Page 83 of I Will Break You
Realization has my heart skipping several beats.
That cold-hearted bastard just turned off my electricity.
The only powerful source of illumination in the room comes from a pair of battery-operated flashlights. Both of them point at the door. But when a knock sounds on the opposite wall, I point one at the source of the sound.
“Xero,” I whisper. “Is that you?”
One knock.
“What do you want?”
He taps out a sequence in Morse code, but there’s no Ezekiel here to translate. He probably got arrested alongside Relaney for the basement drug farm. If I’m going to communicate with this ghost, then I’ll have to ask more specific questions.
“Xero, I don’t understand. Can you just talk to me?”
Two knocks.
“Why not?” I roll my eyes at my open-ended question. I know exactly why he doesn’t want to communicate like a normal ghost. I’ve made this room Xero-repellent. “You want me to turn off the flashlights?”
One knock.
“If I do that, will you hurt me?”
He hesitates for several seconds before replying with two knocks.
“You’re lying.”
Two knocks.
“Then why did it take you so long to answer? You want me to turn off the light so you can slither inside and tear me to pieces.”
Twoinsistent knocks.
Xero is protesting too much. A sure sign that he’s now saying anything necessary to make me drop my safeguards. “Was it another ghost who hung me from a fucking noose?”
Two knocks.
“Well, thanks for the confession, but I think I’ll stay here until sunrise. Then tomorrow, I’ll bang on the window and scream until the police notice me and kick down the door.”
The sound of something heavy hitting the door sends my heart leaping to the back of my throat. I release a strangled shriek.
“See?” I say with a hysterical laugh. “Why would I expose myself to your violent temper?”
The pounding continues, making every hair on my body stand on end. It’s like being on a plane in the middle of a thunderstorm and then suddenly losing altitude.
My heart beats hard enough to muffle the sounds outside the door, but it’s still loud enough to rattle my bones. Cold terror seeps into my marrow, and the pulse between my legs throbs hard enough to send reverberations to my toes.
Images flicker in my mind’s eye, starting with the leaked crime scene photos of the brother and stepmother Xero murdered. It’s followed by the picture of Kayla choking to death on a throat full of silicone, the envelope full of fingers, and then Chappy’s limp body swinging from a noose. Not to mention the morning’s delivery of his pierced tongue.
“Myra,” a voice rasps in between the sounds of chaos.
My breath stills.
“You have my friend?”
One knock.
Shit.