The Gathering Darkness (12 page)

“I shouldn’t have treated you like that.” To my horror, he picked up my hand and held it. “I believe you, if you say nothing happened.”

“You’re right! You shouldn’t have. And nothing happened. I got lost, he found me, and by then it was too dark to find our way out of the woods, so we waited until morning.”

He still looked doubtful. “It’s just that, well, the Island isn’t that big and—”

“He yelled. No one answered. It was dark. We couldn’t see to go on. There was nothing we could do.” I was mad at myself for giving him more of an explanation than he deserved.

His hand found the side of my face. I cringed away slightly. Evan didn’t seem to notice.

“Do you forgive me?” He rested his hand on my cheek; his fingers entangled themselves in my hair.

“Yeah, let’s just forget about it.”

I almost stopped breathing when he pulled me into his arms, and that’s when Marcus walked in. Quickly, I pushed myself away from Evan, as if I’d just gotten caught doing something wrong.

“I can take her home,” Evan said dryly to Marcus, who stood framed by the doorway.

I realized then that Evan hadn’t even asked me about my ankle. He must have seen me limping out of the woods.

“Let me up.” I pushed him out of the way and stood on one foot. “Marcus can take me home. He needed the car for something else anyway, so he might as well drop me off on the way.” I lied to Evan. I didn’t want him to take me home. I limped to the door. Evan didn’t offer to help me walk.

“No.” It was Marcus.

I froze to the spot halfway between the sofa and the door and looked at Marcus.

“Evan can take you. I just remembered I have something else I have to do.”

Clearly hurt, he turned and walked out of the boathouse. It felt as if I’d been stabbed in the chest. I had to explain that the hug meant nothing. It was more Evan hugging me than me hugging him. But by the time I’d gotten to the door, he had disappeared. My shoulders fell. I walked by myself out to the Civic.

S
ilence accompanied Evan and me on the drive to Aunt Rachel’s. I sat frowning, staring out the side window, wondering if Marcus would even speak to me again. Things had gone horribly wrong at the boathouse, leaving an empty ache inside me.

Finally, we pulled into Aunt Rachel’s driveway. Before I could get out of the car, Evan reached his arm across my backrest. I looked at him for the first time since getting into the car. His boyish grin touched his eyes.

“So, am I forgiven?”

“Yeah, just forget about it,” I said dryly.

I grabbed the door handle and eased myself out, careful not to bang my injured ankle on the door frame. “Thanks for the drive.” I shut the door with more force than necessary and limped away.

“Need any help?” Evan called out from the driver’s side window, after I was halfway up the driveway.

I didn’t turn around. “Nope. I’m great. See ya.”

“Okay. See ya later.”

There was a flicker of disappointment in his tone. I had a moment of pity for him. Maybe he deserved a better explanation, but I just wasn’t in the mood. My frown deepened. If my actions of today weren’t clear enough for him, then I would just have to suffer through the humiliation and give it to him straight.

Aunt Rachel and Uncle Jim met me at the front door, which surprised me.

“Sammy called,” Aunt Rachel began, “she said you hurt your ankle and Marcus happened to be driving by—” She craned her neck to see past me, stopping in mid sentence. “But that was Evan wasn’t it?”

I quickly caught on to the lie Sammy had told. “Uh, yeah. She must have meant Evan.”

“You should have called. I would have picked you up,” Uncle Jim said.

“That’s okay. It happened last night while we were … ah … doing Yoga exercises in Robyn’s room, and I didn’t want to leave so early.” I smiled with false innocence.

Uncle Jim helped me to the living room sofa, fussing more than necessary. His experience as a veterinarian made it easy for him to diagnose my injury as a mild sprain. Still, they tried talking me into seeing the doctor, but I won the argument after promising to keep my leg elevated and keep the bag of frozen peas that Aunt Rachel had wrapped in a towel on the swelling.

Once I was settled on the sofa, propped up against the cushions, the remote all to myself, Aunt Rachel left the room to make me something to eat. I was starving. I hadn’t eaten anything since lunch at school the day before. A short while later she came back into the living room carrying a plated grilled cheese sandwich and a glass of milk, then disappeared into the study to grade some assignments.

I knew Sammy had to work and assumed Justin had taken her, and Uncle Jim had gone to the animal clinic. That left me alone. Mindlessly, I flipped through the channels on the TV. My focus was on one thing only: Marcus and the pendant. Well two things, but these two things seemed connected.

I sifted through the events of the night before. Every detail was vividly etched into my mind as if it had been recorded there waiting for me to hit playback. The image on the TV became a blur while I was back on Skull Island with Marcus. We’d spent the night together, and now he might never speak to me again.
You blew it, Brooke
.

Barely able to keep my eyes open now, I went up to my room. Once there, I took off the pendant. Immediately, I felt its absence like a hole cut out of my chest. The metal turned cold in my hand. A cool ache flowed through my palm and up through my wrist into my arm, stopping at the spot where Maggie had touched me with her icy fingers almost a week ago. I sat the pendant on the table and hobbled to the bed.

After propping my leg up on a pillow, I lay back against the cushions. Between the twin aches of absence inside and on top of my chest, mixed with the icy pain in my arm and my sore ankle, I was convinced I was falling apart.

My eyes wandered to the window and beyond the trees to the rooftop of the Ravenwyck. If I hadn’t been so tired I would have gotten up and closed the curtains, but as I stared across the distance to the creepy Inn, I drifted off.

As I dreamed of eerie glows coming from dormer peak windows in the night, and shadowed hands reaching out to grab me, I heard a ringing in the distance. It grew louder, and I realized it was a phone.

At the same time as my eyes flew open, I lurched forward on the bed and stifled a scream. Sunlight streamed through the window and across my bed, bringing warmth with it. I ran a hand through my hair. The phone rang again. After the third ring, I picked it up and looked at the display. “Oh crap,” I said when I saw it was the Knights’ residence. What did Evan want? I almost put the phone back on the receiver, but something compelled me not to.

“Hello.”

My voice was slightly shaky from the nightmare. There was silence on the other end, and then the most soothing of all sounds caressed my ear, bringing a smile to my face.

“Hi.” Marcus hesitated and then said, “I’m sorry about earlier. I shouldn’t have left like that.”

My heart still throbbed, but in a different way. He was apologizing for leaving me at the boathouse. The empty feeling inside of me vanished.

“How’s your ankle?”

I gave it a quick glance. “Uncle Jim says it’s just lightly sprained. No bruising, and the swelling’s almost gone.”

“That’s great. Um, listen, I need to talk to you. Can I come over?”

My hand flew to the birds nest on top of my head that was my hair. “Yeah, sure,” I said breathless.

“Okay, I’ll be there in a few minutes. Bye.”

“Bye.”

I hung up the phone and jumped out of bed, wincing when I put pressure on my foot. There were so many things I had to do and so little time in which to do them. First, I grabbed the pendant off the table—it was warm. I put it back on and hobbled to the washroom to brush my teeth. My hair was hopeless, so I gathered it into a ponytail and put a little makeup on. Then I remembered I was still wearing the same clothes I’d come home in, so I grabbed a clean pair of jeans and a T-shirt and hurried into them.

I checked myself in the mirror as the doorbell rang. The rushed make-over would have to do.

M
arcus stood on the front porch, framed by the red trim around the door. His dark hair glistened with moisture from a recent shower. He wore a light blue T-shirt with our school name on the front, and a picture of a soccer ball below. His hands were stuffed into the front pockets of his jeans. I was left breathless in more ways than one.

“Hey,” he said with a slight grin.

“What’s up?” I grabbed my jacket off the hook and stepped outside.

His grin faded. “There’s something I thought you should know.”

Why did I have the feeling this conversation wasn’t going to be a happy one? I couldn’t name one remotely happy moment, Marcus notwithstanding, since the day I’d arrived here, so why should this moment be any different?

“Let’s sit down.” I gestured toward the porch swing. “Gotta keep the ankle up. Doctor’s orders.”

He nodded and sat beside me.

My plan was to rest my foot on the railing, but the railing was too far from the swing.

Marcus must have noticed because he patted his leg and said, “Here, put it up here.”

I turned sideways, accepting his offer, laying my injured ankle across his lap, leaving the other one dangling.

He rested one hand on my leg and began to play with a cluster of frayed threads that dangled from the hem of my jeans. All previous thoughts flew from my head.

Marcus was looking over the railing towards the road when he began. “This morning in the woods, you asked me if I’d had any weird dreams lately.”

I stared at him intently now. He stared straight ahead.

“Well, I have.”

“What are they about?” I asked quickly.

Marcus hesitated. His fingers let go of the threads and his hand flattened out on my leg. He angled his body to face me. “You, actually.”

A tiny bubble of excitement edged with a pang of fear burst inside of me.

“Last Saturday night, I had a dream. I can’t really remember it, but it seemed like I was in a different place and time—a very old place, maybe ancient. The double spiral symbol had been scratched into the skin of my arm.

“In my dream it looked like a series of raised scars, like some sort of tribal marking. I don’t know why, but when I woke up, I felt a strong urge to have it tattooed on me. That day, last Sunday, Evan and I went to the tattoo shop in Salem, and I came back with this.” He gestured toward his arm. The tattoo was hidden under his sleeve. He lifted his hand from my leg and raked it through his damp hair.

I unclenched the inside of my cheeks from my teeth. “The day I arrived in Deadwich,” I said low. “How weird is that?”

“Humph, not as weird as the other dreams.”

“Others?”

He nodded, the muscles in his jaw clenching as he did. I was more intrigued now then he had probably realized.

“Every night since, other than last night, I’ve dreamed about you. You were in distress.”

“Yeah, that’s the new me, the damsel in distress.” I pursed my lips and let him continue.

“Wherever I saw you in the dream, darkness surrounded you. You tried to run from it, but it wouldn’t let you go. It was the same, night after night. You were alone in the dark, crying out for help. Then I came into the dream bringing light with me. I was offering it to you … like a gift. I surrounded you with it, pushing the darkness back, but not completely, just enough so there was a perfect balance of both.”

I must have looked shocked because he leaned closer to me and said, “Are you alright? You look pale.”

Ignoring his concern, I snapped my mouth shut and found my voice. “And did you call me Claire?”

His eyes widened. “Yes.” Then a look of realization swept across his face. “You mean … .”

I nodded. “Yup. You called me Claire in my dreams too.”

“So you’re Claire, and we’re having the same dream?”

“Uh huh. Only mine are much worse. They feel like nightmares and end like yours. For as far back as I can remember I’ve had them every time I’ve slept in Deadwich, but never with you in them. Not until now.” I swung my leg off him and sat up straight.