Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) Page 17

  “I peed,” she replies quietly. “I’m sorry.”

  Through the blur of panic I look to her lap and see that she has in fact peed herself. I look back to her face, and everything clears and rights itself almost immediately. A weary smile flits to my mouth, replacing the grimace from only moments ago. “That’s okay. I should have stopped before now. It’s my fault.”

  I will my heart to slow down, for my chest to loosen, and when I feel properly back in control, I start the engine and continue to drive into the town. I wonder why she didn’t tell me that she needed to go, but when I glance sideways at her, she seems so small and lost that I think that may be the very reason why: she’s lost, wandering frightened in a dark world inside her own mind, hiding from monsters and nightmares.

  “We’ll just drive through and see. We can get out in a minute and I’ll help you clean up. Okay?” I say, and I feel almost elated that I haven’t lost her yet.

  “Okay,” she mumbles.

  I have no intention of stopping and looting anything in this town, but my curiosity is piqued so I at least want to drive through and see for myself. Sometimes you take chances—you have to if you want to survive—but other times you have to trust your instincts. My instincts are telling me to go and get far away from here. Much like my instincts are telling me that I don’t have much longer left. And neither does Lilly.

  But there is nothing to see in this barren town. It looks much the same as all the other towns we have passed through: empty streets, empty windows, and empty storefronts. Broken cars, broken windows, broken bones…

  “I don’t like it here,” Lilly says.

  “Me neither,” I reply. “We’ll leave now.”

  “Good.”

  The stores are all dark inside, and I know they are there. I can feel them, I can almost hear them. They’re trapped inside, in the dark, listening to us drive past, their red eyes watching us from the shadows. Fear tickles my spine, tracing its deathly cold fingers down my throat and across my stomach and making me feel sick. This place is heaving with them, just one giant nest full of monsters. I reach my arm outside the car, feeling the heat of the sun on it and the warm air flowing between my fingers, a stark reminder that we’re safe for now. I place my palm against the metal of the car. It makes me feel better, almost grounding me here in this moment, because I can hear them, calling to us, prowling back and forth in the dark, angry at us for driving away, and I feel lost in that knowledge.

  I look across at Lilly and see her leaning against her door and staring out her open window, her hair still whipping around her face. And I know that she feels them too.

  We exit the other side of the town and I feel better almost immediately—but again, I cannot say why. Perhaps the distance between them and us, the proximity, makes me feel more like myself and less like them. I drive until we’re a mile or two on the outskirts of this strange, nameless town, and then I pull the car over next to a small stream that runs behind an old bus stop. Lilly needs cleaning. The car is beginning to smell terribly and I know that she’s embarrassed. She’s a big girl now, so she always used to tell me, and barring this accident she hasn’t peed herself in a long time.

  I climb out and go around to Lilly’s side. I open her door and unbuckle her and help her out. She may be dehydrated but she is still soaked through, and the smell of pee is strong. I help her over to the stream and I undress her, pulling her sodden panties and pants down her legs. I get our plastic bottle from the car and we both drink what water is left in it before I fill it up again and we drink some more. When I think that we have drunk all that we can, I fill the bottle up and put it to one side, and then I begin scrubbing her clothes in the water until I think the pee is all gone.

  The clothes will take a little while to dry and so I spread them out on the embankment—all but her panties which I help her put back on. Wet or not, they’ll dry eventually just from her body heat alone. Because I realized, as I helped her undress, that her temperature matches mine, and I am burning with a fever. Though other than being hot, I don’t feel sick from it like I know I should. Her body is riddled with black lines, almost like the lines on a map. I don’t dare take my clothes off to see my own body. I do not want to see the horror etched into my skin, branded into my blood. And I don’t want her to see it either.

  I get the berries from the car and Lilly eats, but I can tell she doesn’t really have an appetite anymore. And neither do I. Which is worrying. We walk along the stream, splashing in the water. I try to coax a smile or a laugh from Lilly, but she has retreated into herself. Only this time I worry that maybe she’ll never come back. The stream goes on for quite some time, and we follow it until it enters a bend in the road. Scattered plants are along the edge of the stream, but at the bend, trees are starting to grow tall and proud.

  “Look, Lilly. Trees,” I say and point, but she only shrugs sadly. “There could be food, something we can eat in there,” I continue, but this time, she doesn’t even shrug. “Do you like nuts?” I ask. “Because I think that tree has nuts on it.”

  She doesn’t say anything, or even look up from her feet—though I do see her wiggling her pink toes in the water, which I think is a good sign. I take off my shirt and put it on her. It’s dirty and sweaty, but I can see little goose bumps on her skin and I worry she might be cold. I take her hand and pull her toward the trees. She doesn’t resist, and I don’t worry about the shade from the trees because there isn’t any—certainly not enough for the monsters to hide in. So we walk through the small trees, looking for nuts (that I know won’t be there), looking for some small, innocent animal that has inexplicably survived after all this time, and perhaps we can catch and kill it (though deep down I know I couldn’t really do that). And Lilly, the entire time, stares at her feet solemnly.

  I’m about to turn back when I see something on the ground, so I clutch Lilly’s hand tighter and walk closer to it. It looks like a hole, a wide hole that is very deep. I feel nervous—apprehensive, almost—as I almost reach the edge. A strange smell lingers in the air, a smell I can’t place. Not tree sap, or earth, nor pine needles or dust. A smell that I both instinctually know, and yet equally shouldn’t know. I let go of Lilly’s hand and turn to her.

  “Wait here, Honeybee,” I say to her on bended knee, trying to catch her eye. But she doesn’t acknowledge me in any way. It’s as if she were here alone, and I were not even a figment of her imagination.

  I sigh heavily and stand back up before taking those final slow steps toward the brink of the hole. My steps seem to take an age, but slowly, I find myself standing on the threshold of the hole, looking down into the darkness within. I blink, not quite sure what I am seeing at first, and then I understand.

  Pit. The word sounds dirty in my head as soon as I think it, and yet I cannot think of another word that is more suitable. This was supposed to be a mass grave, yet “grave” does not sound right in my mind. A grave is somewhere that you take your final rest. A singular, solitary hole for one, perhaps two bodies. A place where family and friends can visit from time to time, leave flowers next to a headstone, and speak to the spirits of their dead loved ones.

  But this? This is a pit. A pit full of bodies. Bodies that are long rotted. Bodies that have been torn apart by monsters. Monsters that have become trapped in the pit after feeding upon the flesh of the dead, and have since been burned up by the sun. So in the pit, there are hundreds of rotting carcasses, both human and not, that are now burnt to a crisp.

  Crisp. What a stupid statement. Bodies don’t burn to a crisp. They go black and melt into one giant form, and then they become indiscernible to the human eye, blackened and rotted until they are no longer one body or hundreds of bodies, but one giant blob of burnt flesh and blackened bone.

  Lilly gasps from next to me, her hand squeezing mine tightly. I look down at her, my mouth open as it forms a silent O. She tugs on my hand, pulling me away from the gory sight, and I follow her numbly. Child leading mother. It is all so wrong.
This picture, this story, it’s all wrong. Things shouldn’t be like this. But they are.

  We make our way back along the stream, back to Lilly’s clothes on the embankment. She silently takes off my shirt and hands it back to me, and then she dresses in her own still-damp clothes. She immediately climbs back into the car, puts on her seatbelt, and waits for me. I stare at her, watching, scared, frightened to my core, because I am horrified by the mass grave of monsters and humans alike, yet Lilly—she seems untouched by any of it.

  Chapter Twenty-Three.

  #23. Once there was a little girl, and she used to smile.

  Sometimes when I am lost in my own misery, I try to recall mundane things. Nothing of consequence, just something simple like the sound of a clock ticking, or how people used to mow their lawns in the summer. They are lonely yet familiar things. They remind me of home, of a life lost, without being too painful for me to recall. If I keep them abstract and un-personal, they calm me. They remind me that I am still human, because if I were not, I wouldn’t remember them.

  Tonight as I pull the barricade across the basement door of the dilapidated house we are hiding in, I decide which things I will think about. Perhaps the sound of a refrigerator clicking on and off, or the image of someone putting up a poster about a lost tabby cat. All of them are simple, non-threatening things that mean nothing to me, but will soothe me.

  I pull the bar firmly in place, staring at it for several minutes with a hard frown. I think it will hold firm. No monsters have been here recently, and why would they? The place is all but demolished, no windows, no doors left, there are barely any walls left standing. But beneath the rubble we find the small trapdoor. It used to be a bomb shelter, I’m sure, and then was possibly converted to a storm shelter sometime after the war ended. Now it is a place to hide from the monsters. A new shelter for a new war.

  I finally turn and make my way down the steps, slowly and surefooted. I find Lilly standing in the middle of the room, exactly where I had left her. The small candle I gave her is still burning in her hand, creating shadows and distorting her features. I place a hand on her shoulder and I expect her to flinch, or turn to look at me, to suck in a breath of fright, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t move. She isn’t concerned, or worried of what I am or who I might become overnight. She is still and silent, like she has been for most of the day. My fingers pull her knotted hair to one side and I gently trace the black lines down the back of her neck. Still she doesn’t flinch, and I know that she doesn’t like me to touch the lines. I think that’s why I do it. So that she will speak, ask me to stop, to pull away in anger or fright, or both, but still…nothing. She gives me nothing.

  There is very little down here, but at least it’s somewhere below ground, away from them, I think as I survey the small space. It’s better than last night, at least. I leave Lilly in the center of the room and I take my own candle, cupping a hand around it so as not to blow out the small flame as I walk around. There was a bag of candles on a shelf—dusty, unused, long-forgotten. No one uses candles anymore. They attract monsters, the light piercing the blackness like a beacon, letting them know that humans are nearby. But there is nowhere for the light to escape to down here, and so I enjoy the light that the simple candles provide, the smell of their wicks and wax burning.

  The room is reinforced. Of course it is—it’s supposed to withstand bombs and tornadoes. There is a small toilet that doesn’t work, a unit that works as a kitchen but there is no food or water in it, and a small bed with no covers on it. The shelves are bare of belongings—no ornaments, no picture frames, nothing to tell the story of the people this place once belonged to. And I think I like it that way.

  I make my way back to Lilly, wrapping my hand around hers, and I guide her to the toilet. I help pull her cotton briefs down and she pees, though of course I can’t flush it. The old Lilly would have found it funny, to be using a real toilet again, but not this Lilly—not this child. I guide her over to the kitchen, coaxing her into a chair, and then I pick through the bag of berries, placing some in front of her. She looks down at them. Her belly is growling hungrily, yet I have to tell her several times that she needs to eat before she will. Eventually I think she has eaten enough, or perhaps I am tired myself. So I once more take her hand and guide her over to the small bed. I take the candle from her and help her to lie down, and she does, curling up on her side, and then she closes her eyes without hesitation.

  I sit down next to her, running my fingers over her. Stroking her hair, her side, ignoring the sinking feeling in my heart, and trying to keep a hold on her for a little longer. My Lilly—my Honeybee—she’s going. She’s drifting along on a cloud of black poison and I can’t bring her back. Every mile forward is sinking her further. It’s almost over is all I can think. It’s almost over, finally.

  I sit on the floor up near her head, the light from my candle flickering over us, and I watch her for a little while, seeing how her features twitch every now and then as she dreams. Her skin is smooth and perfect, barring the black in her veins, her eyelashes still healthy and thick, but her hair…her hair is thinning. I run my fingers through her knots, and come away with hair trapped between my fingers. I stroke the loose strands from my hands and then do the same to my own hair, morbidly curious to see how bad I am becoming. Chunks come away with my touch, and I repress the whimper of fear which crawls up my neck.

  “I don’t want to die,” I whisper into the darkness, a teardrop sliding down my face.

  I had to say it out loud at least once. I know that I have no choice in the matter, and it’s something that I have thought on many occasions, but I’ve never said it out loud. Not even once. Except for now. Because now it’s near the end, and the final pieces are moving into place. I stroke Lilly’s hair, and wonder if it would be more humane to put my hand over her nose and mouth right now. To cut off her air supply and let her stay asleep forever. No more changing, no more monsters, no more fear. But of course I won’t, because I’m a coward. I love her too much to do that, but not enough to end it for her. Not today anyway, but maybe tomorrow.

  A scream resonates from somewhere outside, and I recoil and then slowly climb to my feet. I’m surprised that they are here, though I really shouldn’t be. But there had been no indication that they had been here recently, no scratching in the ground, no piles of bones of long-dead humans, no telltale nests—nothing. And there isn’t anything here, nothing for them and nowhere for them to hide. I make my way back to the door, slowly climbing the steps, making sure to be quiet, silent as a mouse. The door fits perfectly within its frame, leaving no space for shadows to pass. I may not see them—the monsters—but I can hear them, loud and clear. The sniffing and clawing, the screaming and growling, their nails dragging over the door. But they can’t get in. I’m almost certain that they can’t get in.

  I pull my pathetically small knife from my pocket and clutch it tightly, holding it out in front of me. Waiting, always waiting for them to find us, to catch us, to kill us. Waiting. It’s a cruel torture.

  The night goes on, the blackness suffocating. The noises are all around us, overhead and on each side—not just at the door, but everywhere. They are slowly closing in on me. On us. Lilly starts to whimper from somewhere in the dark and I go to her immediately, half driven insane from the worry of losing her and of the monsters scratching at the door.

  She’s sitting up in bed, crying. She’s trying to be silent, to be hushed and soundless, but every noise seems to echo. She runs to me when she sees me, and then I am crying. Clutching her small bony body against mine, and crying against her neck and hair, so happy that she is showing some sort of emotion, but so sad that the emotion is fear again.

  She clings to me, and I hold her fiercely. I sit on the bed with her. I don’t like it because I want to be closer to the door, but it would frighten her more—and I don’t want her to be more frightened than she is. I don’t want her to feel scared. So I stay with her wrapped around me tightly, sitting on
the edge of the uncomfortable little bed, as we wait for either morning or death.

  I know when the sun awakens, because the world goes silent. The monsters bolt away, running somewhere to hide from their foe, and I carry Lilly gently across the dark room, toward the door. She won’t let me put her down, so I let her cling to me while I slowly pull the barricade free and push open the door.

  The daylight is bright—glaringly so—and I yelp in pain as the sun startles me, burning my corneas and making me see a glow wrapped tightly around everything. Lilly is still buried against my neck, so the impact isn’t quite as strong for her, but I feel her flinch under the warm rays of the sun just as I do, and I know that it cannot mean anything good for either of us.

  I lean against the doorframe, letting my eyes adjust and my senses become alert to the new day. Finally, I can catch my breath and feel steady enough to walk. I close the door to the shelter, trying not to worry too much when I see the claw marks on the outside of the door, and I push some rubble on top of it, though really, I know that it doesn’t matter. They have found this place, and they will return tonight. They will be able to get inside and they will either destroy it or nest in it.

  I shake my head, half angry and half sad, and then I make my way over to our car. It’s in pieces—literal pieces: doors torn off, wheels punctured, the seats pulled out. The hood is open and the engine is quiet, long since finished ticking and hissing at its own destruction.

  “We’ll have to walk again,” I say to Lilly, but she makes no move to get down. “Let’s eat some breakfast first,” I suggest, and I think she moves her head in a small nod because her hair tickles my earlobe.