Chapter 10 ⁓ Always With You

126 33 220
                                    

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

The evening has cooled the oppressive heat to a more manageable warm mugginess

Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.

The evening has cooled the oppressive heat to a more manageable warm mugginess. A slight breeze blows through the window with its pane slid open, blowing the ivory-coloured curtains inward and revealing the shadowed forestry surrounding the farmhouse. It's remote. A bit unnerving. No lights of the city beyond can be seen over the treetops. And it's jarringly silent without the constant sound of cars driving along the asphalt. Instead, the quiet is broken by the constant chorus of summer bugs singing into the night, and only a floor below, murmured conversation from a television and the distinct whooshing of running water from a tap.

Hannah drops her backpack onto the bed. It's queen-size, with thin blankets tucked under the edges. A glossy dark wooden headboard and footboard that match the same aesthetic as the wardrobe on a far wall, a wide shelf of books by the door, and a lengthy desk beneath a substantial window. It's a clean room and admittedly quite nice. The wallpaper is a tasteful brown, and a striped rug of various shades of black takes up the floor space, making the giant room cosier.

She'd been offered dinner but declined, claiming she was tired; the greasy burger she'd downed before she'd hopped on her bus early in the day and her nerves have kept her appetite at bay.

Hannah takes her time nosing through her dad's things.

A few glass orbs are being used as paperweights. Hannah weighs them in her palm and finds they're a lot heavier than they look.

She wanders over and touches the clothing that hangs in the wardrobe. Slacks and sweater vests. Hannah inhales scent that lingers, woody and familiar, aching her heart.

Her attention turns to the many handwritten notebooks left around the room with a laziness that isn't characteristic of the impeccable cleanliness of the rest of the items. Hannah flips through one. It's gibberish. Drawings of clocks and shadowed figures with horns of smoke, and, near the end of the notebook, it tapers off into ramblings that verge on madness at times. Her father claims he's being watched and hunted by something in his dreams.

It turns her blood cold.

Hannah slams the notebook shut and covers it with another book atop the desk, not wanting to look at it all night.

The Demon's ReprisalWhere stories live. Discover now