Insidious(25)

An appreciative smile tugged at his lips, and it still confused me. I had been the one to officially end the relationship, but Adam was the one who made it clear that he wasn’t invested for the long haul. Yet he seemed to have taken the breakup like a wounded puppy dog. Carly was right. He did regret what happened, and the thought hurt all the more. If he still cared, why did he do any of it in the first place? And why did he continually hurt me when we were together? The whole scenario made no sense.

I was left to digest those questions as he said, “I’ll be right back,” before disappearing into the damp concrete stairwell leading up to the weightlifting room.

“I’ll be right back,” I reiterated to myself, still finding no humor in the horror movie clichés that seemed to be playing out all too frequently. Thankfully, my life wasn’t entirely like Scream, because Adam did in fact return a moment later with no stab wounds in sight. He pulled a large hoodie on over his head, subsequently covering up the ab-tastic awesomeness that was his stomach.

I followed him across the gym to the side exit, and thanked him as he held the heavy metal door open for me against the batting winds. We raced over to my car, and Adam cupped his hands over his eyes, stealing a look into the backseat through the rain splattered windows.

“You’re all good,” he confirmed as I hit the UNLOCK button on my key ring.

“Thanks.” Still shaken, I returned his smile as best as I could, climbing into the driver’s seat.

“If you have any problems, just give me a call.”

“Will do.” Unlikely.

He closed the door and saluted me before trudging his way back up to the building. I started the car and turned out onto the main drag. The windshield wipers swiped at the highest setting, but it didn’t do much good as the rain hammered down harder than ever. Maine’s swiftly changing weather constantly kept its inhabitants on their toes behind the wheel, and it was giving me a run for my money. A knot had formed in my stomach earlier when I’d woken up from…whatever that could be called, and it hadn’t gone away. The further I drove, the knot only grew.

I was being paranoid. Simple as that. The weirdo in the hall was probably just some brain-dead jock who’d seen me in the gym. Hell, if I hadn’t known Mark was still on the court, I’d bet my life that it was him. He did stupid things like that all the time, no matter how insensitive they were. So it stood to reason that another one of his basketball buddies got the same idea.

But what about the picture?

And how I’d been feeling?

Or me…levitating?

I could chalk up everything to PTSD and some cruel, obnoxious prankster. But that last bit…it didn’t have a rational explanation. Either hysteria was causing my imagination to wreak havoc on my sanity, or something else was really, really wrong.

Refusing to let my thoughts run away to a very dangerous place, to which there was no return, I pressed my foot down harder on the accelerator. The sooner I got home, the better. I’d take a shower, get something in my stomach, and lose my thoughts in homework until I fell asleep. Sounded like a solid plan.

Warmth spread across my chest, yet I could feel the hairs on my arm stand on end beneath my sweater. If there was such a thing as spidey-senses, I was pretty sure this was it. That, or I was having a panic attack unlike any I’d ever heard of. An inexplicable dread washed over me, and I looked in my rearview mirror to see no headlights behind me. There weren’t any cars in front of me now either. Knowing that I wasn’t going to get creamed by some reckless SUV barreling down the street should have been comforting. Yet, my hands instinctively gripped the steering wheel till the whites of my knuckles looked like they were about to tear through my skin.

The wipers continued racing across the windshield, but it was getting harder to see. I turned on the defrosters, hoping to clear away the steam on the windows. It was then I realized that the mist wasn’t on the inside. The fog seemed to cling to the glass as I raced down the stretch. I could barely make out the red light hanging above the upcoming intersection, relieved to see it switch to green just as I started to slow down. I let my foot off the brake, rolling right through the juncture to the town square.

Lightning waged overhead, and sparks suddenly spewed from everywhere. All the bulbs from the shop windows to the streetlights exploded, sending the village center into total darkness. It wasn’t until I was right on top of them that I saw the silhouette standing right in the front of the car.

“Holy shit!” I yanked the wheel to the right, sending the car into a tailspin as it hydroplaned on the flooded street. The backend bucked up from what I guessed was the Civic jumping the curb, but I didn’t hear any other impact as I jolted to a stop. Just as I blew out a sigh of relief, the front end buckled with a heavy wallop. I shrieked, seeing a pair of booted feet standing on top of the hood.