The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 4 🔻 Fading Ache

This time, unlike my arrival into the Dark, I screamed. Loud and clear.

The shadow passed completely through Dominic's body as if he were the ghost.

It barreled into me in full force.

The creature and I landed on the floor in a heap. It had one of my arms in its jaws, and it shook its head with a brutal fury, trying to rip the limb from my body. More saliva oozed from between its crooked teeth and splattered my face. I kicked at the creature's thorax. The shadow only chomped down on me harder. Its cold breath beat down on me through flared nostrils.

Pinned to the floor, I glared death in the face and unleashed another anguished yell.

Because there was no escape from After or the Dark that surrounded it.

And there was no escape from this shadow whose teeth sank deeper into my flesh while I struggled beneath it. I reached with my free hand for the dagger I'd stashed in my pocket before fleeing After.

But it wasn't there.

A silvery glint caught my eye. The spectral knife must've fallen from my pocket when the shadow attacked me, and now it lay on the floor mere feet away. In a flash, I reached for my weapon.

My fingers just barely touched the knife's blade.

"Skye!" I heard Dominic shout.

The shadow raised its head, my arm still in its jaws. Smoke spilled from its throat as it growled at him. Its face looked horrifyingly human. Why did it look so human?

Dominic swung at the beast with the baseball bat he'd retrieved, then he backed away in horror when the bat phased clean through the shadow. Taking advantage of the beast's distraction, I ripped my arm from its teeth. Ghost flesh peeled away, leaving a gaping black void from my wrist to my elbow. There should've been bones beneath my torn-away skin. And muscle and fat and hot, red blood. I had to look away from the empty space to quell the uneasiness stirring within me at the sight.

Except for a heart that rarely beat, I really was hollow.

I tried to snatch the knife, but had to grab the monster's oozing face instead when it snapped at me again. "Dominic!" I yelled, struggling under the monster. "Turn on the lights!"

The man ducked away at my command.

The creature's cluster of maggot-white eyes all rolled down to glare at me. Hatred swirled in their murky depths.

It bit at me, but I beat it across its ugly face with my intact arm. One of its teeth went flying, carried in a spray of black blood that splattered across portraits on the walls. The whining shadow spat and pawed at its mouth.

With my strength waning, I grabbed the dagger.

There was an inhuman screech. Just as the shadow pounced, I unleashed a battle cry of my own and stabbed my dagger at the monster's skull, aiming right between its eyes.

My uncoated dagger bounced off of the shadow's head with a clang and flew out of my grasp like I'd struck a diamond. My heart froze in mid-beat, going deathly still. I understood then why the ghosts of After coated their weapons in glowing red lux.

Because only lux could penetrate a spirit's skin.

The shadow let out a laugh—a human laugh!—as my useless weapon clattered on the linoleum floor. I backed away, phasing through furniture, defenseless and with nowhere to run. I held my ice-cold limb to myself, shivering. My skin cinched together before my eyes, but not fast enough.

The creature charged with jaws open wide to snap me up.

All I could think was...What happens to ghosts when they die?