The Dead and the Dark(94)

The Dark presses against the girl’s ear, warm and quiet and calm. He cannot erase the way you hurt, but I can. I only want to take away your pain. I become stronger when you are stronger. Be strong now.

“Logan,” the man says again. He shudders and his fingers are slick with his own blood. “I let this thing out, but I don’t regret it. I would do it again. I would let it kill me to keep you alive.”

The Dark takes the girl by the throat. She can hardly breathe. Her heart trembles in the Dark’s grip. Hot tears cloud her eyes as she looks into the man’s face. She hates him, but she loves him, too. Both emotions rage like wildfire in her gut—they come from the same place. To the girl, they feel the same.

“No, that’s not … that doesn’t make any sense.” With tears muddled in her throat, the girl asks, “If it was all for me, why did you leave me alone?”

The man’s expression shatters. He reaches for his daughter’s hand and she raises the gun again. This is how the man will die. After his years of wandering, of avoiding his family, of hating himself for his mistakes, this is how it will end. She will forever remember the way he sounded when he died—just flesh against wood, and then nothing.

“I’m so sorry,” the man says. He closes his eyes and braces himself. “If you have to do it, I…”

He cannot finish his sentence.

This is the end.

“I never wanted you to go away,” the girl croaks. She has never told the truth of it; she has never said the words out loud. She closes her eyes and hot tears rush down her face. “I wanted you to love me.”

“I do love you.” The man takes the girl’s hand. His palm is wet with sweat and blood. He shakes with fear, but he holds her and breathes, “I love you more than anything. I love you and I’m so sorry.”

He does not love you, the Dark tears into her. This is what you have always wanted. You hated him from the beginning—

“No.”

The girl shakes.

Kill him.

The girl drops the gun and something inside her erupts. The cabin explodes in a shockwave of nothing. Broken glass clatters against rotted wood and the ceiling groans, shifting in its wake. The man topples backward and slams against the cabin’s front door.

The Dark scrambles for a foothold in the girl’s mind. In an instant, the blackened, rotted place it nestled is gone. She is flooded with light, and it burns the Dark. There is nowhere to hide, nowhere to hold, nowhere to whisper. There is no hate here and the Dark is left scrambling in the unrelenting light. The cabin is all at once a ruin, a home, and a memory. The man is both young and old. The Dark unravels, fluttering around them like flakes of ash.

And then it is nothing.

It tears itself from the girl’s mind, slowly evaporating in the untethered air. The girl’s eyes shut and her knees buckle. Her vision turns black as she falls and falls.





38


Swimming In The Smoke


Logan never hit the ground.

Brandon’s arms—her father’s arms—were there to catch her. The cabin spun and spun and, for a moment, she saw it all. Not the strained, filmy past the Dark had showed her; everything. Every memory she had concentrated into one moment. Golden sunlight pouring through the lakefront window, the ceilings vaulted by massive wood beams, the air that smelled like woodsmoke and apple cider. Just faintly, the piano played a lullaby. It was everything she’d lost, drifting back to her like a sheet of falling dust.

Brandon was different. He smiled at her, but he was younger than the Brandon she knew. His eyes were alive with a joy she’d never seen, bright and dancing as sunlit water. He laughed and his eyes clouded with tears.

They were alive.

“I’m so sorry,” Brandon whispered.

And then he was Brandon again; the real Brandon. The one who was both alive and dead, both here and gone. The cabin righted itself in a single moment. The Dark’s residue ebbed away and they were left there on the floor, surrounded by rotting wood and silence. Somewhere far away, lake water lapped ashore. Somewhere farther away, the last of the Dark scuttled into the shadows until there was nothing left.

It was over.

Brandon’s eyes were half obscured by a deep crack in his glasses. Blood spotted the ridge of his jaw, but he was smiling. He wrapped his good arm around Logan’s back and pulled her against his chest. Logan’s arms hung at her sides in disbelief. This had to be a dream. The weight of it crashed over her with sudden, unrelenting force. She wasn’t dead, she wasn’t dreaming, she was alive and there was no Dark left in her because there was no Dark anywhere.

Before she could help it, she was crying. Brandon held her, cautious at first like he wasn’t sure he was allowed, and then he was crying, too. They held each other and shook and cried because they were alive.

Beside them, the floorboards groaned. Elexis stirred, massaging the purple welt on his brow. His expression pinched. “I … where am I?”

Logan blinked. She untangled herself from Brandon’s arms and clambered to Elexis’s side, fumbling to untie the rope binding him to the piano. “Oh my god. Please say you’re okay.”

Elexis groped along the cabin floor for his glasses. Other than the knotted bruise at his brow, he looked unharmed. Logan plucked his glasses from the rubble and grimaced. One lens was missing and the wire frame was bent. She held the glasses between them and laughed uneasily. Elexis groaned. “Awesome.”