CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
David watched Ellie carefully as she released him from his bindings.
“What the hell just happened here, Ellie?” he finally said. After Linda and Randall’s spectacular destruction, he had watched the dark figure next to Ellie nod in her direction and then slowly fade away.
“It’s over,” she said. She looked up him and smiled.
Then she wrapped her arms around his waist, and David had to admit that felt great. He still couldn’t process that he had been born almost a hundred years ago, and had apparently been a captive of the house all that time. But it made sense to him now why he had always felt so comfortable there.
“What do we do now?” he asked. “I feel like my whole world has been ripped apart.”
Ellie’s words surprised him, and he felt the knot of fear return. “We stay,” she said simply.
“What does that mean?” He pushed her away, searching her eyes. He knew that something had transpired between Ellie and the dark figure that had banished Linda and Randall.
“This is where you belong, David. It is your home. And I’ll stay with you, of course.” She smiled warmly and tried to hug him again but he stopped her.
“I don’t belong here, Ellie,” he said. “And neither do you.”
Ellie looked frustrated. “You heard everything we said, David. This is where you came from.”
“I’m not staying here, Ellie. This is a bad place. Horrible things happen here. We’re leaving.” He grabbed her arm and started pulling her with him out onto the landing.
She struggled against him. “David, please. There’s something I need to tell you. Something you aren’t going to like.”
Her fevered speech made him move faster. “I need to get you out of here, Ellie. Away from whatever it is that lives in this house,” he said.
“No, David. You aren’t listening. You can’t leave.” And then Ellie dropped the bomb. “Neither one of us can," she said. Her smile had faded, and her eyes were haunted.
They stood on the patio with Skipper and watched the sun come up. It was cold, but they didn’t feel it. Ellie knew the time had come. Already things were changing. Everything around them was covered in heavy snow. The world was silent.
David had not spoken to her since she had finished telling him what had happened in those few moments before the Third banished Joseph and Lillian back to the depths of hell. Ellie explained all of the images of the future that the house had shown her, and how his parents had died. It sounded too fantastic to be real.
“You don’t know that was the truth, you know,” David finally said. He didn’t look at her.
“We were kidnapped by soul-sucking ghost monsters, David,” she argued. “I had a pretty good idea of what was going to happen even if the Third hadn’t shown me what happened to Emma and Henry.”
“So you made a deal with the devil,” he said. “A deal for both of us.”
“Like it or not, David, this is where you grew up. It has had its hooks in you since you were born. It wasn’t going to let you just waltz out of here, even if we had somehow managed to escape from Joseph and Lillian. What we have is what it wants.”
“So we’re trapped here forever,” he said.
It frightened Ellie that he wouldn’t look at her. She stepped in front of him and gently reached up to touch his cheek. Finally his eyes dropped to hers. She saw a man in torment. She wrapped her arms around his torso, and after a moment she felt him put his arms around her. She was relieved.
“Don’t worry, David. This is just the beginning. We have time now. We’ll figure it out. Together.”
She heard a rumble inside the house. She knew she’d have to be careful what she said from now on. “We’d better go back inside.”
David took her chin and kissed her softly. “If you say we’ll get out of here, Ellie, I’ll do whatever you tell me to do. I believe you.”
She nodded. She had to appear confident for him. Then she took his hand and pushed the front door open. Skipper scooted through the door first. David glanced at her and followed Skipper. It was like they were swallowed by the darkness on the other side of the threshold. Ellie took a deep breath and hoped again that she had made the right decision. Then she stepped inside and closed the door behind her.
###
Ellie made a deal, and now it’s time to pay the price for it.
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Note from the Author
Thank you so much for taking the time to read Ellie's story! If you enjoyed Edge of Shadows (Shadows #1), please consider leaving a review and sharing your thoughts. I'd also love to hear what you liked (and what you didn't!) if you'd like to drop me a line at
[email protected]. As always, thank you for your support.
About Cege Smith
Everyone loves a good origin tale. Cege's started when she was eight years old. She snuck out of bed late one night and into the living room to watch TV. Flipping through stations with the volume turned down low, she came across a rerun of a movie called The Exorcist. She was terrified yet mesmerized.
Cege wasn't unfamiliar with the idea of the battle between good and evil. She attended Catholic school in a small town in rural Wisconsin, and at the time knew the 'age appropriate' stories from the Bible. Nothing in those stories prepared her for the visual onslaught of watching the battle between the priests and the demon for the soul of the young Linda Blair. Cege was deeply disturbed by the movie, but nonetheless a seed was planted that night. That seed grew into a rampant fascination with all things supernatural.
Sleepovers turned into B-rated horror film marathons. Her library card was used to bring home piles of books about ghosts and vampires. She still isn't quite sure who she loved first, Stephen King or Freddy Krueger. By the time she was twelve, Cege took a turn at penning her own spooky tales. That love of things that go bump in the night and scare you to death has only grown stronger throughout the years.
The paranormal and supernatural take center stage in all of Cege's stories. Over the years, she has crafted her own origin stories about vampires (the Bloodtruth series), zombies (the Twisted Souls series), and ghosts, angels, and demons (the Shadows series). She's also taken on the folklore around the Fountain of Youth (the Immortal End series beginning with Ageless). There is something for every reader of the paranormal in Cege's books.
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