Horror fear

“Kind of.” She turned sharply, pacing, as if it would toss off the memory, and Ryn’s hand fell away. “I don’t like to think about it.” She stopped and pressed her palms against her eye sockets. “I see things in every shadow of this stupid, creaky house.”
Ryn wondered what, exactly, Splat revealed to her—how much Naomi knew.
“I realize it was just the fear, but I remember the whole thing clearly when I sleep, except now I know more about what Banich was planning than I ever wanted to. The news had all the details. The things in his van…” She covered her mouth suddenly, eyes going still. “A blow torch,” she murmured. Blinking, she lost control of her tears. “Corkscrews.” Her scent bloomed into a more acidic flavor, typical of horror-fear—familiar to Ryn from all the ways she’d taken men apart. It didn’t belong on Naomi. “I try not to think about it, but I can’t stop dreaming… Want to know something morbid?”
Ryn didn’t know how to answer, as most of what she knew already was morbid.
“I Googled pictures of the corkscrews. Hoped that if I stared long enough the horror might somehow pass through me, like I needed to get to the other side of it. Stared until my skin turned to ice, but I think I just invited all of it in. I wonder if it ever goes away.” She strode to her bed and collapsed there, thumping face first into a pillow.
“It will,” Ryn whispered.
She shook her head, around which her wavy auburn mane had settled in a bright pool. “It won’t,” she groaned through the pillow. “And I’m an idiot.”
“It will.” Ryn took two small steps forward.
The girl rolled into a sitting position, clutching pillow to lap. “Dad wants me to take a semester off at Madison and attend cyber-schools. Maybe he’s right.”
“You fear leaving your cell.” Ryn’s lip curled, not at Naomi, but at what Splat had poisoned her with.
“It’s not a cell.” Her voice faltered at the look on Ryn’s face, and she squeezed the pillow to her chest. “And I’m not afraid.”
“It is. And you are.” Ryn could taste it in the air, bilious and foul. “It turns strong legs wobbly and fills you with the need to vomit—yet you cannot, because the thing wriggling within you isn’t bad meat. It’s horror-fear.”
Naomi stared, lips somewhat parted. “Horror-fear?”
“Why do you lie about it? I smell it.” Ryn tapped her nose.
The smile was small—on any other mortal, a mystery, but on Naomi it made such wonderful sense: small because it was the mark of light weakly penetrating whatever pall afflicted her. “Smell. Right.” She tapped her own nose, teasing. “That obvious, huh? I guess I don’t want this to be a cell, and I don’t want to be afraid.” Her eyes glistened, and she brushed at them with both hands. In spite of it, tears still streaked down her face after.


Chapter 8, Page 108-109