NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1) (13 page)

I nod.
 
“Yeah.
 
I just…I’m restless.
 
You know how you didn’t believe that I
know someplace creepier than here?”

He nods slowly, interested, his eyes
gleaming.
 
“Yeah.”

I smile.
 
“Want to see it tonight?”

My dad coughs a little.
 
“Calla, I’m not sure that tonight is the
best night for that.
 
It’s dark, you
could get hurt.”

I roll my eyes.
 
“Dad, Finn and I have been there a
hundred times over the years.
 
It’s
fine.”

I look at Dare.
 
“You up for it?”

He grins.
 
“I never say no to an adventure.”

QUATUORDECIM

Finn

From my window, I watch them go and the darkness from
outside seems to bleed into my room, into my heart, into my blood.
 

LetHerGoLetHerGoLetHerGo.
 

I swallow back the hateful words
as I watch my sister get into our car with him.
 
Bile rises in my throat because my
sister is mine and distancing myself is the last thing I want to do, but at the
same time, it’s the only thing I can do.
 

DoWhatIsRight.
 

That’s my voice.
 
Finally.
 
Breaking through the crazy, through the
voices, through the words.
 

I’ve got to do what is
right.
 

What is
right.

What is
right.
 

ProtectYourSecret.
 

The other voices come back,
hissing, reminding.
 

My secret.
 

That’s what it comes back to
now.
 

Always.
 

No matter what.
 

QUINDECIM

Calla

Dare
sprawls on the passenger side seat, taking up every inch of space as I drive us
carefully down the
mountain.
 
I don’t even glance at my mother’s cross
as we pass, and although I’m sure Dare has seen it and wondered about it, he
doesn’t mention it.
 

“So where exactly are we going?” he asks
in his sexy as hell accent as we turn onto the highway at the bottom of the
mountain.
 

I glance at him and smile.
 

“Are you scared?”

He shakes his head, rolling his dark
eyes.
 

“Not hardly.
 
I’ve got you to protect me.”

I laugh at that because the idea of
little me protecting huge him is laughable. But then I shake my head.
 
“You’re going to have to wait.”

So he waits while I drive.
 
Into the night, along the quiet highway,
until we turn off and head into a quiet part of town, then out onto the edge,
where it’s darkened and only a few city lights twinkle in the night.
 

We drive beneath the old burned out sign,
the words that form a rickety neon arch, faded purple and created back when
neon signs were cutting edge.
 
The
bulbs have long ago been broken, a glaring reminder that this place is sad and abandoned.
 

JOYLAND, the letters spell out.
 

Even the letters look spooky, all
darkened and jagged.
 
There’s
nothing joyful about this place anymore, other than the memories that it
contains, memories of riding the old train with Finn, laughing with him on the
bumper cars, running through the haunted house.
 
But that was all before they closed this
place, of course.
 
Afterward, Finn
and I came here to be alone, to huddle together and talk amongst the creepy
buildings because we found it amusing to scare ourselves.
  
But we haven’t been here since mom
died. I guess real life is scary enough.
 

I pull into an abandoned parking spot,
between faded orange lines, among a sea of other empty slots.
 

“My parents used to bring Finn and I here
when we were little,” I explain.
 
“But the owner apparently got into tax trouble and overnight, this place
was locked up and abandoned.”

Dare looks around, at the black parking
lot, the darkened gates, and at the rickety Ferris wheel looming above the
gated horizon, it’s spindly bars a haunting white against the blackness of
night.
 

“So you just come here and sit in the
parking lot or what?” he speculates, his face blank.
 
I chuckle.
 

“No. We figured out a way in a long time
ago.”

Dare grins now, as realization spreads
across his face. “Ohhhh.
 
Breaking and Entering.
 
Always a crowd favorite.”

I chuckle again.
 
“Somehow I’m guessing this will be a
first for you.”

I open my door and the creak echoes
through the night because there are no other noises here to mask it.
 
It feels like we’re on the edge of the
world, all alone, and if we take one wrong step, we’ll vault over the side.
  

“It’s all right,” I call over my shoulder
as I head for the park.
 
“The owner
is long gone. We heard he’s overseas now so I’m sure he doesn’t care who pokes
around.
 
We’re not the first, and we
won’t be the last.”

I feel Dare behind me, so close that I
can smell his cologne, as I lead him along the fence.
 
Finally, I see what I’m looking for… the
jagged hole that someone cut away years ago.
 
It’s just the size for a person to crawl
through.
 

I duck through it, and Dare
doesn’t
hesitate to follow.
 
The idea that he trusts me enough to
follow without question makes my belly warm.
 
He barely knows me.
 

But as I turn and pause, staring up at
his handsome face, the look in his eyes melts my insides.
Because he
wants
to know me.
 
That much is clear.
 

I swallow hard,
then
turn back around, surveying the scene in front of me.
 

The Midway is empty, completely abandoned
and dark, like something out of a horror movie.
 
The carnival games line each side, with
grotesque clown faces and peeling
race cars
, and the
gleaming paint of a beaver as it watches me from afar.
 

Trash blows in the breeze like paper
tumbleweeds, and there is graffiti on a few of the buildings, evidence that we
certainly aren’t the first here.
 
TURN
BACK, is written in artful red and black.
 
DROP DEAD is painted directly beneath it in glowing orange.
 
And then, at the very bottom, painted in
eerie, morbid white, is DEATH COMES TO US ALL.
 
I don’t bother mentioning that my
brother painted that one.
 

“Interesting,”
Dare
says slowly, as he pivots in a circle.
 
“But I wouldn’t say it’s creepier than a funeral home.”

“That’s because this isn’t what I want to
show you,” I tell him mischievously.
 
He glances down at me.

“Well, I’m ever ready,” he
announces.
 
“Lead on.”

I giggle at his formal tone, which even
still is sexy with his accent, and without thinking, I reach behind and grab
his hand in the dark.
 
I almost
startle at the contact, at the feel of his warm fingers and strong hands.
 
He’s surprised by it, but he doesn’t
shirk away.
 
Instead, he grips my
hand firmly, yet softly, and I pull him along, enjoying the very idea that I’m
touching him right now.
 

I’m
holding hands with Dare DuBray.

We walk through the dead center of the
Midway, past the Old Mill boat ride, with it’s rotting boats bobbing in the
murky moat, past the hanging swings, their chains creaking as they move in the
wind, and past the bumper cars, with the defunct cars all shoved together in
the middle.

I stop in front of Nocte, Joyland’s
version of a house of horrors.

Dare reads the dark sign, the black
letters that seem to drip with
blood.
“Nocte, huh?”

I nod. “It means
by night
in Latin.
 
Finn
used to love this place.
 
And I
think it’s what started his love of Latin.”

I don’t mention my theory that Finn loved
this place because the grotesque horror of it made even him feel sane.
 
That’s why we still come, because it
still has the same effect, maybe even more so. The atmosphere of abandonment
adds to the horror, making it seem real, somehow.
 
So when he walks through it, he’s the
sanest thing in the room, aside from me.

Dare and I stand staring up the winding
drive, toward the deserted mansion that seems to leer at us from above, some of
its windows broken out and winking.
 
Plants line the drive, and weeping trees form a canopy, creating a shadowy
walkway.
 

Dare glances at me. “Ok. It’s creepy.”

I smile, even as chills already form
along my spine.
 
“You haven’t seen
anything yet.”

I tug on his hand, and we start up the
drive.
 
“When this was running, they
used to have ghosts and zombies jumping out along the way, scaring you, telling
you to turn back.”
 
I pause, staring
up at him.
 
“Do you want to turn
back, Dare?”

My voice contains a flirty challenge, and
he hears it.
 
He turns to me,
grinning.

“Not on your life.”
 
The moonlight shines down on him,
illuminating the dark stubble that lines his jawline, and glinting off the ends
of his hair.
 
He seems to shine, for
a moment, and I itch to reach up and touch his face.
 

But I don’t.
 

Instead, I smile.
 
“Let’s do it, then.”

We climb the creaky stairs of the porch,
cross the creaking boards,
then
turn the brass handle
of the door.
 
Dare steps fearlessly
over the threshold.

“Which way?” he turns to me.
 
I pull out my flashlight and shine it
around the familiar foyer. Red velvet lines the walls, hanging in an ominous
way reminiscent of blood.
 
It smells
musty and old in here, oxygen deprived and dusty.
 

“That way,” I point to the right, toward
the hall that I know leads to the bedrooms.
 

Because suddenly, I just have to be close
to him.
 
It’s a need, not a want.
 
An unconscious pull, a call that I
desperately want to answer.
 

We inch along the hall, with every other
step creaking, and I catch Dare glancing behind us several times.
 

“Scared?” I ask cheekily.
 

“Not at all,” he answers calmly, stepping
around a mannequin lying in a pool of fake blood.
 
The mannequin seems to stare up at me
with lifeless eyes, eyes that seem too knowing to be glass, too real to be
fake
.
 
It’s part
of the draw of this place.
 
It’s
creepily real.
 
And now, since it’s
abandoned and dark, it’s scarier than they ever meant for it to be.
 

As we walk, I know without looking where Dare
is. It’s like I’m a planet and he’s my axis… or my sun.
 
I feel his heat, I feel his presence,
and I ache to lean into it, to fold into him, to absorb his strength.
 

It’s a sudden urge, and I’m startled with
the intensity of it.
 

I’m startled because I’ve never felt it
before, not like this.
 
It’s enough
to make me feel guilty, because it distracts me from other feelings that have
overwhelmed me lately…the blinding grief.

I swallow hard as I lead him to the first
bedroom.
 

Stepping inside, I shine the light
around, at the mannequin lying on the bed, with the rope around its neck and
the knife in its chest.
 
She stares
at me accusingly with matted blond hair, like she wants to know what the hell
we’re doing with this intrusion.

I
don’t know what I’m doing.
 

That’s the truth of it. What I know is
that I like the way Dare makes me feel.
 
I like being distracted from pain.
 
I like the way my heart flutters and my stomach flips whenever he’s
around.
 
That’s what I know.
 

I turn my attention from the mannequin to
her surroundings.
 
The bed-sheets
are splattered with ‘blood’ and on the wall, THE GOOD DIE HERE, drips in
ominous red, supposedly written by the murderer’s finger dipped in the victim’s
own blood.
 

“Are you?” I ask Dare with a smirk.
 
“Good, I mean?”

He looks at me sharply,
then
his mouth tilts into a smile.
 
“I’ve had no complaints.”

I shake my head because obviously that
isn’t what I meant, but it’s funny so I laugh anyway.
 

“Hmmm.
 
Then we might be in danger.
 
If you’re good, I mean.”

I scoot closer to him and
suddenly,
I’m in his personal space.
 
I’m pressed against his chest, and the
rock hard solidity of it surprises me.
 
He’s lithe and slender, so I didn’t expect him to be so…immovable, so
muscular and hard.
 

I take a deep breath, inhaling his
masculine smell, and stare up at him.
 

He’s staring down at me, his gaze
connected to mine, just like the first day I saw him.
 
But this time, there’s something in his
eyes that wasn’t there before, there’s an expression there that I’ve only seen
in my dreams.
 
Want.
 
For me.
 
It
shakes me to my core, causing my breath to linger on my lips.

I reach up to touch his face, my fingers
grazing his jaw, his stubble teasing my fingertips.