Dark Secrets (Dark Secrets #1)(191)
Author: A.M. Hudson

But she was gone. Everything was gone.

The strange blackness of the world smothered me, tightening around my ribs, making the air thin and humid. I felt myself being pulled down, like I was swimming against a strong current and losing the fight. I tried to kick my legs, to clutch at my throat and tear away the belt of restraint, but my hands were gone; there was nothing to move, nothing to free me from the sweltering wrap of my own death.

And then, from deep in the darkness, a warm grip pulled me back to the night. A hand. Something waking me from the depths of my own fear. I held onto it with my mind, focused on it with all of my strength until I heard a voice: “Ara? Baby, oh baby.” It echoed like an old memory. “God, what has he done to you—?”

“Mike?” I think I whispered.

“Ara.” His golden voice hit the walls of my subconscious and bounced off the empty space around me. “You stay with me…with me…with me,” it echoed again. “Ara, please—don’t let go…let go…let go—” I felt a hand around the back of my head, and a heavy cold settled on my limbs, making me wish I could sleep. Just fall asleep and everything would be okay.

“Mi-ke.”

“Oh, God!” his distraught voice cut out under grief. “Get help—please, she’s losing too much blood. Get help!”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Nothing. No stars. No sound. I tried to open my eyes to see against the black, but as I truly noticed the emptiness for the first time, I felt my heart stop; my eyes were already open.

“Mike?” I called, but my own voice fell flat in front of me, as if I’d spoken into cupped hands. I waited; waited past that moment you expect everything to be okay, past the breath you held when you thought you heard something, and finally realised what happened.

I’d let go.

Perfect silence. Complete weightlessness; it almost made me breathless, like I needed sound or a horizon to remind me how to breathe. I couldn’t breathe—couldn’t suffocate because there was only emptiness where my lungs should be. All I could actually feel were tingles, shivering across every part of my body that had turned into air. I wanted to break free, but there was nothing to break free from.

I was gone.

Mike was gone.

The world was gone.

Everything was gone…

* * *

Floating through space and time, I waited for morning to come and light the corners of this dark room, but the sun never rose. I wasn’t sure how many days or years had passed, but this couldn’t be sleep—it couldn’t just be a dream. In fact, I was pretty sure this was Hell. No fire, no pain, just…eternal blackness slowly, second by quiet second, driving you mad.

It reminded me of the time I went swimming as a little girl; I’d closed my eyes and floated in the water for a while. With my ears under the lashing of waves, aware only of my own thoughts, I had thought it was peaceful then, but here, in this unimaginable expanse of nothing, floating, unable to find the shore, it was just agonisingly confining.

The only thing I ever found down here was the memories—hidden behind shadows in the darkness. And when the darkness got too much, those memories became nightmares—unhappy endings I’d keep examining in my mind—over and over again, never able to find the conclusion, because there’d never be a conclusion. Not for me, anyway. In death, we have no resolution.

My last breath would have been taken in the arms of my best friend; my naked, twisted and broken body would have stirred thoughts in him I couldn’t control; he’d think Jason raped me, did other unspeakable things to me, and I couldn’t tell him the truth.

Tears of frustration and anger wanted release, but with no face and no eyes to cry from, they were trapped, lodged like a rolled-up sock in my chest—quivering and growing into a feeling I had never known before. I wanted to rattle the bars of my cage, to scream at those responsible.

But the rage always wore down to misery, and when misery was unreleased, trapped in by nothingness, it turned to fear, then to rage again. It was an endless cycle. And even that made me mad, because there was just nothing…nothing I could do to make it stop.

“Let me out of here!” my mind called into the darkness. I imagined myself circling around, gripping my hair with both hands, falling to the floor with my head in my knees.

It did no good to picture it, though. I still felt just the same.

“Mike.” I imagined myself looking up—to wherever up was. “Mike. He didn’t rape me.”

I needed him to know that. I needed him to know how sorry I was for leaving the dance, and for not remembering what he taught me all those years—how to survive, how to fight.

“Mike? Please, please be there. Please.”

But nothing ever answered back.

The rage subsided again and I watched my imagination fall to her knees. She looked so fragile and human, so broken and alone. I felt no pity for her, though, because she did this to herself. She let herself walk into the arms of a vampire, and now, she was dead.

* * *

Dreams had happened in the blackness. Once or twice, I’d seen myself somewhere else, only to wake in the nothing again. As I wandered forward, of full body, I knew this was just another dream.

The emptiness around me was coloured with blue plumes of smoke, rising up, gripping my ankles and hips like creeping fingers. The message I’d been trying to get to my fiancé was still trembling on my lips, stuck, like a ghost that couldn’t cross over. “Mike?” I said weakly into the darkness. “Mike, please listen.”

With each step I took, I could feel the fine, tickly tips of the grass between my toes. I walked through the smoke, reaching out to touch anything at my fingertips. I’d take a tree in the head right now—just to feel.

When the sound of soft, ragged breaths came from somewhere ahead, I looked deeper into the darkness—past the blur, past the shadows.

Then, I saw him.

“Mike?”

He didn’t look up. As he became completely visible for the first time, so too did the world around him—but not me. The storm clouds overhead raged and swirled, lapping the horizon with the promise of a wild night. But my hair, my dress, and my existence stayed frozen in time.

Mike stood hunched and shaking, one hand splayed out on something stone, while his lungs fought to find the breath that would make it all okay. “Ara, baby. I’m so, so sorry. I should’ve protected you. I should’ve been there to stop him from hurting you.”

I watched on, my lip trembling, tears edging tightly on the brink of hysterics.