Keep climbing into my head without knockin'
And you fix yourself there like a map pin
On this ghost of this street where I'm livin'
I'm in a chrysalis and I'm snowed in
Darling, darling, that dam's gonna give
It's inevitable the way that you live
- Dogwood Blossom, Fionn Regan
When she woke, the darkness behind her eyelids was too complete, the air around her face too cold. The immediate panicked feeling of her gut plunging into her spine was familiar, an almost nightly ritual now. But repetition didn't make any of it less terrifying.
She knew she wasn't downstairs anymore, where the nightlights shone from every outlet and the plastic stars glowed on the ceiling—where real starlight, too, peeked through the lace curtains and reminded her she wasn't alone. No, here there were no lights, no windows.
With a whimper, she allowed herself to feel the bed beneath her, the covers tucked around her as though by a loving parent. It wasn't the twin bed she'd gone to sleep in, with its polka-dot comforter and piles of stuffed animals. This mattress was hard, the sheets stiff and scratchy. And yet there was something cushioning her. She moved just her pinky toe back and forth along the bed. The ancient springs creaked. Her toe displaced some of the softness, and she struggled not to sob.
She didn't need to open her eyes to know where she was. To know that every inch of the bed beneath her—the covers around her, the abandoned room she'd tried so hard to stay away from—was covered in a layer of dust.
She squeezed her fists closer to her chest. She was so tired. So tired of going to sleep downstairs and then waking up in the middle of the night in this same horrible place. It had been weeks of this, months. And every morning when she went back downstairs, she felt herself whittling away.
A tear slid from her closed eye down her cheek, dampening the pillow of dust.
She couldn't do it anymore. She couldn't fight it. Some broken part of her broken mind must have known this was where she belonged, and this was where she had to stay.
None of them would understand this.
How could anyone ever understand this.
YOU ARE READING
Solid Walls
Mystery / ThrillerA HAUNTED HOUSE MYSTERY about isolation and friendship. Willa O'Keefe can't leave her room. Every time she tries, her body loses mass, and she begins to turn to dust. Her family has called everyone from doctors to exorcists, but no one can figure o...
