Page 74 of Dark Things
“We have to go back in there. She’s in there. She’s fucking in there!”
They both manage to drag me down the hall, but I kick and scream the whole way. We found her. We found her and now she might be gone forever. I won’t let that happen. If she doesn’t pull through this, I will murder every motherfucker in this town. Burn it all to the ground.
“Colt, calm the fuck down. Security is watching and we need to be here when they give us updates.They had to sedate Haunt just to get him in the ambulance. I know she might have information, but please calm the fuck down, or we’ll never know.”
He tries to get me to sit in the chair, but I can’t sit when she’s in there dying. No, not dying, hurt. Just hurt.
“You don’t fucking understand!” I yell, pushing past him, but Brooks gets in my face.
“I fucking understand Colter,” Brooks says, getting in my face, cupping my cheeks. The tears still flow freely dripping down my chin.
I shake my head. “No, you don't, she's in there. She’s in there, Brooks.” I can’t fucking breathe. I collapse on my knees in front of him. My chest is cracked open, bleeding on the floor like I’m the one that got shot. It should have been me.
“Hey, talk to me. What happened in there?” Staff says, placing a hand on my shoulder, gripping it tight.
“She’s…she’s…” The words won’t come out. I cry out bending at the waist, clutching my chest. My screams are so loud, bouncing off the walls.
Brooks pulls me in his arms, “Breathe, brother. Just breathe and tell us what you saw. Please, Colt. You have to calm down. Please tell us.”
I grab his shirt and cry, soaking it in minutes. He rocks us back and forth, Staff clutching us in a hug from the side. “Colter, is she alive?” Staff asks, his voice muffled in my shoulder.
“They…they took off her shirt. Cut it down the middle to get to the bullet wound. I didn’t take my eyes off her for a second, and when they did that… It’s her. It’s Belle.”
My voice cracks, and I let out another sob. Brooks stops rocking me. We all go still, and the only thing I can hear or feel are my own cries, my body shaking.
Brooks lifts my face, eyes tracking mine. I try to close them. I can’t look at the devastation written there. “Are you saying what I think you are?”
I nod. “She’s in there. She’s been with us for a month, and we didn’t know. We didn’t know it was her. Oh, God. I’m going to be sick.”
I run to the garbage can in the corner. I heave up all of the contents in my stomach and when there’s nothing left, acid burns the back of my throat. I deserve it and so much more.
Staff shoves some napkins at me, and Brooks hands me a water bottle. They lead me to the corner of the room where I slump down into a seat.
“Start from the beginning,” Staff says.
“They cut off her top and bra like I said. It revealed…revealed her tattoo.”
“I’m not following, brother. She has a tattoo, and you think she’s Belle?” Brooks says.
“It was a glass dome with our initials in it. Just like the one from Beauty and the Beast, her favorite movie when we were kids, the one she sketched in her notebook. Except this one looked dead. The glass was broken. It’s her. There’s no other explanation.Everything that’s happened, all the coincidences, everything we’ve been feeling. It all came to me at that moment. We found her, and now we might lose her again.”
Staff’s face pales, and he crashes down into the chair next to me. His hands start to shake and tears fall down his face. Brooks starts pacing, fists clenched by his sides. His own tears stain his cheeks.
“Tell me she’s alive, or so help me everyone is going to die,” he says, stopping in front of me.
“I think they were going to take her into surgery when she was stable enough to move. I don’t remember much of what they said, but I think I heard that.”
Staff takes off his glasses and leans back slumped in the chair. “You were right, Brooks. We should have cornered her, asked her to her face. Now we have to pray to every deity that ever existed, because I can’t lose her again.”
Brooks grunts and continues his pacing. A loud roar sounds from behind the door, and we look through the glass and see Haunt trying to fight one of the security guards.
Brooks runs up to the desk. “Let us in there. I’ll get him to calm down. He’s going to hurt someone or himself…worse than he is.”
The clerk looks over at us, all the blood coating us and then back at the scene behind her. Haunt is swaying, and one of his fists connects with a male nurse. The guy goes down.
She turns back around and nods. “If you make it worse I’m going to have all of you taken outside, and you won’t be able to come back in.”
We agree, and she buzzes us in. We run to Haunt, who looks at us with wild eyes, not really focusing on one thing. Brooks steps up to him and puts his hands up in surrender. “Haunt you have to calm down and let them help you. Come on, let’s get you back in bed.”
