Page 14 of Haunt

I drop my gaze down my dress. Thick straps over my shoulders, a bright yellow pinafore-style top, square neck like a slash across the top of my breasts, tight until my waist where it flares out, length stopping at my knees. Matching yellow ribbon tied in a bow in the front of my hair, the thick brown strands of it loose down my back. I have a black Victorian-ruffle neck shirt on beneath it. The neck is high, the sleeves are long, elasticated at the wrists, a flare of frilly lace cuffs that cover the backs of my hands to the knuckles. My gold locket tucked beneath it all, black combat boots on my feet.

I wonder, looking at myself, glancing to my right at the God that walks beside me, gaze focused on the dark path ahead, what he really sees when he looks at me. In his outfit of all black, tight jeans, long sleeved dress-shirt, combat boots, laces looped once, all the way around his ankles before being tied in a tiny bow at the front. He is simply beautiful in a dark, vicious, God-like way, and it should be terrifying. But it,he,isn’t.

I keep pace with his large strides, the cut high up on my inner thigh rubbing and itching with every step, two of mine for every one of his. Destination something unknown. Billy winds us through the snaking lanes, buildings and houses towering high on either side of us. As the path opens up, widening like the gaping jaws of a beast, blackness all that is beyond, I can see nothing, and I want to.

I hesitate, my eyes flicking up once more to Billy. Studying him, the underside of his jaw, prominent and angular at the base of his ear, his chin wide, squarer than the rest of his face. I watch his lips kick up, he doesn’t dip down to look at me, but his eyes roll in their sockets, the light blue focusing on me from the corner of his eye as he keeps up his pace. Almost dragging me along with him by his hold on my hand, but it’s like he doesn’t notice. Or, perhaps, he knows exactly what he’s doing but doesn’t let it deter him.

There is a gradual incline beneath my feet, and my eyes slowly traverse from his. The space opens up further, a small footbridge, the faintest sound of water, a steady flowing body of liquid beneath it, larger than a stream, smaller than a river. I half skip to the top of the bridge as he pulls me towards it. Releasing my hand, he drops the duffle bag down his arm, he rolls his wrist and then watches me as he heaves it over the black curling railing, holding the heavy weight of it above the water.

“After this,” his voice a deep thrumming as it washes over me. “No more without me,” he dips his chin, looks up at me from beneath dark curling lashes. “Okay?”

My heart hammers in my chest, drumming violently against my sternum. Eyes flying from his to the bag, his fingers, one by one, slipping free from the woven handles of it. I swallow, sweat pricking along the back of my neck. There is silence around us, other than the water, my heavy breaths, but it feels loud. Those words. The impact. I’m not sure how I feel about it. I think he wants to keep me safe. Maybe he just wants to help. Perhaps it’s something else entirely.

‘You thought my words scrawled inside the pages of your book meant nothing.’

The Obsidian.

There are so many things that mean something and nothing. I am not even sure what I am doing here. So far away from home. Well, not really home, I haven’t had one of those since he left me. It is a swell of confusion inside my brain. Why I have ended up here, where I would have escaped to tonight.

Alone.

Without him.

“I am not always sure of what I am doing.”

I’m not sure why I say it. I’m not sure what it even means. I have a pain in my heart echoing in my lungs, breath sort of whistles its way around my insides, a mass of confusion. A frown appears in the form of a crease between my brows.

I have never really felt like anything without him.

It’s not that I can’t get by on my own.

It’s that I don’t want to.

I have never wanted to.

He was all I ever saw whenever I thought of my future.

He and I together.

A big house full of dark rooms and low lights, just Billy and I.

Lovesick little demons creeping in the dark.

“How do you feel about me, Nellie?” is his response, fingers, one by one, retightening around the bag straps.

My heart kicks up a bit faster then, wondering why he wouldn’t let go, drop that into the dark water below, when I was so sure he was about to. What it is I have said to make him halt that. Perhaps I am wrong and he wasn’t going to drop it at all.

I am so con-

“You are so confused, Little Lamb,” he coos gently, echoing my thoughts, his bottom lip pouting just enough to match the natural pucker of his larger top one. “Come to me,” he whispers, and it’s only now that I realise, I have taken a few short steps away from him, separating us. “Penelope,” he says a little louder, “come here.”

He extends his arm, offering me the hand I clung onto the entire way here, to this bridge. Maybe this is our destination, perhaps it is only one of however many stops we may make tonight.

‘Would you like to go on an adventure?’

I step forward, eyeing his open palm like his fingers might suddenly grow snake heads and lunge for my own. They don’t and I willingly curl my hand into his. He snatches it up immediately, yanking me into his tall, hard body, my chin smacking into his sternum as I fall into him. My teeth ache, jaw crunching, I shake my head, and he is banding his arm around my back, the one with the bag in his fist. I feel a dribble of something cool splash onto my calf, but I cannot look at it, drag my eyes from his.

“Are you scared with me, Nellie?” he whispers over my mouth,“of me?”my chin trembling, chest shaking.

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