Disclaimer: I don't own Harper's Island or its characters. That right goes to CBS, and stuff.

Waterfall

Twelve-year-old Abby Mills laughed as she raced across the rocks on Harper's Island at the water's edge. She couldn't contain her tremendous smile as she watched the boy running to her, recklessly, down the steps that lined the mountain. It'd been a year since they'd seen each other. "Henry!" she called. Her voice sounded deeper than she remembered it being at twelve, though. And it was muffled—echoed and blurred as if competing with the sound of white noise.

The boy gleefully ran up to her and brought her into a hug in one swift motion. "Abby!" he yelled. His voice was lower than it had been the year before, but that was to be expected. He was, after all, a growing boy. "I missed you!" She brushed everything off once she heard that.

"I missed you, too!" She embraced him tightly. "How are you? How's everyone? How's your mom?"

He paused, his face going serious. "She's dead, Abby." The way he said it sounded as if she knew before and he was reminding her. But this was news to Abby Mills.

Her entire face went slack. "Dead?" she asked. She forced herself to say the words, her breath seeming to halt.

"Yeah. My dad killed her." But Henry didn't sound remorseful at all.

"What?" she asked, the shock still hindering her breathing. "How? Why would he do such a thing? Did my dad catch him?" She was rambling now, and shouting. The whole situation was causing her to lose control of her emotions, of her senses.

"No," Henry said as his head shook from side to side. "My dad killed him, too."

Now was when Abby Mill's brain chose to both shut down and overrun itself with thoughts and feelings. The images, the urges all mounded in her mind, cascading like a waterfall through her head. Soon, the waterfall overflowed from her thoughts to her face. Her body instinctively began moving towards her house. "I need to see him," she said. The white noise had faded, yet somehow her voice sounded as distant as ever.

He reached out to grab her arm and pulled her back. A fourteen-year-old boy shouldn't be that strong. "Abby, he's been gone for a while."

For a moment, a flash lit the world, as if lightning had struck behind her eyes. When she could see again, she swore that the ocean around them was dyed red. Storm clouds littered the sky, and thunder roared ominously from a not-too-far-away distance.

The waterfall transformed. It ran dry, but its cry was still heard, now as a scream—a shrill scream, a primal scream of anger, fear, and remorse. She suddenly switched directions. "I'll kill him," she growled. Her voice was still too deep, but her frame was so tiny. To hear such guttural words come from so small and innocent looking a creature was undoubtedly frightening. "I'll kill your father!" Abby embraced the scream of the empty waterfall, letting it take over her own voice.

Henry's quiet and calm voice stopped her. He was no longer holding her arm, but the subtle power in his voice alone was enough to still her. "I already did, Abby," he said.

She turned again to face him. Another flash of the atmosphere and the sky was the same crimson as the sea.

Henry was shaking his head, his eyes now cold and lifeless. "I did it for you." The heavens flashed brightly again, the thunder yelling at the young girl as if reprimanding the violent ghost of a waterfall that lived within her. A harsh wind blew. It whistled morosely, and carried with it the stench of death. The wind blew right against Abby as if the spirits were gripping her by the face and crying to her, howling to her hauntingly.

She barely noticed herself scream as she shook her head and batted away at the breeze, as if she were capable of stopping it. When she opened her eyes again, the breeze only seemed to float around Henry. And mounds that she swore weren't there before were behind him, resting on the rocks.

"I killed them all for you."

Abby shook her head furiously. "No," she whispered. The shaking became more frantic as murmurs were heard on the rock beach. "No!!!" She was screaming again, unaware of it as the same words flew from her lips. The waterfall wouldn't return to her ears, so she'd tried to drown out the murmurs with her own screams of denial.

A blonde man walked out from the water, his head facing the sky unintentionally, his back positioned in a way that shouldn't have been physically possible. He gurgled something. In his arms rested a golden-haired woman, her hair dripping and wet, her body limp and broken all over. Her neck hung down at another impossible angle, her hair covering her face. "I loved him," she hissed through her hair. Chloe and Cal.

She tried to walk backwards and away from her old friends, but she heard something crunch under her feet. Abby now found her shoe caught in Trish's cousin Ben's jaw, maggots pouring onto the sneaker from the wound. She gasped and fell to the floor, crab-walking back as if it were the only thing she could do.

Two half-corpses were pulling themselves towards her. The upper halves of a man and a woman whispered, "All your fault, Abby." It was Uncle Marty and Trish's bridesmaid, Beth.

One by one, more horrific sights were coming into view. Maggie with her broken neck. Sully clutching at his heart and moaning. Danny with the spiked paperweight through his eye. Shane marching zombie-ishly towards her, multiple stab wounds lining his body. The two burned corpses of Lucy and Malcolm. Everyone, everyone was there. Richard, Katherine, Thomas Wellington, Kelly, Booth, Nikki, John Wakefield even—everyone. Abby held her head tightly, her eyes dangerously wide, looking like they might just burst as her nails dug into her skull. She was bleeding, but she couldn't feel it. All she could feel was the chilling wind, and all she could hear, despite her desperate rapid cries of "No," were the whispers of the phantoms.

Trish stood before the twelve-year-old girl, to the right of the young Henry. She wore a wedding dress full of mud, blood dribbling down from her abdomen. She stared into Abby's eyes, her face alive with disgust. "I died because of you," she growled accusingly.

Abby's denial became more hushed, but elongated as she sobbed. Now she stared up at Trish, her eyes filled with tears. She shook her head, her thin lips pulled down in horror. All she said was, "No," but all she wanted to be saying a thousand times over was, "I'm sorry."

"I told you, Abby," scolded a voice that brought her attention to it. There stood J.D. on Henry's left. J.D., holding his stomach in a desperate attempt to try to keep all his organs on the inside of his body instead of allowing them to pour out of the gaping wound in his belly, shook his head condescendingly. He was glistening and pale, deathly. "I told you it was all about you. If you could've figured it out, you could've saved everyone else."

Abby wasn't talking anymore. She'd said the one word so many times and so fast that it just became broken noise. She whimpered as her head kept going with the repetitive shaking motion and her tears blurred her vision momentarily. The girl buried her head in her knees wanting to neither see nor hear any longer.

That's when the fourteen-year-old Henry stomped forward hurriedly and grabbed her by her hair vehemently, forcing her eyes back on the scene. "You have to see this!" he yelled. But before Abby to get a good look at that blood red sky, she plunged the boarding knife through Henry's chest—a movement she had not willed herself to make.

He stumbled back, his face finally alive again and drooping with betrayal. His eyes instantly fogged over with tears, and he sniffled in a breath. His eyes, too, were swimming with a single word—'Why?'

"Abby?" he questioned, as if he were confused, as if perhaps he was mistaken about who he had been talking to.

She froze. Her tears ran dry. Only shock coursed through her veins now. She couldn't speak or whimper or move. Behind Henry, ropes lingered, hanging from the crimson sky. The only reason she was able to switch focus to those ropes was because at the end of them swayed her mother and father, side by side.

"Abby!" Henry called, his voice deeper now, demanding her attention angrily, desperately, longingly. The atmosphere flashed before she could look back at him. And when she did, no one else remained on the island besides he and her. The sky was black with night. She was no longer twelve, but twenty-five. And he was no longer fourteen, but twenty-seven. He'd grown handsome, but that handsome face was now riddled with dirt, as if he'd crawled out of the ground. And his hair dripped with seawater, blood trickling down his clothes from the boarding knife wound. He bled eternally. But smiling wistfully, he whispered, "I love you."

With a flash, Abby awoke with a start. She was in her bed, back at her home in Los Angeles. It was storming outside. The view of the cascading rain from the window seemed haunting on this night, and she pulled the covers up to her neck. Looking beside her, she saw Jimmy sleeping peacefully. Her breath slowed slightly. If Jimmy was there, everything was okay. He would protect her.

She lowered herself back to her pillow, thoughts clouding her head.

One by one. People died. Horribly. Violently. Viciously.

And it was all her fault.

Her hands moved to her eyes, furiously pressing on them as if it would stop her tears from flowing. Her body convulsing with sobs that she tried to quell lest she awaken her sleeping protector.

It was all her fault.

Things would never be the same.

--

AN: Hey everyone, great to see you again. I know this isn't really like my normal stuff, but it was just begging to be written. And…that's really it. Hope you all enjoyed.

-Fictions