CHAPTER XII

Nightfall

In the weeks to come, I was so busy with school work I hardly had time to dwell on the world I had closed the door to, and was quite happy, grateful even, for the distraction. My days were filled with projects, coursework and homework on top of that, so I could barely have a thought to spare that wasn't focused on my piling school work. However, at every chance my mind began to wander it would bring me back to the hallowed halls of the Institute and all that had passed that night, taking me back to a haunting pair of eyes, green like emerald. And every time, I would abruptly stop and shake those thoughts from my mind, telling myself over and over to forget. And try I did. I buried myself in my work, spending any free time absorbed in a book or writing fan fiction. I had posted more chapters in such a short space of time than I had ever written at all. I spent the rest of my time at school religiously avoiding Octavia, whom I hadn't spoken to since that night on Halloween, and wasn't in the mind to any time soon. The feat turned out to be surprisingly easy, I hadn't seen hide nor hair of her there, even when I was too tired to put effort into avoiding her. It seemed that she was absenting school frequently of late. Why, I knew not, but neither did I care. She wasn't my best friend any more, wasn't mine to worry about any more, and she could blame herself for that if she dared complain.

But not all of my time could be filled with such distractions, there were always moments were my mind was left free to wander. And wander it did. Always ending at the inevitable. I would walk like a zombie in between lessons, my head lulling and eyes tired. Looking positively ill, or even dead. Lucky not to walk into someone.

On top of that, I hadn't been sleeping well, not well at all. I had always been a bit of a night owl, and an insomniac too. But now my dreams were plagued with nightmares so terrifying I would awaken, alone in the house, in a cold sweat. Filled with unadulterated terror, heart racing and breathing heavily. It would often be that I would not be able to find sleep again on those nights. To counter it, I had made multiple dream catchers in an attempt to ward of the nightmares. None of them had worked, much to my dismay. In a matter of weeks, I had gone from looking eighteen to eighty, with heavy bags under my eyes and a face drooping with fatigue.

The only one who noticed the change was Darcy, who sensed from the beginning that something was off and all but forced me to tell her what was wrong. After days of hounding me, I told her about the nightmares that had been invading my sleep, causing my daily show of zombification. From the look on her face, I could tell that she didn't quite buy my explanation, sensing something more that I wasn't divulging, she was right, but thankfully she let it pass for now and had taken to sleeping over at my house regularly, to accompany me and sooth me from the nightmares that stole my sleep.

Tonight was no exception, I lay quietly in my bed trying to lull myself to sleep under the over of the darkness that filled the room, the only light coming from a gap in the curtains where a full moon just peeked through, bathing me in the beautiful rays of moonlight. Calming my fray nerves a little. Darcy slept on a pull out bed beside mine, breathing softly. I closed my eyes, willing my mind not to wander, but to be dragged into sleep, hoping the nightmares wouldn't come, when I heard a rustling, the sound of Darcy shifting in her sleep. I was envying her for her easy slumber when a sound broke through the tolling silence of the night.

"Are you ever going to tell me what really happened that night, on Halloween?" Darcy's voice, quite awake, pierced through the silence, filling the room with the pitch of her voice.

I feigned slumber, avoiding her question, though knowing that she knew that I was awake. I was going to have to tell her, but the question was, when?

And then, answering my question, sleep pulled me in with its iron claws.

With each step that I took the ground beneath my feet became hotter. Hotter. Scorching. Until flame licked at my ankles, searing through my skin and leaving my body blackened at their touch with ash. It was that day relived.

16:40

My footsteps turns to runs. I was tearing through a pathway slowly degrading into ash. When I reached my street it was raining with it. Soft grey flakes dancing down a still, grey sky. Flame consumed my vision, obscuring my view, flickering at the corners of my eyes but I knew I could not stop. Despite the pain ripping through my body at the scalding touch of the flame I ran desperately for my house at the end of the street. In the dream all the other houses were gone, my house stood alone on an empty street consumed with ash and blackened skies. Despite everything, I ran for my lonely house, finding my front door in shards of glass of the floor. Uncaring of how my bare feet were cut into ribbons, I ran head first into the mouth of the fire. When I crossed the threshold, everything stopped.

Silence rang through my ears, leaving a cold veil across the house that hung eerily. Lingering in the atmosphere.

Time had stopped.

It was just like it used to be.

Untouched.

Unbroken.

Unburnt.

I tiptoed further into the hallway feeling like with one wrong move everything around me would crumple into soot. But my sole attention was fixed upon upstairs, where I knew my room laid. Still untouched. Still unburnt. Still as it used to be.

Carefully I stretched out my hand and placed it on the stair bannister, and for a second, nothing changed.

Then the dark wood of the long railing began to seep into a dark, ashen grey at my touch, flooding over the object and creeping into the walls.

Soon, everything around me was a dark and unforgiving black. Acrid smoke began to pour from the walls and consume to air around me, making it hard to breathe and flakes of ash fell from above. I flew up the stairs finding the disease had not quite reached the bright white door to my old bedroom yet, but the smoke poured at my tail, swarming around me teasingly. Inching closer and closer for my door, daring me to try anything.

There was no time left to think, this was my last and final chance.

I dived for my door, but as I leapt it shot from my reach. Fading farther and farther away from me into the arms of dark, menacing cloud of ash.

I was too late.

Smoke now poured in endless bound around me. Engulfing my in acrid clouds of thick grey poison. Everything around me was black. The air around me was plagued with the memory of that day. Pouring down on me, dusting me in a cloak of grey were the flakes of fallen ash, which still floated like a sinister snowfall from the ceiling.

Everything around me was black, ashen, burnt. Touched by me.

I crumbled down within myself onto the scorching floor beneath me as I felt the end coming quickly. I knew what was going to happen within seconds.

I felt my entire existence blow up in a violent explosion from a distance.

This time taking me with it.

I awoke screaming, fighting for my life under the sheets until I felt a warm pair of calming hands lightly clasp my upper arms, soothing me.

"Shh, shh. It's okay, you're safe" Darcy whispered through the darkness, gently rubbing my arms, perched on the side of my bed next to me, "You're here with me, it's okay"

My beating heart gradually began to slow, my breaths evening out and I began to sit up in my bed, my head swaying, and propped my back against the wall. My breaths still heavy, in fearful and shaken sighs, and my body quaked as I drew my legs into myself, fighting for balance and clarity. My alarm clock read 05:55 AM. I had slept most of the night, though we would have to be up soon. My eyes flickered up to Darcy sat by me, still gently shhing me into peace, I smiled weakly at her.

"Want to talk about it?" she asked, her dark brown eyes shining in the moonlight.

I shook my head.

"Do you want to take a walk?"

Darcy looked out into the dark winter night revealed by the small gap in the curtain. I thought about it. Darcy knew me much too well. I must have at one point told her that walking under the blanket of night calmed me, despite knowing it was dangerous in the outskirts of a city such as London.

"Yeah" I said, my voice only just quietly breaking through the night, soft and shaky.

We strolled slowly down the empty streets illuminated only by the light of the street-lights and the lonely Moon and stars hanging in the night sky. Having quickly changed, we had gotten ready as if for school, knowing we wouldn't be going back to sleep that night, though doing so without turning on the harsh lights of reality which would shatter the quiet, lucid calm of the night

When I looked up into the bright, full Moon I was reminded of the night of the party, standing alone in the streets under the light of the moon after I had run off. It was a full Moon that night as well, it had been some time since then. And so much had changed...

We walked easily in silence until we reached the memorial park. The trees swayed gently in the cold breeze, autumn fading early into winter in the late November night, and the grass glistened with the light of starshine in the rays of the moon with the morning frost. Beautifully preserved under a layer of delicate, silver ice. We entered the park through the gates, our feel crunching over the frosted grass, and were soon covered by the rustling umbrella of leaves. Buried in the corner of the walled park. Shrouding us slightly from sight and the shadow of the branches above dancing on the ground, beams of light shining softly through the space between the leaves. Then, Darcy spoke.

"All of this. It comes back to that night, doesn't it?"

"No" I protest, but the look of exasperation she gives me forces my acquiescence, "Yes..." my shoulders slump as I finally give in. Darcy gives me a look of appraisal, as if she's deciding what to say to me next.

"Look, I know something happened that night. Something big that you're not telling me." she sighs, "What I don't get is why. You know you can tell me anything and it kind of hurts me that you don't trust me enough with this"

Pain is written in the sparkling dark of her eyes as she looks at me, full of questions and hurt, and my chest binds in inner conflict and turmoil.

"It's not that I don't trust you. I do" I tell her.

"Then what's the problem? What so big that you can't tell me?"

And now I know that I can't withhold the truth any longer. The time to tell her the truth of all that had happened that night had finally arrived. A part of me rejoiced at the prospect of telling her, relieving me of my guilt and fright and regret. Of having someone listen and understand everything I say. All that's been building up inside of me, undeterred by whether she'll believe me or not. But the rest of me is filled with apprehension, anxiety and worry. I don't even know where to start, let alone how to explain.And if she doesn't believe me...

I guess I was just going to have to take a leap of faith, and trust that she will.

I drew in my unsteady breath and prepared myself to begin the story from the moment I ran off that night at the party, leaving her. Hoping I would know how to explain, how to word it so she would understand. When I was interrupted by a terrible, unearthly screech, filling the air, rising from the east wall at the side of the park where we stood. A startled and frightened look must of stretched across my face as Darcy asked, concern filling her gaze:

"What is it?"

I looked at her, confused.

"Do you not hear that" I ask her, shouting to vise above the sound. Worry edged my voice as I looked frantically around for the source of the dreadful wail.

"Hear what?" Darcy tried to mirror my actions hoping to see or hear what I was looking for. The sound grew louder, closer, ear-piercing. I fought the urge to cover my ears as it grew louder still and I thought my ears would begin to bleed. Darcy looked at me in confusion, no idea of the sound and what was causing me to react so.

And then I saw it.

A colossal black form towering behind her. All smoke, dust and shadow. Ripping the nights calm in a terrible apparition, haunting the air behind my friend. My eyes widened with terror as I beheld the beast. Heart racing with fear, lungs filling with it, stealing my speech. Any kind of warning lost to wind, constricted in my lungs.

I was too late.
It came too fast for me to even process it.

A fluid, dark arm stabbing right through Darcy's core, ripping her open, blood blossoming on her shirt and dripping from the ghostly apparition. Shock set into her features, holding her in its paralysing grip as she looked down in slow motion, to see the awful gap within her, leaking her very essence of life.

Her face contorted with pain, her legs crumbled beneath her and she fell. The frozen winter grass forming a bed beneath her lifeless form.
Blood began to pool around her, pouring profusely from the aching wound. Stunned, trapped in the grip of fear, shock and pure terror, I stared on. Falling to the ground beside her, my eyes wide, my hands dancing above the wound, I was deep in the grips of shock. Still disbelieving, unknowing of what to do.

My hands shook and my body quaked with the waking nightmare that was before me. And the deathly demon that was above me.