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  • Alice J. Black

FACING THE TORMENT Release Week: The Darkness Within


Today we’re going back to revisit an old friend. Adele is one of the people who has been in Peyton’s

life for a long time, alongside Olivia. She’s strong and steadfast and even when things got tough in The Darkness Within, she stuck around.

We’re taking a look back at everything Adele experienced in

her home when Peyton entered for the first time and woke the darkness that lay within, and her

friendship with Peyton.

Pick up your copy here.

Curling her legs beneath her on the sofa, Adele relaxed with a coffee in hand. She glanced around

the room. The white furniture in her living room glistened, both asserting her personality and driving

the darkness away. She smiled. It wasn’t so long ago when things had been different. Sometimes it

seemed like a million miles away but Adele knew better than most that it just took one mistake, one

moment of weakness, for it all to come tumbling down.

Not so long ago, on a binge drinking session with some old acquaintances, she had opened up a

Ouija board and something has crossed into their realm. At the time she hadn’t felt it, hadn’t noticed

because she was too drunk. It wasn’t until she was sober and Peyton came for tea, that things

started getting bad. It was like Peyton had been a magnet to the thing, drawing it out of the

darkness where it had lain dormant. The whole house was turned upside down as the demon

wreaked havoc and she had to run from the house with the boys. Adele knew she would never

forget that night. It was as ingrained in her memory as the day she got her first token at AA. But

Peyton had done her thing, used the help of Sylvia, and together they got rid of it. Things had been

peaceful ever since.

Shaking her head, she took a sip of her coffee, the cream sweet.

That night, and the subsequent Ouija board session to end it all, was the point where she’d seen

Peyton come into her own. She was struggling with her sobriety, fighting to stay strong against all of

her urges, when she was thrust right into the centre of the whole thing. Or rather, started it all.

Peyton ran at first. She was terrified, scared of her own shadow and refusing to come to terms with

what had happened. But she came through. She picked herself up and, for Adele, had done what

needed to be done.

A smile lilted on Adele’s lips. That was the moment, when Peyton and Olivia were in her home,

tidying, cleaning and cleansing, that she saw a change in Peyton. The girl had gone from timid and

unsure to confident and sure of herself and what she was doing. She was willing to do anything it

took to help Adele.

Sometimes they went for weeks without seeing each other, but Adele knew that Peyton was always

there and would never forget their friendship. The AA meetings they attended together were the

glue that solidified the beginning of their friendship but like it or not, Peyton was stuck with her now.


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