Pretty Faces and Dark Places

by Rose B Mashal

  I tried with all of my might to open my eyes. A very thin line of light told me that I was succeeding, and with more trying I would be able to open them fully and look at my surroundings. And that was exactly what happened. And I wished it hadn’t.

  I found myself in my bed like Andrew told me, but my white sheets had turned to take on the color of my blood – red. It took me just a few moments to realize that I was drowning in my own blood. No idea where exactly the blood was coming from or where I was wounded, but I was bleeding heavily and I knew that there was no way I was going to make it out of this.

  By then, my breaths were nothing but short gasps and frightened pants. I searched for Andrew, thinking that maybe he could save me, get me help or just do anything to make it stop, but when my eyes found his, I screamed and cried out loud until my voice was lost.

  When I thought there was no way out for me and that was the end, I finally got my respite when Nana woke me up… I’d overslept until noon.

  Every night I would dream of him, telling me something new, something creepy, scary and frightening. And just like when I’d met him, I still felt the pull. I knew I was being stupid, and many times I questioned how I’d let him touch me that way that night, but I still couldn’t resist feeling the need to be close to him again. I thought about him a lot, more than I’d care to admit, and my feelings for him were overshadowed only by my longing to see Sophie again, or at least hear from her. But I knew that there was nothing I could do. I couldn’t stop my feelings from growing so crazy in every way possible. It was almost embarrassing.

  One time he promised me ‘Better wings’ and ‘Sharper teeth’ – something strange and crazy – just like everything he ever told me in my dreams of him. He once even told me that ‘I missed the warmth only you could provide me,’ whatever that meant. The only thing he said that I couldn’t stop thinking about was when he said the strangest of things, even stranger than the usual: ‘She can’t wait to see you again,’ he’d said.

  I knew he’d meant Sophie.

  The days that followed were the toughest of all. The questions became bigger, the wondering happened more often, and the theories I kept making up became crazier.

  Those days were the hardest of all because I couldn’t stop questioning my sanity.

  I believed that my dreams – or nightmares, for that matter – meant something. I liked to think that Andrew’s visits had a meaning behind them. Like, he was there to make sure I remembered him. Or to see if I still remembered him. Or maybe he was there to do something to me. Remind me of Sophie, maybe. I just – I didn’t know. But I believed they weren’t just meaningless dreams.

  Those days were the hardest because the doubt I had – the very same doubt that made people think I was completely crazy – grew stronger. And the thought of it being real haunted me. I believed that Sophie was not dead, like everyone else believed and wanted to force me into believing. I believed that Sophie was alive somewhere. I believed she wanted me to be close to her again, just like we’d always been. I believed she needed me.

  I just had no idea how to get to her. How to prove all of the people around me wrong and show them that they’d given up too soon. I had no idea how to get my friend back. Or from where, for that matter.

  I remember once opening her chat box on Facebook, only because I wanted to be near her somehow. I wanted to write to her what I couldn’t tell anyone. I wanted her to listen to me as if she was really there and would somehow receive it. Her last message to me was two days before Halloween: ‘I love you, crazy bitch. xox,’ she’d typed. It made me choke up, sob, and weep until I couldn’t cry anymore. Still, I opened it a few more times, and one time I could swear I saw ‘Sophia is typing …’ at the end of the chat box. And as crazy as it sounds, I did wait for the message to come up. It never did.

  On top of everything else, I was actually ashamed of myself. Ashamed that I was thinking of him almost as much as I was thinking of her. It was unfair. I was being unfair. I’d known him for an hour, and I’d known her my entire life. I shouldn’t think about him that much. Heck, I shouldn’t really think of him at all. But I did. I just couldn’t help it.

  Halloween 2014

  A whole year had passed without her. It didn’t feel like a year – more like ten or twenty. Losing Sophie was really painful. It gutted me. Gutted. Me. It hurt so bad, so bad that I could physically feel it deep inside of me and everywhere that could ever hurt, all at once.

  With every passing day I missed her more and more, still. There was nothing in the whole world I wanted to do more than curl into a ball and just cry. But it was like I wasn’t even allowed to do that anymore. People used to look at me with pity in their eyes, but now they were judging. It was like they were telling me – yelling at me – with their eyes and those looks they’d give me to just snap out of it already. As if that was something I could do. As if there was a button I could press and everything would be okay. I even wished there was something like that.

  I just wanted my friend back. Or an answer.

  Around eight in the morning, I went downstairs and walked into the kitchen. It felt like only yesterday that Sophie had joined me there at the kitchen table, scolding me for trying to remind my granny that she didn’t like pancakes.

  I wiped a lonely tear away from my cheek and reached for the cereal in the kitchen cabinet, then for the milk from the fridge – another silly attempt like so many other silly things I did just to feel closer to Sophie, now by eating the food she liked to have for breakfast.

  As I was eating my breakfast, which I couldn’t even taste, something on the milk carton grabbed my attention and I had to stop mid-chew. It wasn’t Sophie’s photo this time – hers had been removed long ago when her family decided that enough time had passed searching for her and that there was no hope. This one was a photo of a face I knew so well. I knew him. I’d talked to him. I’d shaken his hand and felt its coldness. I knew him. And I also knew that I’d seen this very photo long before last year’s Halloween.

  Matthew Harrison.

  A loud gasp left my mouth when my doubt was confirmed by the first name underneath the photo.

  “You look oddly familiar.”

  “I hear that a lot,” he said. “Actually, my eyes are not my own; I borrowed them and I need to give them back before sunlight.”

  I covered my mouth with my hands – how could it be? How could it be him? What did it even mean? He’d asked me if it was my first time at that party. He’d told me it was his third time there. Did that mean that … God! Oh, God!

  The thoughts in my head were enough to make my head dizzy. Matthew has been missing for longer than a year, but he’d seemed okay when I saw him. Meaning, he hadn’t been kidnapped or anything like that, so why wasn’t he home? He couldn’t be just a runaway boy; he was still in town, and if he was, why would he stay here? Why did his family have his photo put on milk cartons all the time? If they loved him so much, why couldn’t he love them back? Because if he loved them just as much, he would’ve at least told them he was alive … Or maybe he wasn’t?

  I was going insane!

  Without a second thought, I grabbed the keys that were on the small table in the foyer and hopped into my grandmother’s car, going to where I’d always wanted to go but never had the heart to. I drove myself to the woods.

  Hours passed without finding the right way; it was as if the police officers were right, that the road I was talking about simply didn’t exist. Still, I kept searching, driving all around the forest, wherever the car would fit, leaving with empty hands each time I circled it.

  I felt as if there were eyes on me, watching me closely, my every move, even while still in the car. It was creepy and I got that tingling feeling in my fingertips and my toes which I hated with everything in me.

  I shrugged those thoughts away. They were not helping, only holding me back and scaring me, and it was something I seriously didn’t want today. I wanted answers, and I was determined that I’d get them
.

  After a long, powerful fight with myself, I hopped out of the car and decided to walk, hoping that my legs would have a better memory than my mind and would lead me to the right path on their own.

  It was still daylight, and I could see clearly, but the quietness was enough to send chills all over my body and cause my stomach to turn and twist into knots. I walked, walked, walked. Came up with nothing. Everything looked the same; everywhere I looked there were trees, leaves, and dried grass. Nothing looked familiar enough. Nothing gave me a clue of where to go to even find the cottage. Nothing.

  Tears started to stream down my face and I started dry heaving when I noticed that the darkness had started to take over. I was in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t even know how to get back to my car; I’d never kept track of where I was walking. I was just searching, looking for something, anything to get me an answer as to where Sophie was or what had happened to her. I also wanted to find him. I couldn’t help the need to find him. I didn’t have my cellphone or anything to tell anyone where I was or even to find my way through the darkness.

  I hugged my arms to myself and kept turning in circles, not knowing what to do. I felt numbness in my legs and a heaviness in my body that made it so hard to walk, it was almost impossible. My legs were simply glued to the ground beneath me.

  Minutes or hours passed, I don’t even know how long I stayed there in that state – breathing hard, scared, cold and plain terrified. It could’ve been only seconds, until I felt a small earthquake that was strong enough to make me drop to my knees, but thankfully didn’t cause any trees to fall.

  Suddenly, and out of thin air, once the earthquake passed, I saw light. A familiar campfire, far, far away from where I was kneeling. It gave me the power to get up and the undeniable need to run.

  My legs were still too heavy; they felt as if they weren’t my own. I struggled with every step. I hadn’t gone very far when I tripped and fell, cursing, with more tears escaping my eyes. I searched with my eyes around me to see what I’d tripped on, and when I looked closely at it, all of the blood left my face, and all of my breaths caught in my throat.

  A headstone.

  I stood up, frightened and terrified, gasping when I found myself in a graveyard, with headstones all over the dark place, filling the ground. I had no idea that there was anything like that out here. I’d never heard about it, and I didn’t know why no one had ever mentioned it before.

  The fact that I was standing in a graveyard in the darkness creeped me out to no end. I was breathing really hard and unevenly; heck, I was truly surprised that I was breathing at all. I wanted to walk away from them, but my legs just wouldn’t obey. An eerie fog started covering the ground, scaring me even more. It grew bigger and heavier with every passing moment until it was so thick that I couldn’t see my own hand in front of my face. For the second time in just a short while, my legs felt so heavy, even heavier than before, that I couldn’t move them at all this time, no matter how hard I tried. All I could do was look around like a crazy person and free more tears than I’d known could ever be shed, gasping scared breaths and sobbing frightened cries.

  A loud scream escaped my lips when my eyes found a headstone that read ‘Andrew Damon.’ Beside it there was another headstone that read ‘William Damon.’ and next to them was ‘Kathrin Damon.’

  It couldn’t be!

  God! God! God!

  My eyes widened as I saw headstones that stated years and years of death dates, knowing that those very people were ones that I’d talked to just last year. Dear God! One of them I’d slept with, not just talked to! How could he be dead for over twenty-five years, then?

  Another scream flew from my mouth when I heard, “Welcome back, Soulmate!” by the voice that had haunted me for the last year. Awake and asleep I was hearing it. I’d loved and hated it all the same. Loved the feel it gave me whenever I heard it, and hated the sensation that consumed me when it spoke my name or referred to me with those nice words of his.

  It was only a second after Andrew made his presence known that I heard another voice, the one I’d longed to hear the most, “May!”

  My mind couldn’t take it anymore, it simply shut down. I couldn’t take it, couldn’t stand it, couldn’t bear it. Too confused. Too scared and just utterly and completely lost.

  Everything turned to black right then and there.

  The sounds of screams surrounded me; they were seriously loud and spoke of agony. It took me a few moments to realize that those screams were coming out of my own mouth.

  Agony was such a small word to explain what I was feeling, because what I was feeling was beyond that – it was indescribable.

  I felt as if I was being pulled down, as if something or someone was pulling me by my feet. I felt as if I was sinking, drowning. But there wasn’t a drop of water around me. Every time I managed to force my eyelids to open I would see dirt and rocks. All around me was dark, and I could only smell that rich smell of mud and overly wet grass.

  I didn’t like the smell in the slightest, but it was my tiniest concern. The feeling I had all over my skin made it too difficult for me to be able to think of anything but that horrible sensation. It felt like I was being rubbed with sandpaper; no spot on my skin went untouched. Every piece of my body was being scratched as I was being pulled down. And my screams only grew louder as the pain grew greater.

  If that was how it felt to be swallowed by the ground, then I didn’t really want to know.

  After what felt like ages, I felt as if my legs, starting with my feet, were being freed from all of the sandpaper-grinding. Soon I felt the same thing on my waist, then my stomach and chest, ending with my head. And once I was completely freed, I found myself falling from a high spot toward the ground, my hands in front of me doing nothing to ease the fall. I was pretty sure I’d broken some bones, and the bloodcurdling scream that I let out once the side of my head hit the ground was enough to make anyone around me realize how painful it really was.

  I don’t think it was more than a minute later when I felt hands – many hands – carrying me and then placing my feet on the ground to put me in a standing position. My body was very weak and my eyelids were almost too heavy to open. Everything I could see was nothing but blurs of people, arms and legs and ... feathers?

  I felt the hands tying my own to what I realized to be a cross, and at the same time I felt other hands tying my feet together and then tying them to the south part of the cross.

  “No, no!” I screamed. “Please, no! Let go, let me go!”

  My screams and begs for whoever was there to hear me didn’t do anything to help me. It was only when I felt the heavy and cold chains being tied and secured over my stomach that I realized I was completely naked.

  My throat felt as if it was burning from the inside out, just like the rest of my body. My nudeness in front of too many strangers to even count or see brought tears to my eyes. My tears stung and hurt, but the feel of them over the wounds on my cheeks and chin was strangely welcomed, because it eased the pain I was feeling in them just a bit.

  The fear of being raped consumed my every sense. I had no idea what they were going to do to me, had no idea why they were tying me up this way, had no idea if they were some psychos that would get off on seeing me being tortured to death, or what.

  And in that moment, death didn’t sound like a very bad thought. I found myself wishing for it to come and hug me so I would feel no more pain.

  I felt a hand on my cheek, so tender and gentle that I think my head leaned a bit into it. The hand wiped away my tears ever so softly, and then I heard it, a whisper that was even tenderer than butterfly wings, “Hush now, Beautiful Angel.”

  A soft gasp left my mouth. “Andrew?” I asked, eyes still too heavy to fully open, head still pounding too hard to be able to move it, and voice is almost too low to be heard.

  “Yes, Angel, it’s me,” I could hear the smile in his voice.

  “Andrew, please help me,” I begged.
The questions I had about him and about what had brought me here, or all of the things I’d wondered about for the past year, were completely forgotten. All I could think of now was for him to just get me out of there and back to the comfort of my house.

  “I am helping you, Love,” he said, to which I frowned. He couldn’t be serious. I was in so much pain, I was tied up, I couldn’t move, I was naked and I was bleeding from all over my body – how could he say that he was helping? “It’ll end soon.”

  “Andrew, please, please!” I cried and pulled at my restraints. All of my attempts to free them were fruitless, only managing to make my body heavier and the wounds all over my skin to sting badly.

  More tears came out of my eyes and more screams and begs came out of my mouth as I felt Andrew no longer beside me. The thought that maybe he could be the one who’d brought me here and was the reason why I was facing all of this made my stomach twist and turn.

  It felt as if hours and hours passed as I stayed in this position. I was no longer screaming, no longer asking for help, no longer struggling against my restraints, but I couldn’t stop crying.

  My vision become a bit better as the time passed, still slightly blurry, but I could see things more clearly than before. It felt like there was a thick fog of smoke all around the large room, a room that was completely empty aside from the chairs that surrounded the wide space in the middle of the room where the cross I was tied to was. It brought the full attention to it by being centered this way.

  Where I am? What’s going to happen to me? The questions kept roaming in my head.

  A while later, a great door opened right in front of me, and then I saw people entering the room, many people. All of their eyes were on me as they took a seat here and there on the chairs that were placed around the room.

  I was completely humiliated and terrified, feeling like this was some kind of a live show for them just by the look in their eyes and smiles on their faces. I even thought it wouldn’t be a shocker if they started passing around popcorn.