Hollowed
Authors: Kelley York
Tags: #Children's Books, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy & Magic, #Spine-Chilling Horror, #Children's eBooks, #Science Fiction; Fantasy & Scary Stories, #Sword & Sorcery, #Scary Stories
- A Half Light Novel -
By Kelley York
Published by Kelley York
Amazon
Edition 1.0
Copyright 2012
Kelley A. York
Amazon
Edition, License Notes
This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.
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Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Real loss only occurs when you lose something that you love more than yourself.
–
Anonymous
.
Thursday
– 11:16pm
He's not coming.
Every night for the last three weeks, I’ve
stood
here in the cold after my shift has ended,
waiting
for Noah. And every night, he hasn’t shown up. So what makes me think tonight is going to be any different
? Hell if I know.
Sherry steps outside of Howell
'
s family bar
where we work
to join me on the sidewalk, marshmallow-fied in her puffy white coat and matching beanie.
"Still a no show, huh?"
"
You know he
'
s working
," I mutter, hugging myself.
And it isn
'
t like Noah has specific dates of when he
'
ll be in town. Duty calls and he goes, and sometimes the job doesn
'
t end when it should. Still,
it
doesn't do much for a girl's insecurities when her boyfriend spends most of his time traveling on
assignment
for the government
and
is
mostly unreachable
. He isn
'
t allowed to give me details on what, when or where.
As we start our walk to the light-rail station, Sherry sneaks me a sympathetic look. Maybe she gets I'm starting to lose hope that
Noah is coming
back, like, ever. She comes to a stop halfway across the bridge
gapping the distance
between bustling Downtown and the quieter suburbs, and peers over the edge. She takes a breath,
a
warning she's about to say something I don
'
t want to hear.
"
First off,
you know
I really like Noah
, right?
He
'
s a great guy.
But maybe at this point it's time to
think about...
moving on?
"
"If he didn't want to see me again, he'd
say
so." I don't mean to snap. Noah's a lot of things, but he isn't the sort of guy to drop off the face of the planet
because he lacks the balls to break up with someone
. He has a reason for being away so long and not contacting me. Right? Right. I just have to wait it out.
I keep walking, hands seeking warmth in my jacket pockets. Maybe it's easy for Sherry to shrug a guy off. She isn't drop-dead gorgeous, but there's something about her
that
boys are totally drawn to. Her bubbliness. Her
breasts
. I don't know.
"Briar," she calls.
If she were smart
er
, she would drop the subject
.
"
Forget it
, Sherry
. You're more hung up on this than I am." Not true, but I can fake it. "There
'
s no point in freaking out or dwelling on it. If he doesn
'
t want to see me, fine. Whatever. Let's just get home
;
it's freezing."
No answer.
I stop, listen, wait.
With an exasperated sigh, I turn around.
And...I'm alone on the bridge.
"Sherry?"
Still no answer. I turn around full-circle, scanning both ends of the bridge. Where the hell could she have gone?
"Sherry, come on. This is so not funny!"
She couldn
'
t have fallen over the edge. Not unless she scaled the chain link guard put there for the sole purpose of deterring jumpers. But where else could she have gone?
Rushing to the
ledge where
she stood
, I lean over, forehead pressed to the fence while squinting into the darkness. The river churns angrily below, inky black and dirty. Somewhere down there,
I think I see a flash of white that might be Sherry's coat.
Heart pounding, I take off the way we came. There's a barely noticeable turn-off at the end of the bridge, a dirt path snaking through the trees to the river's edge. It's shaky footing all the way down in my heeled boots. I stop long enough to yank them off and the
icy
water burns my feet while I try to keep from slipping on moss-covered rocks.
No sign of Sherry. What was an angry growl of water from the bridge is a roar down here, but I cup my hands to my mouth and
yell
her name anyway.
There
'
s
absolutely
no way she could have fallen down here in the ten seconds I had my back turned. No.
Flipping.
Way. But if anything happened to her, it
'
ll be my fault. We could have gotten a ride home from her brother
when our shift ended
, but
I
wanted to wait
around
for Noah and Sherry would never leave me behind.
Picking my way up the water's edge, I spot
Sherry
'
s
jacket through the trees up ahead. Just a blotch of white against black. I run for her, slipping, splitting my knee, getting back up and trying again.
"
Sherry!
"
She doesn
'
t make a sound even as I drop to her side. I'm afraid to move her
. What if something
'
s broken?
When I touch her head through the mess of blonde hair,
my fingers
come back sticky and dark. My stomach rolls. No time
to wonder
how the hell she got down here.
Get help
. That
'
s what I need to do. I fumble for my phone, fingers searching for the right keys.
I
dial
as far as
9
before s
omething—
someone
—
slams into me from behind with enough force to send me face-first into the rocks. Sharp pain blossoms across my left temple. N
ot hard enough to knock me out, just e
nough to leave me reeling.
Whoever-it-is grabs a fistful of hair, wrenching me back. I
'
m seeing stars. Can
'
t make out more than a vague outline of a shoulder and the arm holding me.
Maybe the shape of a mouth. Eyes.
There
'
s movement near Sherry. Another attacker
?
I can
'
t see them
well
, but I can hear a low, guttural growl
alongside
Sherry
'
s pained whimpers.
Whimpers that
are music to my ears because it means one very important thing:
Sherry is
still alive.
I muster as much energy as I can, slamming the heels of my hands into my attacker
'
s chest. It gains me no more than a few inches between us. But it
'
s enough that I can twist to my side, hands g
rasping blindly for something—
anything. My fingers graze something slick and cold. I palm the stone, clutching it tight.
He grabs my hair again, close to the scalp, twisting. I swing. The rock meets the side of his head with a sickening sound of breaking bone. He grunts,
then
knocks my arm away without a thought.
I cracked the asshole
'
s skull, and he didn
'
t even
flinch
.
M
y head
is slammed
back to the ground. This time the pain is blinding hot and resonates all the way down my spine.
I can
'
t move. The world spins around me in watery
blobs
of black and grey
, shapes bleeding together
. He descends on me again and it
'
s all I can do to feebly shove at him while turning my blurry gaze to Sherry.
She reaches
for me.
"
Don
'
t,
"
she whispers.
Her words are muted
by
the roar of the river.
"Don't...hurt Briar..."
Sherry
'
s attacker looms over her, head bowed to her throat. I can
'
t tell what he
'
s doing. Not until the figure holding
me tears into my neck, piercing flesh, drawing blood
. Pain screams through every nerve in my body. I can
'
t struggle. He is solid, immovable. Every breath, every heartbeat
,
has him crushing his body closer to mine.
He
'
s going to kill me.