“When? How? I don’t understand.”
I pulled away from his grasp and went back into the kitchen to stand by the open door. The stench was worse by Rebecca’s bedroom, and if I didn’t get some air, I’d throw up.
When my torchlight fell onto the kitchen table, I spied my letter to Rebecca exactly where I’d left it, unopened and propped up against the mostly empty bottle of wine. The blood iced in my veins as I grabbed the letter and turned it over in my hands. The envelope was still sealed.
“She didn’t read my letter,” I muttered as Nate surveyed the mess on the kitchen table. All the plates from our last meal together were still there, moldy from the remnants of food we hadn’t managed to finish.
“Rebecca was alive when you left her?” he asked me, picking up the wine bottle and sniffing the neck.
“Yes. I checked on her before I left. She was asleep. I think.” The stink of decomposing flesh and putrid food began to make me feel lightheaded. “I…I don’t know.”
He took the wine bottle over to the kitchen counter and poured the dregs into a glass tumbler. For a second, I thought he was going to drink it, but instead, he held it up to his torch and swilled the red liquid around, peering closely at it. I moved to his side, watching a strange, powdery film form on the surface of the wine.
“What is it?”
He frowned and dropped the glass into the sink. His eyes darted around the kitchen until he spied the bin. He stood on the pedal to open the lid and then used a wooden ladle to turn the contents over. Suddenly, he stopped and reached his hand inside, pulling out a small box.
“Diazepam,” he muttered.
My Aunt’s pills.
He ripped open the box and slid out the foil blister packets, which contained the pills. Each one of the packets were empty.
He looked at me, his eyes full of sadness and pity. “I think Rebecca overdosed, Halley. She crushed up the pills and put them in her drink.”
“But why would she do that? Why put them in the wine? I drank it too, Nate.”
He blinked. “That many pills…you’d have been able to taste it,” he replied and then looked at all the pots and pans on the countertop. “Who cooked dinner?”
There was that horrid sinking feeling again. “She did.”
He picked up one of the saucepans and ran his finger over the lip finding a small trace of the white powder.
My jaw clenched involuntarily as grief turned to anger. “She put it in the food.”
Unable to stomach being inside the cottage anymore, I ran outside and vomited violently onto the pathway. Nate was behind me in seconds, arms around me and holding my head against his chest as I sank to my knees.
“I would know, wouldn’t I?” I whispered. “I would know if I’d died?”
But Nate hadn’t known. He’d simply taken the pills and fallen asleep, waking up none the wiser.
I thought back to the last night that I’d spent here. It’d been fine, hadn’t it? No obvious indication that she intended to kill us both with a fatal overdose. Had I remembered it wrong?
Suddenly, as I searched my mind for answers, a floodgate opened, and the truth came pouring in.
“You can still come with me,” I’d said as Rebecca had served up a spicy carrot and coriander soup. Too much chilli powder. Spiced up to conceal the bitter taste of Diazepam.
She had poured herself a large glass of red wine and then filled my glass to the brim.
“No,” she’d said. “I’ll wait here and keep everything going, like you always did for me when I had to go away.”
Halfway through the main course, I’d begun to feel tired. Really tired. But it’d been a long, exhausting day, checking I’d packed everything and then re-packing. I’d also deep cleaned the chicken pen so that Rebecca wouldn’t have to do it for a while.
I’d declined a second glass of wine when she tried to fill my glass again. “Oh, just one more.”
Dessert had been steamed fruit and sweet honey. Sickly sweet.
“Get an early night,” she’d said. Then, we’d hugged. “I love you, Halley. I wish you didn’t have to go.” She’d kissed my cheek, and I remembered feeling something wet against my skin. When I’d looked back at her, there’d been tears in the corners of her eyes.
Once in my bedroom, I’d practically fallen onto my bed, just managing to set the alarm clock before my eyes grew so heavy I couldn’t keep them open any longer.
For a long time, I remembered there being nothing but darkness and the faintest of whisperings in my head.
Until the dream came.
****
Before…
I am in a barren desert. I am alone, surrounded by mountains of reddish-brown, their peaks covered by gray ash. I walk forward because there is nowhere else to go, pressing on for what seems like hours until eventually, I reach the base of one of the mountains. There is a lake here, spanning as far as the eye can see and, in the middle of it, is a wooden structure.
A cabin.
The water of the lake is black and reflects nothing but the miserable gray sky. I look around for a way across, but there isn’t one. My only option is to swim.
The deep, dark water terrifies me, but I wade in until the black oily liquid reaches my waist. The water is warm and feels like treacle against my skin, which makes it hard to swim in, but I force my body through the water, and just as I think my arms and legs are about to seize, my feet find something hard to stand on.
There are wooden steps beneath the lake, and I clamber up each one until I am out of the water and standing on the wooden veranda that encircles the cabin.
Exhausted and breathing hard, I walk slowly to the front door. It is open, although I cannot see what’s inside because the doorway is blocked by something dark, shimmering and rippling like a rectangle of upright water. I linger there frustrated, until I pluck up the courage to plunge my hand into the rippling pool and then propel the rest of my body through after it.
The world inside the cabin is very different; it is warm and cozy, lit by the glow of a dozen candles. A man sits on the floor with his back to me, holding a small child, maybe a year old, on his knee. He is reading ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’ to her.
The child looks up at me with the most beautiful blue-gray eyes I’ve ever seen, even though they’re ringed with the red of the virus. The man gently slides the child off his knee and onto the carpet before getting to his feet. He turns around and smiles at me.
“She has your eyes,” he says.
He has beautiful eyes too, dark and a little sad, but also full of love.
“Where am I?” I ask.
“Home,” he replies.
He steps forward and kisses me. I should pull away from this strange man, but I don’t. When his lips finally leave mine, he smiles again and gestures to the child on the floor.
“See, she’s perfect. She’s safe from the virus. All the children will be safe. I need you to remember that, Halley. It’s important. Tell the others.”
I shake my head, confused. “There are no others.”
“You don’t believe that. That’s why you came here,” he replies.
“Who are you?”
The man grins. “I’m someone you trust.”
I laugh in disbelief. “I don’t trust anyone!”
“You trust me,” he says.
“I don’t know you!”
The man leans forward and kisses me again. I don’t resist this time either.
“You will. You just have to find me. Find us.”
I blink, and he is gone.
Everything is gone.
I am standing back where I started, all alone again.
“No,” I shout, spinning around, my eyes searching the horizon in the hope that I’ll find the cabin again.
But it isn’t there.
I scream.
****
Now…
The cottage burned like old, dry newspaper. Once the flames began to lick the roof, the that
ch caught quickly, sending thick black smoke up into the night air. When the heat of the fire on my cheeks grew too hot to bear, I climbed into the truck and continued to watch the destruction from the comfort of the passenger seat.
In the footwell was my mother’s copy of Wuthering Heights and Lizzie’s letters. They were the only things I’d taken from the cottage before asking Nate to burn it to the ground.
As he slid into the driver’s seat, I shuffled over a little to lay my head on his shoulder. We hadn’t said a word to each other in over an hour—neither of us knew what to say. No words of comfort could quell the swirling storm of anger and guilt and grief within me.
Finally, though, when the cottage was almost nothing but a mass of shrinking bonfires, I cleared my throat and spoke.
“Why would she do this? Do you think it was my fault for wanting to leave?”
Nate stroked my hair and sighed. “No. This isn’t your fault. I can only make a guess as to why she did this, given my own struggle with the darkness.”
“And?”
“She went mad, Halley.”
It was almost funny. I tilted my head to look up at him. “You knew, didn’t you?”
He arched an eyebrow. “Knew what?”
“That I was already dead.”
He inhaled deeply and leaned back against the headrest. Truth was, he hadn’t looked remotely surprised by any of this.
“I wasn’t sure,” he said. “I became suspicious when your wound healed so quickly, much faster than that type of injury normally would. But I also thought it might’ve been because I gave you my blood. That it somehow sped up the healing process.”
“I see.”
“Not to mention, the process of death is what fully activates the virus within us. It’s like a reboot. I don’t think conception is possible in an unevolved survivor,” he added.
I managed a smile in order to mock him. “Must be nice to know all the answers.”
He rolled his eyes. “Not even close, Halley. I still don’t know why you were the first to conceive.”
“They chose us,” I said, matter-of-factly.
“Why us? Chosen for what?”
My hand went to my belly, giving it a soft pat. “Chose us to be her parents, Nate. She’s a little different from us, though. I can feel it. Not in a bad way—in a good way. They sent me to you so that we could make her.”
“Did they?”
I nodded. “The night I died was the first time I dreamed of the red desert. I just didn’t remember it until now. It was awful. Horrible. You were there, and then you just disappeared.”
He hugged me a little tighter. “You probably blocked everything out. It was probably too traumatic for you to remember until you came back here, and it triggered the memory.”
I recalled what Lizzie had told me in one of my dreams. “I’m sorry, Halley. It’s going to hurt you, but you really must remember.”
Quite an understatement, in truth.
“What did I do in this dream?” Nate asked.
“You gave me a message and told me not to forget. Which I did, until now. You said the children would be safe from the virus. All the children. Then you told me to find you.”
“So, they pretended to be me to give you this message?”
I bit my lip. “No. It was you.”
Nate closed one eye, skeptically. “I’ll have to give that concept some serious thought.”
“I wouldn’t bother. I’m sure they’ll explain things eventually. Besides, we have more important things to focus on.”
Nate nodded. “So, back to London then?”
I took one last look at the remnants of the cottage. “Not yet.”
Epilogue
I needed to go home.
Although I considered London to be our home now too, Nate’s cabin was more than that. It was our sanctuary and exactly where I wanted to be more than anywhere else right now.
I dozed a little on the way but woke when the truck’s engine coughed to a halt at the top of the steep road that led to ‘Siren Bay.’ We headed down, just as the sun rose amidst a light rain.
The moment I saw the cabin, my heart lifted, and the sound of the sea filled me with a sense of calm I hadn’t felt in a long time.
While Nate quickly went around back to turn the power back on, I waited on the front porch, watching the sky turn from a deep blue, streaked with pink, to a stormy gray. My nose savored the salty air as I closed my eyes and listened to the seagulls squawk, and the gentle tapping of raindrops falling onto the wooden veranda.
When I heard Nate’s footsteps behind me, I opened my eyes again and leaned back against him as his arms went around me.
“How long are we staying?”
I sighed. “Forever?”
Nate chuckled. “Tempting.”
I swiveled around and put my arms around his neck, pulling his head toward me so that I could kiss him. “We’ll stay a few days, then head back to London.”
He nodded and yawned. “Okay. What do you want to do now?”
“Go to bed.”
Nate grinned.
“To sleep,” I added, with a smile.
He feigned disappointment. “And after that?”
“I don’t know, what did you have in mind?” I asked him.
His expression became sheepish. “Monopoly?”
I tutted and rolled my eyes. “Thought you wanted to cheer me up?”
“I’ll let you win again.”
My mouth dropped open. “You did not let me win!”
He laughed. “C’mon Halley, everyone knows you buy Mayfair as soon as you get the chance!”
I shook my head and playfully slapped his arm. “Fine. A rematch it is.”
As the rain began to fall with a greater intensity, a low growl of thunder emanated from a cluster of charcoal-tinted clouds out to sea.
Taking hold of Nate’s hand, I led him into the cabin and closed the door firmly on the oncoming storm.
A word from the author…
My inspiration for this book came from a strange dream I had one night. I put it down to eating too much cheese before bedtime, but the story stayed with me, and so, en-route to a comic-con in Birmingham, I began to write it down. The story isn’t finished yet—although this part of Halley and Nate’s tale is over, there are so many questions that still need answering. All I can say is; stick around, you’re going to love it.
As for the real world, I am a mum residing in the southeast of England. Geek to the core, I am often found at comic-cons dressed as my favorite characters—usually from fantasy or science fiction— while indulging in a bit of celebrity stalking. I also enjoy napping with my dog.
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As the World Falls Down Page 32