From Chapter One of THE PAWNS
A RETURN VISIT FROM HER dead bestie jolted Rachel awake, her pulse pounding like a stampede of wild zebras across a riverbed of wet sheets.
Why now, Sophia?
Light from a streetlamp filtered through breezy, shifting curtains in the predawn stillness as she shuffled toward the bathroom to get a towel. She pulled back the covers and spread it over the wetness as best she could. The cotton felt coarse and lumpy, but she forced herself to breathe deeply, clear her mind, and drift back to sleep.
In the morning, the towel was bunched up by her side, but at least the sheets were dry. Cool air wafted in the crack of the window. Didn’t they say it would be warmer? She snuggled under the comforter to hide, but the dream always found her. Fragments prickled like rusted barbed wire as they invaded. More than four years had passed since Sophia went missing, but only recently had the nightmares started.
Why now, Sophia?
Depression, a familiar specter, dogged her days. So far, she’d managed to move on without Mia and Sophia. Only James understood, and that made things more complicated.
She closed her eyes and curled into a ball.
How could I have soaked the sheets? It’s freezing, I still need a few seconds.
And that’s when the snippets broke through.
Beams don’t do much against drifting mist on a narrow mountain road. From somewhere in the tangle of trees, sobs overtake the shrill thunder of crickets. Sophia scuttles from the shadows and ducks between the headlights. There’s panic on her face.
She scrambles for the cover of fog, but a woman in tatters gives chase in slow motion, hunting from above with fabric rippling and a pointed fence post poised to strike.
No one can outrun the witch in the woods, and Rachel already knows the ending.
But Sophia doesn’t, and she screams as the stake impales her, and blood sprays, and then everything’s swallowed—the woods, the car, and the road—a crimson murkiness.
Rachel gasped and shot up in bed, eyes wide.
There was more, but she stifled it. This had to stop, and she had to tell someone.
She checked her phone and wondered if James were awake.