Speak No Evil Trilogy Page 8

  “Only about fifteen minutes, folks,” he called back before leaving the bus first.

  “Should we stay on,” I whispered to Tristan, aware of the people in the aisles making their way to the exit.

  “This is our final stop,” he grinned. “Time to get off.”

  My legs felt stiff after sitting for so long. How much time had passed since we left the hotel? A day? Two days? Where were we now anyways?

  Tristan had said we were there, but there was nothing here. The bus had stopped at an old one lane gas station in the middle of nowhere- straight out of a scary movie. There was probably a man with a chainsaw hiding behind one of the old cars lined up with grass growing from the engines.

  A small cluster of women from the bus hurried out of the bathroom at the side of the gas station, huddling close together and obviously waiting for the same man I was. The group got back on the bus together, leaving me completely alone. With a small shake of his head, the driver pulled the door closed and the bus groaned away.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” I muttered to Tristan, who was standing almost behind me.

  “I'm sure.” At least he sounded confident.

  “Are there any hotels around here, cuz this looks pretty...” I glanced around with another grimace. Even if there was a hotel, we should probably just sleep outside in the woods. At least there were plenty of trees, if not people.

  “There's a cabin- not far from here.”

  “What?”

  “We'll be walking.”

  “Walking?” My grimace turned to a groan. I hated night hikes. “I need to use the bathroom first.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The darkness was intimidating, even if it was just a short distance to the bathroom that the women had just vacated. Why couldn’t Tristan come with me? I took the few seconds it cost me to glare back at him.

  He stood near the place the bus had just vacated, his dark form almost lost in the inky shadows. Worry that I didn’t understand lined his face, taking away some of the attractiveness that came so effortlessly to him.

  I paused, wondering if I should go back to him, when a cold gust of air passed close to my face. I sucked in my breath, jumping back from the unknown source of frigid wind. I could take a guess though. And I wasn’t walking through that.

  I turned again to the bathroom door; it wasn’t far now.

  The old door creaked loudly when I pushed it open and peered around the thick, peeling wood. There was no one in there. Did I expect there to be?

  I tugged lightly on my bottom lip and took the necessary step to put me into the room. My chest felt tight, even more so when the door banged closed behind me. I took a deep breath, focusing on the single stall the dingy bathroom offered.

  Just a few steps, right? I could do that. I fumbled awkwardly behind me for the handle, hoping for the small metal locking mechanism but came up empty. The door didn’t lock.

  No biggie, I shrugged. Tristan was just outside; what could happen?

  Not giving my overworked mind time to answer, I shoved my body away from the door and hurried over to the stall. The half door swung open too easily, slamming into the wall behind it before I could stop the motion with my shaking hands. I flinched away from the sound, automatically glancing around the empty bathroom.

  “Calm down,” I whispered, “you’re fine.”

  My cheeks puffed out with the breath I held tightly in my lungs, then deflated as I exhaled. Toby would have come into the bathroom with me. The stray thought took me by surprise. Why was I thinking about him again?

  The toilet sat low to the ground and had too many rust colored rings inside the bowl to be considered white anymore. Flecks of brown dotted the seat from where the paint had chipped away. Or worse.

  Shuddering, I backed away from the sight and turned instead to an equally rusty sink. Maybe it would at least have running water so I could wash my face. The bus ride had been long and I could feel the effects of too many hours leaned against a window. I wasn’t very hopeful as I twisted the small silver handle, but was happily proven wrong when a thin stream of clear water fell from the faucet.

  Cupping my hands under the ice cold water, I let them fill up until I had enough to splash over myself. It was too cold to be refreshing, instead leaving me shivering worse than before. “Ohh,” I let out a small groan as my eyes slipped closed briefly.

  The unease I had felt outside followed me into the bathroom, leaving a feeling of breathless panic behind. But I wasn’t caving in to it - not yet anyways. Leaning my weight onto the sink with my hands, I peeked under my arms to scan the small room. Still empty.

  It wasn’t like I had to go that bad anyways, I told myself, it can wait.

  I pushed myself straight again; a little too roughly but regained my balance before I hit the floor. Lucky for me too, the floor was even more disgusting than the toilet. And that was saying a lot.

  A tiny shudder ran down my spine as I turned away from the cracked mirror above the dingy sink. Time to leave the bathroom from my nightmares. I froze mid-step, before I could even take one step.

  The bathroom had gone cold. Not the normal middle of the night cold but a bone chilling cold that left my breath hanging in front of my face in a small white puff ball.

  “Is…is someone here?” I croaked out stupidly. Of course someone was here.

  In answer, the lights above me flickered off then back on before I could faint away from fear.

  “T…Toby?” I tried again. It would be like him to try and scare me for running off on him in the middle of the night.

  The lights flickered again, staying off for even longer this time. My head jerked to the sound of the bathroom stall banging open on its own and then swinging back closed with just as much force.

  Don’t look, don’t look, don’t look - I silently chanted to my racing mind.

  Even if it was Toby, I decided in a second, we could talk outside. I bolted to the faded door of the bathroom and twisted the cold metal under my shaking fingers.

  Nothing.

  The doorknob didn’t move at all. It wasn’t possible for it to be locked though, I reminded my hammering heart. The lock didn’t work when I came in. Still, I fumbled over the locking mechanism, twisting it uselessly both ways. The knob was still stuck.

  I banged on the door several times with my open palm. Someone would be out there. They would open the door up and let me out. I wasn’t stuck. I was just panicking.

  “Tristan!”

  “He won’t hear you,” a woman spoke from behind me.

  My hands stilled instantly. My chest was rising and falling too fast, but there wasn’t much I could do about that now. I was lucky it was moving at all. My mouth fell open in a scream that made no noise.

  I was alone in the bathroom, I made sure of that before. Who was talking then? I knew. I nodded heavily, accepting the inevitable. I already knew I wasn’t alone. I never was.

  “Tristan can’t hear you,” the female voice called out again, just in case I didn’t hear the first time.

  Summoning up all the courage that I didn’t even possess, I inched my body around until I was once again facing the empty bathroom. Still empty. I sucked in a loud breath through my shaking lips.

  “W…who’s here?” I whispered.

  A light flared to life, an unnatural white light that I had seen before - but not often. The mirror was blazing so bright I had to momentarily shield my eyes. By the time I pulled my arm from my face, a single shining face was staring back out at me.

  “Ren,” the woman acknowledged me without a smile, but also without any other expression.

  “Who are you?” I forced out through my tight throat.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she snapped, only now showing a tiny shimmer of anger.

  “What do you want?” I tried another question, maybe more important than the first.

  “I want you to stay alive,” she said softly. The li
ghts lining the ceiling flickered dead again, but the glow from the mirror woman kept me from being bathed in total blackness.

  “Good plan,” I muttered past closed lips.

  “Why are you with Tristan?” the woman flared, briefly flashing too bright for me to look at her. “You need to leave him.”

  Leave him? My eyebrows furrowed together at her suggestion. Why would I leave him? Then I would be all alone and at the mercy of the ghost people. Ghost people like her. “I can’t,” I said out loud.

  “Yes you can,” she fired back.

  “I won’t!” I set my lips in an almost defiant line, too scared to be completely convincing.

  “He will kill you if you don’t.”

  “He said he wouldn’t.”

  “He lies,” she hissed.

  Probably, I secretly agreed. But I had made my choice - Tristan - now I had to follow it through. Didn’t I? Yes, I did. Where else would I go? I didn’t even know where I was.

  I fidgeted with the door behind me, trying again to get it to open. It still wouldn’t budge. I didn’t know the ghost people could lock doors. What else didn’t I know about them? Did I even want to know?

  No!

  I turned around, yanking as hard as my feeble strength would let me on the door. Using my fist this time, I pounded on the door again. “Tristan!” I screamed. “Tristan help me!”

  A fresh gust of cold air swept over me. “He can’t hear you,” the woman screamed out over my own cries for help. “He wouldn’t help you if he could!”

  “You don’t know anything about him,” I whirled around to bravely face the woman. Brave wasn’t anywhere near what I was feeling, but it was clear that she wasn’t letting me out until she had her say or until I did what she wanted.

  “You have to get away from him,” she pleaded.

  “Even if I want to, I can’t run from him.” I didn’t want to though.

  “Far away from him,” she doggedly continued as if I hadn’t said anything.

  “Just leave me alone!”

  Both Tristan and Toby said the ghost people couldn’t hurt me. This mirror woman might be able to lock me into a forgotten gas station bathroom but she couldn’t hurt me. Right?

  “If that’s what you want,” the woman replied icily.

  Was that it? Was that really all it took for them to go away? I had lived all this time afraid of them and that was all it took?

  “It is,” I jerked my chin forward.

  The light in the mirror disappeared, plunging me into the darkness that it had kept at bay. I twisted the door handle; still locked. The lights flickered back to life, casting an eerie yellow - orange light down on me.

  Suddenly, a grey hand shot out of the already cracked glass in the mirror, followed closely by a second hand. The mirror ghost’s head appeared next, snarling out at me. Using those worse than dead hands, she pulled her entire body out of the mirror and climbed down from the sink.

  My mouth fell open.

  In the next second she was mere inches in front of my face, her lips pulled back into a grotesque snarl. I jerked my head back but there was nowhere to go. The wood of the door didn’t cave as well as my head did. Just before everything went black, the woman was standing over me - just watching.

  Chapter Sixteen

  My eyelids opened wide, nearly shoving the eyeballs out in their haste to see where I was. This wasn’t the bathroom though. How had I managed to leave the bathroom? Wasn’t there a creepy ghost woman who had come out of the mirror?

  I sat up slowly, well slower than I had laid down anyways, and took stock of the new air around me. I knew this place. Standing up so both my feet rested on the pavement of the familiar road, I craned my neck both ways - not sure which way to start walking. Or maybe I should just stay where I was.

  Last time I had woken up on this road, Nona had been here with me. Would she be coming this time too? Why had she brought me here? Maybe she just wanted to save me from the woman in the bathroom. Nona had her own plans for my death.

  Despite the lack of darkness and the absence of the ghost people, the road was almost as creepy as the bathroom with the cracked mirror and dirty toilet. Without Nona there, the silence was overpowering.

  “Ren!” She was abruptly there, out of thin air, bringing with her a small breeze that ruffled her short black curls.

  “Nona,” I called back, only with way less volume. “What am I doing here?”

  “Exactly what I would like to know,” she fired, balling her small fists up and propping them on her hips.

  “You brought me here, right?” I glanced around again, afraid I had missed something obvious. Was there a creepy mirror ghost here too?

  “You’re with Tristan?” Her nostrils flared with the widening of her eyes.

  “He’s…not here,” I breathed in response. Nona could be really scary if she wanted to be, I realized - flinching backwards.

  “Of course not,” she snorted. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “I…”

  “Are you trying to get yourself killed? Has he already gotten to you?”

  “Toby left,” I mumbled. “You said to trust him but he left.”

  “So you decided to trust Tristan?”

  “He hasn’t hurt me yet,” I pointed out.

  “He can’t hurt you,” she fired. “That’s not how he works.”

  “What do you mean? How does he work?”

  “He makes you hurt yourself.”

  My forehead knitted with confusion. “I thought you said he was going to kill me, but he hasn’t.”

  “Did you not hear me?” She thrust her arms out, creating a tidal wave of angry air. “He’ll make you hurt yourself.”

  “Like suicide?”

  “Exactly like suicide. What do you think the Cursed are?”

  “Ghosts.”

  “Ghosts of his victims, the ones he made kill themselves. Now they are cursed to help him carry out his cruel plans. And you’re high on his list, Ren.”

  “If he wants me dead,” I began awkwardly, “he can do it himself.”

  “He can’t!” She took a deliberate deep breath and then began again, more softly. “He only has so much power. The only way he can keep you is if you do it yourself.”

  I digested her words slowly. Was she telling the truth? How could I be sure? “If that’s true, then did Toby…?”

  “Toby is in trouble right now.”

  My heart sped up. “What kind of trouble?”

  “He’s looking for you.”

  That wasn’t true though. Toby could always find me no matter where I was. He had always been right there with me, even when I didn’t want him to be. Especially if I didn’t want him to be.

  Exactly, another part of me argued. He’s always been there, so why isn’t he now? Nona was telling the truth at least about some things. Toby was in some kind of trouble.

  “Where?”

  “Tristan has you shrouded so he can’t find you. Even I barely could. How could you trust Tristan?” The wind tried to knock me down again but she pulled it back quickly.

  “He seems…nice,” I offered weakly.

  “Nice,” she snarled. “Of course he seems nice. His voice is…hypnotic, to say the least.”

  Hypnotic? I did feel different when I was with Tristan; like I was no longer myself. When I talked to him, I almost could imagine a life of not being crazy. And that kiss…

  I let my fingers trace the soft flesh along my bottom lip. Who kissed strange ghost people in a strange hotel room in the middle of the night? Not normal ones. Had I been tricked by Tristan?

  I had to admit that it was possible.

  “Where is Toby now?” I demanded softly. A feeling of unease washed over me, making my knees shake with the weight of wanting to be with Toby again. “I should have stayed with him.”

  “Yes, you should have!” she snapped.

  “Well, what should I do?�
� I heard the whine in my voice. Nona yelling at me for something I already knew wasn’t going to help anything.

  “You need to…” she stopped talking and stretched her body to search behind her. The road was starting to get fuzzy.

  “Nona?”

  “Find Toby,” she screamed. I could barely hear her anymore though.

  “How?” I screamed back. We were still standing just a few feet apart but something huge had sprung up between us.

  “Find Toby,” she repeated. “Find…”

  I gasped loudly, sitting back up in the same second that my scream died on my lips. I was back in the bathroom. Nona was gone. The road was gone. But the woman from the mirror was still there.

  I scrambled backwards until my back was flush with the hard wood of the door. I opened my mouth wide, trying desperately to get a deep breath into my lungs. It was no use though; somehow they had shrunk.

  “I have to find…Toby,” I gasped up at the woman. Would she let me out of the bathroom now or was I going to have to break the door down?

  The woman’s expression didn’t change. She continued to watch me, her strange eyes unblinking.

  Using the broken handle for support, I clawed my way up the door until I was standing with my back against it - looking back at the woman. Why did she look familiar to me? It wasn’t shocking to see one I recognized - it had happened before - but I was curious. Had she followed me here? Why was she so interested in me?

  I didn’t have time to work it all out though; there were more important things waiting for me. With a quick breath, I twisted the doorknob.

  As soon as the door opened, the woman in front of me disappeared. I turned in the same instant and bolted out into the cool night air.

  Tristan was there, waiting for me. “What took you so long?” he growled, irritated.

  “Ghost locked me in there,” I gasped, gulping in a great lungful of fresh air in the process of trying to talk - which resulted in a fit of coughing.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” he demanded, peering behind me at the now empty bathroom.