Chapter 40: And All Hell Breaks Lose
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Xander’s eyes opened to silence and he blinked slowly, disoriented, his body stiff like it had been folded too long inside a cardboard box. The ceiling above him stretched pale and smooth, painted in that forgettable cream tone most houses used back when they still pretended to care about resale value.
He sat up, squinting in the half-light, it was just an old lamp shinning against pale-blue wallpaper-the kind of color his mother used to say felt "calm and cosy." There were white curtain trims, a wardrobe in the corner, and a dresser lined with picture frames that nearly stopped his breath.
’Wait a minute...’ he thought with a frown.
Why the hell did this room look so damn familiar?
He swung his legs off the bed, feet sinking into soft carpet with the exact pattern he used to trace with his toes as a kid, while listening to jazz on Sunday mornings and wondering if pancakes meant his parents weren’t fighting to the death that day.
The chipped dresser still had its uneven drawers where his mother’s fake flowers sat. He walked towards the picture frame hesitantly, like stepping closer might activate something. His fingers hovered but didn’t touch. Inside, he saw it clearly:
A boy with gapped teeth and a lopsided grin, squeezed between a woman with eyes full of tired sunshine and a man mid-laugh, his hand resting firm on the boy’s shoulder. His father, his mother and... him.
Xander exhaled through his nose.
"This isn’t real," he whispered and turned away from the dresser, stepping back toward the doorway that seemed to bleed shadow-and that was when he heard it. "That goddamned ghost..."
He had to find a way to get back to Iris and Alyhana fast and get the hell out of–
"Xander..."