Amelia

Sometime in the darkness, I rose from unconsciousness with no pause, no hesitation. The reminder of the pain lingered as I drifted awake. A horse – one made out of sand – had attacked me. I remembered that and I remembered backing away – and then it had attacked me before Pitch had managed to stop it.

Next came the earlier memory of Pitch's voice calling to me. I couldn't remember much, but I remembered descending into his lair and whatever had made me do it must have been something close to foolishness. Then Onyx had attacked me, causing me to black out.

My eyes opened to the darkness and I shivered. Fear seized me and my heart started beating at an unusually fast rate.

It's just the adrenaline!

I felt the pounding in my head from where it had made contact with the wall. I felt everything and the voice in my mind was reminding me about Pitch…How his resentment of the Guardians had led to his defeat, his longing to be believed in, his approval of being resurrected and then he had lured me here. Had he known all along that was possible? Maybe it was a guess. Or maybe he understood I was his new source of fear.

I saw that I was laying on my side, on something cold, my body against stone. It took a couple of attempts, but I managed to sit up. And screamed.

"PITCH!"

I scrambled towards him, moving as fast as I cold while breaking into a cold and thick sweat.

"PITCH!"

Without thinking about what I was doing, I grabbed him around the shoulders and shook him, hard. He wasn't responding. The small black shapes circled above his head. His eyes were closed, bunched up.

He's having a nightmare, a voice in my head reminded me.

I tried to follow the shapes, tried to keep my gaze on them. The first five must have been the Guardians because two of them resembled a man with a long beard and an oversized rabbit. There was something else, something that made me freeze in place. The next few shapes seemed to be the horses, like the ones that had surrounded us moments before they'd attacked us. Except, in the nightmare, they submerged a man whom I recognised as Pitch. In his nightmare, the last thing that happened were the Guardians watching him fall victim to his fears. I didn't know what he was afraid of but based on what he'd told me, it must have been something about being isolated and fading away.

My hand flew at one of the shapes, and instantly, before I could react, they changed. So did the colour of the sand. Golden butterflies circled above his head. And when Onyx dared to take another step, she backed away after I strode toward her.

Good, I thought, define progress.

"Don't touch him," I said, firm without aggression.

Next, I felt the tension beginning to evaporate from my body.

"I'm not afraid of you," I went on.

If Pitch could be moved to somewhere more secure, somewhere safer… I threw my heavy arm around his shoulder, and when I helped him to his feet I didn't know where I was supposed to take him.

The wind blasted through, almost like it was calling to me. At that moment, I boosted myself with a small incline of my shoulders so that I was not just supporting his weight, but also mine. When he was securely in my grip, I moved through the steps and looked around. Beside the dark, a ray of moonlight was my only companion. A companion observing me when Ben was killed in a heartbeat.

I dragged Pitch until the ground underneath my feet became even more uneven and I found myself listening to the silence, fascinated by it. There didn't even appear to be the faint, gentle buzz that came when a solitary place grew far too quiet. There was only the sound of Pitch's heart beating against mine, slow, gentle. Yet I knew of course.

Onyx was behind me.

The room I soon recognised as a kitchen was decorated in black, giving it a sleek and tidy look. Opposite that was a grand dining room with a large wooden table and on it was an untouched plate with a single knife and fork, all polished and clean.

The bedroom door was standing ajar.

Come on, Pitch. I thought, You need to rest.

The cold grip of fear had long disappeared and the bedroom door was open just a crack and no light entered it at all. The blanket of darkness seemed to float heavily over the bed, waiting for the night to fall so it could swallow it all. Then I stepped forward, and using my free hand, pushed the door open and stood for a moment, peering in. Inside the room was a king sized bed with large pillows and a freshly made bedding, all of them black. After laying Pitch down, I unhooked his arms after he'd managed to wrap them around my neck, then reached to brush strands of dark hair away from his heart-shaped face.

My mind rolled back to a three-year-old memory where Ben had managed to catch the flu at work. Even the hand sanitizer on the wards hadn't been enough to chase away the bugs. Dosing up on painkillers at the time seemed to do the trick, at least when they eased his throat. Ben, being the determined man he was, had recovered without much trouble. I'd made sure of that every day. That same year, it was a relief that all Noah had suffered with was just a headache and not another episode of the chest infection during the first five months of his life that had left him in hospital for a number of days.

Now I had Pitch stable, what I needed to do next was find a way out of here. The hole I'd come down was far too high to climb and I wanted to kick myself for leaving my phone; let alone being so easily lured down there in the first place. The glowing hands on my watch were enough to tell me that I had been down here for more than twenty-four hours. Twenty-four hours where Noah had been left alone in the house. Another reason to get the hell out of here.

When I started to back away from Pitch's room, everything around me was motionless and still. It felt like I had taken some form of drug where once the effects wore off, I would forget everything I had recently seen.

Something reflected in the corner of my eye, inside the wardrobe, inviting me in. when I took a closer look, I recognised the shape was a small golden locket contain a photo of a girl, about six. It was tucked away with a small golden box and a General's uniform that had faded with age. Despite that, it looked good. High-ranking even. Diving looks between the uniform and Pitch, it never occurred to me that this might have been his. Pitch had never struck me as the General type but if that was once who he was, why was he the Boogeyman now?

That I didn't know. I did not intend to dwell on it.

His eyes flew open. I kept stumbling backwards until I fell against the bedroom door. In spite of that, he remained looking at me with an impassive expression and asked, "Did I scare you?"

"Don't ask stupid questions."

He feigned hurt.

"That wounds me, woman," he droned. He sat up a little, realising where he was. "Hang on… did you carry me all the way here by yourself?"

"I'm not weak."

He made a note of the way I kept my hand firmly over my right pocket.

"I told you before, that gun won't hurt me."

"I doubt that's true. Besides, I'm a grown woman. I think I can handle being a little nervous." Which brought me to my next question. "Why did your nightmares attack you in the first place?" I realised something. "You were afraid of fading away and being forgotten, weren't you?"

"You don't understand anything," Pitch seethed.

I remained standing there and staring stone-faced at him.

"Thanks to the Guardians, no one believes in me and yet again I've been written off. Because everyone's overcome their fear, there's no one left."

A moment later, I cupped his face.

"There's me." And I just knew that all the sarcasm, all the wit, was a piece of armour shielding his pain. "You know, when I trained as a psychologist I learnt fear can be your friend. In other words, it can protect you." I didn't give him the chance to continue. "After Ben died, it made me aware I needed to take care of Noah. Without fear, we probably wouldn't be standing here having this conversation." We stared at each other longer than we'd intended to. My cheeks reddened. I summoned enough courage to hold eye contact and added, "So…you're the Boogeyman."

"Yes I am."

"What sort of nightmares do you give?"

Pitch grinned.

"Very mean ones."

"No. What I meant was…do you scare kids about anything rational?"

"Well, the more rational the fears, the less entertaining it is."

"And what's your favourite book?" I asked keenly.

"Romeo and Juliette."

Resisting the urge to glance back at the uniform, I asked, "And did you always know spreading fear was what you wanted to do?"

He hesitated.

"Okay, my palms are starting to sweat. I feel like I'm in a job interview. Do you, by any chance, know how to talk to people?"

"I'm interrogating you?"

"Yes."

"I haven't really spoken to anyone in a long time. Apart from when I'm at work."

"Well, since I've already saved you, you've saved me and we believe in each other," Pitch soothed, "Maybe we can make our own rules." He chuckled. "Why are you blushing?"

I touched my cheek, and when I did my hand came away warm.

"Sorry, I didn't know I was. I think you're making me nervous. Okay…I'll try and be myself. It's not easy, but I'm gonna try."

"What was the question?" Pitch asked, "Oh! 'Did I always know I wanted to spread fear?' the answer is yes. Because that's the only thing I knew. I didn't know anything else before that. Okay, I believe my time's up. It's your turn."

"Already?"

"Deep breaths," he murmured.

"Well, like I told you before, I'm a psychologist – and I have a Ph.D."

Pitch's eyes burned with satisfaction.

"I didn't know you were a – what's the word? – doctor."

"That's probably because I didn't mention it. But now that I have, I know that you were likely raised to be a polite gentleman, despite your occupation. I can admit it and maybe you won't be intimidated by it."

"No, no, I'm still a little intimidated by it."

"Well, a little is one step ahead of the game," I explained. Which I suppose makes us even now, I added mentally.

Pitch shuffled over a little and made space for me on the bed. I hesitated, but sat down anyway.

"Tell me about your family."

"Okay, well, my parents have been married since I was two years old, I have a brother, John, nothing irrational never particularly bothered me, I have a son who's ten, I'm recently a widow and because of John, I really don't like clowns."

"Wait!" Pitch said, "You're saying you've never been frightened by anything irrational?"

"I know. That must sound terrible. Especially when I was still a kid. You know, I tried. Believe me." I took a deep breath and let it out, slowly and gently. "Can we talk about you some more? Please."

"Okay, well, I'm trapped in my own fears all the time."

"Really?"

"Really, really," Pitch repeated. "More than any man you've ever met."

"You don't have to be this nice to me."

"It happens to be the truth. An unexpected anxiety attack, I'm trembling."

At that, I laughed.

"Amelia, I'm a coward. I think I'm a coward. I think I must be."

I started. "What exactly did you do to make them hate you so much?"

"The Guardians. Well let me clear your mind about one thing, in a bid to rid the world of all its wonder and light, I went as far as ruining Easter."

And that's what caused Noah to have nightmares every year, I thought.

Once every four years, Ben and I had taken it in turns to wake him from one of his bad dreams. An anxiety that became stronger when the next Easter fell. Over and over, Ben and I had always struggled with giving him hope. It had always been challenging and even more so now Ben wasn't coming home. The revelation gave me a morbid chill.

Pitch may not have put Noah in physical danger, but knowing what he'd done was enough to make the rage in my blood hotter.

The sound of the gun shot ricocheted throughout the lair as I pulled the trigger again and spotted the lifeless bullet laying on the floor. Pitch recognised I had no intention of harming him, but I wanted to make him understand how it felt knowing he'd disheartened my own child. Including Jamie and the rest of their friends. He lifted his chin, looking me right in the eyes.

"Don't you want to know what else I did that year?" he gloated. "Why the tooth fairy never came…"

Deciding to change the subject, I looked him right in the eyes and asked, "If you'd have won, would you have really been happy?"

Pitch thought about this for a moment. While he did, my mind conjured up probable reasons of why he had stolen the children's teeth in the first place. If what Noah had said about the Tooth Fairy helping him with his memories was true, which bizarrely I thought could be, maybe it wasn't only the children's memories Pitch had wanted.

Maybe it was his.

If it was part of a buried longing he didn't know about, maybe he'd been subconsciously trying to find out the truth without really knowing it.

As I strode towards him I understood it: the recognition that something about me was more dangerous than before. For the first time, Pitch was unnerved by a human. I thought it over and said, "Okay, Pitch, I'm prepared to offer you a deal. Listen to me. You will act as my associate and help me find out how Ben died–"

"I told you before, deep down you knew Jack Frost got your husband killed. There are other ways to bring him to justice."

"That's not what I'm implying," I said through lips set in a tight line. "After the car was removed from the pond and taken for evidence despite the cops being unable to find anything, I started to remember getting it serviced the week before and getting the brakes fixed."

"What are you saying?" Pitch asked.

"They weren't broken before the crash and brakes don't get damaged like that, not unless they were…" I felt my stomach drop…"cut." I held his gaze with a sick, shaken fear. "It wasn't an accident. Someone wanted me – or Ben – dead! Whoever did it was perfectly fine with putting Noah's life at risk. My own child! It wouldn't have mattered if Jack hadn't iced the road over, because I wouldn't have been able to stop the car." I felt tears streaming down my cheeks. "Pitch, if you help me… I'll help you overcome your fears."

He gave a wicked smile.

"I'm in."