When the Darkness Fades Away
Prologue
Quiet Is My Loudest Cry
I, Isabella Marie Swan, believe that I am cursed. Weather it happened at birth or something that developed later in life, I suppose its inconsequential, the end result is the same. I am nothing more than a walking disaster. My parents always believed just the opposite. From the moment I was born they both praised God, even though they were not religious in the slightest, for having been blessed with a miracle. Sure I was born seemingly normal, ten fingers, ten toes, one head and no tail. Everyone that doesn't know me and most that do believe I live a normal and ordinary life, and for the most part I suppose I do. But there were moments throughout my life where nothing could be described as normal and ordinary. And those moments were becoming more frequent and increasingly more obvious.
I remember it all starting when I was 10. I woke up the same as every other ten-year-old; a wide smile on my face and big plans for the day. I know some people claim that on days like I was going to have, they wake up just knowing that something bad would happen. But to me, it was just another average day that was going to be filled with average events. It was a Sunday in August, it was a hot day, slow and steady rain that was supposed to develop into storms in the evening. Most people would argue that the rain ruined the day, but at the time I disagreed. I loved the rain. Right up until that afternoon.
My mother Renee tried to convince me to say inside and out of the rain. But I insisted on going out to see my best friend Jessica, claiming there was no difference in playing in the rain than the day before when I had spent playing with water balloons. She eventually gave up and I ran out into the rain with reckless abandon.
I got halfway to Jessica's and stopped in the middle of the street, letting myself take a moment to spin around in dizzying yet lazy circles. The cool water met my warm flesh and cascaded over my body in the most wonderful way. That is why I always loved the rain. To a young and innocent child there was no better feeling. Since there was still no traffic I kept my place in the middle of the street and smiled and giggled as I swayed my hips, dancing slowly to the music I was singing to myself. I wrapped my arms around myself and rubbed in the rain.
It was nice to have those peaceful moments where you could clear your mind. Sure, I was ten at the time but I still had a lot on my mind. My home life was very average. It was far from perfect but wasn't a great American tragedy, yet. My parents were divorced when I was five. They lived far enough away from each other that they rarely had to interact face-to-face and when they did they were polite to one another. I was loved and well cared for. My mother was flighty and often wild and reckless in my youth. My father was careful and calculating. And I was stuck somewhere in between.
But even underneath all the ordinary there was more. The way that my parents both looked at me when they thought I wasn't looking. The careful way they spoke to me, always seeming to hold something back. And the fact that no one seemed to be comfortable around me. My family was slightly dysfunctional and nonconventional for reasons I couldn't understand at the time, but as life went on and I became more aware of the reasons, I grew to be haunted by it.
I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, willing the rain to take away all that was wrong with my life. The rain chilled my flesh and caused goosebumps to rise. I spun around one last time. As much as I wished and prayed that the rain would change all those little things about my life and make everything normal again, I knew it wouldn't. So I gave up and moved on. I opened my eyes to see Mr. Bromely standing just outside of his garage, watching me. As kids we nicknamed him Crazy James. I've been told that every city has their own version of the crazy James. The middle aged guy that still thought he was cool enough to hang out with high school teens. The guy that was always so nice to everyone still gave you the creeps when he looked at you. The guy that was always alone. And the guy that always seemed to be everywhere you went, just hanging around.
I waved a simple hello to him and again started my walk to Jessica's but his rough voice called after me. "You should get out of the rain," he said to me, almost demanding.
"I'm fine," I smiled and kept walking.
"You should come in until it stops," he called. I could hear his heavy boots step in line behind me.
"I'll be fine. I'm not going very far," I replied, quickening my pace.
But he didn't listen. I grabbed my arm and turned me around to face him. My eyes widened in terror. He released my arm quickly and looked around nervously. "You'll catch a cold," he said, his voice lowering as his eyes wandered over my wet body. "A pretty girl like you wouldn't want to get sick on her vacation would she?"
"I'll be fine, Mr. Bromely. But I really need to go. My friend Jessica is-"
"You're friend Jessica can wait," he cut me off with a sharp yell. My eyes again grew wide with fear. He noticed my fright and changed his tone. "Here," he sighed, his voice now lowering and a smile creeping up onto his face. "I'll let you borrow an umbrella." He turned his back on me and started back up his driveway.
"No, thank you." I shake my head and begin my walk again.
In an instant I felt his hands close around my arm and pull me along. "I insist," his voice was cold, hard and forceful.
"Really, Mr. Bromely I'm-" But I never got a chance to finish. His right hand squeezed tightly against my small arm and practically dragged me behind him while his left struck my face. Tears formed instantly and I tried to fight the way that my father had taught me. I kicked and screamed and scratched. I even went limp but he just dragged me up his driveway and lifted me in his arms as he closed the garage behind us.
He threw me over his shoulder and carried me through the house, gathering a small box from behind his television set before he walked out the back door. He threw me against the red brick of his house, making sure we were safely out of view in his fenced yard. He leaned in close, his face mere centimeters from mine. "I've been watching you for a very long time," he spoke his foul breath hot on my face. I grimaced at the smell of the whiskey and stale cigarettes that he reeked of as he leaned forward and placed a soft and awkward kiss on my unreciprocating lips. The stubble on his face left over from a few days without shaving scratched the delicate skin of my face like rough sandpaper. I kept trying to fight him off or even pull away as his tongue sought access to my mouth, but he held me completely still. He dominated my small body with ease. I mustered my courage and offered a prayer as I bit down on his tongue as it finally crossed the threshold of my mouth. He pulled away just long enough for me to fall into the mud and stumble no more than a foot away before he took hold of me and slammed me hard against the brick again. He struck me repeatedly until I couldn't even think about trying something like that again let alone muster enough strength to actually do it.
His callused fingers ripped away my shirt and unzipped my jeans and his hand fumbled down my pants. And just as his fingers reached their destination, my fear multiplied and magnified and forced itself out in the form of vomit. My sick washed all over him making his anger flare as he wrapped his fingers around my neck.
It's not something I like to talk about, even after I've had almost fifteen years to recover from it. I can still smell the whisky and cigarettes that clung to him in my nightmares. Sometimes I can even taste it. I'm still haunted by the memories and by the fact that no one paid attention to the screams of a little girl as she was tortured. They all locked their doors and pretended not to hear a thing. They all say that they heard nothing more than the rain drops falling on their rooftops, the loud clappings of thunder as the storm finally reached its crescendo and on top of all of that their houses were locked up with the loud hum of the air conditioner as it blazed. Maybe they thought the screams were the normal sounds of a little girl playing in the rain because no one thought that in their sleepy little town something that terrible would every happen. Or maybe it was just that no one cared enough to do anything, even check out their windows.
I couldn't say how long I was there with him. It could have been minutes but it felt like hours. First my body became numb and was shortly followed by my mind. I stopped fighting and gave into my fate. And when that finally happened he opened the box he brought with him and bound my body and hands to his deck and again wrapped his fingers around my neck. He squeezed so tightly that I couldn't even scream if I wanted to. And just when I thought that my head would explode, he released my neck.
But he didn't want to choke me. He wanted blood. So he brandished a knife and held it to my throat. He didn't hesitate for one second before he slipped the knife into my neck and sliced. I was surprised at how slowly the pain came. At first I felt nothing but a kind of warmness as blood warmed my chilled flesh. Then that burning slowly intensified to an agonizing level. I watched him for a second, recline in a lounge chair, unzip his pants again and watch as the life poured out of me. It didn't take long for me to pass out. And shortly after that, I died.
This is the part of the story that has only been told to me once, so all the details aren't there. James Bromely's elderly neighbor had witnessed the whole thing and called the police. And everyone was too polite to ask her why she just sat and watched instead of trying to do something…anything to help. He was caught off guard and arrested. I've been told that the paramedics did everything they could to resuscitate me. No one likes to give up on a child. But they had done their part and delivered me to the hospital. I was dead for just under seven minutes before my heart again began to beat. After several surgeries and five days passed, I woke in the hospital.
The doctors all told me how I should be thankful. It was nothing short of a miracle that I survived. I had lost a lot of blood. He sliced my throat and severed veins, arteries and my larynx and required two surgeries to fix. I couldn't speak for months before being rehabilitated.
I was told I was lucky. But I didn't feel lucky. Things like that didn't happen to lucky people.
Up until then my mother had never been a religious person her wild lifestyle never allowed it. She never spoke about her beliefs or ever went to any church services. But after my "miraculous" survival she became a fanatic. She said that it was a miracle that I survived. Now she had to pay homage to God for sparing my life. And she insisted that I should do the same. But I had a hard time believing in God. Because what kind of God puts a child through that. I lost any and all faith I had during that time of my life. And it wasn't necessarily because I was put through that whole ordeal. It wasn't the fact that I had died. It was the fact that when I died, nothing came next. None of those things that people talk about when they have similar experiences. No bring lights, no bubbles, no purgatory, no fiery flames of hell. Just plain nothingness.
The rest of that story is a bore. The long months of rehabilitation and recovery. All the doctors and therapists I was forced to see. The trial I had to testify at. But those are all regular things that happen in daily life. My life was much more complicated than that.
I had died and came back. But I didn't come back the same. Sure, I looked the same and sounded the same and had all the same memories. But I didn't feel the same. I couldn't put my finger on it back then but I knew that I had come back different. And because I was so different I needed to make a change. I settled on something small and easy, my name. I was no longer Isabella, I would be Izzy.
My life would have been tragic enough if that was the end of my story but that was simply the beginning. When I was fifteen, I died for the second time. Not something that many people get to say.
Again, the day started like any other. No feelings of impending doom. Just another ordinary day. I had done a lot of growing up over the years. And probably a little too quickly too but that's what a traumatic childhood would do to people. My scar slowly faded and could be covered up or passed as an awkward skin puckering and sometimes if I held my head just right it wasn't really visible at all. It was summer vacation and this year I was spending it with my father along the Pacific Coast. I was young, reckless and rebellious and my parents thought that spending the summer with my father the cop would help. It didn't.
It was early summer and I was headed out to sea with Mike Newton. He asked me out every time I went to my fathers and I had always turned him down, telling him that it's better if we're just friends. I had never spent more than a few weeks with my father before and the idea of being alone for the entire summer was frightening so this time when he asked me I finally said yes. We had been going out for a few weeks before he took me out on his father's boat. He stocked it with beer and condoms and we were off.
We spent the first hour drinking and smoking before we went below deck. Being young in inexperienced the sex wasn't the greatest but it was good enough that we didn't notice the weather alert system go off with warnings. We stayed in the underbelly of the boat completely unaware of the uneasy seas surrounding us. We finally snapped out of it when the boat began to rock and jerk almost violently. Mike immediately turned the boat back to shore but the storm was over top of us.
The small boat rocked from side to side, water lapping over the edge. I was soaked and shivering in my blue bikini and Mike's white button up shirt. He cursed as he worked to keep the boat level. I watched the waves crashed against the side of the boat angry that my day had been ruined by rain. And then something happened that caused Mike to panic. I wasn't familiar with the Pacific Coast weather and thought it was just something that would quickly pass like it always did in Phoenix. But Mike knew better. So while Mike frantically radioed for help I basked in the ignorance of youth. Because I had been through so much more in my life already what was one little rain storm over the ocean?
Mike left me in control of the controls as he left to search for life jackets and just as I heard a voice crackle over the radio it happened. Just like an explosion. A rush of cold water hit me like a brick wall and swept me off my feet. I quickly lost my bearings and slammed into the side rails of the boat. The impact forced all the air from my lungs and when I finally was able to inhale all I took in was a breath of salty seawater. I broke the surface and my body involuntarily reacted violently trying to expel the saltwater from my lungs as Mike grabbed my arm and pulled me to him. He held me close as he prayed for safety. "Don't waste your breath," I croaked, my voice horse. "There's no one listening." He ignored me and kept his prayers going and I just watched the boat rock in the churning seas. Finally the boat lurched to one side and it was the beginning of the end. Mike was thrown overboard and I should have been too but my foot caught in a rope and I was stuck flailing helplessly under the water. I struggled to free my foot to no avail. And Mike was no knight in shinning armor coming to save the day, he was nothing more than a little boy frightened by the rain.
Panic began to set in when I felt like the oxygen in my lungs was multiplying and they were about to burst. But I kept myself calm. That was the secret. Keep calm. The calmer I was the less air I would need. It would be a win/win situation. So I closed my eyes for a second and pretended to take a nice relaxing breath of air and then exhaled and suddenly my foot slipped through the rope and I was free. Relief washed over me as I raced towards the surface, only problem was, I had no idea where that was anymore. I followed my instincts and started to paddle for what I hoped was the surface. But before I could really get anywhere my body betrayed me and my lungs exploded, more like imploded as they filled with the painfully stinging saltwater. A horrible sensation filled me as my body convulsed unwillingly as it took in water against its will. I gagged and coughed but in the end my body continued to pull in deep breaths of nothing more than water. My chest had never felt heavier as my lungs collapsed. And that's when I allowed myself to relax and just let go. I had already died once before so I knew what to expect. A brief shot of pain and then nothingness. It would all be over in a minute. I just had to let go. So I did. And again the darkness washed over me and I was free.
But again I woke up in a hospital, people crowded around my bed. No one was sure how long I was dead before members of the coast guard were able to clear my lungs and resuscitate me. But everyone agreed that it couldn't have been more than a few short minutes. The doctors again told me how lucky I was. And again, I didn't feel lucky. The nurses told me I had to take it easy for a few days and tried to rush everyone that was awing over the girl that had somehow cheated death twice out of the room.
Mike was rescued without a scratch on him.
This time my mother swore to devote her life entirely to God. She thought that it had to mean something that God would chose to make me suffer so much only to give me my life back again. I thought I just had shit for luck. My mother tried to convince me that I should be grateful. That I should go to church every day. She tried to argue with me that God saved me because I had a purpose. That I was somehow God's vessel, to do his bidding on earth. Problem with that is that I was a horrible choice. I didn't buy it. And even if I did, I made my fair share of mistakes. She argued that I needed to devote my life to God. But I flat out refused. Because for the second time in death, I found nothingness waiting for me. I was filled with nothing more than the emptiness that death leaves with you. There was nothing out there. There was no God. He didn't reach out from the heavens and save me the coast guards did. She had even gotten her priest involved in the argument. They all said that God works in mysterious ways and that there is a reason for everything. It's amazing how much they believe in something they can't even see but something as common and obvious as homosexuality doesn't exist to them. And no one really had a good rebuttal when I got my turn to question them. When I told them about my experience in death and how let down I was, they ignored it and just kept insisting that I needed to pray and accept the Lord as my savior. They left me with the promise that they were praying for me.
And again I came back different. Some of the differences were becoming frighteningly clear. But I was told I was just a little crazy and they had the brain scans to prove it. But I was reassured that there was nothing wrong with a little crazy after all that I had been through. And because I was different I again chose a new name. I was now going to go by middle name, Marie.
You would think that this would be a good place to stop my story but there is so much more to tell. And I saved the best for last.
Even though I had suffered through two terrible deaths and had been through more than any one person could imagine I did try my best. Sure, I made my mistakes. I sulked and sat around and felt sorry for myself. But eventually that passed. And where ever I found myself people always managed to find out my story then I couldn't escape the looks and the questions. And no one liked the answers I have them, probably because I gave them mostly nothingness like I had gotten.
I managed to survive the rest of high school and got into college. And like every other student I was having difficulties deciding on a major. I was twenty and running out of time. So as spring break approached her friends decided it was a good idea to blow off some steam. One group was doing the traditional going to Cancun thing that I wanted no part of. I had my share of boats and the like. The second group decided on mountain climbing. That idea sounded awful. I wasn't the outdoorsy type and I was terribly uncoordinated at times. And the last group decided that skiing sounded like fun. And I thought all the ideas sounded horrible. But my only other option was to go home and hang out with Charlie. So I decided on skiing, it seemed like it would be the safest option for me. But little did I know that no matter what I had decided to do it would have ended in a disaster.
The first day went well, there were not major accidents and we spent the night partying until dawn. I was part of the group that slept in and decided to stay off the hills for the day, thinking that skiing with a hangover didn't sound like fun. But at night we had all recovered and decided skiing at twilight sounded like a lot of fun. Of course there was drinking again. And this time there were a few people that got hurt doing stupid things. But that is what spring break is all about being young, stupid and mostly having fun. My boyfriend for the duration of the trip, Tyler, had whisked me away to find a remote area to fool around.
And this is where my memory starts to fail me. I remember snow. I remember drinking straight from a bottle of whiskey. And I remember losing a few articles of clothing as we messed around. And then I remember pain. I tried to move but the pain only got worse. At first it was isolated to just a few places my left shoulder, my chest and back, my legs. But slowly the pain began to spread as the cold set in. I laid flat on my back and stared at the stars wondering how long it would take for Tyler to bring help.
As the minutes ticked by and started to turn to hours that I was waiting the more I began to see that I was just doomed again. The intense pain was beginning to numb as the cold overtook my body and the numbness slowly began to set in. I closed my eyes and released a heavy sigh. This was going to be the worst of all because it wasn't going to be quick and it certainly wasn't going to be painless. My eyes snapped open when I heard the first loud crack. My hopes soared thinking I was going to be rescued. They were quickly dashed when the cracking continued and I felt a coolness rush over my legs. It wasn't help on the way. I somehow managed to land on a very thin sheet of ice covering the outside of the lake. The ice was beginning to thaw and break apart, and icy water lapped at my skin, piercing my flesh like a million tiny daggers. I again tried to move but this time I was frozen in place completely unable to move. It didn't take long for the ice to give way and plunge me into the freezing waters. For the second time in my life I was left alone and helpless submerged in water. But this time I didn't even bother to fight it. I just let the darkness come and rescue me.
Somehow I had survived and woke up weeks later in the hospital. People didn't know what to say. They didn't know how to react. But I could see it on their faces, the same mix of awe and terror. What I did manage to get out of people is that while me and Tyler were off fooling around a drunk friend of ours on skis crashed into us. Of course Tyler just suffered some bumps and bruises in the collision. I broke a lot of bones in the crash and tumbled down the mountainside into a freezing lake. My luck sucks. The other interesting thing the doctors told me, this time it wasn't minutes that I was dead. This time it was more along the lines of hours. Apparently that can happen if your body temperature falls that low that quickly. It shut down all my body functions as it froze so I could die without suffering brain damage. So when the search and rescue time finally found my lifeless body floating in the lake they thought I was a lost cause but had a legal obligation to try to resuscitate me. The doctors didn't hold out much hope for my survival. The normal human body temperature is 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. After your body temperature is below 82 degrees you are considered to be in critical life threatening condition. You need things like heated oxygen and heated IV's and all sorts of modern medical marvels to warm you again. I was brought into the hospital with my core temperature at 65 degrees. But the doctors had seen it all before, a patient coming in from a tragic fall. They had seen many with temperatures lower than mine even, but none of them ever came back. There was once a man who's temperature was 70 degrees that came back and survived on life support for three weeks before his injuries forced him to succumb to death again. I was told that I now have some kind of world record for lowest body temperature and for the longest time being dead without suffering lasting brain damage. I was again told that my survival was a miracle. I simply shrugged and told them that it was something that just happens… at least to me.
And this time I could tell from the very beginning that there was something very different about me. I didn't even pause to think about it. I knew it was coming. And I decided to now go by Bella.
By that time I was bored with it. Suffer. Die. Come back to life. Things would be so much easier if I were normal. You die and you stay dead. Just like everyone else. I had seen it happen plenty of times. I began to study my life after that and I unfolded an odd web of coincidence. After every time I died and came back, someone else died. And unlike myself, they didn't come back. A week after my rape, my best friend suddenly died. The autopsy showed a blood clot lodged in her brain. Something that hardly ever happens in healthy children. Five days after I was released from the hospital after my drowning my mother suffered a severe allergic reaction to a spider bite and died. And on the plane to come to my side my father suffered a massive stroke and passed away. He was buried before I regained consciousness.
I also noticed that it came in five year intervals. First when I was then, then at fifteen and again at twenty. I was pretty much convinced that I had died when I was five and no one ever told me about it.
And now at twenty-for, the dreaded twenty-fifth birthday was fast approaching making my stomach twist into knots. The five year theory wasn't one that I wanted to put to the test. But I guess I will find out within a year what my fate would be.