Malevolent by Jana DeLeon Read Free Book Online

onto her pillow and blew out a breath. Lately, every time it rained, she had the same dream. So far, most of the summer thunderstorms had rolled through the city during the day, but a few had broken the night stillness with booming thunder and pounding rain.
    She closed her eyes, wondering if she’d be able to get back to sleep, but with every roll of thunder, her heartbeat ticked up a notch. She flung back the covers and walked down the hall and into the kitchen. It was a short walk and an easy one. No light switches to fumble around for in the dark. The only time Shaye was in the dark was when the power went out, and even then, she had a lantern and a whole nightstand drawer full of flashlights, located right above the drawer filled with batteries.  
    No complete darkness. No candles. Not ever.
    She grabbed a bottled water from the refrigerator and flopped down on the couch. The television was mounted on the wall in front of her, but the cable guy wasn’t due until tomorrow, so right now, it was just a big black monitor, providing no distraction whatsoever. At least the Internet guy had made a call that afternoon. Television she could do without for a night or two, but having no Internet was akin to having no hot water. It just wasn’t a livable sort of thing.
    She rubbed the bottle of water across her forehead. The air-conditioning in the apartment was good, but the humidity from the storms made the air inside stale and muggy. Her laptop sat on the end table where she’d left it before she went to bed, so she flipped it open and fired up a movie on Netflix. At least it provided a little bit of noise to drown out the storm.  
    Staring at the dark television in front of her, she tried to force her mind from the dream but she couldn’t. Was it real? She had no doubt the girl in the dream was her, but what she didn’t know was if the dream was true. Had that really happened to her? Was that the reason she was terrified of the dark and hated even the sight of a candle? Or did she fear those things for other reasons and the dream was a made-up story that her mind had created? Its way of expelling her demons?
    Would she ever know?
    She blew out a breath. Eleonore told her that her mind had blocked the past in order to protect her from a mental break. Given the extent of her physical injuries, Shaye had no doubt that was true, but Eleonore also thought that one day, when she was strong enough, she might start to remember. The problem was, right now, everything Shaye saw was only in her dreams. Nothing flashed through her mind or caught her attention when she was awake. Only when she was sleeping did the darkness creep in.
    The dream felt real. She could feel the terror the girl felt, the horribly painful throbbing of her foot, the awful desperation when she began to pray.  
    Shaye’s foot had been broken. It was one of the many things she’d had surgery to fix after she’d gone to live with Corrine. Two long scars across her wrists indicated a suicide attempt, and one made by a child who had seen it in the movies but didn’t know that you should cut long ways if you were serious about dying. But again, were those things that she knew to be true manifesting themselves in her dream, or was the dream giving her a glimpse of her past?  
    As much as the dreams terrified her, she hoped they were real. Because if she never remembered, then the people who’d done this to her would get away with it.

    ###

    Emma hurried across the hospital parking lot, one of the hospital security guards in tow. Jeremy Walker was a nice man and more importantly, a big man and a retired cop. When her shift had ended, she’d sought him out specifically and asked if he would walk her to her car. It was a little after 2:00 a.m., and most of the city had shut down for the night. But it was midweek. Come the weekend, at 2:00 a.m., some parties would just be getting started.
    “How you doing tonight, Miss Frederick?” Jeremy asked as they