“Emma?” Jack’s voice echoes from the somewhere near the front of the Big House.
My heart leaps with joy. I’ve never been so relieved to hear his voice. “Jack! Help!” I scream just as the creature lunges forward and seizes my throat with its clammy, fetid hands. My voice cuts off as it lifts me off my knees and suspends me in the air.
I stare at my reflection in its bulging, lidless, bloodred gaze. My eyes are stretched wide, my jaw agape, and my skin’s pulled taut in a perfect picture of abject horror. Yet the image doesn’t come close to conveying the actual terror that has filled my mind and engorged every cell of my body.
“Silence! I don’t wish to hurt you, but I will if I must,” it says, lingering on each s sound. “You see, the smart ones are my least favorite. Not very tasty. Though it’s never stopped me in a pinch.” Its long, lizard-like tongue shoots from its mouth and licks the length of my jaw, leaving a thick layer of slime.
I gag as an idea forms of what this thing is. No! Clawing at its lean arms, I try in vain to make it release me. Its skin is tacky and feels exactly like an uncooked piece of steak that’s been left out on the counter for the afternoon.
It laughs again as it tightens its grasp. “So very feisty. Though I should thank you for breaking the Gullah hag’s curse. Now I don’t have to wait for the boy’s birthday to claim his body. His intact soul will make it harder to separate his life force from his flesh, but it’s nothing I haven’t done before.”
Jack’s footfalls pound toward us.
I call to him, but the creature still has my throat in its vise grip so the sound comes out garbled, though loud.
“You asked for it.” The creature opens its toothless mouth. Thick white sludge drips over its fine, red lips. It leans in, extending its jaw wide enough to swallow my whole head.
An invisible force flicks on, sucking the life from my body. More than my energy, it feels as if the monster is inhaling both my spirit and soul. My vision blinks white as memories literally unspool from my mind and whoosh toward the monster’s throat. Distorted images from when Jack and I were babies, sharing the same crib, and playing on our hobbyhorse yank from my brain. I know they’re real and depict actual events, but stolen this way, they’re pulled and stretched, a fun house version of my life. Next, my mother and father whiz by as they were one Christmas morning more than a decade ago, in our old house in DC, followed by scenes from preschool and kindergarten and our first trip to St. Helena to see our dad. But rather than reliving the joyous, happy times they were, the pictures are contorted, dark, and frightening. And worst of all, this alternative, warped version of reality feels so real it’s enough to make me question my sanity.
“Emma!” Jack’s voice, filled with dread, fear, and alarm, is the only thing that breaks through the unfurling events of my fourteen-year-old existence. “Let go of my sister!” he screams.
His arrival must distract the creature because the force field breaks and my early memories snap back into my head like one of those vinyl window shades that retract on a roller. But rather than bouncing back to their former, happy shapes, the images remain buckled and deformed, leaving me terribly unsettled.
The creature glances over its scarlet shoulder. “Go away! This doesn’t concern you,” it hisses.
“Like hell it doesn’t.” Jack darts into the woods on the side of the house.
The creature jerks back toward me and tilts its bizarre, thin head. “Now, where were we?” A thin slash of a smile splits its lips. “Oh, yes. Just a tiny nibble more.” Its jaw gapes once again and the vacuum-like force switches on.
Just as my brain starts to slip back into that disoriented whirl of disfigured images, I catch a glimpse of Jack running toward the creature, his hands gripped around something long and pointy. He screams just as the creature starts to Hoover my brain again.
White light flashes. Memories flicker. Then everything stops as I’m jostled, then dropped to the ground. Propping myself up on my elbows, I blink up at the red, fleshy creature looming above me. Its hands are wrapped around the end of a tree branch that Jack must have impaled through its midsection.
Cooper’s window opens. He pries his face against the screen. “What the—”
The creature stumbles back a few feet. Then, like a magician pulling handkerchiefs from his sleeve, the creature yanks the bough clear through its midsection, leaves and all. When the limb is free, the wound spews a sludgy, black substance, spattering everything within a six-foot radius, including me. It stinks like raw sewage. I shriek as the fetid glop gushes on my legs, stinging my skin, and soiling my clothes.
Slapping its three-fingered hands over its gaping wound, the creature looks up at Cooper. “This isn’t over. Your soul may be safe, but your body has always been marked as mine. I won’t relinquish my destiny, and you won’t escape yours.”
The creature vaults over me, clutching its abdomen as it dodges around Jack, then dashes into the woods and fades into the night.
“Emma! Jack!” Cooper yells, then disappears from his window.
I slump to the ground and cough as I heave for air through my crushed throat. Every breath draws in the awful stench that covers my skin and clothes, but I’ve got bigger problems, starting with the disturbing images that haunt my mind’s eye. I tell myself those screwed-up pictures aren’t real, that my real memories represent blissful times. But even though I know that to be the truth, fear and anxiety linger in my chest anyway. Maybe if I keep reassuring myself, eventually, I’ll believe it. But my still-pounding headache isn’t making things any easier. Staring up at the moonlit sky, I attempt to will away the pain.
Jack races for me, diving next to my prone body. “Are you okay?” His searching eyes are filled with shock.
“Ugh.” I’m so far past okay, I can barely form words in my mind much less speak them.
He plugs his nose. “Dang. No offense, but you stink.”
I nod my head, which only makes it hurt worse. “I know.” My voice is rough and raspy as I lift a hand to put pressure on the ache. “How did you know to save me?”
He shrugs. “Twin sense, I guess. I felt you were in trouble, so I went to find you. When you weren’t in your room, I figured you must have come out here. Which was beyond moronic by the way, even when a demonic monster isn’t trying to kill you.”
Cooper flies around the corner from the back of the Big House. Crouching opposite Jack, he grabs my hand and gazes down at me with his white-gray eyes. “What happened? And what was that…thing?”
I clear my throat. “I’m pretty sure it was a boo hag.” I had my suspicions when the creature talked about how tasty people are, but they were confirmed when it claimed Cooper’s body. And perhaps most frightening of all, the boo hag is somehow connected to the Beaumont Curse. All that creature’s talk about destiny and being marked can only mean one thing: even though we broke the jinx and secured Cooper’s soul, Cooper’s still in danger.
Cooper gulps. “What does it want?”
Jack turns to him, his brow hitched. “Evidentially, you. Or at least your skin.”
My legs move past stinging into full-on burn territory. I suck in a gasp.
“What’s wrong?” Cooper asks.
“My legs. They hurt.”
Jack gawks. “They’re bright red. We’ve got to get you inside and wash this off, now.”
I try to sit up, but my head reels, and I sink back down. “I can’t.”
“No problem.” Cooper stands and then scoops me in his arms in one fluid motion.
A shock jolts my skin where his flesh touches mine, just like it did at the cemetery. Which only confirms my reasons for coming here tonight. Something’s definitely up, but between the headache and new twinging sensation, it’s impossible to think.