Dark One: One for Sorrow... (The Khiara Banning Series Book 1) (16 page)

“We have to go,”
says a voice that makes my heart pick up, though not in fear. I don’t really understand what this feeling is, but it’s not bad so I don’t find myself panicking. I feel safer than anything else. I feel like I know this person…

“Goodbye.”
The woman places her thumb, middle and index finger in a triangle over my heart.
“We’ll meet again, as I said – hopefully under much better circumstances.”

Everything goes dark, and when I wake up I don’t know where I am, but it’s scary.
“Hello?”
I call into the scary darkness.
“Mommy? Papa?”
Nobody answers me. I try to focus on how I got here but I just can’t seem to remember. One minute I was outside playing with my tea set, and the next thing I know I’m here.
“Cara? This isn’t funny! You know I don’t like the dark. If this is about your doll, I’m sorry I broke her, it was an accident I swear, ask your daddy he saw me trip!”

Minutes later, the police break through the door and-

The scene switches abruptly to Cara’s bedroom. I’m watching the events as if I were a bystander. Cara and I are sleeping together in her huge bed, curled up next to each other. We must be about five and six years old. I watch as my younger self begins to stir, and eventually wakes up. She looks around the room, and then her eyes focus on something and widen. I follow her line of sight and see a dark shape standing by the door. She tries to wake Cara up, but she’s a deep sleeper and just continues snoring.

Younger me then gets up and walks to the bathroom, hoping to escape whatever it is in there. Like I’m attached to her, I follow and step in before she closes the door. She walks over to the sink and washes her face and I feel myself being sucked into her body until we become one. I am five years old again, sleeping over for the very first time at my friend Cara’s house, and I don’t want to make a scene because I think I saw some kind of boogeyman. I splash some more water onto my face and look up into the mirror – and I scream.

I wake up.

Shakily I reach for my cell phone beside me on the couch, and shudder when I see the time. Midnight. I check outside and see that the rain is still going strong, and sigh. I stare down at my phone for a minute, debating what I should do, then I pick it up and click Cael’s contact icon, hold my finger down until the text or call options pop up, and choose text.

R u up?
I send.

Two seconds later he replies.
Yeah, just watching TV. You ok?

No. Can’t b here. 2 many nightmares…memories? I dunno.

My phone buzzes with his answer.
I can send a cab over and you can come here if you want. Or I can send a cab to bring you home.

Can’t go home
. I don’t feel like explaining anything to my parents right now.

Forty-five minutes later, a cab comes to pick me up. I left a note on Cara’s TV where I know she’ll see it, and she knows how I feel about sleepovers.

“Well then” says the driver, who I quickly recognize as the guy who drove me to and from Cael’s house the night of Cara’s party. “You’re a regular, aren’t you Mrs. Banning?” I politely nod. I don’t question how he knows my last name; our town isn’t huge, so eventually you’re bound to know most of the workers, and though I’ve never seen him before and that means he must be new and Jerry’s replacement in his retirement, I know that he’ll probably know the names of almost everybody in town by next month.

“You know my parents,” I state, as we turn down Mercury lane.

“Yes, I know of your mother,” he says brightly. “I’ve bought many of your mother’s paintings from her site; she keeps her business card everywhere in town and eventually I had to see what all of the hubbub was about. I’m very glad I did. There’s a lovely family picture on her biography page, and I recognized you instantly. I hope to go to her studio in town.”

The driver’s nametag reads Fred, and his accent and beautiful skin tone hints at Middle Eastern descent. Perhaps Israel? “Here we are,” he says as we pull up to Cael’s place, “free of charge for tonight’s best customer.”

“Who’s the second best customer,” I ask as pull out a twenty, which is obviously more than enough, and hand it to him. “You feed your family, Fred.”

“Thank you,” he says, sounding touched as he takes it, but gives me the correct change instead of taking all of it like I intended. “But if you insist on paying for your fare, well I can’t change your mind now can I?”

I smile. “I’m glad you moved here, Fred, and replaced Jerry. You’re going to be the most requested cab driver in no time.”

“There are only a few cabs anyway,” he says, chuckling, but visibly pleased.

Cael is standing outside in his pyjamas holding an umbrella, and he opens the door for me and helps me out. He walks me to the door and gestures for me to go inside while he pays the fare, and I smile as I walk in and see that there’s a steaming hot cup of coffee waiting for me on the living room table in front of where I’ve sat the last couple of times I was here. I walk over to it, plunk down on the couch, and close my eyes and sigh.

The door closes and I open my eyes as Cael sits down next to me. He smiles. “Coffee’s for you, if you were wondering. Unless you wanted tea or hot chocolate…” his smile fades a little, but when I pick the coffee up and shake my head it returns.

“Coffee is
absolutely
fine with me.” I take a sip of the delicious stuff and place it back on the table.

“So,” I say, “what’s on the tube?”

“Late night re-runs and infomercials. It’s lady’s choice tonight.” He passes me the remote, his blue eyes filled with good humour.

“I’ll take infomercials for two hundred, please.” I flick through the channels until I find an infomercial worth watching. A lady is excitedly explaining how to cook with this new kitchen set we can get for only ten small payments of twenty-nine-ninety-nine!

“See,” I say, “It’s like watching a cooking show.” I take a sip of my coffee and smile at Cael, who nods.

“Exactly. It’s entertaining.”

We sit for a while, watching the lady cook with the “amazing” pots and pans, cutting things with the “just superb” knife set. Eventually, I find myself growing sleepy and I yawn.

“Tired?” asks Cael, who yawns himself right after. I nod my head, but then shake it. I don’t want to fall asleep and have such terrifying nightmares again. Cael’s eyes narrow and he asks, “Those dreams you had. How bad were they?”

I look down at my thighs and sigh. “Bad. I think they might have been memories, but they’re too strange to believe you know? But they feel so familiar…”

“What were they about? If you, you know, don’t mind me asking.” I wave my hand in a gesture I hope comes across as
not at all.

“When I was in grade two, I was kidnapped. It’s why I hate the dark so much. I never remembered much of how it happened. I always remember waking up in total darkness, and then being found not too long after by the police. They always said it must have been some stupid kids from out of town playing a prank because a call came in about my whereabouts.” Tears fill my eyes.

“Tonight though, I dreamed that it was a man who’d kidnapped me. I can’t remember what he looked like anymore, but he seemed so
familiar
. He told me that he was working for…
Satan
, and that they wanted me dead.” Cael remains silent, looking pensive.

“And then” I continue, “there was this girl. She saved me…and somebody else. She said his name and it…it was the angel from the story you told me about. He was the one who phoned the police while the girl untied me.”

Cael’s Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows some saliva. “That’s rather scary isn’t it? I wonder what made you dream about it?”

I shake my head and lean into him. At first he seems surprised, but then his arms entangle me and bring me closer. “I don’t know. It felt so real, like it really happened. But that’s impossible.”

He nods his head in agreement. “Impossible.”

“When that dream ended, another began. You know how I told you sleepovers give me anxiety? I think I remembered why…but I can’t remember much about that dream. Only that something scared me, I guess I saw a shadow in the mirror when I was washing my face and it traumatized me.”

Cael kisses the top of my head. “I’ll keep you safe from your nightmares tonight, if you want.”

I try to smile through a yawn. “How?”

He gently pushes me aside and stands up. “Wait here,” he says as he leaves the room. He comes back a couple of minutes later with a huge fluffy duvet, a sheet, and some pillows. I giggle at the rather large load of things he’s carrying and offer to help him, but he promptly drops them on the floor.

“We can make a fort.”

Thirteen

I slowly drift awake in the early morning to the sound of soft snoring. Not wanting to open my eyes I lay there, quietly trying to remember where I am.

Groggy, it takes a couple of minutes for the memories to come to me but when they do I smile. They’re like pictures at first, snapshots of the fun we had;
Cael laughing at my expression after he threw a pillow at my head, and then our crappy attempt at a couch fort.
Then they start to move together like a reel.
He was tickling me and I kicked over my coffee cup, and I felt such horror and embarrassment at first but then our laughter continued as he said it didn’t matter and continued to tickle me anyway.
I replay the moments that lead up to when I eventually must’ve fallen asleep, and I lie there in our terrible attempt at a couch fort, listening to Cael’s snores, feeling his chest move up and down under my head with his breaths and I realize something. This must be what it’s like to be slowly falling in love.

~*~

I never thought anything like this could be possible but here it is, this situation that has my kind-of-human heart beating fast and hard in my chest; the chest which her head is currently resting upon deep in slumber, her breaths even and deep. I find myself smiling as she mumbles something incoherent in her sleep, and shift my arms around her a little tighter. She sighs into the embrace as if there’s nowhere she’d rather be. There is nowhere I would rather be either than right here, right now. I will protect her and I will find a way to break her curse. The Battle will be fast upon us, and I need to find a way to tell her soon.

“Father,” I whisper. “Please help me find a way.”

In response, thunder rumbles in the distance and the rain pelts the windows and roof harder. My heart lurches. I know that He cannot help even if He wanted to. God can only do so much.

But still, it’s nice to know He wishes He could do more. Curses only have so many loop holes.

~*~

My eyes pop open at a sudden movement underneath my head. I scan my surroundings and realize I’m still at Cael’s. Yawing, I sit up and stretch as he does the same.