I open my mouth to reply, but he doesn’t allow it.
“I’ll be sleeping here in the Carriage House,” he tells me. “Instead of in the funeral home. It’s for the best. Maybe things aren’t going to change after all, this time. Maybe this will always be how it is, and if that’s the case, then I just want to let go, Cal.”
“Let go?”
He nods and I’m dying dying dying inside, because he can’t do that. I need him.
He won’t let me argue because he thinks it’s the right thing. My soul is crushed, but I leave anyway, because that’s what he wants. For now.
But my room is empty and I’m empty and I want nothing more than for him to come back and sleep on my floor where I can wake up in the night and make sure he’s safe.
I curl onto my side in my cold sheets, and again, I press my fingers to my lips where his glorious mouth had been just hours ago.
I’d give anything for him to be back. In my room, in this world. Just here.
I fall asleep and my slumber is restless and dark.
The dreams
The dreams
The dreams.
The boy is back, in his hood, and he stands in the middle of the road.
“You weren’t supposed to give the ring to him,” he tells me. “You were supposed to give it to me. I could’ve saved them, Calla.”
“Saved who?” I demand, but then I know.
“You know who,” he nods. “You must change it. You must change it. You must change it so I can have the ring.”
Because if I don’t, there is water and burning rubber and fire. There is screaming and it’s my mother, I think. There’s sand, there’s a white sheet, there’s sobbing, wailing, dying.
My mother’s eyes are lifeless
And Finn
Finn
Finn.
A voice is whispering, chanting.
St. Michael the archangel, defend us in battle.
Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou O prince of heavenly hosts, By the power of God,
Thrust into hell Satan,
And all the evil spirits prowling the world
Seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen.
The wordsthewordsthewords.
Protect me St Michael, Protect me St Michael, Protect me St Michael.
Over and over and over, and I wake, sitting straight up in bed, a sense of loss so profound that I can’t stand it. I feel crushed under the weight of it and there’s nothing I can do, nothing I can do, But run to Dare.
I run through the dark house,
Out the door, through the night,
And into the Carriage House.
I leap onto the couch next to him, wrapping the sheet around us both.
He stirs, but he doesn’t push me away.
“The nightmares, Dare,” I whimper. “Make them stop.”
“Shh, little mouse,” he says quietly and his arms wrap around my waist, pulling me close. “You’re safe now.”
But I don’t think I am.
I don’t think I am.
“I don’t want to be alone,” I tell him, turning into his chest. He lets me.
“You aren’t,” he promises. “Not ever.”
This can’t be my life. It has to change. It has to be normal.
I’m determined to fix it
Fix it
Fix it.
I fall asleep finally, since Dare is so near, and I fall asleep twisting his ring round and round and round, because it is somehow a key, and the boy in the hood wants it, and because of that, because of that…
I know he probably shoudn’t have it.
I sleep uneasily,
Restlessly.
And when I wake,
Finn is in the window.
His face is startled,
And he clutches a St. Michael’s medallion in his hand.
Protect me, St. Michael.
The voices, the words…. They swirl around me so loudly that I can hardly focus on Finn’s horrified face, but I do. I concentrate and look and see him.
Finn looks from me to Dare.
Wait.
To Dare.
To Dare.
Does he see Dare?
I race after my brother, my sheet trailing behind me.
I reach him only when we get to the porch of the house, and my mother is coming out the door.
Finn opens his mouth to say something, but my mother looks at me, at my sheet and at something behind me.
Before I turn, I already know what it is.