Dead End: Midnight Hollow by Penn Cassidy (best e reader for epub txt) 📕

up my spine like a memory, and my brain immediately flashed back to the carnival in the mortal world on Halloween. In fact, now that I really looked around and paid attention, there it was—the table in the center of the room with a crystal ball on top. One wooden stool sat on one side of the table, and two matching stools faced it on the other.

For a second, I felt like the walls were closing in around me. Had I come full circle? Was this how it ended? Shit…did that Frank guy drug me somehow and these entire last couple of weeks were just some bad trip? Maybe Maddie was right. Maybe we should have run from that booth the second things got weird.

I was about to hightail my ass out of the shop, hoping to the great pumpkin that Midnight Hollow was still there on the other side, when I heard the swish of beads and footsteps coming from the other side of the shop.

“Ah, Miss Hallowell,” came an all too familiar voice.

I turned on my heel slowly and faced Frank, who strolled into the room, wearing an identical velvet suit to the one he was wearing the last night in the mortal world, only this one was a shocking orange instead of purple. Even his crazy that matched. I suddenly had the hysterical image of Frank’s entire wardrobe filled to the brim with identical suits in every color of the rainbow.

“What are you doing here, Frank?” I asked, crossing my arms over my chest defensively.

He smiled, casting his hand towards the stool I once sat in. “Have a seat,” he said.

“I think not.” Shaking my head, I glared at the man who probably set all of this in motion in the first place. “Was it you?” I asked. “Did you make our bus crash?”

He blinked at me, genuinely taken aback, and the shock in his expression loosened something in my chest a little. “Oh my, no I didn’t.”

“Then what are you doing here? Who or what are you?”

“Have a seat, October, and we can have a little chat while your friends grab a bite to eat.”

I looked over my shoulder out of pure instinct, but brought my eyes back to Frank a moment later. “If I sit, do you promise to tell me what you know? No bullshit?”

“None,” he confirmed with a smile.

Slowly, I approached the table and took a seat on the stool, arms still crossed. We were silent for a moment, the room filled with nothing but the crackling flames of the candles surrounding us, until he asked, “So how are you enjoying Midnight Hollow?”

“You said no bullshit,” I muttered.

“I can assure you, Miss Hallowell, I am in no way here to…bullshit you.” He smiled kindly. “As you might have noticed, my humble little shop straddles the line between the mortal world and this one. The fact that you stumbled in here on the night of Halloween was purely coincidence, as the veil was just thin enough.”

My eyes widened. “Are you saying Maddie and I were actually in Midnight Hollow?”

“That’s exactly what I’m saying.”

“So what was all that mumbo jumbo about, then? You said something was coming. Were you talking about the accident?”

His face sobered, and he shook his head. “I apologize if I might have mislead you in some way, Miss Hallowell, but my powers don’t work like that. I don’t see your future as if it were a film. It’s more of a small glimpse into possible futures, and even then, it’s more of a feeling. A warning, if you will.”

“So you think your prediction was trying to warn me about the crash?” I asked hopefully. I hoped that’s what it was, because then I could rest easy. I hadn’t even realized how much Frank’s prediction that night had actually rattled me.

“Would you mind letting me try again?” he asked, holding out his open palm.

I stared at his hand, unsure if I was willing to go through this again. The last time hadn’t worked out so well for everyone else that was thrown from that bus. I still didn’t know if any of them had died that night, or what had happened when the five of us just disappeared. But what could it really hurt to know if danger was still looming? It wasn’t like he made it happen.

Placing my hand in his palm, I tensed as his eyes shut immediately and his fingers wrapped around mine tightly. That same coldness slithered through me, just like the first night I stumbled into his booth. Frank’s eyes were moving rapidly behind his eyelids, and his breathing was becoming more ragged.

“What is it? What do you see, Frank?” I asked pathetically.

“It’s—” he struggled to get it out. “I’ve never had this happen before…”

“What?!” I was beginning to panic now. “What hasn’t happened before?!”

Frank let go of my hand abruptly, and I had to brace myself as I rocked back on the stool. It took a moment for him to blink, as if clearing away a fog. He looked at me, this time gravely.

“What did you see?” I asked again, gritting the words through my teeth.

“It’s not what I saw, Miss Hallowell… It’s what I didn’t see.” His haunting voice gave me goosebumps, almost like a warning for what lay ahead for me.

“You need to speak in plain terms, Frank,” I demanded, tired of running in circles like a merry-go-round.

He cleared his throat, tipping his hat up and running a palm over his sparse grey hair. “I didn’t see a thing. Your future…it simply wasn’t there, like a blank slate.”

I blinked at him a few times, sure I’d heard him wrong. That didn’t make any sense. Unless I was about to die in the next few seconds, he should have been able to see something.

“So what does that mean?” I asked. “Am I gonna die?”

“Oh my, no,” he was quick to say. “Although I’ve never seen such a vision before, or lack of vision rather, I