The Monster Within

THE MONSTER WITHIN

Kelly Hashway

S
PENCER
H
ILL
P
RESS

© 2014 Kelly Hashway

Sale of the paperback edition of this book without its cover is unauthorized.

Spencer Hill Press

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

Contact: Spencer Hill Press,
PO Box 247, Contoocook, NH 03229, USA

Please visit our website at
www.spencerhillpress.com

First Edition: June 2014.
Kelly Hashway
The Monster Within/by Kelly Hashway—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary:

A teenage girl resurrected from dead finds out she is a monster—tangled between dueling factions of witches, she must break the curse that brought her to life before she kills the people she loves most.

The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this fiction: Band-Aid, Ford Focus, Goodwill, Kindle, Mack trucks, Mazda 6, Post-it, Super Bowl,
The Blair Witch Project, The History Channel
, Walmart

Cover design by Lisa Amowitz
Interior layout by Errick A. Nunnally

978-1-937053-85-7 (paperback)
978-1937053-82-6 (e-book)

Printed in the United States of America

PRAISE FOR KELLY HASHWAY’S
THE MONSTER WITHIN…

“Hashway does a great job creating characters that stir your emotions and a mystery you want to unravel.”

– Cherie Colyer, author of the
Embrace
and
Hold Tight

“Witches, lies, black magic, murder…and the ultimate act of selfless love. Kelly Hashway has a spellbinding hit with
The Monster Within.”

– Michelle Pickett, bestselling author of
PODs

“Resurrection has a dark price.
The Monster Within
is a fast paced and twisted read that will keep you guessing to the end.”

– Heather Reid, author of
Pretty Dark Nothing

Also by Kelly Hashway

Touch of Death
Stalked by Death
Face of Death
Spencer Hill Press

Into the Fire
Perfect For You
Out of the Ashes
(2015)
Up in Flames
(2015)
Writing as Ashelyn Drake
Month9Books/Swoon Romance

Curse of the Granville Fortune
Tantrum Books

The Darkness Within
(2015)
Spencer Hill Press

To Ayla with love
.

CHAPTER ONE

M
Y
life began again the second I pulled myself out of my grave and looked into his beautiful blue eyes. This was my second chance, and he was the one who had given it to me. I wasn’t sure if I was a living being in the traditional sense. What did you call someone who came back from the dead? A zombie? Undead? I wasn’t happy with either term. I certainly didn’t feel like a zombie. I still had all of my own thoughts and memories. It was nothing like I imagined it would be.

“Sam.” My name was barely a whisper on Ethan’s lips. Even in the dim lights of the cemetery, I could see his eyes watering at the sight of me. “It worked. You’re you again.”

I looked down at my body, inspecting every limb. I was wearing a black dress. Mom’s favorite, so I understood why she’d had me buried in it. I stared at my casket, unable to get over the fact that I’d been dead.

I raised my eyes to Ethan’s. “How did you do it?”

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is you’re here.” He stepped forward and pulled me close to him, running his fingers through my long, dark hair.

I rested my cheek on his chest, wondering what lengths he had gone to in order to bring me back. Before I died, Ethan said he’d find a way for us to be together again. That he refused to lose me so soon. I had shrugged them off as the desperate words of a guy watching his seventeen-year-old girlfriend die of cancer. He’d been so amazing through all of it. He’d never left my bedside, and I remembered he’d been holding my hand when I took my last breath.

I tilted my head back to look at his tear-streaked face. “I have to know how you did it.”

“Shh,” he said softly. “I found someone who could help me, who knew what to do. Besides that, there’s nothing you need to know.”

He was keeping something from me, and that could only mean he’d done something big. Big enough that I would get upset if he told me. Still, being in his arms again was heaven. He’d given me the gift of life. How could I question that?

“How do you feel?” He held me by my shoulders and looked back and forth between my eyes. “You look like you. Everything seem okay?”

“Yeah. I feel like me. Not like a zombie or anything.”

He squeezed my shoulders. “You’re not. You’re you. I promise. I made sure of it.”

“But—”

He raised a finger to my lips. “We have to go. We can’t stay here where someone might see you.”

I hadn’t thought about that. To everyone else, I was dead. My parents, my brother Jacob, my friends—they all thought I was dead. If I waltzed back into my old life, they’d think they were seeing a ghost. That, or they’d have me turned into a lab rat to figure out how I’d come back to life. Even I didn’t have the answer to that. Only Ethan did. And what if they figured out he was responsible for me being alive again? What if they locked him up for messing with the laws of nature?

“Where are we going?” I was suddenly determined to leave as soon as possible.

“My cousin has a little cottage in the Poconos. He never uses it. It’s not in the best shape, but we’ll be okay there.” Ethan let go of me long enough to close my casket and grab a shovel. “I have to get this back the way it was. No one can suspect your body isn’t inside this grave.”

“How long was I gone?” I had no sense of time, but the flowers on my grave were fresh, so I was guessing only a matter of days.

“Four days. The four longest days of my life.” He dropped the shovel and wrapped his arms around me again.

I breathed in his scent, not even caring that he smelled mostly of dirt and sweat from digging up my casket. Besides, I couldn’t smell much better. Nobody ever made a perfume in “Dirt-Covered Corpse” scent. “I’ll help you cover the grave again.”

“No.” He let go of me and picked up the shovel. “You’ve been through enough. I’ll do it. You go wait in the car. I can’t risk anyone seeing you.”

If Ethan got caught shoveling dirt back onto my grave, he’d be in serious trouble. But he was right. If he got caught and I was standing there with him, we’d both be totally screwed. I nodded and walked to his red Mazda 6. I had always loved his car. He used to take me for long drives down back roads, where we could pretend we were the only people in the world and there was no such thing as being terminally ill at seventeen.

I watched Ethan shovel the dirt back onto my grave, and it was surreal. I couldn’t get past the feeling that I didn’t belong here. I’d been dealt my hand, and yes, it sucked, but that should’ve been the end of it. I should’ve been in the ground or in the afterlife. Ethan walked back to the car, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. He threw the shovel in the trunk and got in the car in a hurry.

“Ready?” he asked, out of breath.

Was I? I wasn’t sure, but I had to at least pretend for Ethan’s sake. Whatever he’d done, it was huge. I owed him my life.

I forced a smile. “Ready.”

He started the car, and as soon as we were out of the cemetery and on the road, he took my hand in his. Our fingers laced and rested on the middle console below the gearshift. Ethan’s car operated as either an automatic or manual. When he was alone, he always drove it manually. But when I was with him, he kept it set to automatic so he could hold my hand while he steered.

I rested my head back on the seat and took a deep breath, wondering how long it would take for me to get used to being here again. I should’ve been happy, but something was nagging me. Pulling at my thoughts and screaming, “Look out!” Maybe it was just leftover anxiety from my illness, from knowing any moment could be my last. The final days had been awful. I hadn’t been able to get out of bed. Mom and Dad had let me stay home because I hated being in the hospital. I’d spent too much time in a hospital for one lifetime. Ethan slept over every night. My parents had practically adopted him by that point. He loved me and refused to leave my side, except to use the bathroom.

Mom always said what Ethan and I had was more than high-school sweetheart stuff. Maybe she was right. Maybe the universe decided that, since I wasn’t going live long enough to get married, have kids, and grow old, I should at least get to have the love of my life before I died. I was thankful for that much.

“What are you thinking?” Ethan asked, invading my thoughts.

“You were so amazing. Through everything. You were stronger than I was.” I choked back the tears.

“Hey.” He turned to face me, lifting our hands to his mouth and kissing my fingers. “Don’t think about that. We have a second chance. This is our life now.”

I didn’t want to break his heart with all my questions about how we would survive on our own, how we would support ourselves when we hadn’t even finished high school, but I couldn’t say nothing, either.

“What’s it going to be like? Our life? Will we be hiding out in the cottage?” Coming back to life to live in fear of being seen wasn’t my ideal.

“No. We’re going to get fake IDs. We’ll enroll in school and do everything we would have if—”

“I hadn’t died.” I swallowed hard, remembering the pain the cancer had caused. “Will I have to change my name?” I never liked anyone calling me Samantha, but I’d grown fond of Sam, especially the way Ethan said it. It always sounded like a sigh. A happy, content sigh.

“You can keep Sam if you want. It’s not like anyone is going to come looking for you.”

That was true. As far as everyone knew, I was six feet under. “So you’re not keeping Ethan?” I couldn’t imagine calling him by any other name.

“Would that bother you?”

“A little.” I knew I was being a baby, wanting him to keep his name, but he was my Ethan. He always would be.

“Okay, I’ll keep Ethan then. We’ll both just change our last names.”

I nodded and gave him a weak smile. Somehow I knew a lot more than our last names was about to change. Samantha Thompson and Ethan Anderson would never be the same; to the rest of the world, we wouldn’t even exist.

It was about a five-hour drive to the cottage, not too bad. In the past, a long drive with Ethan had been heaven, but since I’d come back to life, things seemed different. Maybe Ethan thought I was the same old Sam—minus the cancer—but I wasn’t. I couldn’t shake this feeling that something was wrong. Wrong with me.

It was late, and a light rain dotted the top of the car, lulling me to sleep. You’d think after being dead, I’d feel refreshed. But I didn’t. It seemed so hard to focus on things. The streetlights were bright. The air was damp, and even though it was early fall, I was chilled.

The car stopped, and Ethan’s hand slipped from mine. I turned to him, blinking against the fluorescent lights of the gas station.

“Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I just need to get some gas and a few things from the convenience store. There’s no food at the cottage. I thought I’d grab some crackers and soda. Stuff like that. I’ll even see if they have black licorice for you. I know you love it.”

I nodded and started for my seat belt.

“No. You stay.” Ethan opened his door and stepped outside. I let my hair fall across my shoulders, trying to warm myself against the night air. “I’ll be right back.”

The trunk opened, and a moment later, Ethan opened my door, handing me one of his sweatshirts. “Here, you look cold.”

I smiled. “Thanks.” He knew me so well. I watched him walk inside the store and heard the soft
click
of the car locking again. He wasn’t taking any chances with me. I knew he’d protect me from anything. He’d already protected me from death. He was my everything now. I would never see my family or friends again. I had to start over. The thought terrified me, but at least I had Ethan by my side.

I hugged the sweatshirt to my body. I was too tired to actually put it on, and this way I could breathe in Ethan’s scent while I kept warm. I inhaled deeply at first, and then my breaths became shallow, which was weird considering how tired I felt. I yawned. Exhaustion overwhelmed me. Apparently it took a lot of energy to return from the dead.

I leaned my head on the window, hoping the cool glass would keep me awake, but my head spun, making me dizzy. My arms and legs tingled with the sensation of pins and needles. I felt like I had a million spiders crawling all over me. I threw the sweatshirt off me and onto the floor. My arms were bare. No spiders. But the feeling didn’t go away. I panicked. The walls of the car were caving in on me. The air around me was tight, strangling me.

I searched the convenience store windows for Ethan, but all I saw was a guy in a cowboy hat and a woman taking her little boy to the bathroom. Where was Ethan? The lightheadedness was getting worse—more intense. My breathing was labored. In a panic, I reached for the door handle. It took me a moment to remember it was locked, but when I finally got it open, I stumbled out of the car into the fresh air. I gulped oxygen into my lungs, hoping it would make me feel better, but it didn’t.