The Darkness Consumes

Chapter 20 Everything is fake

It was mid-morning by the time Ash and Viv finally reached the edge of Viv's neighborhood.

Ash's hands were shoved into the pockets of their hoodie, the sleeves stretched long enough to cover their fingers.

Viv walked beside them in silence, his expression unreadable, his steps slightly faster than Ash's like his body couldn't keep up with the storm inside his chest.

They'd left at sunrise, slipping out the back door while Ash's mum was still asleep and Brad hadn't yet stirred.

No goodbyes, no explanations. They didn't want to risk being talked out of it.

This was something Viv needed. He really just wanted to see it for himself, to know the truth.

And Ash... Ash couldn't let him go alone.

They hadn't spoken much on the way there.

The walk had been long and quiet, filled with the occasional passing car or barking dog behind a garden fence.

Neither of them wanted to admit how tense they were.

Viv's shoulders were locked, his jaw tight, his eyes flicking to every familiar corner of the street like he was searching for something he couldn't name.

Ash had kept close, resisting the urge to reach out for his hand again.

Now, they were only a few houses away.

Viv slowed as they passed the park on the corner, the rusted swings creaking gently in the breeze. "We used to go there all the time," he said quietly, nodding toward it. "Me and Matteo. He used to make me push him so high he'd scream."

Ash glanced at the empty swing set but said nothing. They just listened.

Viv's voice cracked. "What if this is all in my head? What if you're right? What if he really was never there?"

Ash stopped walking. They stepped in front of Viv, forcing him to pause too. "Then we'll find that out. Together."

Viv stared at them. The wind pushed a strand of hair into his face, and he didn't bother brushing it away. "Okay," he whispered.

They kept walking.

Viv's house came into view slowly—two stories, pale brick, the ivy-covered front wall still exactly as he remembered it.

There was a potted plant tipped over on the porch, and the windows looked the same, curtains drawn halfway.

He stopped on the opposite side of the street, just standing there and staring.

Ash gently touched his elbow. "You ready?"

Viv swallowed. His lips parted, then closed again. Finally, he nodded.

Together, they crossed the road.

Viv's hands trembled as he crouched in front of the tipped-over pot.

The ceramic was chipped at the edge, a little spiderweb crack crawling up the side.

He didn't know why, but that small crack made his throat tighten.

He reached beneath the dried soil and lifted the flat stone that had always been there.

Underneath it, just like it always had been, was the key.

He stared at it for a long time before picking it up.

Ash stood behind him, silent, waiting.

Viv fit the key into the front door lock with slow, mechanical movements.

The click was so loud in the silence, it startled him.

The door creaked open, and a wave of warm, stale air rolled out from inside—dust, fabric softener, and something faintly sour.

The scent of a house that hadn't been truly lived in for a while.

They stepped in.

Everything looked the same. The same dull beige carpet. The same framed photo of their family by the hallway mirror. Viv, his mum, his dad, and Matteo, grinning like an idiot with his tongue sticking out. Viv couldn't look at it. He couldn't let himself. The silence felt heavy. Sacred.

He led Ash up the stairs, their footsteps muffled.

At the top landing, Viv hesitated for a second.

His breath hitched. Then he turned left, to the room at the end of the hall.

Matteo's door was closed. He reached for the handle, heart hammering so hard it echoed in his ears.

Slowly, he turned it and pushed the door open. The room was... mostly empty.

Viv froze in the doorway.

There was no unmade bed. No posters on the wall.

No pile of socks on the floor. The walls were bare, save for a couple of empty hooks and a single small crack near the ceiling.

The closet doors were open and hollow. A desk still stood by the window, but even it was stripped bare.

There were no notebooks, no pens, no drawings.

Just dust. Viv took one slow, shaky step inside.

There were marks on the carpet where the furniture used to be.

A faint ring of dust on the wall where a clock must've hung. But everything else...

Gone.

Like Matteo had never lived here at all.

Ash stayed at the door, watching Viv's shoulders rise and fall with uneven breaths.

"I..." Viv whispered, but the words broke off.

He turned in a slow circle, searching for something, anything, that would prove this wasn't real.

That Matteo had slept here. Laughed here.

Existed here. But there was nothing. The air felt too clean.

Too cold. Too final. Viv let out a choked sound and stumbled backward, pressing his back to the nearest wall.

"No," he whispered. "No, no, no—this isn't right.

This isn't—he lived here. He lived here. "

Ash crossed the room and gently reached for his hand, but Viv pulled away. He dropped to his knees in the middle of the floor and stared at the empty space in front of him.

"He's really gone," Viv said, almost too quietly to hear. "He's really... dead."

Tears welled in his eyes but didn't fall yet. He felt numb. Cold. Hollow in a way that made him want to scream. Ash knelt beside him, silent, just being there. Viv didn't look up. He couldn't. His heart felt like it was caving in.

"I thought if I came here... I thought maybe..."

But there was nothing left. Only dust. Only silence. Only absence.

Ash shifted closer on the carpet, their jeans brushing Viv's knee. They looked around the empty room, this sad and hollow shell of what used to be someone's life, and then their gaze came back to Viv's face. "Viv," they said gently, "maybe we could go to the cemetery."

"Why?" he rasped.

Ash hesitated, searching his face as if afraid he might break. "If...if he's really gone, maybe there's...a grave. A headstone. Something. It would...I don't know, prove it to you. That it's not just them telling you. That he was real. That he mattered."

Viv squeezed his eyes shut. The idea twisted in his stomach, made his throat burn. "I don't want to see it," he whispered.

Ash's fingers hovered near his wrist but didn't touch him yet. "I know you don't," they said softly. "But...you came all this way. You deserve to have an answer that's yours, not just what everyone else says. If we find it, at least you'll...you'll know."

Viv shook his head, pressing the heel of his palm to his forehead like he could stop it all from sinking in. His voice was raw. "If I see it, it means it's real."

Ash swallowed, and their own eyes were wet, but they didn't look away. "It already is real," they said, so quiet it barely made it past the ringing in Viv's ears. "I'm so sorry."

The room was suffocating. Viv felt like he was going to crawl out of his skin. Finally, he dragged in a ragged breath and forced himself to look up, though it felt like ripping something open in his chest. "You...you'll come with me?"

Ash nodded once. "Of course."

Viv pressed a shaky hand to his mouth and stared at the empty walls, trying not to think about how final it all felt. "Okay," he croaked. "Okay... Let's...let's go."

Ash stood first, brushing their palms on their jeans, and offered Viv a hand.

For a second, he just stared at it, his vision swimming.

He didn't want to stand. Didn't want to leave.

Because walking out of this room felt like admitting that all those nights he'd sat here with Matteo had never really happened. But Ash's hand didn't waver.

Finally, Viv swallowed and slid his shaking fingers into theirs. Ash pulled him up gently, like he might collapse if they were too quick about it.

They moved through the hallway together, each step feeling heavier than the last. The house was so quiet it made Viv's ears ring.

He caught sight of a few more family photos still on the walls and his chest constricted.

He wanted to smash the frames, to tear them all down so he wouldn't have to see that happy version of himself.

Ash must have sensed the spiral because their thumb rubbed softly over the back of his hand. "Hey," they murmured. "One step at a time, okay?"

Viv nodded, though he didn't feel okay at all.

They slipped out the front door, careful not to make a sound, and walked across the road again. The sun was out, bright and wrong. Viv hated that the world looked the same as it always did when everything inside him was coming apart.

At the end of the street, they turned right, heading toward the cemetery that sat behind the old brick church.

Viv hadn't been there in years. He felt like the sidewalk might crack open under his shoes.

Every few minutes, Ash glanced at him, their face etched with worry.

Viv couldn't bring himself to meet their eyes.

If he did, he knew he'd lose whatever fragile grip he had left.

They walked the rest of the way in silence, their hands brushing occasionally.

When the cemetery gates finally came into view, Viv stopped dead in his tracks, heart hammering in his ears.

Ash turned to face him, voice soft but steady. "You don't have to go in if you can't."

Viv stared past them at the rows of headstones. A sick, hollow ache spread through his chest.

"I have to," he whispered. "I...I have to see."

They walked past headstone after headstone, the gravel crunching under their shoes, the silence thick around them. A few birds chirped in the distance, but Viv barely registered them. His eyes scanned every plaque, every carved name, but none of them were the one he was looking for.

Ash kept glancing at him, their fingers brushing his as if they were offering silent comfort without overstepping. Viv appreciated it, even if he couldn't say anything yet. His throat felt like it was closing in on itself.

After what felt like hours, but was probably only fifteen minutes, Ash stopped suddenly, taking a sharp inhale. "Viv," they said quietly, pointing just ahead.

Viv turned, and his breath caught.

There it was.

The small gray headstone, tucked between two larger ones.

"I was just with him," Viv choked out between sobs. "I swear I was just with him. I talked to him. He held me. He was real. He was real, Ash, I swear—"

Ash's hand rested gently on his back, grounding him. "I'm so, so sorry."

Viv's cries came in waves, drowning out the world.

He pressed his forehead to the cool stone, wishing it would crumble under him, wishing he could take it all back.

Take everything back. Because seeing that grave?

It meant it was true. Matteo was gone. And Viv had to live with the version of himself that had built a whole world to avoid that truth.

Viv pressed his shaking hands to the headstone, fingers trailing over the grooves of Matteo's name like he was trying to feel something—warmth, breath, a heartbeat. Anything. But all he felt was the cold, indifferent stone.

And for the first time, he really, truly understood what Dr. Jacobs had meant.

He'd spent months talking to someone who wasn't there. Laughing with him, confiding in him, arguing with him. He'd watched Matteo pick up Jenga blocks, watched him lie back on his bed, watched him roll his eyes and smile and frown. He'd even felt Matteo hug him. He swore he had.

But none of it had been real.

He was the only one who had seen it. The only one who had heard it.

The only one who had believed in it. It was terrifying.

He had always thought "schizophrenia" meant some distant, tragic label that happened to other people.

Some word in a textbook, something you studied in health class.

But now, kneeling in front of his brother's grave, he finally grasped the truth of it: schizophrenia meant your own brain could betray you in the cruelest ways imaginable.

It meant you could be absolutely certain of something that wasn't happening, build your whole reality around it and never once doubt yourself.

It meant the person you loved most in the world could die, and your mind would rather reanimate him like a ghost than let you feel that loss.

Viv squeezed his eyes shut, hot tears leaking down his cheeks. He wasn't just grieving Matteo. He was grieving the part of himself that he'd lost along the way, the part that used to know what was real and what wasn't.

Viv wiped his face on the sleeve of his hoodie, but the tears just kept coming. He stared blankly at the carved dates on the grave.

Halloween.

He sucked in a shaky breath. He still couldn't remember.

That was what scared him the most, how blank everything felt.

How he could recall the way Matteo's phantom voice sounded, the shirts he'd pictured him wearing, the made-up conversations about nothing.

..but he couldn't remember a single second of the night Matteo had really died.

Why did Dr Jacob's mention Halloween? Why? He swallowed hard, his throat raw.

"Do you think...?" His voice cracked. He didn't even know if he wanted to finish the question. But it came out anyway, weak and broken. "Do you think I...I had something to do with it?"

"What? No, of course not."

"No, I mean it." He looked at Ash, desperate, searching their face for an answer he knew they couldn't give. "What if that's why I don't remember? What if—what if my brain blocked it out because it was my fault? What if that's why I was seeing him? Because I couldn't handle it?"

Ash's mouth opened like they were going to argue, but nothing came out.

Viv pressed a trembling palm to his forehead. God, he felt sick. He felt like the air was being sucked out of him. "What if I did something to him?" he whispered, barely able to say it. "What if I killed him and I don't even know?"

He dropped his hand and stared back at the headstone. The name, the dates, the finality of it. His brother was dead and there was this black hole of memory in his mind where the truth should have been.

Viv went still as a shadow suddenly shifted across the grass behind them.

For a second, he thought his mind was doing it again, conjuring people out of thin air because he couldn't handle reality.

He closed his eyes, praying that when he opened them, it would be gone.

But when he opened them, the shadow was still there.

Ash looked up too, and the startled wary look on their face confirmed it: this wasn't a hallucination.

Viv quickly stood up and spun around.

His jaw went slack.

His mother.

Viv didn't know what to say. He hadn't seen her since...God, he didn't even know when. The night they'd sectioned him? Or had she visited once after that? No. She had not. It was all a blur.

She looked older than he remembered, her hair more grey streaked, her face thinner. She wore a smart black coat, one hand clutching a leather bag to her chest like it was armor. Her gaze flicked from Viv to Ash beside him, then back to the headstone.

"Viviano," she said finally, her voice low and hoarse, like she hadn't spoken in hours. "Cosa ci fai qui? (hat are you doing here?)" Her eyes were wide, almost scared.

He swallowed, his mouth dry. He couldn't read her expression. Shock, yes, but something else too, like she couldn't believe she was really seeing him. "Ma. I..." Viv looked back at the grave. His throat closed up. "I had to see for myself."

She took a cautious step closer. "Non dovresti essere qui (you shouldn't be here)."

He let out a raw laugh, not even sure why it came out sounding so bitter. "Yeah, well. I shouldn't be a lot of places lately."

Ash shifted uneasily, glancing between them, clearly unsure whether to say something or stay silent. He didn't understand Italian so he was only hearing one side of the conversation, and by the sounds of it, it didn't sound very positive,

His mother exhaled, her shoulders sinking. "Vai via, per favore (please go away)."

"Ma," he sighed deeply, his eyes watery.

"Non puoi continuare a scappare (you can't keep running away)," she said.

He didn't know if she meant the hospital, or Matteo's grave, or the diagnosis. Maybe all of it. But all he could do was look at her and feel like he was twelve years old again, like he'd never been anything but a disappointment to her.

Viv wiped at his eyes with the heel of his palm. He didn't want to look pathetic in front of her, but the tears just kept coming. He took a shaky breath and gestured vaguely toward Ash, who was standing behind him, arms folded tight across their chest like they were trying to disappear.

"This is...this is Ash," he managed, voice cracking. "They're my friend. From—"

His mother didn't even look at Ash properly, her eyes pinned only on Viv. "Stop. You can't do this," she said in sharp English.

He flinched. "Do what?"

"Run away. Break out of the hospital. You—" Her voice trembled, and she shook her head, her hand gripping her bag so tight her knuckles were white. "You need help. You need to be in treatment, not...not trespassing in cemeteries in the middle of the day with strangers."

Ash's shoulders tensed, their gaze dropping to the grass.

"They're not a stranger," Viv said, too fast, too defensive. "They've been looking out for me. They're the only person who—"

"Viviano." She said his name the way she always did when she was trying not to lose her temper. "Please. This isn't helping you. You have to go back. The doctors called me. They said you left without any of your medication. You can't just—"

"Why?" Viv demanded, his voice rising. "So I can stay locked up and drugged out of my head until I don't even remember my own brother existed?"

"Devi tornare indietro (you have to go back)," she repeated, more firmly now, like she thought if she said it enough times, it would sink in. "You have schizophrenia. Pretending you don't and running away will only makes it worse."

He looked down at the grave again, feeling dizzy.

"You need treatment," she whispered. "You need help."

Ash finally spoke up, their voice quiet but steady. "He's been trying, Mrs. Vitale. I swear. He just needed to see this."

Viv's mother pressed her lips together and finally, finally looked at Ash properly. Her eyes were so tired they made Viv's chest hurt. "I'm glad someone was with him," she said, voice taut with restraint. "But this isn't safe. For either of you."

Viv felt the last of his strength draining away, and he wished more than anything that he could disappear into the grass.

His hands curled into fists at his sides.

He couldn't look at her. Well, he never really could, not for long.

Because all he ever saw in her face was that same disappointed, tight-lipped expression she'd worn since he was old enough to understand what disappointment meant.

There had always been this...rift. A fault line that cracked right down the middle of their family.

On one side was Matteo. Matteo who was golden and bright, who could do no wrong, who got straight A's and never lost his temper and always knew the right thing to say.

And on the other side was Viv. The problem child.

The kid who never fit right into any of the neat boxes she tried to put him in.

Even when he was little, he'd felt it. The way she'd sigh when she looked at his report cards. The way she'd scold him for being too loud, too messy, too angry, too much. How she'd always find some way to remind him that he was failing at something Matteo never even had to try at.

By the time he was a teenager, he'd just stopped trying.

What was the point? No matter what he did, no matter how hard he tried to be good he still wasn't him.

Still wasn't enough. So he started staying out too late.

Started smoking whatever people gave him.

Started disappearing into music he blasted through his headphones until he couldn't hear her voice telling him he was ruining everything.

Started counting pills, counting bruises, counting hours he wished would just stop.

That was how his depression grew so big it swallowed everything else.

He knew that now. Because when the person who was supposed to love you unconditionally can't even look at you without that pinched tired face, eventually you start to believe you really are the problem.

And standing here, at Matteo's grave, with her telling him he needed help, like he hadn't been trying his whole damn life, he felt like that kid all over again.

Small and wrong. And so, so so fucking tired.

Viv didn't even realise he was moving until his hand was already closing around Ash's wrist. His mother's voice kept coming, all sharp and brittle in that way it always was when it came to him, but he refused to listen.

"Come on," he muttered, voice rough, and before Ash could react he was already tugging them away from the grave, away from her, away from everything.

"Viv, wait—" Ash tried to dig their heels in, but Viv didn't stop.

He just kept walking, faster, until they were out of earshot and all he could hear was his own heartbeat crashing in his ears.

"Viv," Ash panted when he finally slowed, stumbling a little to keep up, "what the hell are you doing? Where are we going?"

"We're getting a hotel," Viv said flatly, his jaw tight. He didn't look back, just kept a death grip on Ash's wrist. "I'm not going back to her house. I'm not going back to the hospital. Not tonight."

Ash sounded shaky. "Viv, we don't have any money. You know that. We can't—"

"Don't worry about it," Viv cut in, turning his head just enough to give Ash a look that was part wild and part exhausted. "I have a plan."

Ash's eyebrows knit together, anxious and skeptical all at once. "A plan? What plan?"

"Trust me, okay?" Viv's voice cracked, just barely, and he swallowed hard before he could lose the thin grip he still had on himself. "Just this one time. Just...let me handle it."

Ash didn't look convinced. But after a second, they stopped resisting and let Viv lead them down the cracked pavement, past rows of cars and houses he didn't recognize, out into the darkening evening.

Viv wasn't sure if he felt numb or electrified.

All he knew was he couldn't stand there another minute with her looking at him like that.

He'd figure out the rest later. He always did.

They were halfway down the block when Ash finally tugged gently against Viv's hold, voice small and uncertain. "Viv?"

He didn't stop walking, but he did glance over, his expression tense. "What?"

Ash's cheeks were pink, their gaze fixed somewhere around Viv's shoulder. "Can you...um." They hesitated, picking at the hem of their sleeve with their free hand. "Can you hold my hand instead? Not my wrist."

Viv blinked. For a second, he just stared at them, all that adrenaline and frustration and sadness bottlenecking in his chest. "Oh," he said, voice going quiet.

He let go of their wrist immediately, feeling stupid when he saw the faint red marks from where he'd been gripping too tight. "Shit. Yeah. Sorry."

"It's okay," Ash mumbled quickly, looking even more embarrassed now. "It's just...I don't like it when people grab me there."

Viv swallowed and nodded, trying not to feel like the world's biggest asshole. He took a shaky breath, then carefully slid his hand into theirs instead. Ash's fingers were cool and tentative against his palm, but they didn't pull away. "Better?" Viv asked quietly.

Ash finally looked up at him. Their eyes were shiny in the low light, and they nodded. "Yeah. Much. Thanks."

Viv gave their hand the gentlest squeeze he could manage, like maybe that could make up for everything else, and together, they kept walking into the night.