What has gone before:
Jasper's eyes squeeze shut, and his worst nightmare floods us both …
"You take this family for granted, Edward ..."
"Why didn't you kill her, then? There was no one to stop you."
"She went into the church."
...
"She's part of us now, Edward. For better or worse."
For better or worse.
Everything has changed.
...
A tiny glimpse leaks through my sister's mind. Like a flash of pale skin seen through a keyhole. And then she puts her hand over it.
"Alice, you can't keep hiding from me like this. You have to show me."
She struggles, debates, finally lets me see.
Convergence
March.
I have to keep my eyes off of Bella during class. Others are noticing when I stare. Not just Jessica. I hear that boy, Michael Newton, in his thoughts. His mind is on Jessica, now, more than Isabella. But he notices when I stare at her. Creepy, is what he thinks. Like he wants to do things to her. Eat her. And he shudders.
I keep my eyes to myself, or to the window, or my desk, or the pen that I am twiddling endlessly in my fingers. I watch Isabella through the eyes of the class – even the teacher, since she sits right in front and he has the best view of all. Michael Newton has no concept of creepy.
And I hate it. I want to look at Bella, gaze at her, observe her every movement and expression. I want to see her through my own eyes.
That will have to wait … until night falls. It is falling somewhat later, now. March has come in like a lion. The length of the days and the steeper angle of the light are perceptible, even to human senses. Everyone is restless.
I wait until dark. I have already killed and fed. My family knows where I am: waiting here in the woods at the outskirts of her yard.
Tonight is different. Her heartbeat and breathing are going wrong, all wrong. I hear her every vital sign, stuttering, labored.
I am about to dash to her window when the back door opens and freezes me in place in the wooded darkness. Chief Swan comes out with a shotgun, loaded and ready. His mind is clouded and unsettled. What is he doing with a gun? Surely he doesn't suspect that I am here, have been here every night … Have the Quileutes smelled me on their visits? Have they said something?
I am beside myself. Bella's heartbeat is much too fast. Her breathing is irregular. Something is wrong, and I can do nothing but skulk motionless in the shadows.
Chief Swan scans the perimeter of the meager lawn with a heavy-duty flashlight, cradling the gun at deceptively easy readiness over his other arm. His eyes squint into the black, and I see tumbled recollections in his mind of half-eaten bodies – the girl, the security guard; and there has been another death – a groundskeeper at Lake Quinault Lodge. He has seen that body too.
The antique hunting lodge is only forty miles from Forks as the crow flies.
The Chief is doing the math, triangulating from the sites of the previous kills. Damn big range, even for a bear. There have been too many human deaths in too short a time. He wonders if a single animal can do this, or is it more than one? Perhaps more than one kind. There has not been a man-eater in these parts for a very long time.
Even with the flashlight, the darkness that surrounds the house is nearly impenetrable, and Swan is acutely aware of the limitations of his own senses.
Maybe I should get a dog. Even after this thing is caught, might not be bad to have an animal around. Bella won't be with me forever.
I can scarcely pay any heed to his thoughts. All of my senses are consumed with what is coming distantly from Isabella's room. I will Chief Swan to hurry up and go inside to check on his daughter. What if she's having a heart attack? Is that possible in one so young? Has she had some sort of silent heart disease all this time? Surely Carlisle would have detected it when he examined her …
For pity's sake, man, go inside!
He does.
I sprint across the yard and up the tree. In less than a second. Without a sound. I must make no sound.
Bella's voice greets me in the barest whisper.
"Oh, no. No, no, no. Oh, please."
My whole chest is seized with panic. There is no scent of anyone in her room save her … well, and me. Who is she talking to? Who is hurting her?
"Don't let him die. Oh, please. Please let him live."
I peek past the trunk of the tree.
She is reading my journal. With her laptop and Google right beside her.
I recognize the page.
.
October 13, 1918
.
My memories of those last days are almost all through Carlisle's eyes. But I remember the first time I read what was written there by the boy who died.
.
Father is dead. This church of ours has become a tomb. Not really. They've taken Father away already. But he had been separated from us when he became really sick, carried behind the curtains to the small chapel, which has been made into the "worst-off ward".
They wouldn't even let Mother tend him. Sister Margaret said we shouldn't be near the worst contagion when we still have a chance to get better. Father died alone. They say he never woke.
I mustn't weep. I mustn't. Poor Mother.
What is to become of us, without him?
.
She cannot put this down, now. And I cannot stop myself from staring through the window, following over her shoulder, as her heart trembles in her chest and her fingertips trace gently down each page.
.
October 14th, 3 o'clock in the morning.
The sisters won't allow the church to go completely dark. They carry their little lamps with them as they pass between the rows of cots, and they've left some lights burning in the sconces and by the altar. I wonder where all the pews have been put?
I have Father's pocket watch with me now. I shall keep it under my pillow. The very kind doctor brought it to me when he came to us in the afternoon. He said he thought it best to give it into my safekeeping, all things considered. Was it he who was with Father, then, when he died?
Doctor insists that Mother and I must sleep when we can. I don't know how. I've pulled Mother's cot next to mine so that she can touch me whenever she wishes. She's resting now, but I'm sure she's awake, just pretending to sleep so that I can write. I should put this away. Perhaps if I lie still as well she will let herself sleep.
.
October 14th, after supper
The incessant coughing all around is driving me mad. It's a horrible sound that I hope I shall never hear again, once Mother and I are gone from here. Though God help us, we are coughing, too.
This morning a horrible thought came to me. What is to be done with Father's remains? I didn't know whom to ask, and didn't dare speak of it for fear of upsetting Mother. Before even coming here we had read in the newspapers that the undertakers and gravediggers couldn't keep up, and there were not even pine boxes enough for the dead.
I used the excuse of ferrying our bedpans to search for Dr. Collin in hopes he might be able to help, but the sisters say he's been called to St Luke's where another doctor has fallen ill. Finally just before supper he did come to check on Mother and me, and I was able to ask him somewhat secretly as Mother had nodded off. He has promised to contact Father's partners (if any of them are still well?) and in all events see that Father is properly laid to rest.
I wish I could say this is a burden off my heart but I cannot. Only Friday morning we were all at home eating soft-boiled eggs and toast. Only Saturday afternoon I played the organ for Father, and he told me that it was a fine thing to do, to give music to so many souls on their sick beds. He said that if I should choose music over the law, he would be just as proud of me. Can it be he knew he was going? He'd coughed up a bit of blood then, and his lips were blue, but he could still speak. Did he know? Was he giving me his blessing?
.
October 15th 5:15 A.M.
I have just heard a cock's crow. That is certainly odd here in the middle of town. Perhaps a rooster has escaped from the farmer on the way to market? Perhaps the farmer fell down dead at the side of the road.
There are no new linens to be had for the beds. Mother and I must lie in our sweat, and pray that we do not soil ourselves. We help each other as best we may. The sisters and nurses are worn thin caring for those who can no longer manage themselves. Some get ferried to the hospital for their last hours. Others simply die here.
I miss Father so much.
.
October 15th 2:43 P.M.
Sister Margaret has given Mother and me a ray of hope. She says she's seen the ones who live past three days like as not recover. I can't imagine what it will be like to go back to the house without Father. His watch measures the hours between my entries now. When they used to be measured in days and even weeks between. If I live, I promise never to waste time again.
.
October 16th 7:05 P.M.
We are in St. Luke's now.
Mother sounds like she is breathing under water. So do I. We are like two race horses, running neck and neck. Who will reach the finish first?
All the promises I'll never keep. To look after Tommy's girl. To find him in France. I can barely even hold the damn pen. Barely hold up my own head.
I just want to say one thing. To whomever reads this. Mother. It's not your fault. I could never have stayed in that house alone while you and Father went to the infirmary. Whatever happens, we did the right thing.
.
Oct. 17 5 A.M.
She's gone. When I was sleeping. She's gone. At least she didn't see me die first. I feel sick. To think of her body, cold and stiff and black, stacked naked in the morgue with God knows how many others. Why didn't they wake me up when they took her? Why didn't they let me say goodbye? I never said goodbye to either of them, and now they're both gone. They're corpses. Mother will be manhandled by some stranger.
.
I'm scared. I'm dying in a bed, not a trench. With all my arms and legs still attached. And still I'm scared. What a coward I am. I hope -
.
"No! No, no, no! Come back!"
Bella is calling my name in a voiceless whisper. Not mine, but the name of the boy whose sudden paroxysm of coughing had laid a messy splatter of red across the page. All brown, now, and as faded as the ink of his long lost pen.
She is going through the remaining pages of the journal, one by one, slowly, carefully, so as not to miss a single one.
"Please, oh please. Edward. Come back."
She finds nothing but blank.
Her whimpering sob wrings my heart. I see her curl on her side, as she has so many times in sleep, with the leather volume clasped, so tightly now, to her chest. Her whole body is wracked by sobbing, which she stifles with the quilt stuffed into her mouth.
There had been none to mourn me when I died. Only now, so long afterward, so far away from that place, I am given requiem in Isabella's cries. She pulls the pillow over her head to muffle and hide, but her grief pierces me through and through. It hurts, physically, like phantom knives that enter where no steel can ever touch.
I want to slip in through the window, to hold her, to comfort her, but how can I? The boy that she weeps for has already given up the ghost. If not on that rough-sprung bed in Carlisle's basement, then surely afterward, in the two hundred and ninety seven gruesome murders that I committed between December 1, 1927 and August 23, 1931.
I am not that boy that she keens for. And yet, something within, something that I did not even know was lying in frozen agony there, is being healed tonight, by this girl's inconsolable tears.
And there is more.
For though she does not love me, I love her.
Jasper was right. Alice is right.
I love her.
But I cannot have her.
Even if I watch over her from dark trees her whole life through, even if she lives to be loved by a granddaughter, the day must come when she dies. As surely as she has lost the boy in the journal, so, too, must I lose her.
At the thought, I am consumed with lust to drink from her. Her blood and her tears and the sweet gentle soul that is still weeping under the pillow, choking and gasping as she tries to still herself, all mingle together in my addled senses, pouring out in a holy font that runs red, red, red. Wretched beast, my lips part in a tigerish grimace, pulling the fragrance of her in over my tongue.
If only.
If only she had been born in my time. I would have courted her until I died.
If only the boy I had been had lived.
I imagine a bent frame and white head, a gnarled hand passing over wispy dark hair. He would have doted on the little girl, even if given only a year.
Or if I had been born in this age … to meet with her here.
And watch helplessly as she perished between two hulks of pitiless metal.
Every other path would have been worse.
Only by dying have I managed to preserve her life. I will not undo that now.
Alice insists that she doesn't see me taking Bella's singing blood any more. I will trust that only when her bones are laid beneath the earth. When I have lost her forever.
Alice's other vision, the new one, rises like a pale specter in my mind. How can she still see this when I am bending my every thought to refuse?
Isabella.
Behind me in the forest, the owl calls her name.
A/N: Edward playing the organ in the church-turned-infirmary is inspired by Minisinoo's beautiful one-shot "This Is My Beloved Son In Whom I Am Well Pleased."
Heartfelt thanks to geo3, SaritaDreaming, malianani, Woodlily, and always, aversubtlegift. I couldn't do this without you guys. Dear readers, thank you for gracing this story with your thoughts.