AllFreeNovel
Share Us
We’d heard the rumors and discussed it in passing.
Pastor Hughes’s church, just out of town, had become a solemn place. People were leaving. Pastor Hughes had taken to sobbing at the podium. Ranting about the sins of our children, the way they were being led astray. He preached hope, and his hope had soured to sorrow.
Then he stopped showing up. The doors stayed locked, and he found a new place to talk to God.
Pastor Hughes and his wife gave up leadership in favor of being the sheep. They joined the Deacon on the hill. They rarely came into town. They rarely spoke to others who were not part of the Deacon’s church.
And then one day, they were gone. No one saw them leave town, but they followed the same path as Sam’s parents did. Out of town, far away from the sorrow of their gone daughter. We connected the dots, but to the people of Hart Hollow these two families were not the same. Sam had been runaway. Amber had been a victim.
The rumors persisted, small town gossip and bile.
But in our world, some things calmed. The dreams no longer came to Kyrie. She did not hear something on her roof, did not feel the eyes anymore. She looked rested, a worry dropped from her skin, leaving her lighter. She mourned her classmate, but she did not mourn herself anymore.
I tried to convince myself that my dreams meant nothing, and I didn’t share them with my friend. I didn’t care that on the nights Valerie did not come home, I thought I heard the animal from the hill in the dark outside my trailer, sniffing, crying out, growling.
It was the first time I was afraid of the darkness outside, and in turn, I found a strange comfort in the darkness of my bedroom.
The trailer felt different when I was alone.
And I was ashamed to admit it was a different I wanted.
I didn’t want to think about what it said about me that I wasn’t upset Valerie had left me behind like a forgotten toy.
At school, the basketball team won games and traveled. The choir sang. The drama club whispered in huddled groups. The lost smiles returned to students’ faces. Life had a way of going on despite tragedy, and the winter formal loomed in our minds like a beacon to better days.
We also got a new transfer student from Florida. Her name was Lauren, and she had blonde hair, dark brown eyes, and was almost as tall as me.
The jocks eyed her for different reasons, and Kyrie chatted with her during a few lunch periods, leaving me with the twins.
On Lauren’s first day Kyrie ate lunch with her, and she came back to our table beaming before the bell rang, telling us Lauren’s father had been a pastor in Orlando.
I stared at Kyrie when she told us this news, and when I glanced back and forth between Nicole and Jessica, their faces matched my own.
“What?” Kyrie asked
Jessica leaned in as Kyrie sat down. “Tell that girl to get the fuck out of town right now.”
Kyrie closed her eyes, and I wondered if the town curfew had also dulled her sense of reality. Things had been quiet. We’d met after school at the Nest from time to time, discussing timelines, missing girls from the past, and the Archer house.
The five of us thought of nothing dark, just enjoying each other’s company. Pretending funerals had not recently passed, bodies had not been cut in the night, and I was not an orphan.
Each night we hung out together we had all gone home early, beating the curfew.
I’d joined Billy in the cemetery on the nights he brought up Sam, hoping my presence was a salve in some way. We smoked and played cards on the picnic table beneath my window. Some nights I went over to the trailer and hung out with Jessica and Nicole as well.
I’d worried it would put a wedge between Kyrie and me, and I could see the wedge inching in each day. We had inside jokes, and Kyrie rolled her eyes at them. I’d asked if I could come to Kyrie’s house for dinner on the days I worried the dynamic in the group was blurry. And the answer was always the same. My first friend in Hart Hollow said she would love me to come over, but her father wouldn’t allow it.
When I looked at my friend now, I saw what she was feeling. I saw the wedge between us when she looked at us.
I was on their side.
And Lauren and Kyrie had something in common. Something Kyrie and I would never have.
Because in my heart I did not believe in miracles. I did not believe in the forgiveness of sins and the love of a father. I believed in the wrath of the wicked. I believed not in fairytales, but in horror stories.
Life had a way of going on despite tragedy. But my life was stuttering and starting, unable to go on after what I’d seen in Sorina’s house.
Life had a way of sinking when reality was worse than your darkest nightmare.
