The Unseen by JL Bryan Read Free Book Online Page A

poured herself a quick shot of the cheap whiskey.  She grimaced. “Next time, remind me to steal a shot of something worthwhile.”
    More customers pushed their way to the bar, distracting Barb.  Cassidy eased back, not wanting to be pushed against the sticky bar counter.
    She wasn’t sure when the nightmares had begun—she supposed she’d had them even as a toddler, or maybe an infant, but she knew they’d grown worse since the night of the Ouija board when she was sixteen.
    Without chemical correction, her brain sent her dreams brimming with hellish monsters striking out from the shadows, unnatural things with horns, claws, and tentacles, their faces like misshapen animal skulls, their eye sockets hollow but still staring at her. 
    In one of her recurring nightmares, she ran through an overgrown copse of ancient oak trees, every path cut off by tangles of enormous knotted limbs, her feet weighed down as if by iron weights while something crashed and snarled through the woods behind her, close enough that she could feel its foul breath searing the flesh on her back.  In another, she stood naked in front of a class in high school, trying to read aloud a paper that her eyes couldn’t decipher.  She would look up and see all her classmates dead and rotten at their desks, their skulls sagging inward like pumpkins two months after Halloween.
    If she went a few days sober, the nightmares could begin to bleed into real life.  She would see phantom bugs, like strange insects resembling scorpions with dragonfly wings, feeding on people around her, or bristly worms burrowing in and out of their flesh.  Sometimes people would seem to decay right in front of her.
    And so she drank, and she took any passing drug that might have a chance of negating her brain activity.
    “Cassie!” a girl squealed.  Cassidy didn’t like the nickname— Cassidy or Cass, please , she wanted to say, but she knew that Kit, the girl who had greeted her and was currently hugging her around the waist, Kit, wouldn’t listen.  Kit was one of Barb’s gang of friends she’d picked up from working at the bar.  Kit had just arrived with several others.  Kit was dressed in a holey halter top and wore ultra-pink lip gloss, and she usually acted girlish in a way that annoyed Cassidy. “We can’t wait to see Peyton tonight!”
    “ Oh, good, you’re coming?” Cassidy asked.
    “ Everybody’s coming!” Kit’s voice turned to a stage whisper.  “Barb said she’d break our arms if we didn’t.”
    “ That’s nice of her,” Cassidy said, and Kit pealed out laughter, though Cassidy hadn’t really intended it as a joke.  The girl was probably high.  Cassidy wondered whether she had anything good to share—then again, it probably wasn’t worth hanging around with Kit to find out.
    More of Kit’s crowd closed in, guys and girls in shabby-sexy clothes who were all artists, actors, writers, or musicians, or at least claimed to be when making conversation at bars.  They babbled around Cassidy and sometimes at her.  She confirmed three times that Peyton was spinning at the Red Door that night.  Conversation with this group tended toward the ridiculously repetitive, but Cassidy made sure to thank every person who was coming to support her boyfriend.
    Then she drained her whiskey and made her way out the front door.
    Cassidy smoked as she walked down the street, soaking up the warm summer night in the city, beautiful in the alcoholic lens of her vision.  There was much she didn’t like about Atlanta, but one thing she’d always loved was how the wilderness broke through the city everywhere.  Many streets were lined with centuries-old trees, and the sidewalks bubbled and cracked above their roots.  There was hardly a crevice in the asphalt or brick without some sort of weed or wildflower growing out of it.  She imagined the trees and green life of the city whispering all around her, quietly conspiring to turn all she saw into overgrown