But nothing ever answered back.
The rage subsided again and I watched my imagination fall to her knees. She looked so fragile and human, so broken and alone. But she wasn’t fragile or human anymore. She was dead.
* * *
Dreams had happened in the blackness. Once or twice I’d seen myself somewhere else, only to wake in the nothing again. As I wandered forward, of full body, I knew this was just another dream.
Blue plumes of smoke colored the emptiness around me, rising up to grip my ankles and hips like creeping fingers. The message I’d been trying to get to my fiancé was still trembling on my lips, stuck, like a ghost that couldn’t cross over.
“Mike?” I said weakly into the darkness. “Mike, please listen.”
With each step I took, I could feel the tickly tips of the grass between my toes. I walked through the smoke, reaching out to touch anything at my fingertips. I’d take a tree in the head right now, just to feel.
When the sound of soft, ragged breaths came from somewhere ahead, I looked deeper into the darkness, past the blur, past the shadows.
Then, I saw him.
“Mike?”
He didn’t look up. As he became completely visible for the first time, so too did the world around him, but not me. Storm clouds overhead raged and swirled, lapping the horizon with the promise of a wild night. But my hair, my dress, and my existence stayed frozen in time.
Mike stood hunched and shaking, one hand spread out on something stone, while his lungs fought to find the breath that would make it all okay.
“Ara, baby. I’m so unimaginably sorry. I should’ve protected you. I should’ve been there to stop him from hurting you.”
I watched on, my lip trembling, tears edging tightly on the brink of hysterics.
“You would have called for me,” he said. “Every time he touched you, you would have looked for me, waiting for me to save you. And I let you down.”
Mike lost his words to grief then, sobbing heavily into his fingertips. When he finally composed himself, he reached into his pocket and drew out a closed fist. My thumb landed on my ring finger when the gentle tink of glass drew my eyes to what he placed atop the stone.
“This is where it belongs now,” he said and backed away, wiping a weary hand across his lips. As his shadow receded, allowing light against the words on the headstone, the core of my being imploded:
‘Ara-Rose: Loved Eternally.’
All life drew from my soul, like my existence happened in reverse for that split second, and the remains of the ring I once wore for love bled out over the stone, weeping crimson tears across my name.
I stumbled on my heels, reaching for something to ground me, but the dream slipped away, becoming smaller until the blackness swallowed it whole.
He was gone, but I knew he still existed out there, somewhere I could never go, just like everything I loved: lost in a world I would not see again; their smiles, their voices, their warm arms. All gone. They would grow old and pass, time would pass, and I would remain here.
Ghosts were supposed to watch, to see who was at their funeral, who mourned them. I was supposed to see David again, to know if he came to my grave. I was supposed to sit beside him, comfort him, though he’d never know I was there. Everything just turned out so wrong. How had it all gone so wrong?
The imaginary me appeared in full light again: a soft, golden glow in the darkness, her pale dress billowing like the fingers of a ghost. She was the storybook version I thought death would be. But I was the reality, sitting across from her. An empty vessel—dark, invisible, tortured. There were no happy reunions in the afterlife, no peace and, from what I could tell, no God, either. I had called to Him; called to everyone I could think of, even called to Rochelle. But she wasn’t here. God wasn’t. Buddha. Anyone. Just me. And my regrets.
“And me,” said my imagination.
I wanted to shake my head. She wasn’t there either. I wasn’t sure there was even a mind. I knew only an eternity of nothing; my punishment, I guess, for condemning David’s heart to the same.
It was the little things I missed the most, like a smile or color or twisting my ring around on my finger—my ruby rose. Mike would be so sad that I couldn’t wear it now. And I once thought David would be so sad that I did. But I guess time changes our assumptions. Or our hearts.
“I wonder what he’ll do—David—when Jason shows him the memory of what he did to us,” the imagination said.
We didn’t need to wonder, though. “David will hate me for letting Jason hold me the way he did in the tree.”
That was supposed to be David’s right.
He told me once, so long ago, that the touch of human skin to a vampire was like a thousand kisses of ecstasy; like satiating an eternal hunger with the warmth of one breath. He’d never forgive me for giving that to his brother.
I wished I could go back and tell him I was sorry. Tell him I should have chosen immortality.
“Maybe it was never an option,” the apparition said.
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t you remember?” She smiled wickedly. “He told you that vampires leave and move on without saying goodbye—without telling people why.”
I nodded. “Yes, because it raises more suspicions when questions are asked. They simply send a letter resigning from jobs or schools, and they’re never seen again.” As I finished the sentence, realization struck me worse than shock. “Is that what he did to me? Did he leave me, and I never saw it coming? Did he convince me that he’d come back so that I wouldn’t try to find him?”
“I think you already know the answer to that question, Ara.”
“No. That can’t be right.”
“But it is right. David didn’t come to the ball because David never was coming.”
The remains of my existence suddenly gave up in that one moment.
“Then he really is just as heinous as the man in the memory Jason showed me.”
“Yes,” the apparition snickered, “and you were just another victim of his cruelty.”
34
An alarm clock set my mind on wake, its incessant bleeping stirring me before I was ready. But the sun, usually always up at this hour, was missing. I blinked a few times, thinking maybe my eyes were still closed, and as my breath came back hot against my own lips from a flat surface right above me, dread caved my chest.
My world sunk backward as I placed my hands in desperate layers over the sides, the top, the base of this space I was laying, folding my toes down and pushing against the hard surface there, making my head hit the firm one above it.
“Hello,” I called, but my voice came back dead, absorbed by the wood it fell against. And the tiny box got hotter and smaller around me, my shoulders folding in, narrowing my lungs.
They thought I was dead!
I felt my heart, placed my hand right over it to see if it was beating, but I couldn’t feel it; couldn’t feel the wound on my neck or my wrist or anywhere. They’d healed. They were healed and I was in a box.
Panic filled me up before a chain of fierce screams burst suddenly from my lips, blocked only by the forcing drive of each blow of my elbow, my knee, my foot being cast down on the solid surrounds.
“Please don’t leave me here!” I scratched the wooden roof, my fingers splintering. But I didn’t care. “Please. Please, God. Please!”
A violent cough left my lungs in a vulgar bark, fine particles of earthy powder spiking the back of my throat. The box compressed my shoulders on both sides, stopping my lungs from expanding, denying me the breath of relief I fought for.
I stopped moving then. Stopped kicking, breathing, everything, and laid perfectly still, listening to the flow of dirt rain down in a heavy pile over my ponytail, cooling my head through the strands of hair.
The first rule in this situation would be to not panic. But my chest moved in quick hitches. My fingers balled up so tight my thumb cut my hand, I was sure, and I couldn’t stop the thoughts enter
ing my mind, things David told me: vampires, buried alive for seven days. They survived. They lived through that, tortured, alone, unable to breathe.
“David!” I bent my knee to the highest angle it could achieve and jammed my foot against the floor, pushing on the lid of this coffin, thrashing about like a beetle caught on its back. “Ahh!”
“Ara,” a muffled voice came gloriously through the wood then, thick with grief.
“I’m in here!” I screamed. “Mike. Get me out. I’m in here.” I banged on the roof, making the dirt pile grow. But I didn’t care. Mike was there. He’d get me out. He’d—
“Just squeeze my hand,” he said, cutting off my thought. “Please. Just once. That’s all I need.”
“Mike. I can’t,” I screamed. “I can’t get out. I’m in a box.”
I waited, listening, but this container seemed to be soundproofed, from the inside. I tried to sit up, to move, to struggle against the pine confines, but the dirt formed a mound under my head as I lifted it, pushing my nose closer to the lid and arching my neck at an awkward, unnatural angle. And panic returned with a layer of sweat, turning the dirt to mud around my temples and nose.
“Oh God.” I looked up, shutting my eyes tight. “Please. Please get me out of here.”
“No change?”
My thoughts halted at the sound of another voice.
“Hello?” I called.
“No. Doc says her heart’s not coping,” Mike said.
“Time will tell.” The other voice sounded void of all emotion.
“Where are you going?” Mike’s tone peaked with incredulity.
“She needs rest, and my being here is…” There was a long pause. “Pointless.”
Only a sigh followed that, leaving me by myself again, confined in a space made for those not living.
I shut my eyes tight and took slow, deep breaths through my mouth, tasting the raw, almost freshly cut pine against my lips. I tried to imagine pretty things—butterflies, the sun—not the crawly and possibly un-dead creatures that might be buried beneath me. I’d run out of air soon if I didn’t calm down.
And strangely, as my belly lifted and fell with each breath, the air trembling out of my tight lungs, so too did the panic.
I looked around the dark box for what felt like the first time, and instead of pitch black staring back at me, I could make out the ridges in the panels and the oddly-angled nail sticking out beside my eyebrow.
They’d put me in a box—not a coffin—just a pine box; laid me down, closed me in and nailed it shut.
But I would find a way out of here. Come Hell or high water. This would not be my death, and if it was already my death, I’d be damned if I’d let it be my eternity.
* * *
“How is she?” The voice echoed through my endless night, resonating from somewhere behind me.
My eyes shot open and a cool and airy space greeted me. I brushed my arms, feeling as though there’d be dirt there. But I was clean. I couldn’t remember where I’d been or why I thought I’d be so dirty, but I felt dirty, and starved for air.
“No change,” said a woman suddenly.
“Pardon?” I said, looking up, searching the empty room for a crack of light to mark my position.
“Can she hear us?” a man said.
“Who?” I asked.
“Her monitor changes when I speak. See?” he said, and I got the sense then that they weren’t talking to me.
“It’s just static.” As soon as that man spoke, I knew it was Mike. The other one sounded almost too smooth to be Mike—liquid, if that was the right word.
“It’s not static. Look, she can hear me.”
“You wish.”
“Mike,” the woman whispered. “Be nice.”
“Fine,” Mike said in a tone that indicated a set of folded arms to go with it. “From what I know, the doc says she can.”
“Ara? My love.” Mr. Smooth sounded closer than before. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “Please? Please come back to me?”
“Excuse me. Are… I’m sorry, are you talking to me?” I called.
He didn’t answer.
I blinked a few times, noticing only as I looked down at my feet that my feet weren’t actually there. I held my arm out and ran my fingers over it, feeling the soft skin, but couldn’t see it. There was nothing there to identify me: no nails, no skin color, no age spots or bracelets. Not even a bed or a surface to show what kind of room this was. Maybe it was a prison, a hospital, a bedroom, a padded cell, perhaps even a ballroom with no people. Could even be the White House for all I knew. But that word “Ara” rang a bell somehow.
I dropped my arms to my sides, quickly yanking my hand back when it touched something cold. It stung, like dry ice, sticking to me even as I shook my fingers.
“Did you see that?” the stranger said. “I think… I think she just squeezed my hand!”
“It was probably just a flinch. She does that from time to time.” I heard the silky pages of a magazine turn.
“Maybe,” the smooth voice said, dejected. “It just seemed almost like… My hands are cold. Do you think she…?”
“She what? Knows you’re here? Hates you?” The pages flicked again, and it sounded as though a metal-legged chair scraped along vinyl. “Chances are, she’s shaking you off. Maybe you should stop touching her.”
I frowned, looking down at where my fingers were supposed to be. And like a puppet master, I focused on them, closed them tightly and squeezed the nothing, letting go when that voice laughed.
“She did! She squeezed my hand. Look!”
“What do you mean she squeezed your hand?” Mike’s voice came from closer than before and, though it was still dark, I felt gravity around me, felt him near me.
The echoing mist of eternity flowed out through the cracks in my subconscious then, leaving me solid, heavy. Really heavy. I didn’t remember being this heavy. I didn’t remember having laid down on my back, but when I tried to get up, my chest stayed stuck, glued to my spine against this flat surface.
“Ara.” The smooth stranger interrupted my moment of confusion.
“What is it?” I called, irritated.
“Ara,” he said again, as if I hadn’t answered him.
And now I was getting cranky. It had been God knows how long since I’d eaten, felt the sun, slept, or even seen my own toes, and now this person was talking at me and not answering. I just wanted to get out of here—wherever here was. I just wanted to go home to Mike and lay in his arms. I was tired of the dark, of the black. I couldn’t even remember where I’d been all this time or even why Mike was important to me.
“She’s not in there, man,” Mike said. “And if she was, she’s not gonna come to the surface for you.”
“Oh, I see, so you think she’ll wake suddenly to your soft whispering confessions of love, do you?” Mr. Smooth said sarcastically. “Do you have any idea what she and I—”
“Stop it. Both of you,” a woman said. “It’s three o’clock. Take yourselves home and get some sleep.”
“Fine,” Mike said.
“Fine,” the other man said, and I heard his breath, felt it suddenly close to my face, though there was no one in this room. I held my own breath, scrunching my eyes. “Ara?”
But before I had a chance to answer him again, the surface quaked suddenly under me, my legs tilting through the earth and angling my entire body away from existence. I reached out, grabbing at imaginary branches as my head followed my feet, sliding downward.
There was no wind and no trees for which to show my descent, but I felt it—felt the earth rising up under me. I tensed all over, ready to hit the surface, but nothing came. There was only the emptiness of my eternal, hollow Hell.
I didn’t bother to cry this time as the darkness swallowed me, and hope had been lost so long ago that I’d never truly allowed it back in. I simply existed. In the dark. Alone. My body alive out there somewhere, an empty vessel in their living world, while my soul was slowly dy
ing beneath it.
* * *
“I don’t know. She’s struggling to breathe.”
I frowned, clearly having woken to the middle of a conversation.
“I know,” Mike said. “They’re gonna put her on a breathing machine.”
The smooth voice sighed. “I don’t want that for her—she’s been through enough.”
“I know, mate, but it’s for the best.” Mike’s warm energy emanated from his voice somewhere near. I wished I could feel him, like, actually touch him. “I can’t lose her. I’d rather see her with a tube down her throat than in a coffin.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little selfish: prolonging her life merely to save your own grief?”
“Only as selfish as to wish she’d die so you don’t have to wonder where she is, what she’s doing, for the rest of your life,” Mike spat.
“You know nothing about what I wish for this girl.” His smooth voice cracked like a volcano erupting. I could hear the rumble of anger raging too close to the threshold of release. “If I could heal her, I would, but you don’t know what she may be suffering in this sleep, Mike. For all we know she’s—”
“She’s unconscious. She suffers nothing.”
All was silent until the smooth voice said flatly, “You don’t know that.”
“Look,” Mike said. I could imagine him rubbing his face roughly in the pause that followed. “We’re getting off track. Right now, what’s best for her is—”
“For us to let her go. Stop sticking needles and tubes in her, trying to make her body live a little longer. She’s gone.” I felt something touch my head. “Her body is the only thing left of her.”
“She might still recover,” Mike offered.
“Recover?” his voice pitched high. “Look at her—does she look like she’s going to recover?”
“Stop yelling.” Mike’s tone of reason made my heart soar with desire to be on the receiving end of one of his lectures. “If they hear you, they’ll make you leave. One at a time in here, remember?”
Dark Secrets Box Set Page 63