Dark Secrets (101 page)

I’d let go.

Perfect silence.
Complete weightlessness; it almost made me breathless, like I
needed sound or a horizon to remind me how to breathe. I couldn’t
breathe—couldn’t suffocate because there was only emptiness where
my lungs should be. All I could actually feel were tingles,
shivering across every part of my body that had turned into air. I
wanted to break free, but there was nothing to break free
from.

I was gone.

Mike was
gone.

The world was
gone.

Everything was
gone...

* * *

Floating through space
and time, I waited for morning to come and light the corners of
this dark room, but the sun never rose. I wasn’t sure how many days
or years had passed, but this couldn’t be sleep—it couldn’t just be
a dream. In fact, I was pretty sure this was Hell. No fire, no
pain, just…eternal blackness slowly, second by quiet second,
driving you mad.

It reminded me of the
time I went swimming as a little girl; I’d closed my eyes and
floated in the water for a while. With my ears under the lashing of
waves, aware only of my own thoughts, I had thought it was peaceful
then, but here, in this unimaginable expanse of nothing, floating,
unable to find the shore, it was just agonisingly
confining.

The only thing I ever
found down here was the memories—hidden behind shadows in the
darkness. And when the darkness got too much, those memories became
nightmares—unhappy endings I’d keep examining in my mind—over and
over again, never able to find the conclusion, because there’d
never be a conclusion. Not for me, anyway. In death, we have no
resolution.

My last breath would
have been taken in the arms of my best friend; my naked, twisted
and broken body would have stirred thoughts in him I couldn’t
control; he’d think Jason raped me, did other unspeakable things to
me, and I couldn’t tell him the truth.

Tears of frustration
and anger wanted release, but with no face and no eyes to cry from,
they were trapped, lodged like a rolled-up sock in my
chest—quivering and growing into a feeling I had never known
before. I wanted to rattle the bars of my cage, to scream at those
responsible.

But the rage always
wore down to misery, and when misery was unreleased, trapped in by
nothingness, it turned to fear, then to rage again. It was an
endless cycle. And even that made me mad, because there was just
nothing…
nothing
I
could do to make it stop.

“
Let me out of here!”
my mind called into the darkness. I imagined myself circling
around, gripping my hair with both hands, falling to the floor with
my head in my knees.

It did no good to
picture it, though. I still felt just the same.

“
Mike.” I imagined
myself looking up—to wherever up was. “Mike. He didn’t rape
me.”

I needed him to know
that. I needed him to know how sorry I was for leaving the dance,
and for not remembering what he taught me all those years—how to
survive, how to fight.

“
Mike? Please, please
be there. Please.”

But nothing ever
answered back.

The rage subsided
again and I watched my imagination fall to her knees. She looked so
fragile and human, so broken and alone. I felt no pity for her,
though, because she did this to herself. She let herself walk into
the arms of a vampire, and now, she was dead.

* * *

Dreams had happened in
the blackness. Once or twice, I’d seen myself somewhere else, only
to wake in the nothing again. As I wandered forward, of full body,
I knew this was just another dream.

The emptiness around
me was coloured with blue plumes of smoke, rising up, gripping my
ankles and hips like creeping fingers. The message I’d been trying
to get to my fiancé was still trembling on my lips, stuck, like a
ghost that couldn’t cross over. “Mike?” I said weakly into the
darkness. “Mike, please listen.”

With each step I took,
I could feel the fine, tickly tips of the grass between my toes. I
walked through the smoke, reaching out to touch anything at my
fingertips. I’d take a tree in the head right now—just to
feel.

When the sound of
soft, ragged breaths came from somewhere ahead, I looked deeper
into the darkness—past the blur, past the shadows.

Then, I saw
him.

“
Mike?”

He didn’t look up. As
he became completely visible for the first time, so too did the
world around him—but not me. The storm clouds overhead raged and
swirled, lapping the horizon with the promise of a wild night. But
my hair, my dress, and my existence stayed frozen in
time.

Mike stood hunched and
shaking, one hand splayed out on something stone, while his lungs
fought to find the breath that would make it all okay. “Ara, baby.
I’m so, so sorry. I should’ve protected you. I should’ve been there
to stop him from hurting you.”

I watched on, my lip
trembling, tears edging tightly on the brink of
hysterics.

Mike lost his words to
grief, sobbing heavily into his fingertips, as he reached into his
pocket, removing a closed fist. My thumb landed on my ring finger
when the gentle tink of glass drew my eyes to what he placed atop
the stone.

“
This is where it
belongs now,” he said and backed away, wiping a weary hand across
his lips. As his shadow receded, allowing light against the words
on the headstone, the core of my being imploded:

‘
Ara-Rose: Loved
Eternally.’

All life drew from my
soul, like my existence happened in reverse for that spilt second,
and the remains of the ring I once wore for love bled out over the
stone, weeping crimson tears across my name.

I stumbled on my
heels, reaching out for something to ground me. And the dream
slipped away, becoming smaller until the blackness swallowed it
whole. He was gone, but I knew he still existed out there,
somewhere I could never go—just like everything I loved—lost in a
world I would not see again; their smiles, their voices, their warm
arms. All gone. They would grow old and pass, time would pass, and
I would remain here.

Ghosts were supposed
to watch—to see who was at their funeral, to see who mourned them.
I was supposed to see David again—to know if he came to my grave. I
was supposed to sit beside him, comfort him, though he’d never know
I was there. Everything just turned out so wrong. How had it all
gone so wrong?

The imaginary me
appeared in full light, just a soft, golden glow in the darkness,
her pale dress billowing, like the fingers of a ghost. She was the
storybook version I thought death would be. But I was the reality,
sitting across from her—an empty vessel, dark, invisible, tortured.
There were no happy reunions in the afterlife, no peace and, from
what I could tell, no God, either. I had called to Him; called to
everyone I could think of—even called to Rochelle. But she wasn’t
here. God wasn’t. Buddha. Anyone. Just me. Just me and my
regrets.

“
And me,” said my
imagination.

I wanted to shake my
head. She wasn’t there either. I wasn’t sure there was even a mind.
I knew only an eternity of nothing—my punishment, I guess, for
condemning David’s heart to the same.

It was the little
things I missed the most, like a smile or colour or twisting my
ring around on my finger—my ruby rose. Mike would be so sad I
couldn’t wear it. And I once thought David would be so sad that I
did. But I guess time changes our assumptions. Or our
hearts.

“
I wonder what he’ll
do—David—when Jason shows him the memory of what he did to us,” the
imagination said.

We didn’t need to
wonder, though. “David will hate me for letting Jason hold me the
way he did in the tree.” That was supposed to be
David’s
right. He told
me once, so long ago, that the touch of human skin to a vampire was
like a thousand kisses of ecstasy; like satiating an eternal hunger
with the warmth of one breath. He’d never forgive me for giving
that to his brother.

I wished I could go
back—tell him I was sorry. I should have stayed on the dance floor
with Mike; I should never have gone with Jason.

“
But you knew that then, didn’t you?”
she
asked. “You went with Jason,
knowing deep inside that he was dangerous. You tempted Fate,
tempted danger, so David would realise how precious we are to him,
and stay with us forever.”

I thought about it for
a second. “If that’s true, then I am one big, epic fail, and I will
never see David again—never find out why he didn’t show for the
last dance.”

“
Don’t you remember?”
the imagination said, smiling. “He told you that vampires leave and
move on without saying goodbye—without telling people
why.”

I nodded. “Yes,
because it raises more suspicions when questions are asked. They
simply send a letter resigning from jobs or schools and they’re
never seen again.” As I finished the sentence, realisation struck
me worse than shock. “Is that what he did to me? Did he leave me,
and I never saw it coming? Did he convince me that he’d come back
so that I wouldn’t try to find him?”

“
I think you already
know the answer to that question, Ara.”

“
No. That can’t be
right.”

“
But it is right.
David didn’t come…because David never was coming.”

The remains of my
existence suddenly gave up in that one moment. If I could have been
speechless or stared blankly, I would have. “Then he really is just
as nasty as the memory Jason showed me.”

“
Yes,” my imagination
snickered, “and you were just another victim of his
cruelty.”

Chapter
Thirty-Six

An alarm clock
set my mind on wake; its incessant bleeping stirring me before I
was ready. But the sun, usually always up at this hour, was
missing. I blinked a few times, thinking maybe my eyes were still
closed, and as my breath came back hot against my own lips from a
flat surface right above me, I jumped suddenly. Dread filled my
lungs out, making my world sink backward. I placed my hands in
desperate layers over the sides, the top, the base of this space I
was laying, folding my toes down, pushing against the hard there,
making my head hit the firm surface above it.

“
Hello,” I
called, but my voice came back dead absorbed by the wood it fell
against. And the tiny box got hotter and smaller around me, my
shoulders folding in, narrowing my lungs.

They thought I
was dead.

I felt my
heart—placed my hand right over it to see if it was beating, but I
couldn’t feel it—couldn’t feel the wound on my neck or my wrist or
anywhere. They’d healed. They were healed and I was in a
box.

Panic
rose.

A chain of
fierce screams burst suddenly from my lips, blocked only by the
forcing drive of each blow of my elbow, my knee, my foot being cast
down on the solid surrounds. “Please don’t leave me here.” I
scratched the wooden roof, my fingers splintering. But I didn’t
care. “Please. Please, God. Please.”

I coughed out
suddenly, the air leaving my lungs in a vulgar bark, fine particles
of earthy powder spiking the back of my throat. The box compressed
my shoulders on both sides, stopping my lungs from expanding,
denying me the breath of relief I fought for.

I stopped
moving then. Stopped kicking, breathing, everything, and laid
perfectly still, listening to the flow of dirt rain down in a heavy
pile over my ponytail, cooling my head through the strands of
hair.

The first rule
in this situation would be to not panic. But my chest moved in
quick hitches. My fingers balled up so tight my thumb cut my hand,
I was sure, and I couldn’t stop the thoughts entering my mind,
things David told me—vampires, buried alive for seven days. They
survived. They lived through that, tortured, alone, unable to
breathe.

“
David!” I
bent my knee to the highest angle it could achieve and jammed my
foot against the floor, pushing on the lid of this coffin,
thrashing about like a beetle caught on its back. “Ahh!”

“
Ara,” a
muffled voice came gloriously through the wood then, thick with
grief.

“
I’m in
here!” I screamed. “Mike. Get me out. I’m in here.” I banged on the
roof, making the dirt pile grow. But I didn’t care. Mike was there.
He’d get me out. He’d—

“
Just squeeze
my hand,” he said, cutting off my thought. “Please. Just once.
That’s all I need.”

“
Mike. I
can’t,” I screamed. “I can’t get out. I’m in a box.”

I waited,
listening, but this container seemed to be soundproofed—from the
inside. I tried to sit up, to move, to struggle against the pine
confines, but the dirt formed a mound under my head as I lifted it,
pushing my nose closer to the lid, arching my neck at an awkward,
unnatural angle. And panic returned with a layer of sweat, turning
the dirt to mud around my temples and nose. “Oh God.” I looked up,
shutting my eyes tight. “Please. Please get me out of
here.”