I stood in the shower,
the hot water cascading over the top of my head, my forehead pressed against
the slick tile. I hadn’t been able to
shake that feeling of impending doom that had overcome me in the theater.
I let my mind drift,
wander out of the bathroom, then back into itself, into the darkness of my
thoughtless brain.
Juktha’s room came into
view, Doctore’s Japanese garden a whole mindscape away.
She stood at the far end
of the room, her gaze distant, caught on some far away sight that may or may
not have existed.
“What is it?” I stepped
into her space, the warm smell of vanilla doing little to relax me. “What was that thing? That woman? I know you know.”
She looked at me, her
eyes red rimmed and heavy. “Something
evil. Something growing.”
I shook my head. “Don’t be cryptic with me. Not now.”
She laughed. The sound was hoarse. “It is a hard habit to break.” She sighed.
“It is a witch. A witch consumed with
her magic.”
“Not a demon?”
“No. She is human, or at least, the remnants of a
human. She is a ghost of something.”
I stepped closer to
Juktha. I could see now that she was
chewing on her lower lip.
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
My words were not angry. I was already
pretty sure of the answer.
“You seemed so
happy.” She turned to face me now. “You and Kurt, and… You all were so
happy. I wanted that to last just a
little bit longer.”
“How do we stop her?” I
knew pressing the matter of Juktha’s silence would do nothing. It would only
lead to a fight, or more crying. It
would waste time when the threat had potential to grow stronger, or do real
damage.
“I… I don’t know.” She shook her head, a strand of hair breaking
loose and dangling in front of her face from the violent motion. “She is not entirely in this world. She is hidden, behind a shimmering, opal
surface. I cannot see where, but I can
sense it. It is the gate to her
world.”
I felt my body, my actual
body, left open and defenseless in the real world, go tense.
“Oh no.” Juktha’s eyes
went wide. “She is here.”
My eyes snapped open, and
I was back in the shower, water pooling around my feet. Had I dropped the drain? The tub was filling,
the water level almost past my ankles.
I blinked, unsure of what
I was looking at. I rubbed my hand
across my face, brushing droplets of water away from my eyes.
My reflection was
gone. Instead, the withered old woman
from the theater was looking up at me. She
was looking at me, her body mimicking my stance. When I stood up straight, she did the same,
the woman vanishing as my reflection pulled closer to my body.
Suddenly it felt like the
bottom of the bathtub had dropped away, and I plunged towards the water.
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