Arthur awoke with a start, nearly jumping and smashing his head against the low ceiling that hung near his bed.
"Same dream, same ending," he mumbled to himself, rubbing his head and wiping the sleep from his eyes with his arm. Slowly, he stood, grabbed his prosthetic from its charger in the wall, and affixed it to his shoulder. He did his daily self-check, flexing the elbow, wrist and fingers of the mechanical limb to ensure nothing needed a tune-up before the day began. But while he was checking the prosthetic, his mind was on other things. Every morning, he thought of it at least once. The debacle in the Diablo Caves outside of town. The metal arm he carried now only served as a reminder of what had happened that night. Of what he…
Arthur shook his head clean of the thoughts as he entered the kitchen and reached for a cereal box out of the pantry. It was no way to start the morning. Besides, he had gone through the scenario at least a thousand times before in the past eighteen months since Lewis had mysteriously died in the caves. The police reports say that Lewis had slipped, falling to his death on the stalagmites below. Arthur had confirmed as much. He had lied through his teeth, and no one had batted an eye. Of course, they probably would believe the story of a young man who had lost his entire left arm in the accident. Besides, what could he tell them? That a "mysterious force" had compelled him to push his best friend over the cliff? And then, in order to save him, his other friend's dog who was actually SOME KIND OF MONSTER had ripped his arm clean off, but had failed to save her master's boyfriend? Had he told the truth, he would have been laughed out of the police station, or worse, sent to a psychiatric ward. He hadn't been able to tell anyone. Not even Vivi. Vivi, who should have seen the whole thing, but couldn't remember anything. He remembered how she ran up the tunnel, screaming and crying. Seeing him missing an arm had only made her worse. Then suddenly her eyes flashed pink and she fell, unresponsive, to the ground. Arthur had thought that would be the end of them all, right there.
And then the dog had saved them.
Mystery had pulled both of them out of the cave, and managed to wake up Vivi in his dog form before Arthur finally passed out himself. When he woke up, he was in the hospital. The few days afterward were a blur; the police took his account of the story, Vivi and Mystery came in to visit him regularly, and Lance, his uncle, refused to leave his side until he was able to leave. Vivi asked him a myriad of questions, one after another, but one thing kept ringing through his mind, loud as a church bell: she doesn't know.
She deserves to, though. He had to tell her. He needed to tell her. He was going to tell her.
And then he didn't. He didn't have the heart to. He had already lost one friend, he couldn't bear to lose another so soon.
That should have been the end of it. The secret should have been buried with Lewis' casket, and the tragedy ended right there. But then, they had gone to scope out the old Childswood Mansion on the outskirts of town. Someone had suggested that they examine the place, that there was a lot of weird sightings in the area. There, Arthur found out that his secrets weren't nearly as buried as he thought.
And neither was Lewis.
His first reaction: fear. Fear for his life. Unbelievable. His best friend, whom he'd thought dead, suddenly returns, and Arthur runs away? He should have been hugging him, laughing, crying, something other than run. But, as usual, he took the coward's road. He ran away from confrontation. He could have explained everything to Lewis, he could have gone to grab Vivi too, he could have told them everything and it would have been fine and…and…
…And Lewis would have burned him to a cinder before he could get a single word out. He'd seen what the ghost had done to the mansion in his tantrum; he'd leveled the front hall and compromised the whole structural integrity of the place with the spreading flames. It's a miracle that there was a rainstorm that passed by to put out the flames, or the rest of the house would have burned down too. That kind of temper was NOT the kind of thing that Arthur wanted to be on the receiving end of, even if he deserved it. No, for now, at least, he needed to avoid Lewis if he could. Then again, now that the ghost was awake, he would probably start hunting Arthur for revenge. That thought alone nearly made him drop the carton of milk in his hands from the fridge. This wasn't a problem he could face alone.
But then, who could he tell?
Lewis hated him.
Mystery? The dog-who-wasn't-a-dog? Arthur had watched the six-tailed monster rip his arm clean out of his socket, then swallow it whole, the way an alligator swallows a fish. Mystery may have stopped whatever force it was that had made him kill Lewis, but Arthur wasn't sure if he was doing it to help. It seemed more like the dog (if Arthur could even call him that anymore) had done it because he was hungry.
Vivi? Absolutely not. There was NO WAY that he was going to rope her into this. Vivi had gotten a fresh start from whatever had happened in the cave. She deserved to keep that; she didn't need to know what happened between the four of them.
As much as Arthur hated to admit it, this time, he was on his own. And that thought scared him even more that Lewis' fire.
