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“Goodnight.”
Frost half-smiled crookedly at me, then continued down the hallway to the last door, disappearing through it. I frowned, thinking about his offer as a listener, and leaned against the frame of the door. I touched my as-always cold fingers to the side of my neck, where a dull ache had started to set my teeth on edge. The raised scar felt eerie pressed against my fingertips, the sharp white lines on my skin like seams where I had been torn and sewn back together half-heartedly. I sighed, looking down at my feet. So many scars…. A nauseous feeling began to churn in my stomach.Don’t tell. Never tell.
I swallowed hard and turned into the room, closing the door behind me. As I changed into the sweats Mrs. Frost had loaned me as pajamas, I kept repeating the words over and over in my head.
Don’t tell. Never tell.
----
Their numbers were up. I planned it perfectly. Now it would unfold, like a deck of cards spread and flipped, like a string of dominoes toppling down.
I stand across the street from the house and I remember. I remember everything. I see the party fourteen years ago that seems like yesterday. I seeher, that spineless fool. I see Poe, the worthless bitch. And I see HIM. I remember that summer and I remember everything afterward and I watch it roll across my vision like a film.
And I will kill them all.
I walk on.
FIVE
No.
No.No.NO.
Everything is in black and white. I walk down a nearly black hallway to an ajar door. My hand stretches out before me, ghost-white in the eerie scene, and touches the dark wood panel, pushes it open. Blinding blue light explodes out at me, throwing me back, my eyes burning. Everything turns to blood red and I’m tumbling down the stairs, but they’re concrete.
My head is being bashed in. I’m falling all over again and watching blood and gore fly all across the stairwell around me. Every impact between the concrete steps and my skull, my face, my bones, echoes throughout my nervous system, sending shockwaves through my body. I can hear my wrist, my cheekbone, my collarbone, my knee, my skull crack and shatter, can feel the broken bones digging into my flesh, can see nothing but blood all around me,myblood. I feel the edges of the steps being driven into my smashed skull.
Everything turns once more to black and I’m in a dark cemetery, kneeling before a long line of black obsidian headstones with names carved on them too small to read. The grass is dark and wet, icy dew seeping through my jeans and numbing, pricking at my knees. There are at least twenty headstones in my view, each with a violet rose laid before them. I hold the last rose in my hand, lay it upon a grave, look up at the headstone.
‘CALEB FROST’ leaps out at me in sharp, cold letters. The white slashes of his name, seemingly carved by a knife, burn into my retinas.
A raven wheels on me with eyes too intelligent to be a common bird and croaks.
I see my mother’s face as clearly as if she stands before me, not a memory from a two-year-old’s mind. Her dark eyes plead with me, weeping as she screams in pain.
NO!STOP!
Evan and Emma are staring at me. They have my same brown eyes, my mother’s brown eyes, and they’re crying too. Emma is so pretty. She’s eight years old. She has intricately woven French braids. They look darkly cherubic with her black dress and white pillow. Her skin is like a ghost’s. Evan’s is too. They look like they’re sleeping, but why would they sleep in caskets? Blood runs from their sealed lips…
STOP IT!
I look almost exactly like my father. I wish I’d gotten my mother’s beauty, but I’d gotten the angular Poe face instead of the heart-shaped Blackwing face. He looks too pale where he’s lying in the coffin, though. His eyes snap wide open and they’re black empty sockets and they’re staring at me, through me, begging me…
NO! You’re DEAD! It’s a DREAM!
Edgar’s face appears, so like my father’s, and he whispers to me, his eyes dark with horrific knowing, with all the most terrible wisdom the dead can gather, “Nevermore.”
Hands close around my upper arms, shaking me… NO! Not again! NEVER AGAIN! I lash out with my fist, screaming, blood trickling down my throat…
“Shit! Wake up! Poe, wake up!”
My eyes snapped open, instantly wide as saucers. Sweat ran over my skin like a waterfall and I was shaking so hard that my body was quite literally vibrating. I knew I was awake and that it was just a dream and gone now, but I couldn’t help it, couldn’t stop it. I shut my eyes as tightly as possible and the tears ran over my cheeks as I screamed. Frost’s arms wrapped around me, holding me like a vice against his chest as he whispered, “It’s okay. Poe, it’s over. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
Nevermore.
----
When Frost finally managed to calm me down, I fell almost instantly back to sleep, exhausted by my injuries and, now, the nightmare. But the moment I fell back into sleep, the nightmare repeated itself. The second round was exactly identical to the first. I even woke up screaming at the same point, Frost’s arms wrapped tightly around me again. This time, though, once I was awake, I gained control of myself and stopped screaming, instead just sitting there cross-legged, sobbing.
