The Haunting of Secrets (22 page)

Suddenly from far off, I hear a crash. Unable
to process anything, I don’t even wonder where it came from. Above
me, Tyler turns his head to find out what caused the crash. Seconds
later, I see Logan leaping over the bed, crashing into Tyler and
pushing him off me and onto the floor. They fall together, a
mangled mess of punching arms and flailing legs. I look down and
see the knife protruding from my abdomen; Logan’s effort to get
Tyler off me caused the knife to go in deeper. I cry out for help,
but Logan is fighting for our lives, there’s no one to help me.

I look down at my feet, do my best to use
what strength I have left to free at least one of them. Across the
room, I see the ring that held Logan’s bindings ripped from the
wall. I keep forgetting how strong he is. I hear grunting to my
right. I look and see the two boys circling each other, waiting for
an opportunity to pounce. Tyler is punching hard and Logan is
fending off the attacks with the thick rope that still binds his
hands. Both boys have bleeding lips, raw knuckles, and Tyler has
blood seeping from a wound somewhere on his forehead. Logan is
fighting Tyler like his life depends on it, which it does.

Though I long to see who will win the fight,
the pain in my side takes all of my attention. I can feel the blood
pooling beneath me, but there’s nothing I can do about it. The
world is spinning and no matter how hard I try, I can’t focus on
the fight happening right in front of me. Logan punches Tyler,
Tyler punches Logan, they’re evenly matched. I fear for Logan’s
safety, Tyler is relentless and evil, which tends to always have
the advantage. I see Logan look at me from time to time trying to
gauge how bad my injuries are. I yearn to tell him to pay attention
to the fight that I’m fine, but it isn’t true. I’m losing too much
blood and I can’t remove the deeply lodged knife from my abdomen. I
fear for Logan’s life, which only makes my heart beat faster,
causing the blood to leave the slit in my abdomen like a river
running downhill.

In front of me, someone goes down to the
floor and I pray it isn’t Logan. I’m not even three words into my
prayer when I see Tyler’s face above me again. His right eye is
dark with bruises, his mouth is cut, and there’s blood running down
his face. My heart sinks; Logan lost. I have no choice, but to face
that this is the end. An end that I was always destined to confront
alone. Tyler smiles sardonically at me. I know what’s coming. I
brace myself, but it doesn’t help the blinding white-hot pain that
comes when Tyler yanks the knife out of my abdomen. He lifts his
bloody right hand complete with knife, high into the air and aims
it directly above my heart. I again brace myself, incapable of even
thinking what kind of pain will accompany that kind of injury. I
just hope that my death will be swift. I follow Tyler’s knife as it
arches downward towards my heart, pray that Logan wakes up to save
me, but know that it’s no use. I close my eyes, prepare for the
inevitable. I pray to a God that I feel has forsaken me, but I pray
nonetheless as I wait for the knife to penetrate.

Suddenly, the musty air of the torture room
is split open with the roar of a gunshot. I open my eyes and see
Tyler go down on top of me, blood bursting forth from a bullet
wound to his head—an instant death. I have no idea where it came
from, no idea how it could have happened, but I’m grateful for
it.

Tyler’s dead weight is crushing me, doubling
the pain in my abdomen. I scream out to no one in particular,
desperate for air and a way out of this intense pain. I feel
Tyler’s body roll off of me, feel the air once again move over my
sweaty face. I look up and see the most handsome hazel eyes in
existence hovering over me. They are filled with unshed tears. I
smile at Logan.

“Hey you,” I say lightly. “I’m so glad you’re
okay.”

Logan smiles back faintly, but he’s in a
daze, his eyes are darting back and forth between my face and my
abdomen. Logan moves onto the bed, I can feel his hands roaming my
abdomen to determine where the damage is. He finds the slit where
Tyler stabbed me, does his best to close the wound with his hands,
but my blood flows through his fingers like water. I fight for
breath as the world becomes unfocused. I can feel the life leaving
me and I know there isn’t much time left.

I hear Logan next to me on the bed
whispering, “I don’t know what to do,” as he tries his best to cut
off the bleeding with his shirt.

“Please stop, Logan,” I plead. “It’s no use.
Tyler knew exactly where to put the knife to cause the most damage.
I knew it might come to this. You have to let me go.”

“Don’t ask me to do that, I can’t,” cries
Logan, the tears free flowing from his eyes. “Just tell me what to
do and I’ll do it. Anything, but just sit here and watch you die.
Please, don’t ask me to do that.”

Weakness engulfs me and it becomes harder to
keep my eyes open. Strangely, the pain in my abdomen starts to ebb
until it becomes numb. I know enough about death to know that is
not a good sign. Before I die, there’s one last thing I have to do.
With what little strength I have left, I turn my head until I’m
facing Logan. His left eye is already starting to swell and the
cuts on his face have turned an angry red. His wrists are bleeding
from where he was tied up, but there’s so much of my blood on his
hands now that I can’t see the marks from the rope. His eyes fix on
mine, the fear that threatens to overtake me is mirrored in his
perfect hazel eyes.

“Do you know that I’ve never been kissed? I’m
sixteen years old and I haven’t even so much as held someone’s hand
until you. I don’t want to die without knowing what a kiss feels
like. Kiss me. Now, before it’s too late.”

Despite the impossible situation, Logan
smiles at me. “Only you would think of a kiss at a time like this,”
he says as he leans in closer and wastes no time pressing his lips
to mine. The moment his skin touches mine, I’m flooded with his
memories. I see his delight at walking for the first time from the
couch to the table, see his mother smiling at him as she holds him
high up in the air and twirls him around. Sweet, wonderful memories
flood me and I’m surprised to find out that sharing them with him
is not the awful invasion of privacy that I had expected. It’s more
intimate than that. It’s as if I alone have access to his innermost
thoughts and better yet, I am invited to share in them. I see
images of his twin brother, the constant worry Logan felt whenever
he was around. I experience the very first time he ever hit a home
run and the smile that wouldn’t leave his face as he ran the bases.
There’s no killing, no malice, no judgment whatsoever in Logan’s
thoughts, only peace. Never in my life have I felt closer to anyone
than I do at this moment.

I’m surprised how unaffected Logan is by the
intense feelings that accompany my touch. Usually a person is so
shocked when I suck their memories from them that they freeze. But,
Logan is different. He’s experiencing them as I do; sharing them
with me as he never could before. For him, it isn’t as much an
invasion as it is a show of love; demonstrating exactly how he
feels through his memories. As I reach the memories that include
me, Logan deepens the kiss. The moment Logan’s tongue touches mine,
a shot of electricity surges throughout my body. With the surge, I
feel what Logan feels every time he looked at me; see the beauty I
try so diligently to hide because let’s face it, no one wants to
touch a ghost.

The first memory he has of me is me hunched
over in a desk in some class we had together in the ninth grade. I
see everyone else pass me by, a shadow sitting in a desk invisible
to everyone else. But Logan stopped, he saw through the darkness I
hide behind to shroud the light I never knew shined in me. My head
was so filled with the evil thoughts of others that I was never
able to see past them; never able to separate who I was from the
people who committed those awful acts. Those memories that were
never mine came to define who I never wanted to be. And with such a
focus on who I didn’t want to be, there simply wasn’t any time left
to figure out who I was. It took seeing myself through Logan’s eyes
to realize that I have a light of goodness—one that will never let
the evil thoughts of others consume it. My curse can be a gift.

As we reach the end of Logan’s memories, I
realize that I have never felt more alive than I do in this moment
before death. Now that I’m no longer afraid of his touch, I reach
my hand up and run my fingers through his hair, pull him closer to
me so I can feel all of him. The pain in my abdomen forgotten. All
that exists in the world right now, is Logan.

As suddenly as they began, the memories end.
Every stolen look, every instance where our paths met is now seared
into my brain, never to be forgotten. It’s through his eyes that I
see my true self for the first time. Through Logan’s eyes, I see a
world I want to live in and a girl that could possibly make it
happen. I break away from the kiss, desperate now to live, to be
that girl that he so fondly remembers. I look into Logan’s eyes,
desperate to tell him how grateful I am for what he shared with me,
but I never get the chance. I barely get his name past my lips
before the darkness once again engulfs me. But this time, I know
that it’s forever.

Chapter
Thirty-Four

~ Paradise ~

The sky above is so clearly blue that it’s
blinding. I’m standing in the middle of a beautiful field
surrounded by trees. Within the field is every color and kind of
flower imaginable. I’m wearing a white, full-length dress that
flows down to my bare feet. My hair is my natural blonde, like when
I was a young girl and it billows out behind me in the wind. It’s
so quiet. There are no birds chirping or insects flying around. The
sun is so bright that even shadows have no chance in this paradise.
I walk for a bit with my hands stretched out by my sides, feeling
the petals of the flowers caress my skin as I pass them by. So much
color surrounds me, yet I’m not afraid. I’m in no hurry; there’s
nowhere I need to be. Even if I did want to go somewhere, I have
the distinct feeling that the world will wait as long as it needs
to for me to decide which path to take. Up ahead of me the field
stretches endlessly, the colors caressing my core after a lifetime
of avoiding each and every one of them. There’s no black here, no
darkness whatsoever, just peace.

I walk for a bit more, taking in all the
beauty that surrounds me when I suddenly see a sparkling up ahead.
Intrigued, I pick up the pace, eager to see what glimmers in the
distance. As I get closer, I see it’s a lake, perfectly round and
clear, ripples dancing across its surface from the wind. I lean in
to touch it and see my reflection, the blue of my eyes sparkle like
the water. I smile and the person in the lake smiles back at me. I
make a silly face wondering if the girl in the lake will make a
silly face back, she does indeed. I laugh, a deep, rich sound that
seems foreign to my ears. I pick a flower nearby and drop it in the
water, watch it as it floats away, making its way around the
lake.

Thrilled with my game, I reach for another
flower, but suddenly the ripples in the lake change and I see
another face. The girl with blonde hair and blue eyes is no more.
It has morphed into another face more circular and distinctly male.
His face is so familiar, but I can’t think of who he is or how I
know him. He has hazel eyes, short brown hair, and a dimple in his
right cheek as he smiles. I note his strong chin and wrinkles that
grace his eyes from years of laughter. He smiles back at me from
within the ripples and I can tell that he’s happy that I have
joined him by the lake. I don’t worry about it though, because
here, there is no worry; there’s only contentment and joy. I see
him reach out his hand from within the water and I start a bit when
I see his strong fingers break the surface of the pool and stretch
out towards me, a clear indication that he wants me to join him. I
laugh at the silliness of it, the pure joy of knowing that someone
wants to be my friend. I look up at the sun, close my eyes, and
bask in the warmth of it, in no hurry to do anything, but enjoy
myself. Soon, I return my attention to the water. The boy smiles
back at me, his hand is still reaching up out of the water, and he
crooks his finger at me. We both laugh, giddy at the prospect of
having found a friend in paradise.

Unafraid, I grab my long skirt and gather it
in my hands. I lift the material up above my knees and ever so
slowly begin to approach the perfectly round lake. Peace and
happiness engulf me as I slowly dip my big toe into the lake water.
It is neither cold nor hot; the temperature is like everything else
in this place: perfect. I smile slyly at my friend reflected in the
water, wondering if he has guessed my little game. For the first
time, the unknown doesn’t scare me. I may not know what waits for
me within the depths of lake, but I trust my friend in the
reflection. Fear does not exist here, nor malice or ill intent. If
anything, I am pushed forward by the quintessential concept that
beats at the core of every human heart: hope. I bend my knees so
low that I am momentarily lost within the flowers that are so lush
and abundant here. I take a deep breath, fling my arms out wide,
and I jump into the lake.

Chapter
Thirty-Five

~ Awakenings ~

I awake with a start, choking and gasping for
breath. At first, I’m afraid that I’m drowning in the lake, but I
soon realize that the reason I can’t breathe is that there is a
tube inserted down my throat. I reach up to remove it, but the
minute I start to pull, an annoyingly loud beeping sound fills the
room.

Within seconds, a nurse is running into my
room yelling, “She’s awake!” before assisting me in removing the
breathing tube. The first nurse is joined soon thereafter by more
nurses rushing frantically to come to my aid.