Into the Hollow — Teaser #1

Here’s a lit­tle teaser from Into the Hol­low. I won’t be post­ing too many of these and when I do they will be closer to the release date (Octo­ber 23rd) but here’s just a lit­tle some­thing to tide peo­ple over…or make them more anx­ious. Either or.

 

Into the Hol­low — Exper­i­ment in Ter­ror — #6 — a teaser from Chap­ter Two (UNEDITED)

You’d think I’d be used to that, the unex­plain­able. But when it came to my feel­ings, when I couldn’t fig­ure out what they even were, that’s when I was really scared. That’s when my nerves would clamp up my throat, squeeze my lungs and make me feel that stand­ing under­neath a bare tree was the safest, smartest option for me. I wasn’t in the house, I wasn’t in his car. I was just me. In-between.

Even­tu­ally though, I found my foot­ing. Some per­verse need to choose. I walked out from under the bro­ken canopy and made my way onto the street. There was the car up ahead, parked on the side of the road, fac­ing the other direc­tion, like he had dri­ven past the house first, then turned around at the end. Funny to think that had hap­pened while Ada and I were attempt­ing to be tele­pathic inside my bedroom.

I stepped qui­etly, afraid the sound of my feet would be car­ried off by the chilled breeze and into the house. I knew my par­ents would flip the fuck out if they knew what I was doing.

I kept going.

I wasn’t far from the car when the driver’s door flung open. My insides whirled fever­ishly, my breath halt­ing. In that moment I real­ized he still had that power over me, to make my body react when my mind wanted to turn away, and I hated him for it.

Dex stepped out, almost in a hurry. I had stopped where I was and was just stand­ing on the road, star­ing at him in a hic­cup of time. I only had a few sec­onds to take him in, his black cargo jacket, his messy, wind-tossed hair and beau­ti­fully scruffy face, the flash of emo­tion in his dark eyes, buried under the fur­row of his brow.

Then he was run­ning toward me and for a moment I thought maybe some­thing was wrong and that I should run too. Then I thought maybe some­thing was right and I should run anyway.

Dex ran to me and engulfed me in his arms, hold­ing me tight to him, rais­ing me a few inches above the ground. I was caught so off-guard, I could only let him hold me. My breath was gone, squeezed out from the inten­sity of his hug. I didn’t think I could hug him back even if I wanted to.

He held me like that, my feet dan­gling, his strong arms keep­ing me as close to him as pos­si­ble. His face buried in my neck and his famil­iar smell draped over me like a com­fort­ing blan­ket while his breath tick­led my skin until my hairs stood on end. I decided to ignore my brain for a sec­ond and just enjoyed the sense of being com­pletely embraced.

“Perry,” he mum­bled, his lips graz­ing my throat while he spoke. “Perry…”

He never fin­ished his sen­tence. Instead he even­tu­ally pulled his face away, my skin still hot from his con­tact, and low­ered me to the ground. He kept his hands on my arms, keep­ing me in place, as if he was afraid I’d run away. With his back to the street­light, his face was encased in shad­ows but I could still see his eyes glint­ing, slightly feverish.

I cleared my throat. “Hi.”