Malevolent Sadness: A Paranormal Suspense Thriller: The Prophet's Mother, #2

Prologue — A Doppelganger Drops In

THE SNOWSTORM WHIPPED around Nessa like an evil entity. It whispered dark words in her ears while in the guise of the wind. She was trapped in a cyclone of terror as she maneuvered the claustrophobic whiteout to get home.

Nessa trudged through hazardous inches in an awkward zigzag pattern as the wind pushed against her petite frame while frozen missiles assaulted a face too cold to melt the icy pellets. She pulled her knit cap down to give her enough cover to see a deserted campus. It was the isolation of the sprawling grounds, more than the human-like scream threading the wind that pumped terror in her veins. Although weakened by her arduous trek, she quickened her pace when her sorority house came into view.

Nessa charged the walkway and gripped the wrought iron railing with frozen fingers. She climbed the snow-covered steps hugging her monogrammed black book bag to her breasts as if it could ward off evil.

Warding off evil? She laughed at herself for being silly.

The only evil she’d faced all day was that godawful Ethics exam. She should’ve studied.

Yeah, but still?

Her fingers were too stiff to grip the doorknob, and she began panicking. Nessa was alone, except she wasn’t. The trepidations haunting her were more than bad feelings about a challenging exam. She hadn’t felt alone. Someone, or something, had been close behind and was now dogging her steps.

As fear salted her tongue, she closed her fingers around the doorknob. She twisted, pushed, and slithered into the house. Once inside, she shouldered the door against the angry gale. At the sound of the door slamming shut, she sighed. However, it sounded more like a groan.

Nessa peeled off her soggy outerwear, hung it on the wall hook, and then dropped her bookbag under her coat. She brushed as much snow as possible off her cap before pulling it off to keep the wetness from seeping down her nape and into her clothing.

After that horrible exam, Nessa realized a hot shower would give her some much needed revitalization. She had taken a few steps toward the stairs when she noticed the duo sitting in the living room, quietly observing her like a pair of piranhas. By their sly looks, she could tell they’d decided mutually annoying her was better than whatever they were watching on the television.

How’d it go? Luisa asked, with a teasing lift in her voice.

Carmen parroted. How’d it go?

Nessa suppressed her blooming irritation.

Luisa and Carmen were inseparable. The childhood friends had earned scholarships to attend the same university. Nessa wondered if their small town in Shitsville, America ponied up the costs to get rid of them.

Both were intolerable. Whenever Luisa and Carmen squabbled, usually about everything, their verbal jabs were revealing and entertaining. Unless, of course, they joined forces and concentrated their vocal assaults on a lone victim.

Tag, Nessa was it.

The exam was hard, Nessa said.

Just the exam? Carmen asked as she lifted a perfectly arched eyebrow.

Luisa said, Of course not. She spent the night with Shawn, and that’s why she failed the exam. That’s too bad. So close to graduation too. Her tone was mocking.

I didn’t fail! Nessa protested a little too defensively.

The girls pressed their foreheads together and giggled. Nessa hated how they acted like elementary school bullies.

I’m still on target to graduate, Nessa said, which was true. But a bad grade would probably lower her GPA and knock her off the Magna Cum Laude list.

Damn!

Nessa retorted, At least I can get laid.

What’s that supposed to mean? Luisa asked.

Carmen parroted, What’s that supposed to mean? At least we have boyfriends. You, on the other hand, have booty calls!

That’s it!

Nessa ran up the stairs, chased out by their razor-sharp truths. No more talking to those two, she decided.

Carmen shouted, You’d better let Mrs. Parker know you’re back! You were supposed to clean the kitchen last night, and she was worried when you didn’t show up. We had to tell her that you were probably out with Shawn again!

A chorus of giggles followed the declaration.

You owe us! Carmen added.

Yeah, you owe us!

Nessa raged as she slammed the door to her bedroom. Then she chastised herself for letting those bogus sorority sisters know they’d succeeded in ticking her off. Leave it to the undynamic duo to rat her out to their housemother just because she needed some nookie on the down low.

Nessa suspected Mrs. Parker wasn’t deaf and certainly not as oblivious as she often pretended. Still, the last thing Nessa wanted was for kindly, grey-haired Mrs. Parker to regard her as a ho.

Nessa stripped, grabbed a towel from her bureau, and retreated to the bathroom. Then, just as she closed the door, she heard distant and disembodied sounds; gunfire and a series of screams.

What crime show are those two watching on the tube now? They need to turn it down.

She thought to confront them. But asking them to lower the volume would likely open her up to more ridicule, and she’d had enough drama for one day.

Instead, she turned on the shower and waited until hot water sprayed from the showerhead.  Her only desire was to wash away the recent bad memories–Shawn, the scary walk home, and her needling housemates.

Well, maybe not Shawn.

As steamy water doused her skin, intoxicating thoughts of Shawn’s persisted. Her fingertips brushed over her nipples, forcing a moan from her full lips. She was still tender where he had suckled. The memory of his tongue caressing her nubs to stiffness caused her to purr and shudder simultaneously.

She turned and raised her face to the blast of water. Now, intertwined with her memory of the horrid Ethics examination were snatches of the glorious but ill-spent night writhing under Shawn. Did she want to forget how he’d wordlessly welcomed her into his crib and immediately smothered her with biting kisses? Or the way they’d clawed off each other’s clothing and tumbled entangled on his lumpy mattress. Shawn had lifted her legs, parted her knees, and slid into her softness without an ounce of chivalry. She still throbbed deliciously from the relentless pounding he had delivered. She shuddered from the hot memory of his wicked thrusts, and a moan escaped her lips.

Best to wash away the memory. Yeah, too much stress, and she chose endless orgasms over prepping for an ass-kicking exam. Nice move.

Too bad the snowstorm hadn’t materialized until after she’d taken the final. Only then did the administrative powers that be cancel all afternoon campus classes. Just great! She was having the worst kind of crappy luck. Just like that, the good memories evaporated.

She turned off the water and climbed out of the shower. Nessa wrapped herself in a towel and shared a smirk with her blurred reflection. Seconds later, she squirted a spritz of gel on her toothbrush, brought the toothbrush up to her teeth, and froze. The skin on her arms, despite the humidity, shivered into goosebumps.

The image in the mirror wasn’t hers. The features were hers, but somehow not the expression. She shook her head as if dispelling her fear. The image imitated her action while a beguiling smile mocked her terror. While staring at her fake self, she became aware of something else.

With a trembling hand, she flipped off the ventilation fan and listened.

The sorority house was too quiet.

It was never, ever this quiet.

It was home to fifteen noisy, young, wannabe professionals who mostly got along. So there was usually a lively ensemble of overlapping music, study group chatter, and television babble. Or just plain gossip-fests that, at times, quickly evolved into full-blown arguments. And occasionally, during the wee morning hours, sexual moans—some of them sounded masculine—invaded the quiet. Everyone knew that male guests weren’t allowed after ten o’clock. But, of course, Nessa flouted this house rule too.

But absolute silence? Never.

Nessa’s thoughts zeroed in on every urban legend about psycho killers who had turned sorority houses into slaughterhouses.

Then she chastised her runaway imagination. The idea forced a smile. But, of course, she was being silly.

But what if her intuition was on target? What if some deranged copycat had gotten into the house? What the boogeyman, Richard Speck, had done to those nursing students had been very real.

And she was naked in the bathroom, for god’s sake!

Could. Her. Day. Get. Any. Worse?

Yes!

There was no place to hide. Nessa was determined not to go down, grabbing onto the shower curtain while some weirdo with mommy issues ground her up to meat.

She cracked open the bathroom door and prayed the hinges wouldn’t squeak. She couldn’t help envisioning an inbred freak sporting a mask made from human skin and wielding a bloody axe waiting outside the door.

Heart palpitations dried the spit in her mouth and nearly emptied her lungs. Terror made her muscles so rigid they ached.

A new terror nibbled as she caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Horror crept down her spine and twisted her guts into knots.

She wasn’t smiling, so why was her reflection? And the eyes were wrong. The pupils looked like they were on fire.

A scream tried to rise from her deflated lungs. Yet she could only make hiccupping sounds as the mirror clouded over with condensation too quickly.

Did I see what I thought I saw?

Nah, she couldn’t have. But?

But what if the image hadn’t been her reflection after all? What if that crazy mirror-Nessa reached out from a parasitic dimension, killed her, and took her place among the living?

I gotta knock it off. The only thing I need to be scared of is my grade on that Ethics final.

Still, Nessa opted not to test her bravado. She’d already failed a test today.

Instead, she lifted her chin, straightened her back, and pulled the towel tightly until it dug into her skin. Whatever was out there, she would face it with dignity and little else. She didn’t have a weapon, and she didn’t have a phone.

She considered turning the towel rod into a weapon, then snorted at her ridiculousness. She knew she didn’t have the strength to wrestle it from the wall. Besides that, she didn’t have the nerve to return to the bathroom.

Finally, sound filtered up the staircase, and Nessa recognized the voices of the local news anchors.

Luisa? Carmen? Are you there! Immediately, she chastised her stupidity. Oh sure! Please alert the knuckle-dragging throwback to where you are so he can carve a new mouth in your neck!

No response. So where were the others?

Nessa’s heart jackhammered as if running on diesel. She peered down the hall and saw nothing out of the ordinary. The eggshell-colored hallway wasn’t smeared with blood or splattered with brain gore.

She caught a whiff of something burning just as the smoke detector emitted shrilling beeps. She could only imagine, or hope, it was one of Heather’s concoctions. Her sorority sister was a sweet soul, but she had the culinary skills of an amateur poisoner. This wouldn’t be the first time Heather misjudged cook time.

With a new sense of urgency, Nessa darted down the stairs. She ran, almost skidded, past the living room but came to a hard stop.

Stunned, she saw that she wasn’t alone.

The high-pitched smoke alarm beeps pricked Nessa’s nerves with an antsy itch to hurry and do something. Yet, despite the insistent noise and the acrid smoke beginning to sting her eyes, their stony presence immobilized her.

Maybe in a way, she was alone after all.

It was a full house.

Everyone was there, including Mrs. Parker. It was as if they had gathered for an impromptu meeting. Some were sitting lotus-fashioned on the floor. Some shared the tufted sofa, while others shared seats on the wingback chairs. In every instance, they stared at the television screen. Their faces were expressionless except for eyes rounded by either surprise or fright.

They looked frozen.

Hey, guys? What’cha doing? Nessa asked in a tone thick with fear.

No one answered.

Carmen was closest to her.

Hey, Carm, do you still wanna hear about last night? Nessa poked her good-naturedly, and she recoiled. Her sorority sister was as stiff as a statue. Although Carmen wobbled a bit, she was otherwise unresponsive. She just stared at the television screen without blinking.

Nessa leaned in closer.

Carmen’s eyes were glossy with tears; some ran down her cheeks. And her lips were moving.

Nessa edged in closer to hear her above the smoke alarm.

I need my son. Where’s Victor? she asked.

Son? Victor?

Nessa straightened up one vertebra at a time and tightened her fist around the upper edge of the towel. She was glad the smoke detector kept her anchored in reality. Besides, she didn’t need to figure any of this out. All she had to do was dial 911.

A motion floated into her peripheral.

She gasped as her legs turned to stone. Her eyes bulged, and she rolled them toward the movement without tilting her head.

A large mirror dominated the wall over the fireplace, and Nessa found herself face-to-face with her reflection.

The mirror-Nessa grinned at her as if she couldn’t wait to hang her on a meat hook. But what she saw couldn’t be real. Maybe she’d taken a nap after showering and was in the middle of a close-to-pissing-on-herself nightmare? All she had to do was wake the hell up!

Her grinning image lifted and floated inside its mirrored living room like a specter. She circled back to the mirror and pressed her hands against the glass. Her fingers were long, and her fingernails resembled hooked talons with tips as red as