Chapter 5
KAIRA
My entire body trembled as I stood on the familiar cliffs, overlooking the black sand beach and the ocean spanning into the infinity in front of me. The soil underneath my bare feet should've felt familiar, but it didn't.
There was something wrong. Something that wasn't there before.
Even before turning around as the wind slammed into me, almost making me lose my balance, I knew that this was just another dream. Just another nightmare I would wake up from.
Church bells sounded somewhere in the distance as the crows joined in, creating a symphony I didn't hear before, calming me instead of making me feel scared.
I could feel his eyes on me even before I turned, but now that I was facing him, that I was seeing those emerald green eyes, I wanted to go to him.
No, I needed to go to him more than I needed to take my next breath and it scared me more than standing on the cliff, ready to plummet to my death. I knew it was coming. I knew that the pain was inevitable, and yet I didn't mind being here.
I didn't mind the familiarity or the uncurling of the claws around my heart as our eyes connected, as the pain I so often saw in his entered through my body, mixing with my own.
But it wasn't the pain of losing my family that made the fear erupt through my veins.
It wasn't the fear of me dying that had me taking a step toward him and away from the cliffs.
It was the unexplainable fear of never seeing him. It was the yearning slamming into me, even though it had no place to be here now. I didn't know this man.
I had no idea if he was a figment of my imagination or if he was a representation of something else I was suppressing, but I wanted him closer. God, I needed him closer.
"Who are you?" I asked, my voice barely louder than the wind slamming into me.
The shadows wrapped around him, dancing together with the wind as I took another step toward him and another, begging fate to let me see him.
Just once. Just this once I wanted to see who this stranger was.
I wanted to know why I kept dreaming about him when I was certain I had never seen him before.
At least I was certain I had never seen those eyes before.
I don't think I would've been able to forget. Not their color and not the pain, yearning, fear, love, so much love in them, and I had to understand why.
Why was he here? Why was I being tortured like this? Why did it look like he was in pain every single time I saw him?
And why was I seeing him and not my family?
"Tell me," I pleaded, trying to close the distance between us, but the more I walked, the farther away he appeared to be, and I stopped, seeing myself back at the cliff, looking down at the sea. "Please."
"A stranger." His gruff voice wrapped around me like a blanket, cocooning me into its warmth. "But I wasn’t always."
"That's not an answer!" I yelled out as the wind picked up, pushing against his shadows, pushing against me. "Please! I need to know your name. Tell me your name!"
The sharp pain stabbed through my middle and I didn't need to look down to see the blood covering my hands as I placed them against my stomach. It was always the same. Always, but this time the shadows wrapped around him revealed his neck, showing me a tattoo on the left side.
"I need you to remember," he said, instead of revealing his name. "Please. I need you to remember me."
"I can't," I cried, feeling the tears falling down my cheeks. "I can't remember. Please, tell me your name. Tell me!"
"Remember me. Just remember me."
My body had a mind of its own and instead of letting the wind push me down, I took a step forward and then another, fighting against the force pushing me back. The shadows around him shimmered, becoming bigger, hiding him, hiding his neck, his eyes.
"No!" I bellowed, feeling the loss of him as if part of my soul got torn apart. "Come back!" The wind slammed into me one last time, pushing me over the cliffs and into the dark abyss.
"I need you to remember." His voice followed me as the darkness took over, whispering as if he were standing right next to me. "Remember me, Kore."
I jumped up in my bed, breathing as if I had just run a marathon, my hands still pressed against my stomach.
"Holy fuck," I mumbled, wiping the sweat from my eyebrow. "Holy fucking fuck."
The duvet I had used last night was already on the ground, as if I'd been fighting with it the entire night. Given the dream I've had, I wouldn't be surprised if I really was fighting with it.
"This has to stop fucking happening," I groaned while my body still tried calming down from that entire ordeal.
It had to fucking stop. It's been almost a year since he started visiting my dreams and I was nowhere near closer to seeing him fully.
Or to, at the very least, understand why these dreams were happening.
I turned toward the window, seeing nothing but fog outside covering the ocean that should've been visible from my window. But no matter how hard I tried focusing on the swirling clouds of white, I couldn't stop thinking about the dream.
About him.
There was so much sadness. So much fucking sorrow, I felt suffocated just thinking about the feelings those emerald eyes were conveying.
His mere presence, his words, they tilted my world, making me think more about him and these stupid fucking dreams than my family.
And I had no space in my head or in my heart to think over something so insignificant as that dream.
I had nothing left to give and if these dreams were some fucked-up way my mind was trying to play tricks on me, then it had to stop. I wanted them to stop.
Do you really? came out of nowhere, slamming into the forefront of my mind. The wicked whisper. The slow decay as those three words caressed my skin, because my subconsciousness knew something I couldn't admit to myself.
Seeing him.
Feeling him.
Standing there and dying over and over again, was the only time when I felt alive. He almost felt like a mirror, reflecting the yearning uncurling in my own soul. Yearning for a man I didn't know.
Begging for the moments I would hear his voice. And I could sit here and lie to myself the whole day, saying it was only because I didn't want to think about reality, but it was more than that. These delusional dreams were the only time when I felt like me.
When my lungs worked and my heart started to beat.
He was a demon, but he was also a salvation, and the messed-up part of my mind didn't want to let him go. Even merely thinking about it had my heart thrashing against my rib cage, inciting violence on the still healing wounds inside my body.
Yet I couldn't spend my days thinking of the faceless man. I couldn't waste my time trying to understand this uncanny connection I had with him. Shaking my head I refocused on the room around me, on the smell of lavender surrounding me and the thinning fog outside.
When I came to The Lighthouse B&B last night I was almost positive they were already closed, judging by just a couple of lone lights shining through the windows from the already rented rooms and the lack of light at the entrance.
But the moment I pushed the doors open, an illuminated reception area greeted me and an elderly woman stood behind the counter, smiling widely.
Her warm welcome was probably the only reason why I was able to relax and actually chitchat without feeling like someone was watching me.
Since I crossed into the town the skin at the back of my neck felt cold, small stabs of awareness appearing out nowhere the farther I traveled.
To call it a sleepy little town would be the understatement of the year, and as I passed by the pier, where the fog was the thickest and an actual lighthouse that didn't seem to work stood, I started turning around and looking at my rearview mirror, convinced someone was following me.
But no other cars were on the road, apart from mine, and no people could be found roaming the area. It was as dead as the forums mentioned, with only a couple of houses with their lights on and an eeriness surrounding this place like nothing I have ever felt before.
I stopped trying to make sense of anything the moment I took off from Portland, driving over here, and as I stood up from the bed, turning on the light, I unplugged my phone from the charger and scrolled through the messages I'd received.
Not that there were many.
Some would say I have completely checked out of my life over the past year, and while a part of me would want to hold a grudge against some of my old friends for abandoning me, I couldn't exactly blame them.
There was only so much they could have done before giving up on me, and I know for a fact that I wasn't the easiest person to be around back then.
Especially those first three months after the accident.
I was barely functioning. I was barely surviving, going through days and wishing all of this would just end. Ingrid took all my grief-ridden anger and pushed it away, but not everyone wanted to hang around with someone who had no desire to be alive during their nights out. Everything bothered me.
Their happiness bothered me, because how could they be happy when I was that miserable? Why did they get to be happy when my entire life collapsed in a span of just a couple of hours?
I had no doubt that if it wasn't for Ingrid and her husband, I wouldn't have been sitting here in this room, staring at the fog-covered town out there.
I probably wouldn't be breathing at all, and that's something my family never would've wanted.
But when you're lost, there are not many things left for you to hold on to except for the idea of death.
Of nothingness.
Of eternal peace.
When you feel too much, you often just want to stop feeling altogether. Breathing, existing, trying to push through another day was harder than preparing for the Olympic Games, and when you're all alone with no one to hold your head above those crashing waves, it was even harder trying to fight.
Now, as I stood up with my phone in my hand, shooting off a quick message to Ingrid, I knew that I wanted to live.
No matter what comes of this trip, I wanted to live my life.
I wanted to do all the things my family might not have gotten to do.
I wanted to live for Thalia, for the girl that would never get to accomplish all her dreams, because I didn't want her death to be in vain.
I guess I was finding things to hold on to.
I scanned the room properly as I turned around, locating my small suitcase and the journals sitting next to it that I brought with me.
Maybe they would've been safer back at home, in one of those boxes, but having them with me gave me a weird sense of comfort, as if my mom was still with me.
As if her story was still being written, even though she was no longer here.
Mrs. Sarrendon, the receptionist from last night, told me that The Hollow Grind Cafe had the best breakfast in town, and that I should visit it once I woke up.
I didn't dare mention the island last night.
Maybe because I didn't want to be disappointed if she knew nothing about it, but also because I had a feeling not everyone should know what I was doing here.
I had a feeling that not many things happened in this town, and a stranger coming here and asking even stranger questions probably wouldn't help me. The meaning of "sleepy little town" definitely fits the vibe here, and while it did give me the creeps initially, I couldn't wait to explore it a bit.
Pulling on my boots after I finish getting ready, I tied my hair in a messy bun atop my head and picked the old metal key for the room. My hand landed on the doorknob when the sound of the church bells tore through the silence of the room, catapulting me back into the dream.
With my hands shaking, I turned around, half expecting him to be standing there, waiting for me, begging for things I couldn't understand, but he wasn't there.
Nothing but an unmade bed and my things stood in the room, yet I couldn't shake off the feeling of wrongness.
My soul was getting torn into two opposite directions, while my mind tried making sense of everything.
I took a step back toward the door and opened it wide, locking it behind me, still trying to calm my racing heart. I couldn't keep on living shrouded in the past and the dreams that haunted me. I couldn't let life pass right by me.
My feet had a mind of their own as they led me away from my room, and through the small hallway lined with pictures of the town on the walls. There were so many memories etched into these walls. So many different people who lived here, or at the very least, they passed through the town.
One of the photos showed the lighthouse, shining brightly on one of the black-and-white photos, with a young couple standing right in front of it. I stepped closer to the photo when the vision of a small boat caught my attention, floating on the water in the distance.
The memory of Thalia and me running down the pier on one of our many vacations when we were kids, thinking up stories of the boats we could see down in the marina, entered my mind. My heart clenched painfully as those much happier memories erupted, remembering my family and how it used to be.
Happy.
Complete.
But today I didn't want to dwell on the past. Today I wanted to look at the future, and, ignoring everything else surrounding me right now, I went down the stairs and exited The Lighthouse B&B and stepped into a fog thinner than the one last night.
But the sound of those church bells still followed even when I started walking farther away, blocking my mind from descending into madness. From thinking of him.