Dark Diary (3 page)

“Why?” he asked. “
How
do you find peace amongst the dead?”

I hadn’t told anyone else before, but I didn’t know the
man, and his threats prompted me to be earnest. If he wanted
to know the truth, I’d give it to him.

“Because coming to my mother’s grave,” I paused to compose
myself, “is the only thing that keeps me from joining her here.”

His dark, arched eyebrows twitched.

“Since I was a teenager, I’ve had dreams about my own death.” My voice softened. “Sometimes the lines blur and there are days when I-I can’t shake the visions.”

“You shouldn’t dwell on such things,” he said sternly, as if he’d held a sliver of concern for me. “But you cannot return to this place again,” he reiterated.

“
I’ll return whenever I want!” I clenched my teeth. “Coming
here helps me let go of those images for a little while, so I’m not leaving forever just because you’re asking me to. You can’t stop me, whoever you are.”

His dark presence approached my side, as if he were about to walk past, but instead his fingers came up to twirl a lock of my hair teasingly.

I should have backed away, but I was blinded by anger and I refused to budge.

“What makes you think you’ll be safe here anymore?” The cool lick of his breath caressed my ear.

I’d probably risked my life every night, walking home from work in the dark—alone. His threats couldn’t be more dangerous to me than my own recklessness. I wasn’t afraid of him; I was going to stand up to him, and no amount of fear or instinct would sway me otherwise.

I lifted my chin. “You’re not here to hurt me or you would
have tried to already.”

A deep, throaty growl escaped through his teeth and he bolted at me like an animal, the green of his eyes turning poisonously bright. He grasped my throat with one hand and tangled my hair around his other, jerking me backward until my feet slid forward on the slippery grass and my back arched.

“Leave!” The hideous roar nearly deafened me. I struggled to pry his hands away, but his grip was unyielding.

My heart raced and I could hardly swallow as he effortlessly lowered me to the ground. “I will
not
be so kind if you
return,” he hissed, baring his teeth while looking me straight
in the eye.

His irises kept flickering with neon green light.

“Wh-what… are you?” My voice strained beneath his hands.

My feet came out from under me, and I fell.

I hit the ground hard and the thump knocked the air from
my lungs. I coughed and quickly sat up in the grass to look around.

He was gone.

I brought my hands up to my neck and massaged my tender throat. He could have killed me if he had wanted to.

What was he?

I stood and swept flakes of dead leaves from my pants.

“I’m sorry you had to see that,” I whispered toward the nearby headstone. My mother had encouraged me to avoid altercations at any cost, but I wasn’t about to let a stranger push me away from my one and only haven. “I don’t know
who he is, Mom, but I promise to be more careful… next time.”

I took a deep breath and smoothed my ruffled long hair down against my head and neck. The roots stung from his clutch, but the discomfort would pass eventually. My ego was more bruised than anything.

Thinking about how I had let the man get so close to me,
though, made me question my sanity. How could I have let my guard down that easily? What had possessed me to assume his intentions
weren’t
lethal? He actually
could
have killed me.

What an idiot I was!

There was an obvious hint of darkness crawling beneath his skin. He wasn’t normal. But I wasn’t afraid of him. Even though he was threatening me, there was a gentleness in his voice that calmed the very fear he had tried to invoke. Once his icy fingers grasped my neck, the spell was broken and reality set in.

But then his eyes radiated light. Like fireflies in the night,
they had glistened with a spark of unexplainable, almost chemical luminescence.

He had wanted me to be frightened. He had wanted me to recoil and retreat from that place
forever
.

It wouldn’t happen. My mother’s grave was a safer place than any other on a dark night in my city. I picked the locks, I called my own shots, and I knew my way around. It was
my city
and
my territory,
and he would never take that away from me.

I would return to her grave again, tomorrow, and any
other day that I wanted to. As long as there was breath in my body.

A SECOND CUP OF COFFEE
did nothing to help with my inability to concentrate. There were colored pens and incomplete sketches scattered to the left and right of me. They were terrible. Every one of them.

Damn.
I couldn’t focus. If I kept it up, Derek would surely notice and—

“You feelin’ okay tonight?”

Too late.

“I’m sorry.” I lifted my face up from my drawing and sat back in my chair, crossing my arms.

“Some days, things don’t click,” Derek said with an understanding smile. He rolled the chair next to me away from the table, spun it around, and straddled it, resting his forearms across the back of it.

For someone who
should
have been mostly concerned with productivity and revenues, he cared a lot about my feelings. Then again, you could say I had become the heart of
Restless Ink
—
the shop he’d renamed for my popular artistry. The tattoos I designed often stemmed from the nightmares I’d
had; people loved the vision of my works.

But tonight, I couldn’t grasp that vision. The dark, quickly
fading silhouette of the stranger from last night had
dampened my creativity. All I could think about was how I wanted to see him in the light. I wanted to see the face of the man I should have been afraid of—the man with the
vivid
green eyes.

Derek stretched across the table to scoop together the
loose pens. Then he picked up one of my drawings and raised
an eyebrow.

“Uh…” He tilted the page before glancing over at me. “Don’t push yourself, Kathera,” he said, trying to sound
unaffected. “Besides, there’s someone here who’s thinking about
getting one of your older designs.” He rolled several pens into a bunch in his hands and then tucked them away into a drawer below the desk. “You up for that?”

I chuckled. “I’m always up for that.” I could tattoo one of my past pieces onto someone on even my worst day, without
a
noticeable drop in quality. “I’ll make sure they love it. I promise.”

Derek’s patience in me was a virtue of his, and I was more than thankful for it. If I had lost my job, I don’t know what I would have done with myself. Dad had been pushing me to go back to school for some time now, but I had refused. I had always felt like I wasn’t cut out for the daily grind, that I was meant for something more.

You could say there’s irony in what I do. Every day I make an impact—every day I make a
permanent
mark on someone’s life. It makes me happy to draw, whether on paper or skin;
it’s a canvas all the same. And there’s something about knowing that my image can last someone’s entire life that makes my work so special to me.

“When you’re finished with this client, you can head
home.” Derek stood from the table and shot me a kind glance with his warm, dark brown eyes. “You seem distracted today
. You should get some rest.”

That
wouldn’t
happen, but I returned a nod of agreement anyway.

There were still so many things to do around the shop before I could go home.

As I sat, etching one of my own creations into someone’s
calf, my mind kept drifting away, and the outline of another creature occupied my thoughts.

It was just before dusk when I completed my work, and all I could do was hope for a glimpse of colorful twilight before true darkness came.

I gathered my things and headed off down the street, well prepared, with a handful of candles in my bag. Perhaps I would stay a bit longer…
if
he let me.

Nervous feelings whirled inside, but I kept walking, never
letting my steps waver even as fear and anxiety tightened my throat and rattled me to the bone. I imagined the horrible things the stranger might try to do to me, but my heart pushed me onward with courage I couldn’t explain. My gut feeling was that he was far more bark than bite.

A quick glance left and then right. There was no one in sight, so I climbed over the fence instead of picking the lock of the gate this time. I wondered if he would even come, now that the gate would be closed tightly. How legitimate were his threats?

I unzipped my bag and took out three small votive candles. I placed them along the top of my mother’s gravestone, making sure they were aligned and set evenly a few inches apart. I struck a match on the side of the matchbox and lit the candles one by one. The soft, yellow-white glow came to life with a spark, and I took a few steps back to sit on a concrete bench close by and observe.

The skies were clear. The wind was still.

Maybe he won’t come.

I watched night envelop the horizon, while the candles sank lower and lower.

Maybe I should have left the gate open.

Maybe…

The shades of gray in the distance changed and my eyes abruptly met his.

I gasped, clutching on to the cold, concrete bench with both hands.

He was right in front of me, barely a few feet away.

I started breathing again.

“How long have you been standing there?” I asked, trying to downplay my surprise. His silhouette was difficult to make out amongst the shadows.

“You’ve returned?” The voice was
unmistakably
his.

Candlelight bounced off the sharp curves of his face as he stepped closer.

“Why do you not fear me?” he asked, stopping behind
my mother’s gravestone and dragging a hand slowly through
the candle flames. “Did I not make my intentions quite clear yesterday?” He seemed unaffected by the fire dancing between his fingers.

“I don’t know,” I replied, sitting up straight, brushing a few locks of my hair behind me. I was strangely relieved to
see him again and tried to hide the senseless smile drawing at my lips. “My life at home is a living hell, and I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in years. Maybe I’m an idiot for coming
back, or maybe things just don’t scare me as much as they should.”

His eyes narrowed and he came out from behind the candles.

He appeared to be close to my age, but something was off. There were well-maintained pleats in his dark slacks and he held himself with great poise. The top button on the collar of his crisp, light-colored shirt was left undone, and the cuffs of his sleeves were fitted perfectly beneath those of his black duster jacket.

His arms somewhat stiffly hung at each side of his waist in m
ilitary-like fashion. Exquisite posture. Refined hairstyle.
For someone with nothing better to do than lurk in graveyards at night, he was overdressed.

His eyes locked with mine and I struggled to restrain my curiosity and bite my tongue.

Where was he from and, most importantly, why had his eyes glowed the night before?

His appearance provoked many questions. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-something, but he was dressed as if he had just stepped off a red carpet. There weren’t a lot
of wealthy neighborhoods in my city, and none of them were
within walking distance.

All dressed up and nowhere to go? Or… no one
else
to…
murder
?

No.
I didn’t get that vibe from him at all, and I’ve always been a good judge of character.

I didn’t fear him this time and he wasn’t in a hurry to try to scare me away, either. It felt surreal.

We remained in excruciating silence for several moments. Words were biding their time until they could get out of my mouth. I tried not to look him over too blatantly, but he was just so… different. I couldn’t put a finger on exactly what it was that made him seem that way, either.

“How old are you?” I blurted. The question wouldn’t
stop burning.

He flinched and cocked his head the tiniest bit. If I hadn’t
kn
own any better, I would’ve thought no one had
ever
asked
him.

“Twenty-one,” he whispered. “I think.” His brow furrowed.

“You think?”

How did he not know?

“I lose track, sometimes,” he added casually, his broad shoulders rising and falling in a shrug.

“I take it most of the parties you attend aren’t for your birthday.” I smiled, trying to lighten the mood. His expression hardly changed, but a tiny curl tugged at the edge of his lips. “No offense, but you’re really composed for someone
your age. It made me think you were a little older than that.”