Shadows Gray

Chapter Eighteen



I skim down the dark stairs as though I am a weightless ghost, and I feel as though I may be. Sonnet Gray, dead in this lifeless house, doomed to haunt it for all eternity because she cannot get out. My feet barely skim the floor at the bottom of the stairs as I fling myself at the front door and out into the night air. The first thing I see is the sun coming up over the trees, the second is the Blue Beast sitting quietly where I left it. My foggy brain doesn’t register the fact that the headlights are no longer shining like a symbol of hope and are as an alternative, cold and silent and dark and non-existent. I give a little cry as I realize suddenly what that means: the car is as good as deceased. I have killed the battery and without another car to jump start it, the Blue Beast will stay right here, silent as a tomb.

My fingers which had already grasped the door handle to the car eagerly only seconds before flex and release and I slide my tired body to the ground. I debate just staying there for the rest of my life, for the rest of my life seems quite short and pointless anyway. I am too tired to be scared anymore of whoever locked me in that room and whoever let me out, and my brain is too weary to form any type of plan. Lying in the mud seems a very viable and intriguing option. But if Prue and Dad have managed to stay awake and wait for me, I cannot keep them any longer.

That is the only fuzzy logic that gets me to my feet again. I relieve my aching bladder behind a tree and then rummage in the Blue Beast for nourishment. I find a can of almonds in the console and the bottom inch of a bottle of water that had rolled under the driver’s seat and I make short use of them. Feeling somewhat better, at least somewhat less sick anyway, I begin to walk.

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I walk like a drunken man, I think. I walk like a woman balancing on a tightrope. Lean, correct, stumble, over correct. I weave around the road in aimless patterns and I know I am doing it, but I am powerless to straighten myself out. My feet drag, which hurts the soles of my bare feet, but I cannot find the energy it would require to step higher.

The sun rises, every minute illuminating more of my road ahead of me.

Once I look back because I think I can hear the softest sound of someone calling me, but all I see is that hateful house, getting mercifully smaller the further I walk away.

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The road I travel on is going to intersect with another road just up ahead; I can see the road signs and the way the two roads make a cross at their juncture. It is only a few yards away from me now and I can hear the rumble of a car approaching the cross, on the other road. I begin to make out its shape, its fuchsia color, the smallness of a two door little hatchback. I see it nearing the cross and I know that if the road I travel on has a stop sign, which it does, then perhaps the road the fuchsia car travels on does not. It will speed by and not look my way.

I call out frantically and begin to run or try to; attempting to reach the sign and the cross at the same time as the car, but it is fruitless. If the driver of the fuchsia car sees me, a dirty girl in a long tattered nightgown, he will think he sees a ghost.

Am I a ghost?

I walk.

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I miss driving. I miss the speed, the way the machine hugged the curves, the way my hand would dangle out the window and I would feel so glamorous and modern.

One sore foot in front of the other. My toes are dirty and my heels bruised. I realize eventually when I do not stumble into town, the outskirts of town, or anything that remotely resembles a town, that I have gotten myself lost. I am Lost and I am lost. I laugh out loud. What a dunce I am. I must be the worst heroine in history.

When plotting your next escape, Sonnet old girl, try to remember to turn left at the abandoned scary house, and not right. That’d be great. Thanks.

I decide to sit down and let someone find me. Isn’t that what we learn as little children? If you are lost, stay put and let Mum and Dad find you. Well, I think crossly, dear Mum isn’t coming and Dad can’t seem to find his own way home these days, much less find me. Prue doesn’t drive, Bea and Emme won’t know where to look, Israel has had his car stolen by the girl in question, and Luke…Luke should know where to look!

I have to believe that Luke will know where to look.

I send him what I hope are telepathic messages to turn left and not right after he’s searched the house. Will the someone who locked me in and then let me out try the same thing with him? Is it only I that is being messed with emotionally, and as I look down at my feet, physically? Is Rose traveling with a sociopath? Or was Rose never there at all?

I lean against a tree trunk on the side of the lonely dirt road as I ponder. My body feels heavy again, my hopes of reaching town on my own without sleep have diminished. I can’t do this anymore. No one can stay awake forever.

I am realizing this when I hear the motor of a car and see the dust billow up on the road, coming closer and closer. An expensive looking car pulls up beside me. It is silver and the windows are tinted black. I hear the driver’s side door open and slam shut with excessive force. I know I should be very happy about this change of events in my circumstances but I am simply too weary. I don’t even stand, I simply watch as my rescuer comes around the large car and to my side.

My eyes are too heavy to really focus and the form of a person swims before me, blurry and fuzzy around the edges. His voice, when he speaks, sounds distant and remote.

He also sounds angry, I realize with a little surprise, and although I am having trouble with my ears making sense of his diatribe, he appears to be cursing.

“Get in the car,” Israel says, slowly and with measured fury. Without so much as a soft word in my direction, he lifts me bodily and deposits me on the soft seat of the car.