Out of the Dark (Light & Dark #1) Read online

  The night falls back into silence again, but I don’t breathe a sigh of relief. I never do that. Not anymore. Because there is no relief, there is only another day, and another night to make it through, and the wish that there is another day after that one. I move to the next room. Still hoping, praying, and begging to make it through this night.

  *

  “Mama.”

  Her voice comes to me, pushing through the fog, intruding on my dreams. I see her face, so small, so perfect, her smile stretched wide. And then it is gone, and all I see is the blood. It fills the world with its redness, washing away the monsters. But we can never be free of them, they are always here.

  “Mama.”

  Her soft voice alights my heart and I feel myself cry, hot, salty tears pouring down my cheeks. Tears that I have no control over, that I cannot stop.

  “Mama.”

  Yes, I was a mother once. To a child no older than Lilly. A little girl named Jasmine, with light hazel eyes and long brown hair. She used to like dancing to old fifties music that her grandparents played, she ate peanut butter and jelly sandwiches that her father made, and she liked her hair running free and long down her back, trailing behind her as she ran. I was a mother once. But now she’s gone, and so am I.

  I wake with a start, my breath catching in my throat and my voice choking on my lips. I reach for my knife—the sharpest one I found in the kitchen—and I grip it tightly. My hand only has the slightest of shakes. I look down into my lap and see Lilly lying on me, her small arms wrapped limply around my waist, her head nuzzled against my chest. Sunlight streams in through the windows, hot and bright, and I plead with my heart to slow down—to calm down.

  I relax back into the soft chair, placing a protective arm around Lilly’s sleeping body. She is hot and sweaty. There’s a small, damp patch between my breasts where her sweat has pooled. I stroke her hair, smiling at the softness of it, and I force myself to unwind. I yawn, feeling the long-dried tears on my cheeks, and then I purse my lips as I hug Lilly to me. I love her so much. She is not my Jasmine, but I love her as if she were, because every child deserves love.

  I sit in the peace and quiet, relishing in her warm body and her soft breaths, letting the rays of the sun lay claim to my skin. I feel myself drifting, floating on a bed of clouds, lost in the peace of each heartbeat, each breath, each calm moment that we are sharing together.

  “Mama?”

  I open my eyes and look down, seeing Lilly’s smiling face looking up at me, and I smile back.

  “Morning,” I whisper, my throat feeling dry and tight, my body still sleepy.

  She blinks up at me, her small hand reaching to touch my cheeks where my tears had been. She sees me. No matter how hard I try to hide from her, she sees all of me. Lilly hugs me close without saying anything else and I squeeze her back. We sit there in silence for a long time, neither of us wanting to lose this moment—this peace that we share so equally. No birds sing outside the window, and no monsters scream for our blood. We are safe, for now. We made it through another night, together.

  My stomach growls loudly, disrupting the silence, and Lilly giggles and looks up at me once more. Her small rosebud mouth stretched wide into a large smile, her eyes are dancing, like a child’s should be. Not devoid of life and innocence, lost.

  “I need a drink,” she whispers.

  “I need to eat,” I say.

  Lilly nods. “Me too,” she agrees. “So does Mr. Bear.”

  “We better get him some breakfast, then, before he gets grumpy, don’t you think?” I say, and she grins at me and nods.

  She smiles and climbs down from my lap. She takes my hand as we leave the room, and we make our way down the stairs, both of us still weary from a restless sleep, but glad to be here. Together. In the kitchen I settle Lilly at the table, where she continues to color in the coloring book. The picture she has painstakingly been working on is almost complete. She ignores the blue crayon today, favoring the green one instead. I go through the cabinets and take out some of the flat pop, pouring us both large glasses of it, and then I go over to Lilly and hand her a glass. Our fingers touch when she reaches for the bubble-less drink, and we both stare in morbid fascination at the faint black lines that run down my fingers. I blink sadly, not wanting to feel sad today, but not being able to stop myself. I don’t want to die, but further than that, I do not want either of us to become the monsters that we fear so much.

  I swallow and turn away, leaving Lilly with her drink as I go back to examine the cupboards while she colors, deciding on oatmeal made with water. I find a small jar of jam at the back of the many cans and packages, and I decide to use it to sweeten the blandness of the watery oats. I pull out the items, smiling as I do, knowing how much Lilly will love the jam.

  My hand pauses on the jar as I think about the sweet red jelly within the confines of the glass. It exudes happiness, I decide. Lilly will like this breakfast, she’ll smile and eat happily, and things will feel normal and nice. I set to making the oatmeal, my smile fixed as I do. Because this feels good. I am a mother fixing breakfast for her daughter—a child coloring innocently. These things are simple and honest, but they are the things that you miss the most. Not expensive cars or sparkly jewelry. Not televisions and music. But the simplicity of how pleased a little girl will be to taste strawberry jam again.

  I heat the oats and water on the small camping stove and when it’s ready I set the oatmeal down in front of Lilly. She stops coloring right away, setting her green crayon down and pushing the book to one side. She looks at the oatmeal and picks up her spoon, and then I place the jam in front of her and I grin. She looks at it for a long moment without speaking, and then her face looks up at me with a smile so bright it almost extinguishes the sun.

  I grin wider as I open the jar, the loud popping sound as it opens makes her giggle. I spoon a large amount into her oatmeal and she stirs it for a long time, making it turn pink, but she seems hesitant to try them, to taste the pink goodness.

  “Eat it now, Honeybee, or it will go cold,” I say on a happy whisper.

  She looks at me with those big wide eyes that pierce my soul, and then she pushes her chair back and throws herself into my arms. I hug her tightly, another smile playing on my lips, and I kiss the top of her head, tears choking my throat. Tears of happiness.

  “Come on, into your chair now,” I say. Because I don’t want to cry again today—not even happy tears.

  I help her back into her seat and she picks up her spoon, eating the oatmeal with an excitable groan of delight. I watch for several minutes, leaning my cheek into my hand while my elbow rests on the table. I enjoy seeing her happiness, enjoy her being the child that she should be, that she could be. When she is almost done, I stand to go eat some of my own oatmeal. I spoon a small amount of jelly into mine—just enough to give it flavor and sweeten it a little, but not so much to make it turn pink. I want to save it all for Lilly. I want to see this smile on her face every day for as long as I can. Because all we are left with at the end is a handful of memories to brighten the darkness.

  I look out the kitchen window while I eat, looking for any sign that they have been here in the night, but as is becoming the usual, there is none—no scratches, no blood, no disturbance outside. I smile and realize that they—the smiles—are coming easier each day. This both frightens and excites me. The tentative tendrils of hope are beginning to grow inside me, and I’m struggling each day with dampening them back down. I don’t want to hope, but it’s hard to stop the buds from blooming.

  After breakfast, Lilly goes off to the bedroom to play and I pace the house, checking each room for broken windows or a disturbance of any kind. When I find none, I open the back door and take the bucket of pee from last night out to the drain and pour it away, happy to see that both of us are not dehydrated anymore. Lilly has even put on a little weight; the hollowness to her cheeks is filling out, and the big gray bags under her eyes are almost extinguished.

  Pe
rhaps I can lock us away here forever, trapped in this house’s magical safety. I would like that, I think, and so would Lilly. There is a bike leaned up against the side of the house. It’s rusty and old and has a brown wicker basket on the front. I imagine that the woman who had lived here would ride her bike into town. She would probably go to the butcher’s and the baker’s, perhaps even the post office. She would fill her days with small trips on this bike, a smile on her face and the sun on her back. On her way back home she would stop and pick some flowers from the roadside, filling that brown wicker basket up with them. And when she got home she would put them in a vase with some water and place them in the kitchen.

  I lean down and pluck a small yellow flower from the edge of the path. It’s a weed, really—not a real flower—but it’s pretty all the same. It reminds me of the sunflower field I found Lilly hiding. The monsters had been scared to go into that field. The brightness of the flowers had confused them. Perhaps I can plant thousands of these yellow flowers, all around this house, to keep them out.

  I bring the flower back inside, putting it next to her coloring book, and then I take the bucket back to the bathroom. I walk back along the hallway, examining the books on the shelves. I pluck one off the shelf that has maps of the United States on it, and I take it back to the kitchen. I sit down at the table with it, using one of Lilly’s crayons to mark where we are and where we have been. I use the blue, and the color looks strange against the white of the paper for some reason. Too vivid, almost as if my eyes are still growing accustomed to colors, like they have been blinded to only muted grays and blacks for too long. Like the world has been washed free of its color but it is slowly being colored back in by a little girl with golden curls.

  Our journey has been long, but I’m grateful for that. This place has given us roots—roots that we didn’t have for a long time. We have been wandering the country for months and months, driving or walking from one place to another. Because no place stays safe for long. My thoughts drift back to our last location, with the light that still worked at the top of the hill, and I mark it on the map. I worry about staying here too long, especially since I could hear the monsters last night, yet the desire to stay here pulls strongly at me. What life is it if you are constantly running? So I think maybe another day here will be okay. I leave the map book on the table and go upstairs to look in on Lilly and see that she is playing a happier game than yesterday, her smile truer and broader, her voice more content.

  “I’m going to check on the car,” I say from the doorway.

  She looks up with happy eyes.

  “Are you coming?” I ask.

  She jumps up from her spot on the floor immediately and skips over to me, and we make our way down the stairs, taking them two at a time and giggling. When we get to the front door and I unlock it, and we stand in the doorway as I open it wide, the warm air rushing in to greet us. We wait, listening for sounds of the monsters, looking for signs of them everywhere, but there is nothing. Just the stillness of the day, and the sun hanging full and heavy in the sky.

  She looks up at me expectantly, a huge grin on her face, and I forget where we are, the world in which we now live. I imagine that this is our life, our home, and that there is nothing to fear but the pettiness of each day. These are our things—our clothes, our toys, our furniture, our food. Food that I went into town on my bike with a wicker basket to get. I visited the butcher’s and the baker’s, and I sent a letter to my husband at the post office. He’s away at war, fighting and winning, but he’ll be home soon. And he and I and Lilly will live here happily, forever.

  “Go on then,” I say, and gesture for Lilly to go and play.

  She releases my hand and skips past me, heading straight to the circle of grass once more. Like yesterday, she rolls around on the grass happily, giggling in that way that is both addictive and alluring. A laugh that only children have. I stand and watch her, admiring her resilience to this world—this life—floating above myself to watch her innocence as she rolls around and around and around. Like yesterday, the dried grass clings to her hair, and I smile as her curls tangle and she looks up at me, begging me to come and play with her. But unlike yesterday we are not alone.

  A loud crash sounds from the road—the one that is obscured by the trees—and the screech of metal can be heard. A minute passes and smoke begins to rise from over the tops of the trees. Lilly jumps up and scampers over to me, her eyes open so wide that I see the whites around her irises. I pull her up into my arms as we watch the smoke rise higher and higher and we listen to the soft cries of a woman’s voice for help.

  Chapter Eight.

  #8. There is truth in the unknown.

  “What is it, Mama?” Lilly asks, her fingers curling against my skin and digging into me painfully.

  I don’t stop her, though; I enjoy the pain she gives me. It keeps me alert, it stops me from folding in on myself and giving way to my fear…to her fear. What is it? I wonder that myself. I don’t want to go down there and see, but the cries are becoming more insistent, more urgent and pleading. We go into the house and lock the doors, and then we go upstairs and hide in one of the bedrooms. I stay by the window, looking out to see if the people find the road, to see if they come up it, to see if they find the house and us and…

  Lilly cries in the closet. She doesn’t like it in there—it’s dark and stuffy—but she is safer hidden than not. People are bad. Monsters are bad. This world is bad. And I don’t know how to protect her and keep her safe. The cries from outside are quiet now. They must be trapped, I decide. Whoever is down there is growing tired, possibly dying, and I’m here, hiding away to protect Lilly and myself.

  Lilly has stopped crying and a stillness has settled over the world. The air barely moves. I can hardly feel the pulsing of my heart within my chest, the ache of indecision gnawing at my gut. But I know that my heart still beats, that the breath still leaves my lungs, and that my indecision could kill someone. The smoke has dwindled, thankfully. At least there won’t be a fire that will burn away the trees, our cover and protection. I chew on my bottom lip, tasting copper and flesh, my eyes aching as I watch the trees for any movement.

  I hear the creak of the closet door and I turn to see Lilly peeking out. Her cheeks are blotchy and red because she knows—she know—how dangerous other people can be. But she’s also good, her soul undamaged and still trusting. She knows that someone down there needs our help—my help.

  “It’s dangerous, Honeybee,” I say softly, my patience with her as constant as ever.

  She nods and blinks slowly, but the guilt eats away at me. She doesn’t need to voice the words for me to hear them. They are borne within me. I turn back to the window, looking for the smoke once more, but it’s gone now, and so are the cries for help. The silence is thick and oppressive. I look back to her, to Lilly, still feeling unsure. Her innocent face watches me with morbid curiosity.

  “Are they dead?” She whispers so quietly I can barely hear her.

  I avert my eyes. “I don’t know. Possibly.” I shrug and turn away from her sweet pools of brown. Her eyes make me feel like I’m drowning.

  She joins me by the window, her hand finding mine and clutching it tightly. Her skin is warm and soft, and my hands are cold. “I feel bad,” she says.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because it will be my fault if they die, won’t it?”

  I frown and look down into her face, before pulling her up into my arms. “No, Lilly, no it will not be your fault. Nothing is ever your fault. This world is what’s wrong, other people are what is wrong. Not you, never you.”

  “You would go and help them, if it weren’t for me,” she says, speaking the truth that she knows so well.

  My heart is racing, my words bubbling to escape from my lips. I don’t want her to feel the heavy responsibility of someone’s death. That would be worse than letting someone physically harm her. Because those scars—the ones that burrow deep down into your veins—they never go aw
ay. Those scars will grow vicious, crude bumps across them to try to disguise themselves. But they won’t be hidden. They’ll be ugly, and I’ll see them every time I look at her, every time she cries, every time she wakes screaming from a nightmare about the person that I let die. I’ll know that she blames herself for someone dying, and it is those feelings that will destroy my sweet, innocent Lilly. She continues to stare into my face, blinking every once in a while, her eyes telling me a story.

  “If I go see, you’ll have to stay here, on your own.” I wait for her reaction but she tucks in her bottom lip and nods at me. “Okay, I’ll go see,” I say with an almost inaudible sigh. I put her down and urgently gesture her back to the closet I pause.

  She turns to look at me. “Will you tell them about me? Will you bring them here?” she asks.

  “I don’t know, Lilly. I’ll see if I think they are good or not.”

  She climbs inside the closet, pulling the thick coats up around herself and wrapping her arms around Mr. Bear tightly. “Will you be able to see? Can you tell if they are good or bad?” she asks me innocently.

  “I hope so” is all I can say.

  “Mama?”

  “Yes, Lilly?”

  “Am I good?” Her question hurts, and I answer her without missing a beat, because the answer is the most truthful thing I will ever say.

  “Yes. You are good.”

  She nods and I close the door on her, trapping her into the darkness that I know she hates so much. I leave the bedroom, shutting that door also. I wish it had a lock on it. I’d lock and shut every door in this house if I had to, to keep her safe, to protect her from whatever and whoever is out there. I make my way down the stairs, and I unlock the front door and leave, locking it behind me and placing the key in my pocket. I grip my kitchen knife tightly in my hand, holding it in front of me as I walk straight across the middle of the circular island, across the green grass that offered Lilly so much happiness, and straight onto the gravelly path that we drove up over a week ago—a path I had hoped to avoid going back down.