Chapter 1

My first breath tastes of salt and iron. I pull it in too sharply and immediately choke. The resulting purge is violent. 

     My lungs spasm as I cough up saltwater, desperate for air. After dizzying moments spent gasping, I think I’ve survived the worst, but then I notice the blood. It drips into the wet, sifting sand beneath me, tinging the receding waters a milky red. My fingers curl into the grit, and, just as I attempt to pull myself upright, I’m slammed down by a rush of water. It devours me, pins me to the shore. I panic and flail, dragging myself forward on shaky limbs as breaking waves try to drag me back into the abyssal nothing I came from. I won’t let it. With a grueling heave I’m out of the surf, yet my troubles are still plentiful. As I pull myself to my feet, a mere downward glance stills my fragile breaths. 

     I’m dressed in a nightgown. What was once surely a bright slip of white has been tattered and laid to waste. The hem is ripped to the knee, and the fabric is caked in dirt and colored with blood. Those dark red stains have bled deep into fabric, faded to rust. But alas, there’s still fresh to go with the old. Thick rivers of blood slip down my arms to pool into the sand. I stare at the gore smeared across my skin and stumble back on booted feet as dirt begins to fall amidst it all. It rains down like a sheet of earth, tumbling across my shift and onto shore. Amidst that dank loam, the unimaginable happens. Suddenly, the fabric is new and blood is absent. I blink, and blink, and blink, but there is no explaining this. That dirty nightgown now gleams white, and my heart ticks a little faster. I swallow thickly, eyes darting across myself in search of answers, but I find only more madness to question. 

     I’m covered in bruises and bite marks, and it’s with a surge of terror and awe that I watch my skin knit back together in the wake of more tumbling dirt. My eyes bug wide. My heart pumps wildly in my chest. I’m overcome with the urge to run and escape this nightmare, though when my gaze snags on my right arm, fear holds me hostage. 

     The wounds are worse here—purposeful. I can only stare at those horizontal cuts as they begin to heal, but, before the dirt can erase all evidence, I see the most troublesome of it clearly. There are two words carved into my forearm, etched deep and with a shaky hand. 

     Kill him.

     Dread wraps around my throat, making it hard to swallow. My fingers squeeze with the need to steady myself, and it’s then I feel the prick of pain. I flinch as blood begins to pool in my palm, but what I find only stirs more uncertainty. One moment, I swore I felt something sharp in my left hand, though the next, a clump of dirt has taken its place. I unclench my fist, letting each fleck of soil tumble to the surf below and melt into nothing.

     Trepidation twitches my limbs and floods my chest with growing panic. 

     No. None of that.

     I force a deep breath, ousting my fear before it can take hold. With gritted teeth, I take stock. 

     No longer do cuts and bruises mar my flesh. My nightgown is clean, yet sopping wet. The hem is intact. There are no tears in the fabric other than a small snag that looks like it was painstakingly mended with borrowed thread. I shift in place and flex my feet amidst sturdy, black boots. No socks. 

Strange. 

     My fingertips trace every inch of my skin. The words cut into my arm have long since faded, but their absence does nothing to ease me. I’m diligent in my search for more peculiarities, though I’m not prepared for what I find. 

     The scar is brutal—carved deep. It rests in the center of my chest, though I bear no memory of it. I touch it gingerly but soon realize there’s no need for such hesitance. It’s old. The healed tissue is gnarled and thick, creating a diagonal line through my sternum. My lungs grow tight, unease lancing through me as I try to remember what put it there. 

     An animal? Highwaymen?

     I pluck my thoughts like bowstrings, diligent and determined, but everything is blank. The panic returns louder this time. My eyes dart across the beach. 

     This is not a land I know, and yet… 

     And yet there’s something uncomfortably familiar about this dark shore, like a reoccurring nightmare you never quite remember until it’s too late...