To my dear, patient, wonderful readers:

SORRY!

It was not my intention to leave you hanging for months like that. Seriously. Life basically got in the way.

This chapter was SO hard to write. I had so many different scenarios for where the story should go running through my head since my last chapter (I even considered –briefly- a nice Halloween update of Jasper doing Thriller!) and even wrote an entire chapter where Bella gets sick and Jasper takes care of her and Carlisle comes but it didn't feel… there. My voice in this story has been one of the things that I have taken most pride in and I couldn't hear it in this wanna-be chapter. So this chapter is the product of clearing my head and just writing.

Many thanks to the new readers! I love all of my readers so much! I wish I could give you all cabins in Utah!

The songs for this chapter are Imaginary and Hello by Evanescence. I had to come back and change the chapter title and stuff because the songs I originally planned on using were a little too chipper for this the way this chapter turned out.

Disclaimer: I don't even own my own sanity.

Chapter Six: Imaginary Hello

BPOV:

I wiped my tears from my eyes and stood up, looking at the dead meadow around me. The dead, brown flora looked like it was mirror of my own heart since Alice's death. I felt cold, dead, like nothing would or could ever be important to me again. I knew that if Alice were still alive I wouldn't be feeling this way; that all these broken mangled pieces of my heart would be better somehow, not the dead mess that they were. But she was gone. Like the meadow I stood in, she was dead.

In the corner of my eye, I saw a hint of color move. I turned and saw a flower blooming into life. Around it leaves began to turn green and other flowers and plants burst into life as though waking from a deep sleep, shaking off the dust of a haunted slumber. All around me plants bloomed, turning the meadow into a beautiful, display of life and color.

"Bella?" My heart stopped and then began to pound in my ears. I turned slowly and there was Alice, standing amass the beautiful plants, looking radiant and healthy and alive, different from the too perfect Alice that I had known. I ran to her and hugged her, holding her in my arms and reveling in the feel of her arms around mine. I breathed in deeply and then gagged.

She smelled like death.

I stepped back slowly and screamed.

"Bella, what's wrong," she asked in her soprano voice but now I noticed that her voice was accompanied by incoherent whispers that made my skin crawl. Out of her nose, maggots curled and writhed as though in pain. Her eyes were glassy, pale and her skin looked like it was falling from her body, revealing blackened muscle and pale bone. Half of her hair was missing and I could see parts of her skin missing from her skull, displaying the pearly bone underneath. Her arms were stretched out to me and she was missing some fingers. Black liquid oozed from her mouth and fingertips and whatever it touched withered into ash before my horrified eyes. The sky had darkened when moments before it had been sunny and bright.

"Alice," I breathed in horror. She laughed and instead of the tinkling bells it used to be, her voice sounded like nails against a chalkboard and ominous whisperings in the dark. She began to decay in from of me and I choked back the urge to vomit. She lurched toward me and I screamed again. I stumbled backwards, tripped on something and fell, arms flying out to try and catch myself. I braced myself for impact.

I was standing in the kitchen, chopping vegetables and humming to myself. I looked out the window, waiting for Edward to come back, knowing that I wouldn't see him until he was right behind me even if he did. My phone buzzed on the counter next to me and I picked it up and pressed it to my ear.

"Alice, I am not going shopping-"She cut me off and her tone immediately made my spine stiffen in fear.

"Bella! Bella, listen I don't have a lot of time."

"Alice, what's wrong?" I set my knife down and turned to the door, ready to run to her aid.

"I'm in a burning warehouse. I'm trapped, Bella." Her words swirled in brain, refusing to settle and sink in.

"What? How?" My blood felt like ice water.

"It was Jane. She tricked me. I didn't know she would do this until the match was lit and on the gasoline. Bella, I don't have much time and I still have to call and say goodbye to Jasper before… listen, I'm sorry for pushing you outside your box but I have to tell you something. Things are going to change after I'm gone and it will feel like the end of the world, but Bella, it isn't. I know that you are going to want to give up and throw in the towel and refuse to go on, but you can't! You can't because Jasper needs you. He's not going to cope with this very well and you are the only one who can help him. Please, Bella, you have to promise you will help him!" I listened numbly. What was happening? "Bella, focus! Promise me you will take care of Jasper!"

"Fine, I promise," I rasped into the phone. "Alice-" She cut me off again.

"Bella, I am so sorry," she sobbed. "I know that this is horrible of me but you have to promise me you won't tell Jasper that I called you before him. If he knew that I called you when I could have called him first, he would have gotten here sooner, he would never forgive you. Don't tell please," she begged.

"Okay. Alice…" I trailed off. What could I say? She was about to die. "I love you Alice," I sobbed through my tears.

"I love you too, Bella. Be strong." The line cut off.

"Alice?" I whispered into the phone. "Alice!" My scream echoed around the empty house. I grabbed the keys to my truck and ran out the door. I had to save her. I could save her. This couldn't be the end! She couldn't die! I jammed the keys into the ignition and tore out of the driveway. I pushed my truck to its limit as I raced to the Cullen's. This had to be a sick joke, a dream, a nightmare, anything but reality. I pulled in front of the house and jumped out, not bothering to cut the engine or shut my door behind me. I ran into the house, yelling Alice's name. I rushed upstairs and flung open her bedroom door, half expecting to see her at her closet, reorganizing her shoes. It was empty. I flung open every door in the house, finding nothing, while I screamed until my throat was raw for my missing sister. I ran downstairs and movement and the edge of the property made me turn. I ran through the kitchen and out the backdoor towards the Cullens as they trudged toward the house.

"Where's Alice," I screamed. "Is she okay?" Esme looked at me and then broke into sobs against Carlisle's shoulder. Carlisle's face was somber and grim. Rosalie had the look on her face that I had only ever seen when she told me about Royce. Edward didn't meet my eyes and Emmett looked like he had just watched the sun explode. He was supporting Jasper who was sobbing fitfully and hanging off his brother like his legs could no longer hold him. It was the lost, life-ending look in Jasper's eyes that convinced me.

Alice was gone.

My knees buckled and I fell to the grass, sobbing. I heard a thunk and opened my eyes to see Jasper lying across from me, gut-wrenching sobs bursting from his lips and his face like a man about to be executed. My pain and sorrow were suddenly increased tenfold. My heart felt like it was being ripped open. My lungs felt submerged in acid, burning and drowning all at once. My body felt like it was being squeezed through a meat grinder. I screamed in agony and clawed at the ground, trying to escape my invisible torturers. I distantly heard Jasper screaming with me and someone yell at him.

"Stop, Jasper, you'll kill her.!"

"Jasper, stop!" The pain continued for what felt like a lifetime and then suddenly it eased, no longer the unbearable, suffocating murder. I opened my eyes and saw Jasper look at me in agony. He looked over my shoulder and froze. I turned and Alice was leaning over me, black liquid dripping from her eyes. She leaned over my body to my ear while I recoiled from her.

"Remember, Bella; you promised not to tell." I looked down to where the substance was hitting my body and saw my skin curl up like it was withering. She smiled at me and I watched as spiders fell from her mouth.

I screamed.

"Bella! Bella, calm down!" I thrashed at Alice's rotting hands restraining me and then opened my eyes. I saw Jasper's face hovering over mine with panic and concern written all over his face. I looked down and saw that it was his hands restraining my arms gently. I took huge, gasping breaths, my eyes searching the room to see if my dream Alice had followed me into the real world but only my room's familiar features met my frightened inspection. Jasper sat on the bed next to me and held my shaking body in his arms against his chest, sending soothing waves of calm into me until the shaking stopped. Tears flooded down my cheeks as I remembered the pain and terror of Corpse Alice.

"Bella, what's wrong?" I shuddered as an image of the tormenting figure in my dream appeared in my head.

"Nightmare," was all I could choke out. I felt guilty seeking safety and comfort in the arms of Jasper and I knew why.

While the parts of my nightmare that had Alice in them were purely fictitious, the part of my dream about Alice's last phone call to me and the insufferable pain that I had endured upon hearing of her death were all too real, a memory buried within the horror of a nightmare that haunted my conscious and unconscious hours. And by taking comfort from Jasper's arms, I was taking comfort from the man that I was lying to. I wondered if Alice had been wrong in assuming that Jasper wouldn't be able to save her. Did she know or had she speculated that he would arrive too late or die in the attempt to save her?

This last thought made me shudder again and his arms tightened. Losing Alice was enough but now, after learning so much about Jasper, I was horrified at the thought of anything happening to him too. He had come to mean so much more to me than I ever would have guessed. And even now, my mind screamed at me to tell him about Alice's phone call, to tell him that I was the reason he didn't get to Alice on time. But I couldn't bear to cause him anymore pain and I had promised Alice not to tell.

My last promise to Alice.

"Do you want to tell me what it was about," I vaguely heard Jasper ask. Yes. I so wanted to tell him but I knew that I could not. I would respect Alice's final request of me.

"Zombies," I told him, justifying my lie by imagining Alice's corpse and shuddered again.

"Oh." Clearly not what he had been expecting me to say. "And they were after you?" I nodded against his shoulder and breathed in his scent deeply, trying to clear my head. He smelled like old books and leather and wood. It was a smell that I had become deeply familiar with, that brought me calm even if he wasn't around. "Bella, no matter what, I will protect you. You know that right?" His question brought another round of tears to my eyes and I nodded, burying my head in his chest and sobbing.

"Hey now," he whispered. "What's wrong?" I sat up and looked in his butterscotch eyes and saw genuine concern shining there.

"I miss Alice," I whispered, my frown deepening when I said her name. His eyes softened and he placed a kiss to my forehead and then held me against his chest, rocking from side to side slowly.

"I do too, sugar," he whispered. "I do too." I shook with sobs against his body and closed my eyes. Behind the lids I could only see the tortured look on his face against the grass across from mine.

I was the reason Alice was dead.

And he didn't even know.

AN: Well…. That was NOT how I pictured this chapter coming out. I am always surprised when I go to write with this mental idea of what is going to happen and then I kind of go into a trance and when I come out, there's a chapter there only it's stuff I never would have even thought of writing. Like zombies. I was planning on her writing a letter to Edward to tell him it was pretty douche of him to leave her. I guess her nightmare was a little more important though. Tell me what you thought in a REVIEW! And we have a twist: Bella is keeping a secret from Jasper!

Next update: Christmas with the Cullens… how bad can it be?