LITMIR.BIZ

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If I had, I never would have walked home alone with my head in the clouds, stopping to help out a good-looking kid on the street. Bishop could be the reason behind these disappearances.

      “I’ll come back tomorrow morning to check the alley again,” the cop told me. “Even with the rain, a murder like you’re describing would leave blood evidence behind, but I don’t see any here.” He paused. “Is there any chance this was your imagination? You said you’d gone to see a horror movie earlier, right?”

      I opened my mouth to argue with him, but then closed it. He was right. If I said that I’d witnessed a murder, but there was no body, no blood, only minutes after the crime had taken place, then what was he supposed to think?

      What was I supposed to think?

      He drove me home in his cruiser and told me again not to worry about anything, that the police were on top of it. He assured me that the city was safe and that he was quite sure I’d just been imagining things. I nodded, my brain spinning as I felt sick to my core. He walked me to my front door and waited till I unlocked it and went inside before he went back to his cruiser and drove away. I was soaked to the skin from the rain and shaking from cold and fear.

      My mother had a business dinner with her real-estate associates that she’d said would keep her out until at least midnight. I didn’t often want to spend a lot of time with her—we were so different that we had practically nothing in common anymore—but I desperately wished she was home right now.

      I wanted to call Carly and tell her everything. I even went so far as to get my phone out of my bag, but the screen flickered and went out as I scrolled through the numbers. Dead battery. I swore under my breath. Before I went for the landline, I had second thoughts. I had no proof that what I’d seen was even real. I didn’t think Bishop had had enough time to pick up the body and carry it away with no trace.

      But I’d seen it. I had. I wasn’t going crazy.

      I glanced out the narrow window at the side of the front door, past the blind, to make sure I hadn’t been followed.

      Grays are controlled by their insatiable hunger.

      A sob caught in my chest. I didn’t even know what a gray was, other than a drab color. All I knew was that I was hungry all the time. And I knew, down deep, that it wasn’t just for food.

      The blond kid’s face haunted me. He’d looked so alone and confused. I’d seen the hope in his eyes when he thought Bishop was going to help him. Instead, Bishop had stabbed him in the heart.

      And then they’d both disappeared.

      Despite the fact that I couldn’t stop shaking, I managed to eat three slices of cold pizza before I went to bed. My stomach didn’t seem to care as much as my brain did that I’d been a witness to murder.

      I couldn’t get to sleep, staring up at my stucco ceiling and finding scary images of monsters hidden there. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to block out my thoughts, but what I’d seen in the alley filled my head like a nonstop horror movie marathon. I normally loved horror movies; they were my escape. But they weren’t nearly as much fun when you experienced them in real life.

      When I finally fell asleep, I had another dream about Bishop. This time I could see him clearly as he approached me on the street, his hand held out toward me as if he wanted to touch me.

      I cringed away from him. “Leave me alone!”

      His face was strained and haunted. “You know I can’t do that. Not anymore.”

      I realized I had a knife—Bishop’s knife—clutched in my hand. “Stay away from me or I’ll do it! I’ll kill you!”

      Despite my warning, he still drew closer as if he couldn’t help himself.

      I didn’t remember stabbing him, but I must have, because the very next moment, he fell to his knees and touched the hilt of the knife sticking out of his chest with shaking hands.

      His intense blue eyes locked with mine. “They can’t have you—promise me, Samantha. You won’t let them have you.”

      When he fell heavily to his side, the light from his eyes extinguished, and he didn’t move again. A cry rose in my throat. Suddenly I wanted to touch him, to heal him. I wanted to make it all better again, make everything go away, but it was too late.

      Shadows began to creep toward me from every direction. As they moved over Bishop’s body, he disappeared as if he’d never been there in the first place.

      “You must come with us now, Samantha,” the voices said as the shadows drew closer and closer.

      Icy hands gripped me, stripping away any warmth left inside me and leaving only fear behind.

      “You’re one of us now. You’ll always be one of us.”

      “No!” When I tried to fight them, they began to rip me apart. But instead of blood, darkness spilled from inside me.

      I forced myself awake with a blood-curdling scream.

      My mother thundered down the hallway and yanked open my bedroom door.

      “What’s wrong?” Her face was pale, her normally perfect blond hair a mess. She pulled her bathrobe tighter around her. Dark circles cut under her pale blue eyes. She suffered from insomnia and usually got only a few hours of sleep a night. A screaming daughter didn’t exactly help matters.

      I looked at her from my tangle of light pink bedsheets. “Bad dream. Really bad dream.”

      “A bad dream? That’s all it was? I thought you were being murdered in here.”

      I flinched at her choice of words, wanting to tell her everything but knowing she wouldn’t believe a word I said. Why would she? I barely believed it myself. “Sorry I woke you.”

      She leaned her forehead against the edge of the door. “Better now?”

      “I’ll survive.”

      “Warm milk helps me sometimes. Do you want some?”

      “No, thanks.” Just the thought of it turned my stomach. My new hunger didn’t seem to extend toward heated dairy products.

      Whenever I’d had a nightmare as a kid, she’d come into my room and read me a story until I got sleepy again. I remembered one in particular about a bunny who got lost in the forest and had to rely on the kindness of strangers—even those who might normally eat him for dinner—to help lead him home. Luckily it had a happy ending. Not all wolves had an appetite for cute bunnies.

      For a moment, I had the urge to ask her to read me that story, but I held my tongue. I wasn’t a little kid anymore.

      “You scared me,” she said groggily, rubbing her eyes. “But I’m glad nothing’s wrong. Try to get some sleep. Brand-new week starting. Hopefully it’ll be a good one.”

      As she left, she kept my door open a crack. It wasn’t as big of a comforting gesture as reading me a bedtime story about rabbits and wolves becoming friends with each other, but it was better than nothing.

      I had an old teddy bear named Fritz that had been relegated to the rocking chair in the corner of my room next to my packed bookcase. He was missing an eye, and his left arm was partially detached. I grabbed him and pulled him into bed with me, clutching him to my chest. But whatever comfort he’d given me when I was younger, he failed to deliver tonight.

      An hour later, I gave up on sleep. I grabbed my laptop from the floor next to my bed and went to the website for the Trinity Chronicle, searching for the latest news to see if anyone had reported any stabbings or murders. There was nothing. Between this and the dismissive “it was just your imagination” reaction I’d gotten from the cop, it was like it never happened.

      But it had.

      I read up on recent disappearances, but none seemed related to what had happened tonight. Trinity was a big city with a million residents. Bad things happened

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