THIS BOOK WILL KILL YOU

1_witch_

I don't remember much from my childhood, but I remember this.

I remember that moment between dreaming and waking, that moment when you're swimming up from golden dreams, crossing that liminal, magical no-man's land where two worlds collide. I remember knowing that dreams were safe, that waking was safe, but that space in the middle, where you're neither one thing nor the other, that's a bad place, a dangerous place. There's nothing to protect you there, there's nowhere to hide.

And that's where she always found me.

She would wait for me, right on the edge of the dream, pulling a cloak of cold darkness behind her. Not her, exactly, because she was never there herself, just a force that would wrench me up, up, over the streets, over cars and buses and people, down into the darkest parts of the city to the tall building where she lived. And I'd see it, I'd see her window, as crooked as a mouth, getting closer and closer and closer and there was nothing I could do but be pulled through it.

Oh god, the dread. It's the kind of fear you can only ever really have in a nightmare, it consumes you, it's an ecstasy of terror because your eyes roll up and your body convulses and there's a pair of electric hands wrapped tight around your spine and your skull, squeezing your mind into oblivion. You literally lose everything of yourself to it.

She brings me to a room, the floor bare wood, the walls plaster. There's nothing in here except dirt, and it's dark, but there's another door right in front of me and through it I can see an old kitchen, the stove on, a saucepan bubbling, all of it cut into harsh lines by a single, bright bulb hanging above the table. There's meat on that table, a butcher shop's worth, a sweet, stinking butcher shop's worth.

And I know she's there too, because I can hear her. I can hear her moving toward the door. She can't move quickly, she's far too old for that. But she's coming, her bare feet scuffing the floor, the lump of her hand knocking against the wall, her hazel-twig fingers bristling. She's grinning. I can't see her but I know she's grinning. I can feel it through the wall, as bright as the bulb. She's grinning because she knows I'm not going anywhere.

She's right, I might as well be wrapped in duct tape. I cannot move, I cannot breathe. I just stare at that door, seeing her shadow flood the floor like dirty water, see the eclipse of her head push itself around the sill, twisted and bent, her face buried in clumps of matted hair but one eye sliding up in its socket, one blistered, boiling eye and beneath it one arm, too long and broomstick thin, sliding out to touch me.

And I know, I know, that if those crackboned fingers touch me I'll never be able to leave this place.

So I fight it, I fight it like there was somebody on top of me, pinning me down. I fight it like there was a hand over my mouth and nose and I was out of air. I kick against the broken shell of my body, I punch, I open my mouth and scream and scream and scream until suddenly my body responds and I'm screaming in the dream, I'm kicking, I'm hitting, and that same force sweeps me up like a pair of arms around my middle and pulls me back out the window and back through the city and I can still see that shadowed body grunt and slide through the doorway, her arm outstretched, I can still see her eye watching me go, I can hear her laughing.

Because she knows I'll be back.

She knows that one day, I won't get out in time.

I don't remember much from my childhood, but I remember this. I remember it because I had that dream a hundred times, and every time I'd wake up gripped by such a violent fear that it would take my parents hours to calm me. I had that dream again, and again, and again.

Until one day, I didn't.

One day I got away for good.

At least, that's what I thought, right up until the day the police showed up at my door and asked me if I knew the dead girl, Cara Pierce.