by Wendy Cole
Amelia knew she couldn’t stop her. Her mother never listened. She never believed.
Reluctantly, she released her hold and held her breath. Each step her mommy took was like a battering ram to her nerves.
Her mother opened the closet door, pulling the little chain that illuminated the inside of it.
It was empty.
“See. There’s nothing…” Her mother paused. “Amelia, honey? Did you do this?”
Amelia stepped forward, and saw what had her mother so frozen in place.
Never going to leave.
The words written were aggressively sprawled over and over again in thick black crayon.
Amelia’s mother dropped to her knees as sobs racked her frame. Amelia watched her shoulders shake, feeling helpless. Nothing could stop it. No one could help.
She knew, in that moment, that she was on her own.
CHAPTER ONE
15 years later
A vise-like grip threatened to squeeze the life right out of me. I tried to escape, to wiggle my way to freedom, but it was no use. I was no match, and the tighter her grip became, the more I felt as if I were suffocating.
“Please,” I pleaded, once again, feeling as if I’d been begging for an eternity.
Mother still didn’t listen. “I don’t want you to leave. Stay little. I liked you little.”
“You don’t like me now?” I peered down at her, an action that only proved just how grown I’d become. Poor mother was a good foot shorter than me, which made my lack of ability to remove her all the more disturbing.
“I like you when you’re not leaving.” She burrowed her head into my rib cage.
This was ridiculous. “Mom. Stop. I have to go.” This time, when I pulled her arms away, she relented.
“Fine,” she muttered, turning away from me and exiting the room like a child who’d been denied her way.
I smiled softly at her back. She’d be okay. Better actually. She wouldn’t have to deal with my shit, and maybe after I was gone a while, people would stop associating her with me. It would be better for me too. I’d be away from this place, from the people here. Redbird Falls had a population of 462, or soon to be 461. I smiled. No more crazy girl to brighten up the boring existence of these poor souls. I was out. Off to live a new life, monster free, rumor free.
Brand fucking new.
I looked over to the closet door, to the many spitballs that covered its surface, a phase I’d gone through during what my mother called teenage angst. I called it being pissed off.
I hated this house, hated this town, hated that stupid closet. I’d spent the past ten years being tormented by the people in Redbird Falls. I was that girl. The girl who thought a monster lived in her closet. The crazy girl. Who knows, maybe I was crazy.
It was my own fault. Priscilla. Prissy Priscilla. My first friend, and the person who I’d thought I could confide in. I told her about the closet, about the red eyes, the strange noises.
Then, she told everyone else.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that strange things scared me at home, after that, I had to deal with it at school—a whole new breed of monsters in the form of hormonal high school students with too much time on their hands. I stopped using my locker after the second time they’d hidden inside and almost gave me a heart attack. I stopped using the restrooms in between classes after they had made me jump and piss on myself. But the worst of it all, what truly fucking did me in, was when they made me crash. Last year, on Halloween, Jaden Andrews, captain of the football team, dressed up and hid in the back seat of my car. Who knows how long he waited there for the opportunity to almost kill me. At forty-five miles an hour, he made his presence known with a scream into my ear. I jerked the wheel, sending us into a ditch and ruining the front end of my car.
I didn’t die, and sadly, neither did he. He walked away without a scratch, while I needed fifteen stitches to repair the place where my head hit the door jamb.
They say fate has a funny way about things, but I didn’t find it funny at all.
I grabbed a piece of paper off of my desk, balled it up, and threw it at the closet door in one last final goodbye before collecting my bags from the floor.
I didn’t allow mother another hug. She’d had enough. Instead, I called out one last goodbye and rushed to the car.
She’d understand. Maybe.
The only thing standing between me and normalcy was a new location. Closet monster had disappeared when I was fifteen. It was sudden, but I didn’t question it. Why would I?
It took ten minutes to hit the highway, and when I did, raindrops began to splatter against my windshield, then grew heavier with each mile I drove. I turned on my wipers and strained to see the car in front of me. Driving in the rain always made me nervous. My hands shook as I reached over to turn on my stereo. The moment I clicked the knob, my favorite station blared out of the speakers at full volume. All my breath left me in a whoosh, and I frantically tried to turn it down.
I twisted the knob in each direction, but no change came. The lyrics didn’t help with my panic.
One way or another,
I’m gonna find ya,
I’m gonna get ya, get ya, get ya…
“Fuck that,” I hissed, trying to keep an eye on the road as I turned the station. At least that seemed to be working.
The next channel aired a news broadcast and didn’t seem to be quite as loud, so I left it and focused on the road. I was only half listening to the broadcaster as the rain intensified, but then they said something that caught my attention.
Attention. Breaking news. An accident has occurred on state road two thirty-four, thirty miles east of Redbird Falls...
I listened closely. My heart was pounding, and my chest rising and falling heavily. That was about where I was. I strained my eyes, now more focused than ever on the road in front of me. The rain barreled down from the sky like an assault from the heavens, lightning flashing every few moments, illuminating the road. I watched for police, for stopped cars, but traffic didn’t even slow down. Maybe it’d happened behind me. Maybe I wouldn’t even pass it.
A 2004 Honda Accord crashed into a Chevy Silverado.
There was a pause.
We’ve just been informed that the driver of the Honda was twenty-year-old Amelia Snow.
My breath caught. “What the fuck?” I tried again to turn it off, but it wouldn’t work.
The station flipped on its own, and I jerked my hand away as if the stereo were alive. It continued to jump through channels as my widened eyes darted between it and the red tail lights in front of me. Then it started to stop, only long enough to get a word out of each station before switching to the next.
Stop… the…car …or …you …will …die…
I jerked the wheel and came to an abrupt stop on the shoulder of the road. My breath wouldn’t catch up to me, as much as I tried. The static white noise still filling the car wasn’t helping, and in frustration, I reached over once again to try and turn it off. This time, it worked.
Thank, God. I exhaled a sigh of relief, my heart rate slowing only for a moment before another jolt of fear hit me.
Tires squealed. A horn blew. A vehicle flew past, narrowly missing me as it slid across the slick road.
I jerked my head up just in time to see the car crash into a Chevy Silverado.
CHAPTER TWO
I finally checked into the hotel at eleven o’clock. When I made it to my room, the first thing I did was turn on every possible light I could find.
The driver of the car that crashed, thankfully, wasn’t killed. I don’t know how I would have handled knowing that, what was supposed to have happened to me, had taken someone else’s life. The whole thing was messed up. Not only terrifying, not only disappointing—to put it lightly—but confusing.
It felt like that fucker was helping me.
I walked over to the bathroom, my pajamas bundled into one arm. That was exactly what I needed: a nice hot shower followed by about ten hours’ worth o
f sleep. If I got to sleep. A deep anxiety weighed heavily on my mind. I was that little girl all over again, afraid of her bedtime, afraid to close her eyes. I wasn’t sure how I’d handle it if this really was my illusions haunting me. Go ballistic? Go full-blown, come-lock-me-up, crazy? They sounded like plausible options, but neither of them were conducive with my plans for the future, and I wasn’t about to let anything stop me from having one.
This was my new start, and no monsters were invited.
I spent a whole forty-five minutes in the shower as if I could wash away the crazy. My new landlord was meeting me at noon the next day. I had to go to the college and get a copy of my class schedule; all of these things were supposed to be normal. My first taste of normal.
I stepped out of the shower, dried off, dressed, then stared at myself in the mirror.
My journey would begin the next day. I would go to school. I would become a pediatric psychiatrist. Then, I’d spend the rest of my life helping those scared children that nobody believed.
I doubt I’d ever be able to make their monsters go away. Apparently, I couldn’t even get rid of my own at twenty years old. But I could believe them. If just one person had believed me, I think it would have been a lot easier. I was going to be that person they could rely on and always feel safe talking to.
Just the thought of my end goal lifted my spirits and had me smiling to myself. If I could survive my childhood, then I could do anything. I opened the door to exit and froze.
Every light outside of the bathroom was off.
Bullshit. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. I gritted my teeth and took a deep breath before quickly making my way over to the light switch. Flipping it on didn’t help at all. My lipstick was opened, sitting on the foot post of the bed, and the cap neatly placed beside it.
Disturbing as that was, it was the least of my worries.
Across the room, in huge letters—written with my cherry red lipstick—were the words Sweet Dreams.
I stared at the message as anger slowly worked its way through my bloodstream. I had the sudden, undeniable urge to hit something, anything. This thing! This, whatever the hell it was, had the nerve to come back after all this time and ruin my new start. Well, I wasn’t about to let that happen. I would not be afraid of it! I was going to have a normal life. Or I was going to die trying.
Slowly, I walked over to the bed. “I’m going to sleep!” I called out angrily to the empty room. “If you wake me up, so help me God, I am gonna show you what the fuck scary is, you little asshole!”
I climbed beneath the covers and remained silent for a long time, waiting for what was next. This was supposed to be my fresh start. This was supposed to be the beginning of my normal life. I absolutely refused to have it taken from me by this…thing.
My thoughts left me feeling a sense of power that I’d never felt before. A resolve. I clung to the feeling and let it fuel me to do something I would have never dared to do in my youth.
I turned off the light.
Regardless of my newfound bravery, I didn’t sleep. I just lay there, waiting for the game to start, like it had so many times before.
I closed my eyes, evened out each breath, and it wasn’t long after that I heard it. Light footsteps pattered across the hotel floor. I could make out the familiar sound of its breathing as it slowly moved across the room. It took every ounce of willpower I had to keep calm and still, especially when the sounds drew closer. It came to a stop at the side of my bed, and my bravery faltered. Warm breath fanned across my cheek, and for the first time ever, it touched me.
Rough fingers lightly traced the scar across my forehead, the one left over from the accident. A menacing growl rumbled from the monster’s chest, and I decided I’d had enough.
In one quick move, I swung out my fist with enough force that I managed to roll myself out of the bed. I hit the floor hard, then quickly looked around the room.
Empty. I am alone.
“That’s right! You better run!” I yelled into empty air before climbing back into bed.
But it didn’t run. It never ran, and by some grace of god or curse of the devil, darkness consumed me.
CHAPTER THREE
The sun filtered in through the hotel window, conveniently landing on my face. I supposed it was a good thing since the stupid front desk forgot to give me my wake-up call. I’d have to skip breakfast. Skipping breakfast was not a good start. Hungry self wasn’t a pleasant person. Hungry self would be no good at meeting new people.
I looked to my left and huffed in anger. The message from the night before had disappeared, only to be replaced by a new one.
Good Morning.
Good fucking morning.
“This is not a good morning,” I growled at the air. Why the hell was this thing back, and why was it acting so different? Lifting both hands, I proceeded to flip off every direction within the room. I wasn’t worried about making it mad anymore. I had nothing to lose.
As far as I was concerned, we were at war. I’d never been a violent person. If I was, I would have never made it into college in the first place, considering I had plenty of justifiable instances for violence with my peers at school.
With one last glare at the wall, I gathered my bags and left, making sure to slam the door behind me. When I reached the front desk, a girl was sitting behind the counter playing on her phone and popping her gum.
“I’d like to check out, please,” I said.
She didn’t hear me.
I ground my teeth, took a breath, and forced my voice to stay pleasant. “I’d like to check out, please.”
She sat up straight, then pulled her chair closer to the computer without so much as a glance in my direction. “Name?”
“Amelia Snow,” I stated flatly, more than ready to get out of there. I watched as she began typing my name into the computer. Her fake nails clicked away at the keys, and I studied the glittery acrylic in fascination.
How does someone function with nails as long as hers?
“That’s gonna be an additional fifty dollars for the phone calls you made,” she said, popping her gum as she finally looked up at me.
“What phone calls?” I didn’t have time for this. “I didn’t make any.”
“It says right here that you made eight phone calls between the hours of 2 AM and 4 AM.”
I felt strangely bear-like and envisioned the girl before me holding a stick, poking me as she bellowed out loud cackling laughter.
“I’m just going by what the computer says, ma’am,” she said, interrupting my strange daydreaming.
“Where were the calls placed to?” I asked.
“I’m not allowed to access your private phone calls, ma’am. All I can see is that the calls were placed, and how long each call was.” She seemed annoyed that I kept questioning her.
“There has to be a mistake here. Why would I pay to use the hotel phone? I have a cell phone I can use if I need to make a call, and like I said, I was asleep.”
“Maybe I should have the manager come and help you, ma’am,” she said, then without waiting for an answer, she got up and stepped through the little door behind her.
I waited, staring at the clock hanging on the wall, running through how much of a shit I was going to look like when I showed up late to view the house. The landlord would hate me. Things would be weird for the entire time I lived there. He’d probably think I’m some kind of irresponsible college kid, hell-bent on destroying the place with wild late night parties.
An older woman in a black pencil skirt and jacket exited the same door, interrupting my thoughts. Her grey hair was tied back into a tight bun, and I noticed her name tag had the name Betty etched into it.
“What seems to be the problem, Miss?” she asked with an expression that looked both tired and annoyed, hidden poorly behind a false smile.
“The problem is me being charged for calls I never made. On top of that, I have somewhere I have to be, and since the front desk neglected to give me m
y wake up call, I’m already running late. Now, if you could please figure out whatever the mistake is so I can be on my way, I would really appreciate it.” My eyes hit the clock again, and I was close to begging. Maybe I should just pay? That thought made me cringe. My mother wasn’t rich by any means, and I couldn’t imagine just throwing away an extra fifty when it wasn’t necessary.
“Why didn’t you just set the alarm on your cell phone,” the girl from before asked in a snotty tone. I hadn’t even noticed her come out of the back.
It was all I could do to keep from jumping over the counter. The woman gave the girl a look of rebuke before turning back to me.
She took a moment to study her computer, then asked, “Are you Amelia Snow?”
“Yes.”
“Miss, I made your wake up call myself. I remember because I thought it odd when your gentleman friend answered the phone. I wasn’t aware that you would have more than one occupant in the room. Maybe he made the phone calls last night. If so, you should have him…”
I stopped listening. What did she mean a man answered the phone? A chill ran down my spine, and I felt a sudden, deep need to get away. The money I snatched from my purse was more than what was needed for the charges, but the hell if I cared. The old woman’s face filled with a more genuine concern at my change in behavior, but I didn’t stick around for it.
The monster made phone calls? He’d actually answered the phone, spoken to the front desk, like a real damn thing?
I wasn’t crazy.
It was real, and it…helped me. It saved my life, then, this morning...
Was that message the equivalent of a good morning text? Did a supernatural fucking thing just send me a wake up text?
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered. Who the hell could it possibly have to call?
I was so lost in my thoughts, I didn’t watch where I was going. My feet left the curb, placing me right in the path of a car making its way through the lot. I watched it approach in a state of shock, like an idiot, completely lacking any of the sense needed to get out of the way. Just before it could make an impact, something hit me from behind and sent me spiraling forward, out of the path of destruction and onto the hard concrete.
