Prologue
It was a night like any other until Mina dangled her foot over the edge of the bed. An unconscious and benign mistake.
Shadows began shifting under the bed, forming into a black clawed hand. The hand reached up, playfully stroking Mina's ankle to test the waters. A human's energy was laid bare when sleeping, prime for inducing. The entity felt her energy seeping through, a delicious essence of life. Something he never had yet always hungered for.
His fingers glided down the arch before resting his thumb on the sole of her foot, pressing in. Sharp nail pricking into the skin, a vicious smile appeared in the dark.
Alor's deep voice slithered around the room. "It is done, you are mine."
Mina remained motionless. Chest slowly rising and falling under the oversized t-shirt. She wasn't going to rise to the bait, how boring. Time to play with his food instead.
Alor's lethal fingers curled around Mina's ankle, charged with such power he could taste it on his tongue. In one tug, he threw her entire body out from under the sheets onto the hardwood floor. He erupted into menacing laughter and dissipated into thin air.
Rudely awoken and dishevelled, Mina slowly hauled herself up onto her knees. "Fuck."
Children were taught to fear the monsters under their bed. But Mina had grown up with them, and she was too dazed to deal with this now so she padded back to her bed.
***
MINA
"Are there haunted items in this apartment by any chance?"
As if on queue, the light above the table flickered with a dilated hum. Seated at the living room table, my land lady decided to drop by for a visit. But it was prime time for an interrogation, and I needed answers. There was something dark in this place. I could feel it.
"You ask that like it's a normal question." Janet laughed into her tea before setting it down. She was a kindly 60 year old lady. Her lips pressed into a pensive line, eyes drifting around in thought. "From what I can recall, the mattress might be haunted?"
A long stretch of silence passed. The joke never came.
"You've got to be kidding me." I said flatly. No wonder the apartment was so cheap. I got scammed!
Janet's eyes flashed voraciously, baring her teeth in a wicked chuckle. This was nothing but fun and games to her. "The last tenant had no trouble." Janet waved a hand. "You're a seer right? This is nothing you can't handle." On one hand she was right. I was suited to this sort of thing, seeing things others cannot see. But on the other, it made me more vulnerable to those in the Spirit Realm. My knuckles turned white on the mug nestled in my hands.
I didn't hide the urgency in my tone. "What if the entire building becomes haunted?"
Janet gave a careless wave before getting up off her seat. "I respect the dead, if they want to haunt let them be. They don't concern me."
This thing isn't dead, it's never been alive
.
It was 9pm by the time Janet left. I pressed by back against the front door and watched the overhead light shutter again. Entities were like college kids at house parties, they become untamed under the moon. Bad things happen in the dark, so they said. And that was true--but it depended on what kind of entity you were dealing with.
I did everything I could to ignore the flickering light. Since my apartment was an open floor plan, in one fluid motion I snatched some ice cream from the kitchen and leapt onto the couch to turn on the tv. The screen emitted white static, and as I was about to dig into my cookies and cream all the lights in the room cut out. Pitch black except for the illumination from under my bedroom door.
Fuck
. I slammed my ice cream on the coffee table. "You're being an attention whore!" Clearly, this thing's fun was just beginning. It was a power move but I had no choice and needed to confront it now. Get on friendly terms at the very least.
I slowly felt my way through the dark, cringing in anticipation as I turned the door knob and kicked open my bedroom door. I wasn't taking any jump scares from this thing. I'd slept in this room the night before, on the haunted mattress. I thought about addressing it then, but the moonlight through the windows showed nothing. No signs of movement, no swirling shadows. Just silence. It wasn't a good sign. After all, when you dared to address an entity as sinister as a demon, bad things were bound to take place. They had a hold on you, so to speak. Words were power.
***
It was one of those nightmarishly hot evenings in June. Khloe and I sat in a classroom with broken air con, staring into space. Even the lecturer was droning, absentminded from the heat, tapping through his powerpoint on Rosemary's Baby.
"It's distracting when the teacher is close to our age." Khloe whispered, her eyes glazed over. He was un-buttoning his linen shirt.
I gave her an impish grin in return. "Don't act like you hate calling him sir."
She sunk back into her seat trying to hide her snicker. "I never denied that."
Hugh was one of the latest teaching additions to the university. Though he was filling in for another, he was competent in his field of Gothic studies. A man of romanticism, who would have thought? Everyone found him eye-catching, when he opened his mouth we expected John Keating but got... whatever this was.
"Bloody hell, I'm sweating balls here!" Hugh burst out in a fit of sweat, flinging his laptop shut. Everyone's head bobbed up at his sudden reaction, straightening in their seats assuming his irritation was directed at the class. Hugh dragged out one of the empty seats to the front of the class, directly under a ceiling fan. Sitting down, he leaned back to bask in the fan's wind. Beneath the undone buttons, his sweat slicked chest was now exposed, he sighed in relief.
"Sir, it's only 4pm."
"Thank you, the sun will set soon." The class went silent. We all looked around at each other, chairs scuffing back a few people headed for the door.
"No!" Hugh pointed an accusing finger at the early risers. "If you walk out I'll mark your assessment results down by 10%. Relax in here till class ends."
They returned to their seats while the class began to spread out and attempt to relax in the heat. We really lucked out with four ceiling fans, Khloe didn't waste time securing a spot under the fan Hugh was occupying. I dragged a chair over to see that there was no room under that fan any longer, it had been populated quickly by other fangirls.
"Mina!" I turned at the familiar voice, seeing my other friend Ethan sitting in a sparse group at the far end of the room. He waved me over and I felt my heart skip a beat.
