Kelan’s eyes never left the body.
Not when it lay on top of him, not when he screamed and screamed as he struggled to free himself from its horror. Even now, curled up against the wall beneath the window, he could not look away. His mind, his terror, forced him to look.
The woman’s face sickened him. It was covered in frozen splatters of blood. Whoever had stuffed her into the locker had made good work of the right side of her head. It was crushed in, as if she’d been beaten with a sledgehammer.
Her left eye was closed, but her right sat wide, stuck oddly in place. It stared at that creepy angle as it always had, as if she possessed this otherworldly power to peek around corners. It had always given him the willies, and it was giving him major willies now.
Her arms and legs had been snapped like matchsticks. They were bent at disturbing angles. She lay on her stomach across one of her arms, although Kelan could not be certain which one. It looked as though they had traded places on her body.
Was it really Mrs. Arbor?
It was. It really was.
Kelan forced himself to focus on the window. A black idea came to him then, an unpalatable notion. He buried it in the back of his mind before he acted on it.
Again he stared at the body. The woman stared back. She might be dead, but that eye wasn’t. Somehow, at some level, he knew … she could still see him.
“Stop it,” he said to her. “Just stop it.” He covered his eyes and wished her gone.
Still he saw the body. Saw the eye.
The wind rattled the walls. The fading light seemed to fade a little more. Again that horrifying idea swept through Kelan’s brain. This time it was harder to push away.
No.
Not yet. There was still time.