Between This One and the Next (When Souls Collide Book 1)
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About Ginna Moran
BETWEEN THIS ONE
AND THE NEXT
A When Souls Collide Novel, Book 1
by
GINNA MORAN
Copyright © 2018 by Ginna Moran
All Rights Reserved.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
ISBN 978-1-942073-92-5 (soft cover)
ISBN 978-1-942073-96-3 (eBook)
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Cover design by Silver Starlight Designs
Cover images copyright 123RF
For Inquiries Contact:
Sunny Palms Press
9663 Santa Monica Blvd Suite 1158
Beverly Hills, CA 90210, USA
www.sunnypalmspress.com
www.GinnaMoran.com
For Malory Knezha, my soul sister, friend, and confidant. Our journeys don’t always align, but I’m so thankful for all the times we cross paths.
Prologue
TIME OF DEATH: ELEVEN FIFTY-NINE P.M.
YESTERDAY, I DIED.
It’s the only memory I have outside the chain-link barrier I’m imprisoned in now, and it’s the memory I want to forget the most. I don’t know where I was, only that the stars glittered above me through the moonlit, snow-covered trees. My teeth chattered, shaking my shadowed surroundings until I blinked in and out of the horrible reality I found myself in.
One moment, I was digging my nails into the frozen ground beneath me. The next, nothing but stars. Stars unlike the ones I saw overhead. They weren’t distant sparkles of light. I was among them, one of them, hovering in a world filled with everything and nothing. A world I was pulled from when pain exploded behind my eyes, dragging me back to the snow, to the blood running from the wound on my head, to the figure lurking feet away. To the seconds that counted down to my death.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
“Time of death,” a woman said. “Eleven fifty-nine P.M.”
I returned to the stars, to the place between this life and the next. The place I wish I were now instead of within this small room, remembering my death over and over again.
Time of death: Eleven fifty-nine P.M.
But that’s not the only thing I remember.
“Time of life,” the woman said when I opened my eyes and gasped what felt like seconds later. “Twelve fifty-nine A.M.”
I remember my new life. My only life. I don’t even think I was really living before. If I was, I don’t know. It doesn’t matter.
Because yesterday, I died.
And today, I’m more alive than ever.
Chapter 1
SUBJECT FOUR
“NO!” A HIGH-PITCHED scream rips through the musty air from the other side of the chain-link barrier.
Shadows bounce around the room, and a figure emerges from a pitch-black hallway to stand in front of the glass—no, clear plastic—door of the girl’s cage next to me. She scrambles to the far corner, locking her doe-like, brilliant green eyes with mine.
“Please, not again. Not me. It should be the new girl this time.” The thought slithers into my mind, and I tilt my head to the side. It was neither my thought nor voice in my head. Gaping at the girl, I study her, expecting her to say something to me, but she doesn’t. She flicks her gaze to the plastic door where the figure stands on the other side messing with a few items I can’t see on a rolling tray.
I don’t know how long I’ve been in this room, but it couldn’t have been for more than a day since I’ve only fallen asleep once on the thin blue mat under me. And where I was before I woke up here? I have no idea. All I can remember is small fragments of things and feelings. Like the cold. The way the stars shone through the gnarled, wintery branches of the trees. I remember a figure. I remember the pain. The announcement of my death, and how I went from staring at the stars from the ground to floating among them. Then, I remember waking up here with a dull ache in my shoulder from lying on my side for too long.
“Please step forward, subject three,” a stern, feminine voice says from the other side of the girl’s door.
“No. Not today. Take the new girl or Avery instead,” the girl says.
“Oh, God, shut up, Gemma. You’re going to make it worse for all of us.” I stiffen at the sound of another foreign voice in my mind.
Swiveling, I shift to glance behind me to the partitioned room two over from mine. I’ve been too scared to really look around until now. I meet the gaze of a lanky girl with long legs pulled to her chest, tight curly hair tied in two knots, almost like ears on top of her head, and a gaze dark enough to have me shifting away.
“I will not ask again, subject three. Step forward,” the masked figure repeats.
It’s not until I hear the sound of a chain clanking against metal that I turn back to look at Gemma’s room. The plastic door swings open, and Gemma rises to her feet, turning her back toward the figure to stare at the sink and concrete wall making up the backside of all our divided rooms.
The figure steps into the dim lighting, and my heart pounds so hard in my head that I press my cold fingers to my temples. A petite figure—a woman—wearing jeans, a blue shirt with a loose fitting jacket over it, a medical mask, protective eyewear, and a surgical cap reaches into the pocket of her jacket and pulls out a metallic canister.
“No,” Gemma says, thrashing her head back and forth. She presses her hands against the concrete wall, and the lights flicker above us. It’s like I’m here one second, and then gone, and back again. “Stay away!”
Curling my knees to my stomach, I try to pull in on myself, wishing I could disappear. A scream rips through the air again, and the chain-link barrier rattles all around me. The figure reaches out for Gemma. With one hand, she grabs onto Gemma’s long, wild red tresses and spins her around. Gemma scrambles back, hitting the wall. The woman sprays the contents of the canister directly into Gemma’s face.
“Please, let this be it. Let it be over. I can’t do this anymore.” Gemma’s prayer swirls through my mind, and tears drip onto the thin mat underneath me. With a thud, Gemma falls to the floor, her eyes rolling to the back of her head, and a sigh sounds out from behind me, coming from the other girl—Avery? If only someone would tell me my own name, maybe I could figure out what I’m doing here and who this woman is. Who Gemma and Avery are. It feels like none of this would be happening if I could just remember something, anything, before waking up here.
But my head’s too foggy. It throbs the moment I try to focus on anything but what’s unfolding in front of me.
A shadow falls across my face as the woman shifts and bends down to touch her fingers to Gemma’s throat. She glances from Gemma to her wristwatch. “Time of death: Nine twenty-five P.M.”
Locking her gloved hands around Gemma’s ankles, the woman drags the dead girl from her room and hoists her up onto a gurney placed against the wall near the pitch-black hallway on the other side of the metal and plastic barrier that keeps me locked away.
Avery releases another small breath from behind me, and I roll over. I peer at the empty room between us before turning my gaze to her. Her lips hide in a thin line, but she doesn’t meet my stare. Her focus remains on the woman outside our doors. The sound of a chain clanking against metal draws my attention away from Avery, and my chest tightens when the woman swings open the plastic door to my room.
“Subject four, step forward,” the woman says.
My lip quivers, but I don’t resist. Fear rolls through me in waves, and tears burn my eyes and trickle down my cheeks. I’m too frightened to resist or put up a fight, so I hold my arms over my chest and take a few wobbly steps forward. It’s the first time I’ve really moved since waking up, and my muscles throb with the movements.
“Where are we going?” I ask, my voice only coming out a whisper.
The woman locks her fingers to my shoulders and pushes me from the room first without letting me go. “I’d like you to push the gurney,” she says instead of answering my question.
She motions to a doorway on the far side of the long, concrete room. The stale air makes it harder to breathe, but I do as the woman says and push the bed with Gemma’s body forward, trying my best not to look at her blank, open eyes.
The woman stays behind m
e. “To the corridor on the right.”
I don’t know if she thinks I’ll suddenly try to fight or what, but I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want to die. Again. If I even had really died. But it’s the only thing I remember...
“Good. Leave her here and enter the first door on the left and close it behind you,” the woman says.
I hesitate. “Please, tell me what’s going on. What is this place? Who are you? Who am I?” All the questions fall from my mouth at once. The edges of my vision shadow, panic sneaking from my stomach to my chest to wind around my heart so tightly that I lean against the cold concrete wall for support.
“Enter the room,” the woman repeats.
It’s not until I peek at her from over my shoulder that I get a close up view of the metallic canister she aims directly at me. Stumbling away, I cover my face with my hands and swivel on my bare feet to the heavy door on the left.
A sob wracks my chest, and I heave a few deep breaths, forcing myself to stroll toward the door until I’m standing in front of it. It’s pitch-black through the glass window. I lace my fingers around the cold handle, gripping the knob until the woman clears her throat.
Taking another shuddering breath, I crack the door open and step forward. Freezing air engulfs me, sending goosebumps up my arms and down my legs. The chilly air stings my eyes, making me sniffle. The moment the door clicks closed, I press my face to the window cutout, my warm breath fogging against it.
The woman stares at me through the door for a moment, and I hear her turn the lock. She then slides the window covering over, blocking my view, surrounding me in freezing darkness. I don’t move from my spot, panic rushing over me. Fear claws at my back, and a strange sensation crawls over me like I’m being watched, like someone else’s presence lingers nearby, maybe even in the same room. I’m too terrified to turn around and look, my mind automatically assuming a monster lies in wait to eat me alive.
I bang on the door. “Don’t leave me in here!” My hands throb the harder I pound my fists, and I end up kicking the door with my foot, sending pain radiating through my whole body. But I don’t care. I’d rather break my foot than stay another second in utter darkness with the fear threatening to kill me.
“Let me out!” I scream again.
A hissing sound cuts over the thudding of my hands on the metal door, and I freeze. Spinning around for the first time, I face the dark room and strain to see something, anything, but no matter how long I’m in here, my eyes don’t adjust.
“This is caretaker Sienna Clarke.” The woman’s voice echoes through the room from somewhere to my right, but I can’t see her. “I’m now recording subject four, death number one by blunt force trauma to the temporal lobe.”
Blunt force trauma? Hearing the woman confirm my death sends uneasiness through me. How would she know that? Was she the figure I saw? Was she the one who murdered me? Was I even murdered? So many questions fly through my mind.
“Subject four, please state your name, age, and birthplace,” Caretaker Sienna says.
I don’t respond.
“Subject four, the faster you answer, the faster you will be released back to your room.”
I lean my back on the door and hug myself. “I—I don’t know.”
“Subject four, please state what day of the week it is.”
“I—” I close my eyes. It’s a simple enough question, but the harder I try to remember, the more frustrated I get. “I don’t know.”
“Subject four—”
“Stop it!” I yell, cutting the woman off. “I can’t answer any of your questions. I don’t know what you want from me. Please, let me out.”
The soft static that came along with the caretaker’s voice disappears, leaving me in a silence so intense I’m not sure if I will ever hear again. My whole body trembles, and I do the only thing I can. I slide to the floor, pressing my back to the door, and just stare into the darkness.
I shiver, the cool temperature of the room seeming to drop with every passing minute. My chest heaves with every breath, and I’m afraid that because I couldn’t answer any of the caretaker’s questions she’s going to leave me here to die alone and in the dark.
Unable to sit any longer, I get up and pace back and forth, running my finger along the wall five steps in each direction. The last thing I want to do is wander too far from the door, like I’ll somehow get lost amid the nothingness if the caretaker returns for me.
I run my hand over my cheeks, my tearstains frozen streaks trailing down my face. Even my eyelashes are frozen from the air. It makes me cry harder.
“The longer you walk around, the longer it will take.” The soft, masculine voice sneaks into my mind, pushing my own thoughts away. “Trust me. Stop fighting.”
“Who’s there?” I ask, stopping in place.
“Stop fighting.” The voice is much softer, barely in my mind.
“Who are you?” I think to myself.
No one responds. I’m imagining things. My mind is playing tricks on me like the fear rattling my bones along with the chills.
A small gasp cuts through the darkness followed by more silence.
“Hello?” I call out. It feels like eternity has passed by, and I’d give anything to hear someone beside my own thoughts again, even if it was just my mind playing tricks on me.
“Subject four, remain in your current position.” Like an answered prayer, or maybe a demonic summoning, the caretaker’s voice erupts through the room again.
The sound of a lock sliding open resonates through the air, sending such relief through me that I release a long, shuddering sigh. But the door behind me doesn’t open. A bright square of light erupts in front of me from another door, but I can’t tell how far away it is and can’t see anything beyond the bright light that somehow makes everything around me even darker.
The door swings inward next, and the caretaker stands silhouetted in bright light like a monster from—I can’t remember. But she scares me.
Her tennis shoes squeak against the floor, and a blinding light blinks on in her hand, shining a beam over the metal floor and onto a body. I suck in a freezing gasp through my teeth, holding myself tighter without moving. My instincts were right. I wasn’t alone this whole time, but I don’t know if the person was alive when I entered. But I could feel it—him. The body is much too big to be a girl, broad shoulders, short blond hair, blue complexion.
I cover my mouth to stop the scream from ripping out of my throat. The world starts to spin, and I drop to my knees. Pain explodes in my legs and then in my shoulder as I fall to my side. Stars burst in my vision, sending spots dancing through the flashlight the caretaker shines in my direction. I open and close my mouth, gasping for breath that doesn’t come. My heart pounds in my throbbing head, beating slower and slower. Pressing my cheek into the icy floor, I stare as the caretaker rises to her feet. She squeaks across the room in my direction, the light shining over the metal floor with a drain in the center of the room and nothing else.
She raises her flashlight, shining it directly into my eyes, and it’s all I can see. I lift my arm, stretching out my hand to try to touch the light, but my muscles give out on me. I lie frozen, unable to move, unable to breathe, unable to do anything but watch the caretaker.
She does nothing but gaze at me from under her winter clothes, watching me stare up at the light, my thinly dressed body no longer able to stand the cold.
And then I hear the same masculine voice I heard—moments ago? Hours? I’m not sure—slither into my mind, but he’s not talking to me. He’s counting.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
“Time of death: Nine thirty-five P.M.,” the caretaker says.
“Skye,” the masculine voice whispers through my mind. “You found me.”
All I see are the stars.
Chapter 2
BETWEEN THIS LIFE AND THE NEXT
DARK. LIGHT. DARK. Light. The memory of my death dances in my mind. The freezing air. The metal floor. My frozen tears. The world flashing from dark to light to the rhythm of my fading heartbeat. And now, the stars.