Chapter 59 Imaginary Friend
Sapphire
“No! No! No!”
I pat the ground under my feet, feeling the cold concrete floor under my fingertips.
All of the light has been sucked out of my vision.
There’s a wall behind me.
Two walls connected. I am in a corner.
It’s drafty. Cold. Empty
“Niklaus…” I utter his name like it’s the last time I will ever hear it said out loud. “Oh, God…Niklaus…”
I shake violently in this dark corner. I can’t believe I fucking left him behind! Why didn’t he come with me? How could this have happened? I have to get back…
“Who is Niklaus?” A small child’s voice enters the darkness, jolting a force of shock to my nervous system. My hands slam against the walls to my left and right.
I search the room blindly.
“Dellilian?” I whisper.
The room pulses with a hesitant thoughtfulness.
“Who is Dellilian?”
I brace myself. Flashbacks of a dark room piece my mind and prepare me for physical violence.
“Are you going to hurt me?” I ask.
The little voice answers almost immediately. “Are you going to hurt me?”
“Are you going to keep repeating my questions?” I push again.
The little voice sighs.
“What’s you name?”
“Skylenna Winter Ambrose,” she says.
My gasp is loud and throaty. I cough. My hand presses to my lips.
“What—are you doing sitting in the dark?” I choke.
Skylenna Winter Ambrose.
As a little girl!
She clears her throat, sniffling. “My father got mad.”
I pinch my brows together.
“Why are you in my basement?” she asks.
I look around at the stale nothingness. I’m recalling a piece of my mother’s childhood that she only briefly glazed over. It was something about waiting in the cellar for my dad. He would save her when her father would undergo another Mind Phantoms treatment.
“I was chased in the woods by a pack of wolves. I let myself in through the cellar door to hide out until they’re gone.” My lie might be convincing to a…five-year-old? “How old are you, Skylenna?”
“Six. And those wolves were lucky my puppy DaiSzek wasn’t there to eat them!”
“Awww.” I can’t even imagine DaiSzek as a cute little pup.
“Hey, I have a question,” Skylenna says.
“Okay.”
“Are you my imaginary friend?” she asks.
My heart melts. She is so adorable.
“That’s right. Your best friend.”
Little girl Skylenna makes a funny noise in the back of her throat. “No, no, no! Just my imaginary friend. I have a best friend.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.” She adjusts on the floor across the basement. “Kane will always be my number one bestest friend.”
My body sears with the misery of leaving Niklaus behind and of hearing my mother as a small child talk about my father.
“I’m glad you have him,” I say with a lump in my throat.
“You have a best friend too?”
I haven’t thought about it. But Niklaus has become my best friend between each era of time we pass through. After every torturous event we endure. He is the one person I am dying to tell I met my mother as a little girl about. He is my best friend.
“Yes.”
“Hmm…my best friend is better.”
I chuckle. “Oh?”
“Does your best friend have alters in his brain? Mine does!”
“That is very special,” I agree.
Little Skylenna hums and then sniffles again, like she’s been crying recently. She was being locked in a basement by Jack since she was six years old? God, what the hell were they doing to him?
“Skylenna, does J—your dad lock you down here often?”
Her breathing is labored because she has a runny nose.
“Uh-huh. He gets real mad a lot,” she says with a voice like fairy dust and wind chimes.
That breaks my heart. Jack was a good young man in prison. I could sense that deep down he wanted a family just as bad as Sophia did. It’s not fair that they made him a villain against his will and to his own daughter.
“Will you do me a favor? As your imaginary friend?” I ask.
“Uh-huh. Yeah. Sure. Okay.” She snorts, most likely wiping at her nose again.
I exhale softly. “Always remember that your father isn’t himself when he gets angry. The real dad behind that mean, angry mask is your daddy who loves you so much. He’s fighting a battle that you cannot see.”
“Okay, Imaginary Friend,” Skylenna chimes sweetly. “My daddy does love me.”
The cellar ceiling makes a snapping sound, then a metal door groans and swings open. “Kane’s here! Kane’s here!”
I sit up. “What?!”
A downfall of heavenly light is dumped into the room, illuminating a little girl with long, blonde curled pigtails and a white summer dress.
A young boy’s tan arms extend into the basement, reaching for the little Skylenna to clasp. She giggles and jumps up and down excitedly. Her small hands clap at an inconsistent rhythm, and she begins to hum and sing out of pure delight.
“It’s my best friend!”
I fall against the wall with my hands masking my sobs of joy and long-enduring, all-encompassing love.
My parents. So happy. So innocent. Finding each other so young.
And to my immediate astonishment, the Nightlung opens its vast mouth and swallows me whole. I tumble into a tunnel unexpectedly, whirling down a long, windy canal, and being discarded in a room in the middle of the Demechnef Mountain.