Chapter 24 Wildlight #3
Guilt clawed at my conscience. Jules felt neglected. That explained her abnormal behavior today.
Willow suddenly rose to her feet and stretched her hand out to Jules. “Come with me,” she said, gray eyes determined.
Julianna’s own gray eyes, softer and far less steely than Willow’s, flickered, and she grabbed Willow’s hand.
Willow dragged Jules into the river and splashed water on her, laughing when Julianna’s small body became soaked immediately.
But Jules retaliated and splashed Willow too.
The two of them splashed each other, laughing, smiling brightly in the setting afternoon sun.
I watched the two, feeling warm and fuzzy. I loved my sisters—and my brother, of course—more than anything in this world. Even if they were annoying. Even when they hurt me. Seeing Jules upset made me sad, and seeing her hiccupy laughter now made me feel absolute joy.
Seeing Willow acting so carefree, too, for once, made me also feel lighter than I’d felt in a long while.
So I stared at the two playing in the water, smiled, and even dozed off feeling so content—and tired from the hike too.
That’s probably why I didn’t see what came next.
A shrilling scream made me jump to my feet before I even opened my eyes, and when I did open my eyes, what I saw made me freeze in place, because for a moment, I thought I was dreaming, and this was an extremely vivid nightmare.
What I saw couldn’t be of this world, after all.
The thing that came out of the water was a monstrosity almost as tall as the trees in the woods.
It had the vague shape of a human body, but there were black flames instead of limbs.
Its head was narrow, and it didn’t even have a face—only two diagonal slits glowing white.
The monster had a mane of long hair, too, but the hair seemed like a mirage almost, as it blew unnaturally in the nonexistent wind.
Before I could even process what I was seeing, a scene out of a horror movie played right before my eyes, and I watched it as though I was staring through a telescope rather than being there too.
Because the monster’s arms of flames curled around my sisters, lifting them up from the river as they screamed, crying, thrashing in the hold of the unmovable monster.
“Drew!”
Willow’s scream was what made me snap out of my terrified haze, and I tried to take a step forward as I stammered, shaking all over, “Let them go . . . Let my sisters go . . .”
My legs didn’t respond to my wishes, though. It was as if I was rooted in place, either by some sort of external force or by my own terror.
Helplessly, I watched as the monster began to sink into the river with my sisters in his arms, and I tried to stretch out my shaking hand, to try and walk and reach them, to do something, anything, rather than just stand there and watch like a fucking idiot as my sisters were being kidnapped.
Before the monster disappeared, I suddenly realized their screams had stopped. My sisters were immobile in the monster’s hold, their heads turned at unnatural angles.
My heart dropped just as the monster disappeared under the water with my sisters, and I fell to my knees, shuddering, tears falling down my face, lips parted, and a terrible sense of shock spreading all over my body.
They are dead, a small voice whispered in my head, shaking too. You saw their heads. They cannot be alive.
The river, which had undulated with the monster’s appearance, and now disappearance, suddenly washed over its banks, like an ocean wave, before returning to its serene, tranquil state, as if nothing had happened.
As if my sisters weren’t dead, their bodies taken underwater by a monster.
Still shaking, still unable to comprehend what I’d just seen, I somehow climbed back to my feet and took step after step toward the river.
Then I paused, seeing a sign carved on the muddy ground, as if by a knife. It was neither big nor small, just close to the water, and I wouldn’t have noticed it if something else didn’t catch my eyes.
The small puddles of water near that sign weren’t really water. It was some sort of liquid with a murky color that, despite the last rays of sun, didn’t shine like water, but remained muted.
And it surrounded the odd sign, which consisted of a mishmash of lines and dots that looked like an ancient sigil from another realm.
Present Day
“Later, after I checked the river’s water, diving in and out in a desperate attempt to find my sisters, and the monster, I took a photo of the sign—the Spellscript—with my phone and returned home, still in shock, still shivering, still filled with terror at everything I’d seen, and also full of a different kind of fear.
As in, how would I break the news to my family? ”
I was shaking, unable to look at Lucien’s eyes anymore.
“No one believed me when I explained about the monster. Everyone thought it must’ve been some sort of an accident in the river, that I’d been irresponsible in taking care of my sisters and that their bodies must’ve been washed into the Pacific Ocean, which was the so-called reason why they were never found. ”
Something salty touched my lip. Fresh tears burned my eyes. “That’s why I started researching the supernatural. Why I’m writing for The Hallowing Hour. Why I hoped someone like you would appear and help me find answers.”
I couldn’t help but glance at Kate’s bed, feeling drained, exhausted, and utterly helpless.
“I couldn’t help them,” I whispered, thinking about Dianna.
“I wanted to so much, but I couldn’t move, like a fucking coward.
But even if I could move, I know I would’ve simply died too.
And that, more than anything else, kills me inside. ”
I covered my face with my hands, trying to get ahold of myself as I sobbed, “Julianna was close to Kate’s age too.”
Wordlessly, Lucien pulled me to him again, holding me close. He didn’t offer empty encouraging words; he seemed to understand there was nothing he could say that would make it any better.
This kind of pain and grief would never go away, and a deep feeling in my gut told me he knew that. That he understood.
And faintly, I wondered why.