Chapter 1

15 years later

A vise-like grip threatened to squeeze the life right out of me. I tried to escape, to wiggle my way to freedom, but it was no use. I was no match, and the tighter their grip became, the more I felt as if I were suffocating.

"Please," I pleaded, once again, feeling as if I'd been begging for an eternity

Mother still didn't listen. "I don't want you to leave. Stay little. I liked you little."

"You don't like me now?" I peered down at her, an action that only proved just how grown I'd become. Poor mother was a good foot shorter than I, which made my lack of ability to remove her all the more disturbing.

"I like you when you're not leaving." She burrowed her head into my ribcage.

This was ridiculous. "Mom. Stop. I have to go." This time, when I pulled her arms away, she relented.

"Fine," she muttered, turning away from me and exiting the room like a child who'd been denied their way.

I smiled softly at her back. She'd be okay. Better actually. She wouldn't have to deal with my shit, and maybe, after I was gone a while, people would stop associating her with me.

It would be better for me too. Away from this place. From the people here. Redbird Falls, population four-hundred sixty-two. Or, soon to be, four-hundred sixty-one. I smiled. No more crazy girl to brighten up the boring existence of these poor souls. I was out. Off to live a new life, monster free, rumor free.

Brand-fucking-new.

I looked over to the closet door, to the many spitballs that covered it's surface, a phase I'd gone through during what my mother called teenaged angst. I called it being pissed off.

I hated this house, hated this town, hated that stupid closet. I'd spent the past ten years being tormented by the people in Redbird Falls. I was that girl. The girl who thinks a monster lives in her closet. The crazy girl. Who knows, maybe I was crazy.

It was my own fault. Priscilla. Prissy Priscilla. My first friend, and the person who I'd thought I could confide in. I told her about the closet, about the red eyes, the strange noises.

Then, she told everyone else.

As if it wasn't bad enough that strange things scared me at home, after that, I had to deal with it at school. A whole new breed of monsters in the form of hormonal high school students with too much time on their hands. I stopped using a locker after the second time they'd hid inside and almost given me a heart attack. I stopped using the restrooms in between classes after they made me jump and piss on myself. But the worst of it all, what made me truly fucking done, was when they made me crash. Last year, on Halloween, Jaden Andrews, captain of the football team, dressed up and hid in the backseat of my car. Who knows how long he waited there for the opportunity to almost kill me. At forty-five miles an hour, he made his presence known with a scream into my ear. I jerked the wheel, sending us into a ditch and ruining the front end of my car.

I didn't die, and sadly, neither did he. He walked away without a scratch, while I needed fifteen stitches to repair the place where my head hit the door jamb.

They say fate has a funny way about things, but I didn't find it funny at all.

I grabbed a piece of paper off of my desk, balled it up, and threw it at the closet door in one last final goodbye before collecting my bags from the floor.

I didn't allow mother another hug. She'd had enough. Instead, I called one last goodbye and rushed to the car.

She'd understand. Maybe.

The only thing standing between me and normalcy was a new location. Closet monster disappeared when I was fifteen. It was sudden, but I didn't question it. Why would I?

It took ten minutes to hit the highway, and when I did, rain drops began to splatter against my windshield, then grew heavier with each mile I drove. I turned on my wipers and strained to see the car in front of me. Driving in the rain always made me nervous. My hands shook as I reached over to turn on my stereo. The moment I clicked the knob, my favorite station blared out of the speakers at full volume. All of the breath left me in a whoosh, and I frantically tried to turn it down.

I twisted the knob in each direction but no change came. The lyrics didn't help with my panic.

One way or another,

I'm gonna find ya,

I'm gonna get ya, get ya, get ya...

"Fuck that," I hissed, trying to keep an eye on the road as I turned the station. At least that seemed to be working.

The next channel aired a news broadcast and didn't seem to be quite as loud, so I left it and focused on the road. I was only half listening to the broadcaster as the rain intensified, but then they said something that caught my attention.

Attention, breaking news,

An accident has occurred on state road two thirty-four, thirty miles east of Redbird Falls...

I listened closely, my heart pounding, and my chest rising and falling heavily. That was about where I was. I strained my eyes, now more focused than ever on the road in front of me. The rain barreled down from the sky like an assault from the heavens, lightening flashing every few moments, illuminating the road. I watched for police, for stopped cars, but traffic didn't even slow. Maybe it'd happened behind me. Maybe I wouldn't even pass it.

A 2004 Honda Accord crashed into a Chevy Silverado.

There was a pause.

We've just been informed that the driver of the Honda was twenty year old Amelia Snow.

My breath caught. "What the fuck?" I tried again to turn it off, but it wouldn't work.

The station flipped on its own, and I jerked my hand away as if the item were alive. It continued to jump through channels as my widened eyes darted between it and the red tail lights in front of me. Then it started to stop, only long enough to get a word out of each station before switching to the next.

Stop... the... car... or... you... will ... die

I jerked the wheel and came to an abrupt stop on the shoulder of the road. My breath wouldn't catch up to me, as much as I tried. The static white noise still filling the car wasn't helping, and in frustration, I reached over once again to try and turn it off. This time, it worked.

Thank, God. I exhaled a sigh of relief, my heart rate slowing only for a moment before another jolt of fear hit me.

Tires squealed. A horn blew. A vehicle flew past, narrowly missing me as it slid across the slick road.

I jerked my head up just in time to see the car crash into a Chevy Silverado.