Chloe sat on her bed by the window in her hotel room, trying to enjoy having the time to herself. To celebrate her getting into college, her mom had taken her on a trip through Europe. Now they were in Ireland, staying in an ancient castle that had been converted into a hotel, and Chloe got to stay in her own room. It was an amazing place, with stone walls covered in colorful velvet tapestries, polished oak furniture, and a huge, comfortable four poster bed. She felt like she was living at Hogwarts, except there was also high speed Internet and great cell reception.
Most people would've loved it, and Chloe had to admit the room was awesome, but in truth she hated being alone. Maybe it was because it was nighttime and the thick walls totally cut off sound from outside, making her feel isolated. Maybe it was the way the wind howled and screeched outside like a banshee, or the way the tree in the courtyard scratched at her window and cast shadows in the moonlight on the wall that looked eerily like claws. But Chloe knew it wasn't really any of those reasons. When she was alone, with no one around to distract her, she had all the time in the world to think about her past and reflect on her guilts and regrets until they threatened to consume her.
At the moment, she was playing a Green Day song as loud as possible and checking her Instagram, trying to take her mind off things. She caught herself rubbing the little scar on her forehead absently. Over seven years, it had faded to a thin white line, but she still rubbed it a lot, sometimes without even realizing she was doing it. It brought back memories-both happy and painful.
Suddenly, the Internet and cell reception both stopped working, the bars on her phone disappearing, right before her phone ran out of battery, shutting off the music. The wind outside quieted drastically until it was gone altogether, and between the loss of the wind and her music, Chloe was plunged into complete silence. It was an eerie kind of silence, that sent shivers down her spine.
Snap out of it, she told herself. She decided to go find her mom down at the hotel restaurant. As soon as she stepped out into the hallway, she realized something was wrong. There was absolutely no one else around, no guests or staff or anyone. Everyone's just resting, she thought, but somehow she knew that wasn't the case.
As she made her way through the hallways, her sense of foreboding increased, that prickly feeling down her spine intensifying. Even though Chloe told herself it was stupid, she found herself breaking into a run, which only made it worse. She met no one, and the hallways loomed ahead of her. They seemed so much bigger and darker than they had earlier, the old fashioned torches on the walls casting eerie shadows across the walls. Chloe made several wrong turns and had to backtrack. She finally approached the restaurant, she was relieved to hear voices buzzing inside. So the hotel wasn't completely empty after all.
Chloe threw open the restaurant, she threw open the door without thinking and stepped inside. But she wasn't in the restaurant at all, or even the hotel. She was somewhere completely different. She was so surprised that it took her a moment to figure out where she was.
Wait, she thought. I remember this. It was the auditorium at her old elementary school. She was on the stage, trembling, the microphone in front of her. The auditorium was completely packed with kids. Ten year old Chloe was running for student council president, and the entire school had gathered here to hear her. For some reason, eighteen year old Chloe was trapped in her own memory, like some kind of flashback, only it was too vivid. She was actually there. And she knew exactly what was about to happen, but she found herself powerless to stop it.
The principal gave a quick introduction, and then it was time. She shuffled her note cards, even though she didn't need them. She had spent hours in front of her bedroom mirror, memorizing and rehearsing her speech. But when it came time for her to start, she opened her mouth-and froze. She tried again, and this time made a sound, but it was just a mumble. It wasn't that she had forgotten her speech. She remembered it perfectly, but she just couldn't speak in front of hundreds of people. Her mouth was frozen.
The audience started to chuckle, and when she still couldn't say anything, they started to laugh harder. Soon, everyone in the auditorium was laughing at her, while the principal tried to regain order. Chloe felt a prickling at the back of her eyes, and before she could stop it she began to cry, which only made everyone laugh harder. Sobbing, she ran out of the room and slammed the door behind her.
Chloe found herself back in the hotel right outside the restaurant, back to her teenage self. She was still shaken from reliving that moment. It was one of her worst memories, because no matter how hard she tried not to let other people get to her, she still cared what people thought about her. She had tried so hard over the years to suppress that memory. Just like the other one. And now, it had been brought back to the surface.
She ran back to her room, still thinking about that memory. She was reflecting on it too much to remember to be cautious, and she ran into her room without thinking. Suddenly she was in a car, speeding along the highway. Oh no, she thought. Not this. She knew what was coming.
Her dad was driving the car. Chloe was eleven years old now. The person on the radio was telling jokes, it was her dad's favorite comedian.
He told an especially good joke, and her dad laughed hard-too hard. He threw his head back, looking away from the road. It had only been for a split second. But on a crowded highway at rush hour, a split second was a dangerous thing.
Because  that split second, the car passed an intersection. In that split second another car came in from the left. In that split second, the other car hit theirs with the force of a wrecking ball. In that second, Chloe lost her dad.
She was ripped from the memory, back in the hallway in front of her room. Chloe relived her father's death daily. It had just started to fade. Chloe had just started to be able to remember him without wanting to tear her heart out, to remember the happy memories she had had with him and not just the crash. And now, the wound had just been opened again, maybe even deeper than it had before. Chloe knew it would take years to heal. Maybe it wouldn't ever heal completely.
That was another of her worst memories-the crash that had stolen her father's life and spared her with nothing more than a scar on her forehead from a flying shard of glass. Something was happening in this hotel. Every time she entered a room, she had to relive a moment from her past that she had hoped to keep locked inside her forever. Chloe had a feeling she knew what was coming next, and it was a thousand times worse than freezing in front of the school, worse even than losing her dad. This was something that she absolutely couldn't witness again. If she did, she would die, or go insane. The guilt would eat at her heart and at her mind, like it already did on a smaller scale, until there was nothing left.
She decided she just wouldn't go in any more rooms, until she figured out what was going on or everything returned to normal. It has to sometime, right? She thought.
As soon as she came to this decision, an invisible force took hold of her limbs. She felt her legs moving against her will, pulling her down the hall no matter how hard she tried to stop them. No, she thought. No! Stop! But it was no use. She came to a supply closet, grabbed knob, and turned it. As soon as she was inside, the force released her, just as the door slammed behind her.
She turned around and desperately pulled at the door, but it was no use. She was trapped. Then she felt a prickling feeling on the back of her neck. Something was behind her, in the closet. And she knew what it was, who it was, without even having to look.
Slowly, Chloe turned around, not preparing to face it. Her. But she couldn't avoid it forever.
Standing in front of Chloe was a little girl, who scared Chloe more than anything she had encountered so far.
The girl had dirty blond hair hanging in her face and wore a gray dress. She looked down at the floor, so Chloe couldn't see her eyes. She was sopping wet from head to toe, but whenever water dripped from her dress to floor, it seemed to disappear. The looked eight years old.
Chloe knew her name. Alice Robertson. Her name was Alice Robertson. Alice looked up suddenly, and her eyes were horrible. Before they had been baby blue, sweet and full of laughter. Now they were still blue, but something was different.
When Chloe looked in those eyes, it was like an icy fist was clenching around her heart, paralyzing her, holding her prisoner. Alice looked at her with hatred and malice and cruelty, things that seemed out of place on the face of a sweet little girl. Those eyes tore through her, looking straight into her, tunneling through the deepest, darkest parts of her mind that Chloe had hoped never to explore again. When Chloe looked in those eyes, she felt like she was looking at hell itself.
Alice didn't speak. She crossed the room, until she was right in front of Chloe. She didn't speak, but her eyes said it all. Chloe shrunk against the wall. "No," she said weakly. "Please." But Alice reached out and touched her arm with a hand as cold as her eyes.
Chloe was again in a different place. She knew what was coming immediately. She was twelve years old now. Her dad had been dead for a year now. It hadn't been a good year for her. Every time somebody told her how sorry they were, how good he was, how much they regretted losing him when they hadn't even know  him. Nobody knew Chloe's father like she did, not even her mother. Nobody understood. Not her mom, or the therapists, or her friends, the few that she had. Nobody could make her feel even remotely better, and no one felt the pain that she felt.
So she bottled everything inside, or tried to anyway. More and more often, her anger and sadness came to the surface viciously. She started being mean to everyone at school, even her friends. She insulted people for no reason, other than she wanted somebody, anybody, to feel even a tiny fraction of what she was feeling, even if they didn't deserve it. Basically, Chloe became a bully.
Now, she was on the pier by the lake, at twelve years old. There was a little girl-Alice-cowering in front of her. Alice was Chloe's neighbor, four years younger than her. She had always been sweet and bright and bubbly. Before, Chloe had always enjoyed her company, but now she hated Alice. No one should be sweet. No one should be bright and bubbly. No one should be happy, act like nothing was wrong, when Chloe's entire world had dissolved. So now they were on the pier, and Chloe was teasing her, backing her toward the edge.
Alice was crying, but Chloe didn't care. Let her cry. She should be unhappy for once. Chloe laughed at Alice, and then, with one push, she shoved Alice off the edge of the pier.
She didn't know that Alice hated the water.
She didn't know that she couldn't swim.
She just didn't know.
She watched Alice sink, expecting her to come back up at any moment. Every second she remained underwater, Chloe's cruel laughter dissolved a little bit.
Alice never resurfaced again.
Chloe was ripped from this memory and into another. Now she was in the yard behind the church. It was Alice's funeral. There were rows of chairs, and somebody was speaking. Chloe didn't hear the words. She was too busy staring at the coffin. It was so small, less than five feet long.
Nobody should have a coffin that small. Nobody should die so young. Alice should've lived past eight. She should've gone to middle school, and then high school. She should've become a moody teenager and then a young adult as she went to college. She should've had a job and fallen in love and maybe gotten married. She should've died seventy years from now in her sleep, with her entire life behind her, filled with experiences. And Chloe had taken all that away from her.
Again, Chloe was ripped from the memory. She saw a series of images that she definitely didn't remember. Alice's parents standing next to her tombstone as their only daughter's coffin was lowered into the ground. She saw them sitting at their kitchen table, trying to comfort each other, their expressions blank and lifeless, now that their only source of happiness was gone. She saw them struggle through each and every day without their daughter, sometimes just hoping it would all end. She saw the grief eating at them, slowly killing them.
Suddenly, Chloe found herself back in the present. She realized she was crying.
Alice, or Alice's ghost, spoke, and her voice was the most horrible sound Chloe had ever heard. It was like nails scraping down a chalkboard, times a thousand. It was a voice that could make someone strangle a person or claw their own ears off, that could drive someone insane.
"Do you see now?" she hissed. "Do you see what you did to me?"
Chloe tried to answer, but she couldn't. Her lungs were filling up with water. She tried to draw a breath, but it was no use. She coughed and choked, clawing at her throat so hard that she drew blood and her fingernails cracked. She started to feel that horrible panic that only comes when you can't breath. But she didn't even fight as hard as she could've. This is what I did to Alice, she thought. I deserve it. And she knew it was true.
As soon as she thought this, she felt the water vanish. She could breath again. She sucked in breath greedily in huge gasps. Then she remembered Alice.
Alice was still staring at her, but the hatred had gone out of her eyes. Her shoulders drooped. She just looked sad now. "I just wanted you to see," she said sadly. "I just wanted you to understand." And with that, she vanished.
Sometime later, all the rest of the people in the hotel reappeared. Apparently they had been held frozen in time, suspended in limbo for a few hours, and hadn't even noticed. Hours later, they found Chloe curled up into a ball in the corner of the supply closet, wedged between a mop and a stack of sponges. She was still crying. She didn't explain why. She couldn't. Nobody would understand. It was a horrible parody of what she had gone through seven years ago when her dad died, and again when she killed Alice. Nobody would ever get what she was feeling.
She didn't know how she could live her everyday life now. Go to college, pretend like nothing was wrong when everything was. But she hadn't known what to do back then either. She thought that she could never keep going with her life. But she did. Now, She would just have to do what she had always had. She would just keep going through her life, and eventually everything would maybe start to get a little better. It had to, because there was just nothing else left for her to do otherwise.