The Time Before Home

Chapter One

For the first seventeen years of my life, I believed ghosts belonged inside the pages of dusty books, only to materialise in our imaginations or round a sizzling fire kept alive by the laughter of drunken friends. Demons flickered behind television screens and witches lay trapped in video games, a mere click away from death.

If I had tried to imagine them in real life, I would have been wrong. Under the azure English skies of South Everwood, our ignorance caught up with us and set off a chain reaction which followed me three-thousand-four-hundred miles away to New York City, making me jump as my phone buzzed against my face. I was sure it left a garish imprint as I pulled it from my cheek, muttering of courtesy and who sends a text at 3:45 am? I needn't have wondered though, because while the text left my fingers slack and caused my phone to clatter noisily against the floor, it certainly didn't leave me confused.

'It's back, Allison. You need to come home.'

My anxiety rose into a crescendo as my limbs began to shake, bile rising up into my throat and burning at my mouth. My covers offered no refuge as I yanked them up to my chin, eyes darting to the four peach walls around me as though they were already closing in.

Since I left South Everwood two years ago, I'd tried to count each day as the blessing it was. Every morning without fail I'd paint vibrant colours across my nails, wondering which shade of magenta I'd die in today. My aunt had encouraged me to throw myself into social media. 'You're gorgeous, Allison,' she'd said, 'monetise it.' For two years, a million Instagram followers and the daily grind of being a z-lister had distracted me from the tragedy of home. But it had caught up with me and was banging down my door in the form of a text from the best friend I left behind.

'I know you're going to ignore me, Al'... don't. Your little sister is here and you know what happened last time. Get your arse on the phone right now or I swear to god, princess.'

Bringing up my sister was a cheap shot, but it was an effective one. A series of expletives left my lips as I grabbed the now-buzzing phone with vigour, stabbing the screen and bringing it to my ear.

"If you aren't dead, I don't wanna hear it," I warned, but Violet's voice was serious, pinched.

"Allison, I need you to come home. We need you to come home."

Violet was rarely serious. We grew up in the simple red-brick houses next to one another and rode bikes together when we were eight, right up until the age of seventeen where we traded cycling for cheap alcohol and friendship for an unbreakable sisterly bond. Violet was the type who would throw herself completely naked into a treacherous river to give a cheap laugh if you were sad, and it was among one of the hardest things to be apart from all these miles away.

"Vi... you know I can't," I murmured, squeezing the bed covers in my palm. She took in a shaky breath and I knitted my eyebrows together. Was she crying? I'd seen Violet cry maybe twice in our entire lives and one time was when she was trying to get Donny Glover to give my Pokemon cards back.

"I know you said you're never coming home, I know. You didn't have a reason to. But... it's after us again, Al'."

I opened my mouth to protest, ready to hit the red button and go to sleep away from all of this. But Violet wasn't one to be interrupted and raised her voice, not letting me in.

"Finn's been trying to tell us for a month," she continued, "And we brushed it off because we're morons. But... it's after him."

For the months we'd been in torment back home, Violet had always been the strong one. One by one we fell apart till Vi was standing for all of us, keeping us steady. Now, as I heard her voice shake in my ear, I knew even she had fallen victim to the demons which kept me up at night.

"Please don't ask this of me," I held my eyes closed, tears already spilling down onto rosy cheeks, "I can't do it again, Vi. Finn is imagining it, he probably just-"

"No, Al'," she cut me off sternly, "We can't fuck up again by not trusting each other. I saw... I saw things. We all have. Three days from now on Friday we're meeting at Finn's place, he lives off-campus now. We wanted to give you time to show up. To be a group again."

"You know I can't," I brushed the stray tears from my eyes determinedly, "You know. You guys don't need me anymore, and Seb... Seb hates me. It's been too long, Violet-"

"We were best friends for years, nobody hates you for leaving, Al'," she said sincerely, "Apart from... yeah, Seb. Which isn't surprising considering he held a colossal torch for you," her voice became increasingly desperate, "That'll all get fixed, it doesn't matter. This is life and death, your family are still here-"

"Don't," I pleaded in no more than a whisper.

"-And you know what can happen, we all know. Come for them if not us, please Allison. Just for one weekend. I'll never ask anything of you again. If even a bit of you believes me, then you know how important this is."

The choice was stolen from me as my brain conjured up images of my little sister within the clutches of evil, dragging her into darkness my mind couldn't even fathom. My parents couldn't protect her from what they couldn't see and my brother had spent years suppressing the memories of a time before. I knew demons and monsters to be real, but they didn't.

"Okay," I whispered and she let out a long breath.

"Amazing," she said, "I hope you still like Jaffa Cakes up in prissy New York, I'll buy you a mountain of them."

"You'd better," I half-laughed, hanging up and falling into the bed which I'd once thought would become my coffin. It wouldn't, because I was headed back to South Everwood and I'd bet a lot of money I was going to see my final days there instead.