Read Online Haunting the Night by Mara Purnhagen - Free Book Online

really helped me.
    I plopped in front of the TV. It began to rain again, so hard I had to turn up the volume on the TV to block out the insistent banging of raindrops against the window. Annalise called.
    “My study group will be over by four and then I promise it’s just you and me for the rest of the night.”
    “Great. See you then.”
    “Okay.” She paused. “I’m really sorry—”
    “Stop. I’m fine. Everything is fine.”
    It wasn’t, but that wasn’t my sister’s fault. It was mine. I knew somehow, in my core, that I had failed. My weak attempt at apologizing to the spirit of Marcus had not worked, and the shadow would be making another visit soon. Since I was going home in twenty-four hours, I would need to spend my last day in Charleston tucked inside the library, searching for better ways to solve my problem. Maybe Mills would help me again. And Noah—I knew Noah would help in any way he could.
    Or maybe I should just leave. My brief vacation had gone badly. If Annalise wasn’t going to be away for most of the day, I would have asked her to take me home now. Then I could crash the Prom with Noah. Avery would be thrilled, and maybe I would end up with an evening of decent memories instead of a long weekend full of depressing ones.
    When Annalise got home we ordered a pizza and settled on the sofa to watch a movie. She fell asleep halfway through, though, so I cleaned up our mess and then woke her so she could go to bed. I knew I couldn’t go to sleep yet—not until I confirmed whether or not the shadow would be outside the window.
    I was betting it would.
    I forced myself to look out the window every half hour, convinced that I needed to simply get the encounter out of the way. It was my new abnormal routine, one that I was stuck with for the foreseeable future.
    By ten, I was checking outside the living room window every fifteen minutes. By eleven, I was pacing the room. Why was it taking so long? I felt a glimmer of optimism. Had my little ceremony actually worked?
    Another hour passed, and another. Outside, the rain had reduced to a soft drizzle. The streets were empty of people and cars and mysterious shadow beings. My eyes grew heavy and I wanted to go to bed, to slip under the blankets next to my sister and sleep until late morning or early afternoon. I would wait one more hour, I decided. If the shadow did not appear, I would know that I had been successful and I would rest better than I had in months.
    I crept into Annalise’s room. Judging from her heavy, rhythmic breathing was sound asleep. I quickly brushed my teeth, slipped into a T-shirt and got ready for bed. But it hadn’t been exactly an hour, so I returned to the living room to take one final peek out of the window.
    Nothing. There was nothing there. The streetlight glowed, illuminating a sprinkle of raindrops, not even enough to be called a drizzle. I breathed in, relieved. I had not felt anything during my goodbye to Marcus, but my actions had been enough to appease the shadow creature. I was free.
    I reached over and turned off the lamp. Then I turned around.
    And sucked in my breath so I wouldn’t scream.
    The shadow creature was standing in the tiny kitchen, only a few feet from me. I moved back, trying to put distance between us. It was huge, a dark giant whose head grazed the ceiling of the apartment. And as I moved back, it moved forward.
    “No,” I whispered. “No.”
    It was supposed to be outside. There was supposed to be a window and a wall of bricks separating us. Now there was nothing. It glided forward. I wanted to look away, but I felt completely transfixed by this thing that had no face and no real body. It possessed only a humanlike shape but no features that I could discern.
    My fear gave way to incredulous anger. It had crossed a boundary. I thought we had some sort of deal: it stayed outside and I remained inside and every night made sure to acknowledge its growing presence. And now it was here, in my