Sudetenland Tales by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview
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Sudetenland Tales
Page 468
At first, it felt like freedom. No more long drives, no more waiting. She could get high whenever she wanted, sink into the haze, let the world blur at the edges. But Alta Monte, the hollow, had a way of swallowing people whole.
The nights stretched longer, the shadows in her house grew darker. She started hearing things; whispers through the walls, footsteps in the yard when no one was there. The high wasn’t enough to drown them out. She tried to ignore it, but the feeling gnawed at her, a slow, creeping dread.
One night, she woke to the sound of breathing. Not her own. Something deep, raspy, just outside her window. She stayed frozen, her pulse hammering in her ears. Then came the scratching; long, deliberate strokes against the glass.
She never looked outside.
The next morning, she found deep gouges in the wood beneath her window. Like claws.
J-Ace laughed when she told him. “The Hollow’s got its ghosts,” he said. “You’ll get used to it.”
But Mandy wasn’t sure she wanted to.
The drugs stopped working the way they used to. The highs felt shorter, the crashes deeper. The whispers grew louder. She