Wiccan, A Witchy Young Adult Paranormal Romance by M. Leighton Page B

throughout the room.
    I bolted upright in the chair when I
felt a hand on my shoulder. I was a little disoriented at first. I
felt like it had only been seconds since I’d sat down, but it was
daylight and the living room was bright. Mom was leaning over me,
looking down into my face. She was already dressed and made up and
her frown was firmly back in place.
    “ When I saw that you were
sleeping so soundly, I hated to wake you up, but I didn’t want to
leave without telling you we were going either.”
    “ Church,” I said when my
brain started functioning. “Sorry, Mom.”
    She smiled her sweet, maternal smile
that was usually reserved for me when I was sick. “You needed to
rest. Why don’t you go on back to bed, try to get some more sleep.
I’ll wake you up when we get back. We’ll bring lunch.”
    I nodded, sliding from the recliner and
stumbling back to my room where I fell into bed and, evidently,
right back to sleep.
    A knock at my door woke me next. It was
Mom.
    “ Mercy, you want some
lunch?”
    “ You can come in,” I
said.
    The door opened slowly and Mom peeked
inside. “Want some chicken? We got KFC?”
    “ Sounds good. Give me five
minutes.”
    She nodded and closed the door again to
give me some privacy. I got up and used the bathroom then had some
chicken with Mom and Dad. Lunch passed in a bit of a daze, much
like the rest of the day did. I felt like my dream had drained all
my energy away, leaving me feeling weak and lifeless.
    By 8:30, I felt like a narcoleptic. I’d
nodded off three different times while trying to finish the Cosmo
I’d started on Saturday. Finally, I just gave up trying, turned my
light off and went to sleep.
    Again, it felt like I’d just gone to
sleep when I found myself back in the motel room with the dead
girl, like I’d never left. I pulled the knife from between her ribs
and took her bound wrists in my other hand. I put my thumb against
her palm and pressed up at the base of her right forefinger. With a
quick strike, I sliced off half her finger. It bled, but not as
much as I would’ve expected. I assumed it was because her heart was
no longer beating.
    I took her finger and dipped
it in the pool of blood that was spreading across the sheets from
her left side. I pulled the sheets tight and began to form letters,
re-dipping the severed digit multiple times for more “ink”. When I
was finished, I took a step back and surveyed my handiwork. IT’S
TIME was spelled out in the girl’s blood on
the sheets beside her head.
    The scene flickered again, like it had
when it had begun the previous night, and then it disappeared,
replaced by the restful nothingness of deep sleep.
    ********
    The next day, I felt a little more
rested, but the dreams I’d had were bothering me in a way that I
just couldn’t shake. It was more than just that left-over haunted
feeling you sometimes have after a bad dream. It was like the dream
had somehow planted a teeny, tiny dark seed somewhere deep inside
me and it prickled like a splinter.
    I was lost in my own head on the way to
school. And I still hadn’t picked a different route, so I’d decided
to just cut through the woods sooner and avoid “the scene” by a
couple hundred feet.
    When I came upon the sidewalk, I looked
to my left. In the distance I could see the yellow tape that
surrounded Lisa’s murder site. One piece had come loose and its
tail was flapping lazily in the breeze. I was transfixed by the
erratic movements of the tape as it was pulled and twisted by the
invisible wind. I didn’t hear footsteps until they were upon
me.
    “ Mercy, right?”
    I whirled around. Jake was standing
about three feet away, looking over the top of my head. He was
staring at the cordoned-off area, too.
    “ Yep. And you’re Jake,
right?” As if I didn’t remember. Ha!
    Jake brought his attention back to me
and smiled. “Right.” He held my gaze for a few seconds then looked
back toward the rock where Lisa died. “Did you know