Chapter Twenty Five

Screams. Floating alone in the void, that's all Sandi Griffin was. Screams of guilt. Screams of apology. Screams of pain. Screams of sorrow. Curled up into a tight ball, Sandi screamed and screamed. She was guilty. She was forever damned. Lost and alone. Her guilt ate at her, devoured her, until all she was became a bleeding, raw, twisting knot of pain.

Each and every thing she had ever done became a red-hot needle stuck deeply in her bare flesh. Guilt and shame scorched her writhing body between their twin flames. Anything she had ever said to hurt another person now turned around and struck at her. Envy and jealousy became twin serpents, twisting around her, sinking their venomous fangs deep into her shrinking, pallid soul. Her whole existence became nothing but a sick lie, her every action a loud accusation against herself.

She had failed her mother, caused her to strike her and hate her. She had failed her father, caused the slow dissolution of her parents marriage. It was her fault her brothers hated her, made them bullies. It was her fault the only people she had as friends had become distant from her. By grabbing at Quinn, she had lost Stacy's true friendship, had squashed Tiffany's slowly budding trust.

She and Quinn had played so many status games with each other, trying to top the other, that any real trust had been lost. Quinn always won! Quinn was smarter than she was, was prettier, lovelier! Everybody wanted Quinn!

Meanwhile, sweet Stacy, her first real friend in Lawndale, was ignored, become a nervous, stammering wreck, even while she kept the Fashion Club together. Stacy had always been the real organizer, the one who kept things running, the one who came up with the real ideas, the activities, while Sandi merely parroted things she had read in Waif Magazine.

Stacy's screams joined her in the chorus. Betrayal. Sorrow. Despair. Buried alive for eternity. Never to be found. No rescue. Her hopes of aiding her friends another nail in her eternal prison. Seething with the power and pain of her new state, but trapped, only able to watch her friend's degradation and death. Her noble sacrifice a trap, a lure, to free her seducer.

Each one of Quinn's tears ate into Sandi like the strongest of acids. Quinn's horror and revulsion at what had happened to Tiffany, as well as her nagging fear over the part she had played in it. Who had killed Tiffany? An insane, mindless Sandi? Or the other voice in Quinn's own head?

Tiffany's soft sobbing was a quiet undertone. She had been conscious, had felt her friends teeth tear out her injured throat. Her soft eyes had widened as her killer had bent down over her with mindless hunger, her yellowed teeth eager for her flesh. Her last word's had been a quiet, "I'm sorry." What had she been sorry for?

Now they were all dead, except for Quinn. Quinn, who was trapped with Sandi's possessed body, while Stacy's "Snow Lady" was slaughtering Quinn's family. Her funny father, Jake. Her wonderful mom, Helen. Her weird sister, Daria. Quinn was going to lose all she had ever had, so even if she somehow survived, she would still be lost. Damned as a killer, a cannibal. Forever followed by "Isn't that the woman who ... ?"

It was all her fault. Alexandra Renee Griffin. Why had she ended up at the graveyard? Why had she agreed? Who had she talked to? She felt the warm grass under her again, the quiet whispers of the uneasy dead. She snuggled as if she was in her own bed, once again a little girl, tucked in safely. Mom and dad were in the next room, all was well.

Sandi felt protected. She barely remembered her fathers mother, but Grandma Griffin had adored her son's little girl, little as Renee Griffin had liked Linda. She had always thought that the woman who had married her son was too controlling, but she had always been polite to her, and was always glad to watch little Sandi. On her part, Linda thought her son's mother was too passive and old-fashioned to understand a modern woman like her.

It had always been so nice to fall asleep in Grandma's lap. She could hear her whispering to her, though she knew she was buried far away.

"Sandi, you're in danger, here! Run away, run away fast, sweetheart! Don't listen to them!"

The voices grew louder and louder.

Daria at first oddly felt nothing as she knelt down by her fathers motionless body. She unconsciously brushed the snow from his face. His wide eyes didn't blink at her touch. Deep inside herself, she could feel doors closing, information quietly being filed away.

"Here is where I'll keep Dad's ranting about his father, here is where I'll keep his bad cooking, here is where I'll keep his trying to be a better parent. Wrap everything up nice and neat, put labels on the boxes so I'll know what's in them."

Her bumbling father was now past tense. No more "Hey Kiddo!" every morning. No more weird recipes, with surprise spices. No more father-daughter talks, where she or Quinn twisted him around their little fingers. No more getting embarrassed about their parents still intense physical love for each other.

Quinn's disappearance, Sandi's "ghost," the fight with Linda, Jane's painting, Andrea's story. Shock after shock had numbed her. Even her rage at what was going on in Quinn's bedroom had been doused. She stared at the frost sparkling in Quinn's room, on everything her sister owned. The shining fog almost blinded her. The hissing of snow blowing across itself, the only sound she could hear.

Oddly, the main thing in her mind was Quinn's reaction, " Do you REALIZE, it is SNOWING, in my ROOM GOD DAMN IT!"i Even with, or because, of all the shocks to her mind, it grabbed onto that. Quinn stomping around in a rage, at the destruction of her room. Her Dad would grab his newspaper, raise it high, and hide behind it, while the Morgendorffer women engaged in combat. Dad wouldn't be grabbing his newspaper any more. Ever.

He wouldn't be hiding in the garage anymore when Aunt Rita showed up, and she and Helen started their game of sniping at each other, over who their mother had loved best, while Aunt Amy sat back, and egged them on against each other.

No more stories about being locked away at Buxton Ridge Military Academy, being bullied by the other boys. Jake had never said a good word about his father. Daria realized with a shock she didn't even know what the mans name was. Jake and his mother, Ruth, had always called him by his nickname, "Mad Dog."

Her mothers scream barely penetrated her consciousness.

"Oh My God! Jake!"

A different tone entered her mother's next words, forcing Daria out of the shelter of her own mind.

"Daria! Behind you!"

Daria was suddenly aware of a presence behind her. Blinding white robes seemed to rustle. Slender white hands gently touched the sides of her face and tilted it upwards, almost as if Daria was an infant, being forced to look at something she didn't want to see. Cold raced into Daria's skin from the pale fingertips, almost as if Daria's very blood chilled in her veins. She wanted to close her eyes, but couldn't seem to do it.

She saw a pale, slender throat, then a delicate jaw. Impossibly red lips were set in a quiet smile on the white skin. A small nose, and then ...

The impossibly large eyes. Daria had sometimes seen the expression in her reading of "drowning in her eyes" and scoffing at it. Eyes were eyes, period. But these eyes were different. They seemed to be all pupil, dark pools of infinite darkness. Daria felt herself pulled out of her body, falling first upward, and then outward. She saw a quiet place, a dead place.

Ice and snow forever. Bare lifeless trees thrusting from the frozen soil and drifts of snow, while dead leaves blew across the stiff hands erupting from the soil. Faces frozen in agony barely visible, mouths gaping wide in pain and horror. But they still felt. They would always feel. The searing cold, the pain of loss as their friends and family died around them, as they failed their duties to those they loved. The very air became snow, blowing softly.

Eternal life, but eternally still, eternally helpless, motionless. A prison of silence

This was the ultimate negation of life. Entropy, the end of all things. The universe slowing down, becoming quiet and still, the very stars dying in the eternal darkness. Dead, dark stars, with their lifeless worlds circling their frozen parent in the cosmic winds.

Daria floated in the void, appalled. She could feel herself slowing down, her heart stuttering to a stop, her slow breathing whistling in and out of her lungs, to finally stop, to fall down beside her father's frozen body. She dimly felt Quinn's guilt and shame, knew what she had done to survive, saw the thing possessing Sandi's body, and infecting hers. She saw Jane, her friend. Alone and surrounded, by the hungry dead.

A faint pulse sounded in her ears. Daria, always stubborn, always questioning the way of things. Always saying "why?" Disappointed in life and friendships. Relationships failing, either because of the shortcomings of the others, or her own fears of commitment. Trent the slacker, Ted, the wide-eyed innocent, Tom, whom she had stumbled into on the heels of his own failed relationship with Jane. Tom, who was so witty and charming, but ultimately, rejected to save her cooling friendship with Jane.

Suddenly, the other face of Existence flared. Flame. Fire. The balance of the universe teetered, always on the edge of total stillness, or total destruction. Daria shrank from the raging inferno she dimly sensed, tried to exert herself away from the two opposing yet matching opposites.

Where was God and Heaven in all this? Daria was not particularly religious, though she had read both the Bible, and religious texts, as she had read most other serious books she had come across.

But what she now faced was so primal, almost pure positive and negative polarities. Neither good or bad, it simply was. Neither cared about good or bad, they simply were. Humanity lived in blissful ignorance, imagining themselves to be the greatest of all things.

Daria quietly spoke into the darkness. "Why?"

The darkness answered.

Helen stared at the impossible figure standing over her husbands body. The ghost was holding Daria, staring deeply into her oldest daughters eyes. Daria stared upward as if frozen herself, silent. The bitter cold bit at Helens exposed face, ate into her body through her clothes. All the stress and tension, all the worries of the last several weeks battered her reeling mind.

She had seen Daria brush by her. She knew that her quiet daughter was trying to protect her, but that wasn't right. Mother's protected their children, not the other way around. She had rushed to Quinn's bedroom door, only to feel her heart stop as she saw Dari kneel next to Jake's body. Her husbands body.

The man she had shared her life with legally for thirty three years, and had loved before that. The stressed out man-child who's love had given them both two wonderful, often maddening, but oh-so-lovely young women. He was dead. Helen knew it, could feel it. She wanted to scream, but she couldn't.

She saw Daria's body slowly stiffen, saw the flesh turning white as the cold from the Yuki-Onna's fingers slowly ate into her. She saw the eternal coldness behind the pale figure, saw her husband buried alive beneath the ice, like Stacy Rowe was, forever. Daria was dying. This thing was killing her. Helen saw the breath leaving Daria's frozen lips being drawn into those of the pale woman. It wasn't only Daria's life, it was her soul. Her living soul.

Helen had had to face loss before, when her father had died, leaving her with only her mother, Teresa, and sisters Rita and Amy.. Their constant bickering had taken on a hostile tone after his moderating influence had been lost. Helen remembered him as always reading his paper, while the feminine noise would get louder and louder, until the paper would lower, and Amos Barksdale's warm brown eyes would be fixed on his wife and daughter's. Her mother would blush, and even Rita and Amy would quiet down.

Quinn was already lost, she knew that, but had kept silent. Now Jake was dead. Not her baby, not Daria! The steely determination that sent Helen forward was pure Barksdale, inherited from her quiet father and fiery mother. Helen moved like a figure trapped in a dream, barely able to move one foot in front of the other, but still pushing herself. She shoved forward, the waves of cold blistering her face, but always the image of Daria's slowly freezing body before her.

Helen felt her own lips crack, the hot red blood dripping down her chin. She saw the same thing happening to Daria, saw her daughter's eyes slowly going blank as her blood ran down her own face. Her own heart pounded, her very blood cooling in her stiffening body, the body she had shared with the wonderful man now dead before her. Daria's warm breath left her bleeding lips faster and faster. Helen saw small cracks appear in her daughters exposed face, screamed silently at the pain she saw Daria facing.

Stiffly grabbing the Snow Woman's hand was like grabbing hold of a marble statue. Helen couldn't budge her an inch. Helen raged helplessly for a brief moment, then saw an answer. Without any hesitation, she knelt next to her daughter, then pushed between them, sealing the ghost's deadly kiss with her own lips.

i Thanks, psychotol.