Ultimate Supernatural Horror Box Set

Chapter 32

It is the strangest sensation, the closest thing to a lucid dream she’s ever experienced.

She is aware of herself asleep on the recliner.

She feels the leather cushions beneath her but also the sensation of existing outside of herself. Like being in the audience of a play while she’s also onstage.

There is another, more ominous sensation.

Someone standing over her.

She can feel their presence.

Hovering.

Watching.

She wants to turn her head but won’t, thinking that whatever is standing next to the chair is waiting for her to look, and that as soon as she does, it will do the thing it wants to do so badly.

This must be limbo, she thinks.

This is what forever is going to be like for me.

But that idea is somehow worse, and she’s already turning her head.

Sophie looks up and opens her eyes.

The fire is so low that the room stands in virtual darkness.

Rain drums against the windows.

It stands beside the chair, staring down into her face.

Not Paige. Not Grant.

Just a pure black shadow shorter than either of them, with long, skinny arms that nearly touch the floor.

She tries to speak, but her mouth won’t open.

Tries to turn away, but she has lost the mobility of her lucid dream, now locked in a stare with the shadow.

That she cannot see a single detail of its face is somehow worse.

Her mind runs in terrible directions.

The next time she blinks, the shadow has changed.

Replaced by a profile she knows.

The dying fire even lends this face a glimmer of color.

Paige Moreton says, “Why won’t you talk to me?”

Her eyes are shining, and she is smiling.