Page 89 of Psycho Obsession
He flips it open to show me. To him, I can see he sees columns of data, signatures, and seals. But I see the truth.The pages are blank. They aren’t even paper; they’re old newspapers from ten years ago, the ink bled into grey smudges by the salt water.
Hallow is lowered onto the deck. The men in overalls grab her.
“Asset 402 secured,” the megaphone on the boat booms.
But it’s not a high-tech broadcast. It’s a man with a battery-operated bullhorn, his voice cracking with nerves.
“Got the girl!” the man yells to someone in the wheelhouse. “Call the cops! Tell ‘em we found the ones from the warehouse!”
Hallow stands up on the rotting deck. She looks at the Replacement, who is flickering in and out of existence like a dying lightbulb. One second, the ghost girl is hugging her; the next, Hallow is standing alone, her arms wrapped around her own shivering body.
She looks down at us in the water. The blue HUD light of the “Cutter” reflects in her eyes, but behind it, I see the reflection of the police sirens on the shore. Red and blue. Red and blue.
“The harvest is a lie, isn’t it?” Hallow asks. Her voice isn’t being projected. It’s just a girl, cold and broken, speaking to the wind.
She reaches for the railing, her fingers brushing the “Replacement’s” hand. Her hand passes right through the white lace, through the ghost’s skin, and grips the cold, rusted iron of the tugboat.
The veil doesn’t just tear. It falls.
The tactical cutters vanish. The helicopters become searchlights from the docks. The “Choir” isn’t anarmy—it’s just a bunch of terrified kids in masks huddling under the pier.
And Hallow is standing on the deck of a stolen boat, looking at a Zippo lighter she found in the dirt.
“I can still hear the humming, Jex,” she whispers. “Even without the signal. It won’t stop.”
“Hallow, don’t look at the light!” Ryker pleads, but his voice is dying, the delusion finally losing its grip on him. “Hallow, please…”
She flicks the lighter. The flame is steady. Real. It doesn’t flicker. It doesn’t glitch. It’s the only real thing in the harbour.
“I want to see if the fire is real,” she says.
The fire is the only thing that doesn’t glitch.
It doesn’t stutter like the white lace dress or flicker like the HUD displays. It’s a low, hungry orange bloom that starts at the base of a rusted fuel drum and begins to lick its way across the oil-slicked deck of the Mercy.
“Hallow, no!” I scream, my voice cracking into a jagged, raw sob.
I’m clawing at the hull of the tugboat, my fingernails tearing against the rusted rivets, trying to find a purchase, a ladder, anything to get me up there. The water around me is getting warm—a sickening, unnatural heat that tells me the fuel is already spilling over the side.
“Jex, look at the sky!” Ryker is hysterical now, his arms thrashing as he tries to hold onto the ‘Ledger.’
The police searchlights are cutting through the smoke, but to Ryker, they’re still the beams of a corporate invasion. “The Reclamation Team is coming! They’re going to use the fire to cover the extraction! We have to get on the boat! We have to go with her!”
“There is no extraction, Ryker!” I roar, reaching out and grabbing his collar, shaking him until his head snaps back. “Look at the men in the yellow coats! They’re jumping off! They’re running! It’s just a boat, Ryker! It’s just a fucking boat and she’s standing in the middle of it!”
Up on the deck, Hallow is a silhouette of absolute stillness. The “Replacement” is gone—nothing but a memory of lace and lies. Hallow is holding the railing, her hair caught in the updraft of the flames, looking like a saint made of soot.
The humming in my head reaches a screaming pitch. It’s not a lullaby anymore. It’s a siren.
“I can feel the ‘Mother’ now,” Hallow calls down. Her voice is clear, stripped of the static. “She’s not in the clinic, Jex. She’s the heat. She’s the way the light looks when everything finally stops being a secret.”
She takes a step toward the centre of the blaze.
“HALLOW, DON’T!”
I find a rusted rung and haul myself up, my muscles screaming, my bullet-shattered shoulder feeling like it’s being branded. I roll onto the deck, and the smell hits me—not bleach and formaldehyde, but old fish, diesel, and the terrifying, sweet scent of burning hair.
I see her through the wall of orange. She’s standing over the open hatch of the engine room.
