Let Me In-Chapter Four
Isabella watches as the two girls grab Carlie by the hair, tossing her small body to the ground. They take turns slapping and kicking the child, yelling obscenities in a continuous flow.
Isabella determines the cause of the children's wrath by listening to their verbal assault. Carlie was coerced by their teacher, Mrs. Webber, to tell her who killed the class guinea pig.
Of course it was Lauren and Jessica. Carlie saw them the day they decided to tie a string around the animal's neck. It was ill fate that Jessica was walking by when Carlie's told Mrs. Webber.
Now that Lauren and Jessica must take responsibility for their actions, they want revenge.
Isabella watches with mild interest as Lauren and Jessica get tired. They finally spit on the fetal-shaped Carlie at their feet before giving her a cold warning to keep her mouth shut.
Carlie does not move and Isabella smells the blood leaking from this child. She swiftly drops from her tree long after Lauren and Jessica depart from the scene of their crime.
She crouches and approaches the girl. If Carlie is aware of Isabella, there is no outward sign. It is when Isabella is crouched over Carlie, twisting her head back and forth smelling the sweet nectar that flows out of the child's shallow cuts tainting the white snow, that she finally steals a look at the stranger near her.
"Why didn't you fight back?"
Isabella is genuinely curious. Most creatures have a sense of self-preservation and will fight when they are cornered. From what she observed, Carlie merely folded into herself.
Yet it is not the question that comes from this strange girl that causes Carlie to sit up slowly and look closely at her. It is the sound of her voice.
Even Isabella's human, Charlie, has never gotten quite use to her voice and he marveled at the supple way words materialize from such a beauty of a voice. Thus, it is not surprising that Isabella's prey looks shyly at her.
"Because they would only hit me harder and then say I started the fight."
How odd. Carlie was persevering herself.
Sometimes preservation means being impassive.
The two sit in the snow facing each other for some time. Carlie knows that Edward will arrive soon to take her home. If he sees her in this condition, he will surely want to know what happened and once her mother and father get involved it would only antagonize Lauren and Jessica into further violent acts.
"Can we go some place else?" she pleads with this beautiful stranger.
Although we know the evil that is Isabella, Carlie only sees a stunningly pale girl with the voice of an angel keeping her quiet company after the worst beating in her life.
And of course we know that Isabella is very pleased with the idea.
There is no logical reason, but Isabella decides to take this child to see Sam, the dead bum. For you see, Isabella dumped Sam's body in a lake. It is currently frozen in the middle of this lake, deep in the woods. Yet you can still see his limbs bent at awkward angles through the ice. She knows that by spring, she will not be present once a lone fisherman discovers her garden of bodies.
She helps Carlie up and holds her hand in a caring gesture that to any outsider seems like a little sister taking a walk with her older sister.
In this manner, the two forms walk deeper into the woods. Both are silent until they come to the edge of the lake.
Carlie looks around for the first time, she did not think it was necessary to pay attention during their journey, yet now it seems that she should have.
"Do you want to see what's in the lake Carlie?"
"How do you know my name?"
"You didn't answer my question."
Isabella tightens her grip on the child as she hears the hastening of her heartbeat. Carlie does not struggle; instead she turns towards the girl and truly takes in her features. Although Carlie's left eye is starting to swell and the bruises are flowering on her skin, she starts to notice the oddness that is Isabella.
"What are you?"
Isabella always expects this. Whenever humans spend more than two minutes in her presence, they become acutely aware of her strangeness. No longer is she beautiful, now she is simply odd.
Irrational anger courses through Isabella as Carlie sees her for what she is…a magnificently lonely evil.
She flicks her wrists and sends the child flying into a snow bank. She immediately crouches over her and brings their faces inches apart. Tears are leaking from Carlie's eyes but she does not shut them. Instead she looks into the burgundy eyes of her new companion.
"Carlie, will you be my friend?"
Carlie nods her head in affirmation; she doesn't know why a girl who appears to be the same age as her siblings wants to be friends with her. She assumes that they share the same problem. No one her age likes her too.
"You know friends share right?"
Again Carlie nods.
"Well Carlie, I need blood to survive. Will you share your blood with me?"
Carlie frowns in confusion. Did this girl want a blood transfusion, like what her father does in the hospital? But that question does not slip from her lips. Instead Carlie stares directly into the face of death herself and states, "you're just like me. You don't have friends either."
It is this statement that stops Isabella from unhinging her jaw. That statement prevents her from getting her razor-blade teeth ready for the feast of purity.
Her head cocks to the side as she regards the girl, for Carlie has just invited Isabella in… if we look into what Isabella truly needs to tame the savagery in her, it's the sense of belonging.
She has always focused on how she is not human. How she differentiates herself from them. As if she is in an 'Us verses Them' universe. She has the same need to belong, the same need to be loved.
It is Carlie's simple statement that compares the two of them; classifying herself with Isabella causes Isabella to preserve the girl.
It was the same reason that Charlie Swan was spared that night. The look on his face was one that told Isabella that he was on her side, on her team, that his fate was with hers. It was this bold latching of himself to her that had saved him.
Carlie had done the same thing. She had lumped their two lonely souls together. Carlie was just like Isabella. Her brother and sister only took her everywhere with them and their friends because she had such a difficult time making friends in school.
So it is in this way that Edward comes upon his little sister…pinned to a snow bank near a lake with a stranger hovering over her. He can see the bruises on her face and starts running towards them. He can hear Emmett's heavy footsteps and Jasper's determined jog behind him.
Thankfully they answered their cells when he called to ask their help in looking for Carlie. He had finally calmed Alice after she nearly collapsed when he told her Carlie wasn't waiting for him at the school.
"Get off her!" he yells pushing the stranger with all his might.
It is the surprise that causes Isabella to leap from her crouching position over Carlie. It is the way the electrical tingling from Edward's shove radiates through her that confuses her. She is still crouching for a split second before she stands perfectly straight.
She was so intently staring at Carlie that she did not hear the footsteps or the heartbeats of these three humans. Now Emmett is standing before her as Edward cradles Carlie, shushing her the entire time.
In the corner of her eyes, she sees Jasper move towards her ready to lunge, but she is too quick. They do have her cornered so that the only escape is to run over the frozen lake.
Without hesitation, Isabella steps onto the thin ice. What she seems to be forgetting is that when she was here last, she was barefoot and she used her toenails to dig into the ice allowing her to remain upright as she dumped Sam's body into the lake.
Now she has boots on. She does not have the luxury of friction to keep her upright. So she falls and finds herself rapidly spiraling towards the center of the lake. A low growl builds into her throat as she crashes through the thin ice.
The temperature does not bother her; the lack of air does not bother her. It is Carlie's piercing scream and the simultaneous, "fuck" uttered by the three boys that bother her.
Had no humans been present, she would simply swim under the ice for a few minutes until she came to the edge of the lake and then broken through the ice.
But there are humans present. They would never understand how someone survived more than five minutes without air in a frozen lake, much less broken through the ice.
So she begins swimming towards the hole that she fell through and grasps the side of the ice trying to pull herself out. It is unsuccessful because she keeps using too much force and slips back into the water.
Carlie keeps screaming at Edward to save her, while Jasper and Emmett start gingerly stepping onto the ice to try to get to her.
She finally gets on the ice and slowly crawls to a spot further down from where the humans are. She does however hear them running towards her. As Isabella finally stands on the snow soaking wet, she looks up to see the boys staring in awe.
Carlie manages to yank herself from Edward and run to Isabella hugging her fiercely.
This gesture is unfamiliar to Isabella even though she has seen humans perform it countless times. She pats Carlie on the back and disentangles herself from the child.
With a final look directly into Edward Cullen's green eyes, she turns around and flees through the woods, taking care to run at a pace that is humanly acceptable.
Did you feel that?
There has been a monumental shift in Isabella's world. She is no longer interested in consuming the child. Someone else has stolen her undivided attention and she wants to consume him in a considerably inappropriate manner.
Let's all take the time to welcome Edward Cullen into the heart of darkness.