and gray, a new scene filled the spaces around me.
"Are you trying to be a smart ass, Pledge?" Elijah asked from his spot at the front of a small, dingy room. With its cement walls, low ceiling, and moldy scent, I knew it was a basement. Cold seeped into my skin.
Beneath the long shadows of a lone white bulb hanging from the ceiling, four boys knelt in front of Elijah. When I blinked, I was right beside my father, and my knees buckled at their expressions. They looked like zombies. Red eyes were smudged with deep shadows, faces dirty and disheveled, and they stared at me with giant pupils. The masochistic hunger in the young men's eyes for the status or glory these trials would entail.
Before my eyes landed on the last boy, Elijah slammed his baseball bat into his open palm in a threat. "When I ask a question, you answer! Understand?"
"Yes, sir!" the pledges said in unison.
Rage pulsated from his body. Pointing his bat at the boy at the end of the line, he asked, "Understand, Pledge?"
I thought my heart was going to explode in my chest. This pledge's face was not one of defiance, but fear and exhaustion. His eagerness was muted; his pupils indicating he was on the verge of being too far gone.
Roy Teller looked broken.
* * *
YOU ARE READING
The Unlikely Resident of Room 313
Paranormal𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐩𝐚𝐝 𝐄𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐨𝐫'𝐬 𝐏𝐢𝐜𝐤 𝐋𝐢𝐬𝐭 What do you do when the resident ghost takes a sudden interest in making you lose your mind? College is supposed to be the best years of a person's life. Unfortunately f...
