The streetlights were my curfew, but this evening as they had blinked on in pairs I’d fled from the light, fled from my home. I was unwanted there. No longer could I stand the pain. I stood, emotionally hollow, on the edge of darkness. I did not enter. Because I was not alone. Nor did I have company.
A person who was not a person cowered in the darkness. The inhumanity of their presence made my hairs prickle; the surrounding night compressed the air from my lungs. Like me, this thing had fled from the light. My gut churned.
A slim, pale hand extended from the shadows, reaching for me, begging for my hand to hold. I didn’t move. It was so tiny, just a child’s. A body followed the hand, moving closer, reaching farther. A young girl of seven, her blonde-white hair a wild tangled mess, crawled toward me, reaching for me, but my instinct told me leave her, just leave her.
Her eyes were pitch black, soulless. Fangs protruded over her lower lip.
“Vampire,” I breathed.
At the sound of my voice, her eyes widened. She shuffled quickly back into the shadows, as if being sucked up by the darkness. In the black her eyes glowed yellow. They reflected no human intelligence, only animal desire.
A guttural snarl ripped through the darkness, the noise hitting me like a shock wave. The eyes floated forwards, until a wet black nose emerged from the shadows, followed by a black hairy snout – not human at all. A growl stirred deep in the wolf’s throat. Without warning it sprung forwards, its large front paws catching my shoulders. Slamming to the floor, I landed flat on my back, the air knocked out of my lungs. The wolf’s claws dug into my shoulders painfully, its weight pinning me down.
My eyes burst open and I found myself surrounded by darkness of a different kind. Disorientated, I threw the wolf off me, and my doona landed on the floor in a heap. My sheets were soaked in sweat that still poured off me. My heart finally slowed, and I flopped back onto the bed, taking a few deep breaths to steady myself.
“It was just a dream.” I was glad the walls were thick, otherwise my family would worry for my mental health. And maybe they should. “You were dreaming.”
Bloody hell.
My breath curled into the crisp morning air as I set off on a brisk jog through the bush. The shafts of soft morning sunlight shining through the trees cast long shadows across the dew-soaked ground. The only other life that stirred in the bush at this time of morning was the birds, greeting me with a raucous chorus.
Nothing mattered when I ran, my problems were behind me. If only I could run forever...
Everything fell into the perfect rhythm; my trainers pounding the pavement, my strong heart beat, my even breathing. When I reached the lake, however, I was out of breath. Uniformed men gathered on the grassy stretch between the water and the boulevard – cops, paramedics and the State Emergency Services. Members of the SES floated on the lake in kayaks, easily recognised by their bright orange overalls.
A flash of red in my peripheral vision, a wave of sweet smelling air, and I was grabbed by the shoulders. The vice like grip dug into my flesh painfully. I looked up into the crazed eyes of my assailant, ready to claw them out. But it was a woman with a tear streaked face and unwashed red hair. “Have you seen my child?” she demanded. She shook me, rattling me to the bone. “Have you?”
Grasped in the wave of shock, I was unable to speak.
“Mrs Hamner, please,” a police officer said, prying the crazed woman off me.
“He’s two years old!” she shrieked, tears streamed from her crusty eyes. She pulled her pink elephant night clothes tighter around herself. “He couldn’t have come to the lake! He was taken, right out of his crib! You’re wasting time!”
It registered in my mind that the SES were searching the lake for a body. Suddenly the waters opaque surface seemed sinister, every ripple on the water’s surface suspicious.
“Alexis.” Something stirred in the shadows of the trees to the left of the footpath. A darker patch of shade outlined the figure of a teenage boy, his gleaming eyes fixed on me. He unhitched himself from the fence and was at my side in an instant. “You ok?”
Void of school uniform, I almost didn’t recognise him, but knew him well enough. His mussed brown hair was still darkened from the time I’d dyed it black for him earlier in the year. Rather than the green and blue Forest Lake State High polo shirt, he wore a white t-shirt with a black over-shirt – buttons left undone. Combined with the black skinny jeans and black high-top converses I wondered how he wasn’t dying of heat exhaustion.
“Are you ok?” Dylan repeated, for I had zoned out, watching him chew on his lip piercing in that adorable way.
“Yeah, thanks” I straightened my shirt and kept walking. He accompanied me swiftly, silently, like a ghost. “You’re up early,” I noted.
“With the rising of the sun, inspiration floods my heart....”
“Can I see?” I held my hand out to the note pad in his hand; I was one of the few people he allowed to read his poetry. His hazel eyes watched me from above intently as I flipped to the last page written on and scanned it briefly, finding it hard not to become completely submerged in the piece.
“A day in the life of mortals...” Dylan said almost absentmindedly, his attention wandering to the SES poking around the lake with long metal poles.
They were calling out to one another, their words unintelligible over Mrs Hamner’s hysterical crying and the adjacent traffic along the boulevard. It seemed one group had found something. Near the banks of the murky of the lake, a bone-white entity tangled in the weeds stood out like a firecracker in the night sky. With another jab it floated to the surface.
Dylan had been expecting it since he’d arrived at the scene, but that didn’t stop him from swearing under his breath. “We should leave. Come on.”
A halo of blond hair bobbed on the surface, tiny hands drifting either side. I tore my eyes off the little boy’s body and picked up the pace, unable to escape the heart wrenching sound of Mrs Hamner screaming.
“Hamner...” I said to myself. “Is that Bree’s mum?”
“Yes,” Dylan tucked the note pad into the back pocket of his jeans. “The child is Brianna’s younger brother. Bleh...” Dyl muttered, some normal teenage attitude entering his tone. “Don’t know whether to be freaked out about seeing a dead body, or find it cool.”
“Same, sorta. ‘cept it’s Bree’s bro so I’m kinda like, morally conflicted...”
Dylan laughed, and now I was sure he was snapped out of his ‘writing persona’ as he called it. Before, during, and a little while after writing poetry, Dylan was solemn and formal – it unsettled some kids our age, but I found it interesting.
“I haven’t had a proper talk to you in ages!” he exclaimed. “I miss it, you’re the only person I know who’s got almost the same level of black humour as me.”
I joined in his laughter. “Our friendship reinspired by a kid’s dead body... uh, awesome!”
“Hey, I’m sorry I got you in trouble that time...”
The memory of him shirtless in the gloomy self-help toilet at school sparked an old interest in my mind. But when we’d been caught dying his hair in there, we’d been warned to stay away from each other or they’d contact the police – apparently the teachers had been informed that Dylan and I had sex in the toilets, and he was sixteen whereas I was not of legal consent age. As there was no way to prove what we were accused of doing, I believed it was an empty threat, but they would however inform my mother of the speculation.
“Eh, it’s no biggie. It’s just a pity we haven’t hung out since then...”
“Yeah...” Dylan glanced away.
“So you should really be apologising for doing as you were told for once,” I teased.
“It wasn’t just teachers who were hassling me about you...”
I stared at him, confused. Then I sighed. “You’re friends were giving you shit for hanging out with a kid...”
“Yeah.” He sounded relieved to not have to say it himself. “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have let them get to me. I see now that it was stupid, and you’re worth any crap I get from anyone.” Dyl flashed me a lopsided grin, and my heart fluttered. The sun set the lake on fire as it rose behind him, ducks skimming the surface in flocks.
“It’s alright, I understand.” As much as I understood, I was also cut. He didn’t care what the teachers said – he’d avoided me by choice.
“I’ll walk you home?”
“Sure,” I grinned. Who cares if he hurt me... He’s my guy.
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