My heartbeat thrums against my eardrums, pulsing with every step that I take. Blackened, the world lingers around me, waiting for something to ignite its vitality. The night has bidden its time, snagging the dreary hours that precede the day and clinging to them with every force constituting its existence. Its reluctance to yield its handle on tranquillity surges through me with each breath the trees expel.

The tips of my fingers twitch as exhilaration stirs inside me, no longer lying comatose. The sunless canvas painted before my eyes fractures like a broken window pane. Warped splinters, agleam to their very tips, spiral above the ground as the night shatters. My arms hang senselessly at my sides, the muscles inside consigned to insentience. The earth beneath me apprehends my feet as the fragments of the dark begin to forge a new portrait.

Dazzling eyes, mottled only by the inkiness churning behind the translucent image, latch onto mine. Each thread configuring the green rims circling the pupils exhibits an integral component of the life lived by the projected form. Everything she stands to lose glowers within her fabricated smile.

A sense of dread impresses itself into my chest; a feeling that presents as all too familiar. It has chosen my next victim.

I wake with a start, my eyes shooting open. Ramming against my rib cage, my heart beats irregularly, quivering against the formidable thrill flitting through my veins. With each intake of air, my lungs replete the densely set tension that accrues every time a target is acquired. The ossified trepidation stratified in my stomach from each respective cycle that has been executed suddenly distends as a new course is chartered inside the incorporeal segment of my brain.

My mind is not mine. It belongs to the spectre residing inside, harnessing the world through my eyes.

Spending a shaky breath to buy back my cognition, I push the fresh cotton sheets to one side, tossing my legs over the side of the bed. A slight tremor quakes through my calves as I allow them to bear the weight of my body atop the carpeted floor. I can never escape my dreams unscathed. Should it be a dull ache or a cruel scar, I am always left with a twisted sort of accolade.

Walls the colour of toasted almonds adorned by bottle green paint strewn across canvasses of altering sizes greet my puffed eyes, aglow at the touches of sunlight meandering through the yawning blinds.

Warmth isn't a sensation renowned within the perimeters of West Pier. At night, no fluffed pillows grace the heads of those inside. The attenuated scraps of cloth used as blankets have little influence against the cold. Through the exhausted mattresses, every notch of the metal bed frames can be felt. Morning doesn't bring the first glimmers of day with it. Instead, it is characterised by the pounding of fists on cell doors that erupt moments before the steel grinds against the concrete and the guards drag the girls from their beds, regardless of their states of consciousness.

I dig the heels of my grazed palms into my eyes, attempting to rid them of their filmy mantle. It's almost a relief to be no longer tethered to the unappeasable system that conducts the correction facility.

The walls don't gape as I retreat into the tiled hallway. The bruise clenched around my upper arm, deeply immersed into the tissue beneath my skin, is allowed to breathe for the first day in over a year. To see the brand of West Pier evanesce is always an aberrant occurrence. Once gone, all physical shackles issued by the facility are history. Until the next time, that is.

"Morning Ell."

My head snaps towards my brother.

Caleb offers me a taut smile, the concern plaguing his dark eyes straining against the cheery expression almost masking the hesitance etched into the lines marking his forehead. "Did you sleep alright?"

"Yes," my voice files against the back of my throat, diverging from my lips in a mere croak.

Words are not exchanged between inmates at West Pier. The only instance in which speaking is necessary outside of sessions with Dr. Langley is when responding to the guards. Even then, the occasions on which they seek a reply are few. When submerged back beneath the folds of normality, I often neglect to acknowledge speaking as an imperative form of communication.

Caleb is no stranger to my demeanour, though.

"Ells!" My heart plunges into the wall of dread plating the bottom of my stomach. "How are you?"

I swallow hard, willing the echoes of treachery encircling my every thought to discharge me from my pending remorse as my gaze surveys each step taken by Caleb's wife of three years.

Kailani tosses a diffident smile in my direction, reaching to brush a strand of dyed black hair behind her ear. Startlingly vivid green eyes settle on me as she fixes me with an inquisitive stare. "So, you excited to be back again?"

My eyes don't falter from hers, but no words part my lips. Something inside me is enthralled by my return. If Kailani knew the notions propelling through my mind without conscious volition, terror would strike her to her knees.

"Ella," Caleb's rugged tone lunges at me through my train of thought. "You're doing it again."

Kailani averts her gaze, chagrin clutching her downcast expression. I turn my unblinking stare onto my brother.

Caleb scorns my speechless correspondence. His lecture recurs each time I'm sent free: "speak, Ella. People can't hear silence. You make them uncomfortable. Just speak.'

"No—it's okay," Kailani sheepishly intervenes, her eyes still fidgeting with her clasped hands. "She doesn't have to."

Infinite are the things Caleb would hear if he consecrated a mere second to the taciturnity that prowls behind every sentence spoken. Turbulent thoughts are moulded into admissible speech to such an extent that people rarely speak what really plays on the fraying strands of their minds. Words are lies; deception with an eye for approval. We speak to fill the silence, because silence screams the truth.

"Ell, come on," Caleb pleads, hopelessness integrating into the chestnut swirls dappling his eyes. "All I ask in return for you staying here is that you try to make an effort."

I blink once. Amongst the hopelessness lies deep-seated consternation, scattered like the stars bleeding into the night sky. His palms are pressed to the laminate countertop, fingers bent marginally at his top knuckles.

"Ells, I just want to help," he exhales, removing one clawed grip from the bench and raking the hand through the waves of dark blonde hair that crown his head.

Caleb knows where I'm going to end up. He doesn't understand why, but he's well acquainted to the brutal cycle that never fails to wash me ashore at West Pier. The enfeeblement tangled through every inhale and exhale he makes narrates his apprehensions. Fatigued from defending my propriety against those who care to bat an eyelid in our direction, Caleb still hasn't obtained the answers he's been pursuing from the moment It first struck. Doubt braces his fraught muscles, planting uncertainty into the soil of his brain; maybe the bottom line is that his little sister is ultimately guilty.

Caleb's silence is earsplitting.

I retract my eyes from his, releasing an inaudible sigh. I am not heard here. I don't belong amongst those of many words.

"Leave her, Caleb," Kailani quietly advises her husband.

Defeat labours her words, discontent drawing rings through the green in her eyes. She knows that Caleb still entertains a waning flame containing the belief that I am still within his reach. But Kailani is never one to dwell on the insignificant. She has worries of greater importance to quench her appetite for adventure.

Caleb drops his face to his hands. I turn from the two, heading back down the amicable hallway.

Inside my head stormy vices are accumulating into dark clouds, already starting to veil my own thoughts. Acidic winds mildly whirl beyond the clouds, accompanied by the distant rumble emanating from the nucleus of the fermenting storm.

My release from West Pier continually reinvigorates the depravity that haunts my mind. I surrendered all hope of discovering someone who could credit, or at the very least consider, my truth years ago. If there is a way for the darkness, there is a will. Being sentenced to additional time in the juvenile facility settles a stillness over the evil lurking behind my eyes. An interim truce is called, and the weight across my chest dispels. There is no path inside the jail for my shadows to emerge.

But once again I have shed my chains. The world is at my mercy.

I am not afraid of the dark; I'm afraid of what it entails. My vision clears once the sun melts into the horizon and its rays can no longer paint the sky bronze. When the blackness settles in, it's as if my eyes switch and the earth around me alights. My freedom burns in the early night, but it's soon rendered obsolete as my unsolicited companion surfaces.

Perhaps I am the one who possesses no right to the wheel. Maybe it's me who has infiltrated an already claimed vessel. Either way, I am not alone beneath my skin. By dark, my other half seizes control, and only then must the world watch its back. Because the iniquity clinging to my form does not capitulate. Morals do not palisade its impulses, and the mere mention of mercy extracts a bloodcurdling chortle from its bowels.

Unconsciously abdicating the reigns pulling me together to that monstrosity is what imbues white-hot terror into my bloodstream. It has but one aim: to add another body to the tally. By the time the night wholly apprehends the world around me, I am no longer sentient. It prolongs each number of the countdown, ensuring that its preparations are adequate. As the count nears to an end, it turns its eyes on the hunt, and so it begins.

The light is my domain. The dark is It's. The chaos left in my wake is mine to confront.

It doesn't matter what those who have put me under extensive examination believe. There is something inside me, and its countdown is underway. And this time, the face incised into the back of my mind is that of Kailani Hale.

Nine.