For you.

She didn’t speak but I heard her just the same. Her voice in my head was sweet and lyrical, like the faint tinkle of a crystal bell. I lifted the jasmine to my nose and let the heady perfume fill my senses.

Will you help me?

“Help you…how?” I heard myself ask her. My own voice sounded distant and hollow, like an echo.

She lifted a tiny finger to her lips.

“What’s wrong?”

She seemed to fade as the air in the garden trembled and shifted. My heart was still racing, and I could see the rime of my breath mingling with a milky vapor that curled up out of the shadows. There was an odd copper taste in my mouth as if I had bitten my tongue. I felt no pain. I felt nothing at all except an icy fear that metastasized from my chest down into my limbs, paralyzing me.

The jasmine slipped through my numb fingers as the hair at my nape bristled. The night went deadly silent. Everything in the garden stilled except for that coil of mist. I watched, mesmerized, as it slithered toward me, twisting and writhing like a charmed cobra. The tension humming along my nerve endings was unbearable, as if the lightest touch could shatter me.

But when the contact came, it wasn’t light at all. The blow was quick and brutal, propelling me backward with such force, I lost my balance. Tripping over a small garden statue, I went sprawling. The ceramic cherub shattered on the stone pavers, and a moment later, the sound of voices inside the house dimly registered. A part of me knew the residents must have heard the racket, but my attention was still riveted on the walkway. Another entity had formed in the garden, and she hovered over me, dead eyes blazing in the deepening twilight.