Chapter 18
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The day was bright and beautiful.
It was warm for this time of year, but not too warm. There was a cool breeze coming through, picking up some of the dead leaves and swirling them low to the ground. The trees swayed a little, and I could smell the earth around me, hear the low roar of the river not far away.
I sat in the sand box trying to form a castle. A perfect fortress against the evil tyrannosaurus rex that wanted to wreak havoc on my kingdom. My brother had promised to help defend my little city, but as I looked around, he was nowhere to be found, not even in the treehouse nearby. It got so lonely sometimes playing by myself in our playground, he hardly ever came any more.
As I attempted to make a moat around my city, I thought I heard the sound of a child’s laughter. When I looked up, I saw someone swinging on the swings nearby. A young girl around my age with a patch over her eye.
She glared at me even as I said “Hello,” gripping the chain of the swing tight. As I went to greet her again, two twin boys came running out of the forest.
“Not fair, Dom,” said one boy, gripping a nerf gun in his hand, looking back at the other with a similar nerf gun aimed at his head. “I got you first!”
Dom grinned and shot out a little foam bullet that just grazed passed Leslie’s head.
“Guys, wait up!” Another boy, older than the others, came out of the forest next. Micheal. With his blond-white hair curling over his ears. He glanced at me and nodded as he passed. “Nice castle.”
My heart swelled with pride at his compliment. He went to the swing next to Cassidy and sat by her, swinging slowly.
I knew their names even if they were kids I’d never seen in my neck of the woods, which should have been odd, but I didn’t think anything of it. I was just happy to not be alone.
“Can we help?” came a voice behind me. I looked around and saw Emery, his face bright with excitement, and Nina next to him, sucking on her thumb. She wore a cute little dress while Emery wore a T-shirt with a dinosaur and shorts.
“Yeah!” I said happily.
They started to help create the moat around my castle. Micheal and Cassidy watched, swinging nearby, while Dom and Lez continued to shoot at each other, laughing and chasing each other around the firepit.
We talked as we worked, talking about school and what we planned to do when summer finally came.
“I want to go camping and then swimming,” Emery stated. “And catch Nina a snake because she likes them.”
“Not a snake!” she cried. “A turtle!”
Emery snickered. “Oh, yeah, that’s right, a turtle.”
“You can camp here!” I claimed, patting the ground. “We can have a fire and tell ghost stories and have smores!”
“Oh, Smores! Smores!” Nina cried.
“And the river is right nearby, we can swim by the beach,” I added, excitedly. “But Daddy says not too far out otherwise the current might take you.”
Emery grinned. “I’m a pretty good swimmer. I’m not scared.”
“He can swim like a shark,” Nina said, laughing.
We all laughed, pretending our hands were sharks going in and out of the sand.
It started to grow dark as we played and finished the moat. When the light of the sun slipped down past the tree line, we heard someone calling our names.
“Come in!”
I looked around. Just up a small incline, past a few trees, I saw Andrea, looking like herself, only she was wearing a nurse’s outfit. She stood at a doorway of a large building, one where my house might have been but it didn’t look like it. The windows were boarded up and the roof was made of metal.
“Come in, kids, it’s time to take your medicine!” Andrea called.
They groaned. Emery and Nina got up from the sandbox, looking dejected. Their shoulders slouched, heads slumped forward.
“I don’t wanna,” Nina said. “I want to keep playing.”
Emery took her hand. He glanced at me, his eyes seeming to glaze over. “Sorry. We have to go now.”
They started to leave. I watched them, my heart sinking.
“Wait, don’t go,” I said, standing up. They didn’t seem to hear me. They walked on toward the house, toward Andrea.
“Don’t go. Don’t go!” I shouted. I stumbled out of the sandbox and started to run after them.
I was too slow, they were disappearing into the house one by one. Emery and Nina didn’t look back as they slipped inside.
Still, I ran, even as Andrea looked back at me and smiled, turning away into the dark house.
The doorway seemed to grow larger the closer I got and I could hear their cries, I could hear their screams.
“No!” I cried. “No!”
Before I could follow them inside, Emery appeared out of the doorway. Adult Emery with his skull face smiling back at me.
I tried to stop, dirt flying as my feet slid. I fell back, landing hard on the ground before him as he stood towering over me, blocking the doorway. He tilted his head at me as he took a step toward me.
My mouth opened in a silent scream as I tried to crawl back, trying to get away from him.
“We lost ourselves. We all died inside,” he said, his voice like gravel grinding together. One by one, the kids reappeared, first the twins, then Micheal, then Cassidy, but this time, they didn’t appear like themselves, just ghosts of what they once were, their bodies thin, their faces gaunt, their eyes like glass. “Look what your father did to us?” he said. “You couldn’t save us. But you could have saved her.”
Nina broke from the doorway to complete the circle the kids now made around me. She looked as I had remembered that day in the warehouse. Hair gone, pale and boney. She stared at me with the saddest eyes I ever saw. Those same pleading, scared eyes from when I first encountered her.
“You let her die with us. You buried the secret with her. Tell them what you did.”
Tears streamed down my face. “I didn’t know,” I stammered. “I didn’t know it was her.”
“But you learned.”
I shook my head, wiping my face.
“You learned. But you chose to stay quiet.” Slow like a tiger, he crouched down before me. “You can’t hide it forever. You can’t be with me and hold on to what you did.”
No. No, I couldn’t tell him. It was bad enough what happened after he learned who I was. Thinking I was poisoning him with medicine. But this…this would bring the demon back. This would change us forever.
He would break, and I would break with him.
“You can’t be with me,” he repeated. “Until you confess. Until everything is laid out and there are no more secrets between us. Until you say what you did, there will always be a barrier. There will always be a rift. You’ll never be one of us.”
I blinked and the kids were gone, replaced with their adult selves, their faces now covered by masks.
Confess.
They screamed, and Nina decayed before my very eyes, turning to dust and blowing away in the wind.
I screamed with them.
The darkness closed in until there was nothing, and then, suddenly, I jolted awake.
But I didn’t wake up in bed next to Emery like I expected. It was still dark, but a red light streamed down from somewhere high above me—higher than I remembered. It took me a moment to realize I wasn’t lying down. I was standing.
I blinked, straining to see through the shadows, hoping to catch a glimpse of the bed or anything that resembled the room we had been in.
Instead, I saw…feet.
I noticed they had cracks in them. Below them were a set of candles. Seven in total.
I stared at them as realization hit me. I tilted my head up and stared into the eyes of the saint standing above me.
I was in the church.
How did I get here?
A chill went through me. I was relieved to find I still wore the T-shirt and shorts Emery had given me along with the socks so my feet didn’t freeze. I didn’t feel any pain which meant I had been lucky to not have stepped on anything that cut me.
Carefully, I took a step back, trying to steer around the debris. I needed to get back to the room before—
“Seems like a bad idea walking around without shoes,” came a voice to my left.
I gasped and looked around to see someone sitting close by in one of the rows. I saw their silhouette reclined back, their arms stretched out on either side of them along the pew.
“Leslie?”
I was certain he was watching me even if I couldn’t see. He tilted his head one way as he studied me.
“You often go wandering around in your sleep?” he asked.
I swallowed and shook my head. “No.”
He hummed as if that were no surprise. “Figured I’d see your man coming out to lead you back to bed.” He slid his arms from the pew and leaned forward. “But he hasn’t. He wasn’t around downstairs. I looked in your room and saw only your friend sleeping…I thought it odd and went looking. Assumed you and him were hiding somewhere all cozied up. Until I found you just standing there.”
“I…I think I was sleepwalking.”
“Bad place for that.”
I turned back to the statue. “I was…having a bad dream.”
He was silent for a moment. I heard a faint scratching noise, and the cracking of wood. “Everyone around here does,” he said. “Welcome to the club no one wanted to join. Even your friend…”
I glanced at him over my shoulder. “Lena?”
I watched him digging his knife into the wood of the pew in front of him. “She’s got bad dreams too…” he said quietly. “I heard her whimpering. I thought…” I waited for him to finish that sentence but he didn’t.
I turned to fully face him. “Maybe it’s you she dreams of. You scared her after all. You threatened to hurt her.” I hugged my bad arm, feeling it starting to ache. “She doesn’t deserve that. She’s the nicest person I know. She’s—”
“A good girl?”
I tensed, clenching my jaw.
Leslie sighed. “Yeah. I bet she is. Too good for—”
“Someone like you.”
He turned his head away and laughed.
I looked around, trying to find a clear path through all the garbage and debris so I could get back to the apartment. How the hell I even maneuvered around as I did was enough to creep me out let alone knowing Leslie had been watching me.
“What did you dream of?” he asked.
I froze, watching him again. No way was I going to tell him I’d dreamed of him and the others.
“I don’t remember,” I lied, trying to keep the shaking out of my voice.
He nodded, and I had a feeling he didn’t believe me. “When you do, the confessional is at the back. No priest to hear your sins though, just ghosts probably.”
I glared at him, confused. “What are you talking about? Why would I need to go back there?”
“So you can confess obviously.”
My blood went cold, my heart dropping to my stomach. “What did you say?” I whispered.
He tilted his head at me. “Those were your words. The ones you kept repeating while you stood there.” He pointed to the statue. “Getting pretty loud too. Creepy as fuck, honestly.” When I didn’t reply, he continued with, “You got something. A secret, huh? You’re a Martel so I’m sure you’re full of them. Wouldn’t doubt you knew what was happening to us. Emery believes you didn’t. I think Micheal might come around too. But I don’t trust your word and neither does Cassidy. Dom won’t say but he’s smart, he’ll figure you out eventually.”
“I didn’t know,” I replied. “I swear it. I didn’t.”
He shrugged. “Guess it doesn’t matter. In the end. Micheal brought in Andrea and we thought he was crazy. She’s proved useful but we still haven’t forgiven her. Probably never will. You can be the same.”
I closed my eyes. “I wish I had known. I would have tried to stop what had happened to you and the others.”
Lez snorted, but he didn’t refute me. “Whatever you’re hiding. Know it’ll come out sooner or later. I wonder if Emery will see you as his sweet little angel then.”
I opened my eyes, feeling an awful dread taking hold. I peered along the ground as I took a careful step. I just wanted to get back to the apartment, to curl up beside Emery and hide away.
I went to take another step and felt something hard under my foot. I winced and stumbled.
I hadn’t heard him move. I only flinched when Lez caught my elbow, gripping it firmly.
“What are you—”
“Last thing I need is your boyfriend attempting to kill me when he thinks I’m responsible for your feet getting fucked up by glass,” he said in annoyance. “As much as I’d love to take that guy on, we need his rage focused elsewhere, not on me for the time being.”
He clicked on a small light, guiding me along until we reached the center aisle.
“Where were you two hiding, anyway?” Lez asked as we walked toward the doors leading to the entrance of the church. I pointed to them.
“Upstairs through there,” I said.
Lez stopped and turned toward me, blinding me with his light so he could see my face. “You mean, Micheal’s old apartment?”
“Yeah.”
He laughed. “And I thought I pissed him off enough. Emery is going for the gold.”
I pushed his light away. “It didn’t look like he’d used it in a while.”
“He’s been staying at his other place closer to the city. We think it's because of a woman. Still, he doesn’t like people breaking into his spot and snooping around his stuff. By the way, you didn’t happen to see a lighter up there, did you? I’m pretty sure I left it.”
Something large skittered past my feet, and I let out a yelp in surprise, nearly jumping into Lez who grabbed my arm and pulled me back.
“Was that—”
“A rat? Yeah.”
Quickly, he pulled me down the aisle the rest of the way. “This is why we don’t need you wandering. I might have to submit another request to have you locked up just so you don’t—” He halted, almost sending me flying forward. “Ah, fuck.”
Emery stood just within the doorway leading to the entrance. He stepped out, his hair still messy from bed, his pants without his belt and his shirt wrinkled, clearly showing he had thrown them on in a hurry. He fixed Lez with a look that could kill.
“I’ll give you two seconds to take your hand off her before I cut it off, Lez,” he threatened. “One.”
Lez gripped me, and I could tell he was tempted to let Emery go to two just so they could fight. He thought better of it when Emery counted to two and took another step closer. “All right, don’t cry about it,” he said, letting me go. “I caught her sleepwalking.”
I went to Emery, and he pulled me to him, wrapping his arm around me protectively. “That true?” he asked.
I nodded, finding it hard to look him in the eye as I remembered the dream. “Yeah. It’s true. Leslie was just making sure I didn’t step on glass.”
I glanced up in time to see an odd yet sad look pass over Emery’s face before it disappeared. “Did you?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”
He searched my face. Then, swiftly, he scooped me up, cradling me against him. He turned back for the door when Lez made a noise, stopping him.
“Sun’s up soon. The others are gonna wake. And Andrea and Micheal will be back. As cute as I’m sure it would be for you two to have a morning fuckfest over coffee and pancakes, Micheal will flip out if he sees you up there. And the last thing we need is more drama.”
I looked at Emery, placing my hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go down. I don’t want Lena to freak out when she sees me gone. We can always go back later,” I whispered in his ear.
Emery sighed. “Damn, but I was hoping to have…pancakes.”
Lez grunted as he turned for the stairs. “Don’t we all.”