Prologue

2 weeks prior

I frantically dial the only number besides Summer’s that I have in my phone, the pounding bass of the song I was listening to, causing my head to throb. I don’t know why I don’t call Summer, there’s no time to think. Maybe some slightly less fucked up part of my brain thinks ‘damsel in distress, must call man’.

My clumsy fingers fumble with the device in my hands as I try to pause Rage Against The Machine’s ‘Killing in the Name’.

“Cove? Hello? Can you hear me?”

Hi, I can’t come to the phone right now, I’m probably out catching an epic wave or two. Leave a message and I’ll get back to you when the tide changes.

I almost fucking weep in desperation, and when the beep sounds to leave a message, a jumble of word vomit spews from my mouth without thought. “I’m in trouble and I didn’t know who to call. I…I need your help. I can hear things…bad things…and I think there are some bad people coming for me. They’re close. I can hear them. Hear the things they want to do to me. Things they don’t say out loud. I promise, I know it sounds crazy, but you have to believe me, please, please just send help.”

I pause, wondering what else to say. It might all be too late by the time he hears this message anyway. Should I thank him for his friendship? Confess to feeling something…more? How can I when I don’t even understand it myself?

An ear-splitting crash sounds from within the dorm block somewhere, and I flinch. Everything goes silent. I listen carefully, but I can’t hear what they’re planning. I swear it’s like they’re shielding their intent from me or something. Which is fucking terrifying.

I should hide.

Before I can make a move, the door crashes open with an almighty bang and I drop my phone in fear.

Dark shadows fill the doorway, blocking my way out. As they move into my room, they spread out so that I’m surrounded, but somehow I can’t focus enough to count how many of them there are. All I know is it’s too many. I’m outnumbered and overpowered.

Floor-length, hooded black cloaks obscure the monsters hiding beneath them, but one of them reaches out for me. The sleeve of his long garment falls back to reveal a clawed talon attached to bare, skeletal bones. Even as I try to deny what I’m seeing, my no-nonsense brain overrides my terrified denial and accepts that this is happening.

The yellowed decaying clawed fingernail makes contact with my left temple, and pain unlike anything I’ve ever experienced before erupts inside my skull. Vile and monstrous thoughts assault my mind in stereo, accompanied by a malicious, gleeful crowing laugh.

Falling to my knees, I claw at my head, trying to pluck the invading sounds from my brain. I squint at the door, wondering if I can crawl to freedom. For a split second I swear I see Summer’s silhouette in the doorway, and I try to call out to her for help. When I can’t, when the pain becomes too much, too intense for me to bear, I slump back upon the ground and my mouth falls open in an agonised scream.