Chapter Twenty Six
“I have to go see Charlie.”
Edward is shaking his head before I even finish my statement.
“No, Bella.”
“I can’t just leave him hanging.”
“He’s a tough guy. He’ll get over it.”
This time, I’m shaking my head before he finishes. “He’s already lost Alice. He’s basically lost me, but he doesn’t even know it yet. He’s all alone. I have to tell him.”
“Tell him what, exactly?” Edward’s eyebrow is raised, his voice pure skepticism, and he’s looking at me like I have zero clue as to what I’m talking about. But I’ve thought this through, all night long. When nighttime lasts a million years, that’s a lot of time to think it over. A whole lot of time to feel bad, then worse, then plan a million plans before I finally realize the one and only way to throw that man off my trail forever.
I’m going to go home and flip out.
Teenage girl style.
I’m going to scream and cry and blame school and boys and teachers. I’m going to throw some stuff around and kick something, and I’m going to tell him that I’m leaving. Right now. Tonight. This instant. I can’t take this town. I can’t take this life. I can’t take any of it anymore, and I’m leaving. And then, the kicker: I’m going to go live with Mom. I’d rather live in her yurt in some field with the naked neighbors and the quinoa and the bearded guy who thought he was the second coming of Jesus. I’d rather be there with her than here with him. I’m going to fly up the stairs in tears and pack a bag and then push by all of his pleading and his excuses and his promises to make it better. I’m going to get into my truck and gun the engine and leave him heartbroken forever.
I’m going to devastate him.
Maybe, if I do it well enough, he won’t come looking for me. He’s a hard guy to lose, just ask the dead guy he’s been tracking through Seattle for the last three years, still searching for the fading traces despite the fact that he will never, ever find the man. He’s persistent in the worst kind of way, the little flame of hope that never fully dies out, always burning deep and strong despite every indication that it should have gone out. Three years in and he was still looking for Alice, still looking for answers, still on the hunt for a trail that went cold long before he even got that phone call from me.
I have to ruin myself to him, otherwise he’ll never give up on me the way he’s never given up on them.
The house is dark. No lights, even though the cruiser is parked out front, and it’s only seven o’clock. The sun has just set, and it’s not like he sleeps easy, not like he’d be in bed this early. A small part of me starts to worry he’s resurrected that yearly alcohol addiction of his again, and he’s finally managed to kill himself, lounging on the bottom of an entire bottle of whiskey.
I walk up the stairs, trying to move slower than I should, trying not to stand so straight or look so alert, trying to look like the old me rather than this new version because if there’s anyone in the world who will spot the difference, it’ll be him. He’ll take one look at me and know something wasn’t right, so I slouch. I drag my feet. I pull my mouth down and rumple my hair and reach for the doorknob at what seems to be a snail’s pace. The door creaks, and I call out his name.
For the second time in my life, I come home to a horror show.
My father, my dad, the guy who changed my diapers and taught me how to ride a bike and cooked me nothing but spaghetti for the last three years, is face down in a ravaged puddle of blood. His eyes are open, and his mouth is gaping, and the wound on his neck still pumping warm and wet into the carpet. He’s still blinking. Still breathing out of the hole in his neck, and his eyes are on me. I can taste his fear. His sadness. His soul, as it escapes him. I can taste the last metallic remnants of his heartbeat and the remorse ripping through every last dying cell in his body. He gurgles, something unsaid caught in his mouth, and I’m on my knees in his blood, my hand on his cheek as his eyes slip closed.
“No,” I whisper.
This is a dream. This is a nightmare. This is a movie or a book or a play about someone else’s life, someone else’s really shitty life. This isn’t my life; it can’t be.
This isn’t real. This isn’t happening.
A sound breaks the silence, roars through the echo of death like a freight train through a tunnel. A sob that I think might be from me, except I can’t get a breath. I can’t catch my heartbeat. I can’t feel my hands or my face or my brain. I want to react, want to scream or cry or rage around the house until it’s just flattened, but I can’t. And yet, there’s someone sobbing, and even though I leave my hand on his face, still warm and soft, my eyes pull up toward the sound.
Alice.
Standing at the top of the stairs. She’s staring down at us, still in that nightgown, now wet and sticking to her skin, stained pink and rose and red. Her arms are splattered, and her hair is damp, and her face is smeared with blood. Her fangs are out full force, and her eyes are red, and her mouth is twisted up in a smirk as though she thinks this is funny.
“Alice. No.”
“I couldn’t stop.” She smirks
“You killed him.”
“So what?” Alice bellows from the top of the stairs, loud enough to rattle the picture frames on the walls, and I cover my ears, the high pitch of her scream nearly breaking my ear drums.
When I pull my hands away and glance back up at the stairs, she’s gone. I don’t know how much time I spend sitting there in a puddle of my dad’s blood. I don’t know how long I hold his hand, wishing he’d twitch or blink or groan. I don’t know how long I wallow in the second bloodbath this house has seen in less than five years, but Edward shows up just after the sun sets, which means I’ve been here for hours. My knees are stiff, and my feet are numb, and my heart aches like something run over by a semi, several times. My eyes are sore, and my mouth is dry, and my fingers are tingly, and when Edward pulls me to my feet, I collapse against him and cry all over over again.
He helps me put the place back together.
I can’t leave it a disaster. Our lives were a disaster, and I just can’t let it all end that way. We deserved better. He deserved better. The last moments between them, the struggle at the end, it must have been terrible. The curtains are ripped away from the windows, and the couch is overturned. The television is screen down on the carpet, and the front door is off its hinges.
His beer is freshly opened, the carbonation still bubbling, next to his chair.
Edward rights the furniture while I mop the floors. He fixes the front door while I do the last of the dishes. He vacuums the living room while I wipe the fine layer of dust from all the shiny surfaces in the house, the windowsills and the stove and the coffee table. We haul my dad out to the backyard and lay him in the grass by the woodshed, right there at the edge of the forest. With that hole ripped in his neck, the only plausible answer is an animal attack—the same magical, maniacal creature he’s been chasing for years, the one taking down hikers and truckers and kids walking home from school.
He spent my whole life being big, but now, he just looks limp and flat and empty, staring up at the sky.
“I can’t believe this is my life now,” I mutter, staring down at him in the dewdrop grass. “I didn’t even get to tell him goodbye.”
Edward doesn’t say anything. He’s staring off into the tree, his eyes narrowed and his jaw tight, and his whole body leaning forward just the tiniest bit, like he’s prepared to pounce.
“What? What do you hear?” I ask.
Edward sighs, deep and heavy, and slumps at the shoulders. “Nothing,” he says, looking back at me. His eyes have fallen, and the tensed stance is gone.
“What were you listening for?” I try hard, strain myself, but the world is just wind and water and atoms bouncing against each other. Just trucks on highways and waves on rocks and sunlight on sand.
“Alice. I keep thinking I hear her, but…”
“Why?” I can’t help but gasp, feeling breathless even though I haven’t even taken a breath in hours. “Why would you even do that?”
As far as I’m concerned, Alice can fuck right off. She’s not Alice anymore. She’s a little monster, a demon in miniature, who just murdered my father after a three year rampage, taking out innocent people like they were just candy, and she was sugar-starved. I don’t even know for certain how many she’s killed but this, him, lying here at my feet… this is too far.
There’s no coming back from this.
There’s no forgiveness left in me.
Edward looks hard at me, his face angry. “It’s my fault she’s out there.”
“It’s her fault, actually.” I know I sound like a petulant kid, but shit. Look around, dude. Pull your head out of your ass for three solid seconds and get some perspective.
“This is my punishment,” he says, “I deserve this.”
“You are oddly self-effacing at the weirdest times. I don’t understand what you’re saying at all.”
Edward groans heavily and clenches his fists. His voice is tense and tight, his words wobbly and uncertain. “This is happening to me again because of my sister.”
“You have a sister?” My mind skitters all the way back to the old haunted house and that room full of little girl clothing and dolls and blonde hair and something in my brain just clicks together.
“Had,” he says sharply. “Had.”
“What happened to her?” I wonder if she looked like him. Wonder if she sounded like him or if she hooked her ankles together every time she sat, just like he did. I wonder if her laugh sounded like his or if she was as sad as he seemed to be all the time. If she had that wild hair and tight mouth. Edward just shakes his head at me, eyes pinched like he can hear all the questions tumbling between my ears. He doesn’t say anything.
“I’d probably understand, you know. I lost my sister, too,” I grumble.
Edward moves so quickly that I startle. He’s by my side so fast I gasp, and he grabs me by the arm so tight that my eyes well up water. His eyes go pitch black night, and his face twists into something rock solid and eight million years old.
“You couldn’t even begin to understand,” he hisses in my face before he flings me away and runs headlong into the trees.
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