Read Online Your Worst Nightmare by P.J. Night - Free Book Online

moth didn’t seem to realize that. Its useless wing flopped as the moth tried to turn itself over, but it was all in vain: Water was seeping into those fragile wings, dissolving them into a fine white dust that swirled on some strange current in the shallow puddle. A current, Olivia realized in disgust, that the moth was causing with its desperate, dying struggle.
    She was rooted to the spot, looking at this miserable thing, with its bright-white wings and its body covered in thin, clear skin. Olivia didn’t know how much blood would be in a moth’s body—somehow the topic had never come up in her life science class—but it couldn’t be more than a few drops. And yet it was enough bloodfor her to watch those drops flowing just under the moth’s transparent skin, through an intricate network of tiny veins and capillaries, flowing slower . . . and slower . . . and slower . . . as the moth’s life slipped away. Cold pinpricks of sweat broke out on her forehead and on the back of her neck. Olivia squeezed her eyes shut against the miserable, sick, swaying feeling she sometimes got right before she threw up. But Olivia would not throw up, she would get out of here, out of this horrible cave, away from this horrible thing . She had never meant to kill it, but there was nothing she could do now. Nothing but get away.
    Olivia started moving faster, making more noise, completely forgetting Mrs. Hallett’s warnings and her own worries. Again and again Olivia wiped her hand on her sweatshirt in case there was any powder from the moth’s wings still on her skin. She felt a funny tickle on her hand. It was probably a loose thread trailing down from her sleeve, Olivia rationalized. Yes. That was it. A loose thread.
    Except it wasn’t.
    Another horrible pale moth had landed on her skin, tapping . . . tapping . . . tapping with its hairy feet. She flung it off, and this time Olivia didn’t stop to see if shehad killed it or not. She didn’t have time, because just a second later there was yet another moth—bigger than the others—nestled into a fold of her sweatshirt.
    She slapped at the moth, but it wouldn’t move, as if its feet were somehow stuck in the fabric. So when the next moth landed on her, that made two, and then there were three. Four. Five. A dozen. Moths too many to count, on her hands, on her shirt, on her jeans, on her neck, in her hair, in her ears—
    Where are they all coming from?
    What do they want with me?
    For as long as she could remember, Olivia had hated moths. She was too young to fully recall sitting in her stroller at a summer picnic—but her mother had told her about that day so many years ago, when a large, hairy moth had landed on the side of her nose. It had stared at her with these glittery black eyes, and little baby Olivia couldn’t get it off her face. She had started to cry. The memory came back to her now in hazy fragments; she almost didn’t believe in it except it was so clear, so real , those bulging eyes —
    That’s when a new thought struck Olivia, one so horrible she almost screamed—but of course, she couldn’tscream; she would end up with moths in her mouth. Already they were covering her eyes, making it hard to see; covering her nose, making it hard to breathe. But no matter what, Olivia would not open her mouth, which was why she couldn’t scream when she realized that these moths, the ones bombarding her, didn’t have eyes.
    If none of them had eyes, then they couldn’t see her. That meant they were finding her some other way.
    Olivia was running now, but she couldn’t outrun the moths. After all, they had wings. They could fly. They could follow her anywhere. They would never leave her alone. Even if she somehow managed to escape, Olivia already knew that the moths would be with her forever, in the memory of their crawly legs on her skin