The Masquerade (19 page)

It was a solid yellow line. My eyes were entranced with
the color fading into the blackened asphalt. I took one step forward and found my feet were stuck on the line that curved to fit the bend in the road. With every step I put one foot carefully in front of the other, both like magnets
pulling them back to the yellow line.

I could not fall off.

I must not fall off.

"She doesn't know," a voice said from the left.

Ben stood on the shoulder of the road. He was motionless with his hands at his sides and his hair brushed into his face. I wanted to run to him. I desperately tried, but my feet would not budge from the ugly yellow line.

I could not fall off.

But his eyes, his beautiful blue eyes were not for me. They stared past me. I wanted him to look at me. I craved the attention of his crystal orbs. Why wasn't he looking at me? I tried to move again.

I must not fall off.

"She's in love with him," a familiar voice said to my right.

Eli stood on the right shoulder of the road. He too,
stood frozen with his broken eyes locked in front of him. The wind picked up and the leaves from the woods around us swirled into the air. They danced below an angry, grey sky. Eli didn't sway in the growing force of the wind. I looked to my left and noticed Ben stood perfectly still. Both wore hard expressions with
intense stares for the other.

"She's a risk," another voice said. There were four figures around Ben, their faces clouded and their bodies shadowed.

"I'll fight for her," Ben said, his voice deadly calm.

"She knows too much," another voice said from the right where Eli stood. There were figures around him too. I recognized
Vlad, Chester, and Kellan, but the rest of the figures were blurs and I couldn't care to identify them.

"She can expose us," threw a voice from the left.

I turned to Ben's side again. I wanted to run to him. I
was afraid and I didn't want to be. I wanted his arms around me. I wanted to tell him I loved him. I wanted him to keep me safe, but my legs constricted any movements away from the line.

I cannot fall off.

I will not fall off.

"She's one of us," Someone on Eli's side said.

Ben's voice shot through the whirring wind. "She's mine."

"She will tell," a voice hissed from the same side.

Ben's eyes finally switched to mine when the thunder tumbled out of the sky. I gasped when I found his eyes were cold and shut off like the day I met him in the alley. He stood with his shoulders back and head
up, he did not claim, he conquered. His sinister stance struck me with vague familiarity, but I couldn't allow my mind to place it.

"Her lips are sealed," Ben stated abruptly.

I opened my mouth to speak to him, but my lips refused to separate. I tried again and the outcome was the same. I wanted to scream. The sound boiled in my chest and thrust against my lips, banging against them,
begging for release. I whimpered, but the sound was locked in my mouth.

My hands flew to my mouth only to find something laced through the top part of my lip and out the bottom. My fingers ran across the line my lips made together, feeling the familiar pattern tied them together.

I could see myself then. I stood in front of myself, watching as I frantically touched my lips. My eyes were frozen on my lips. They were sewn together with a thick thread of black wire forcing them shut. A few
splotches of blood smeared the corners of my mouth where the wire was tied at end. I watched as my trembling hand rose to my mouth. My finger lightly pricked the wire poking out of the corner of my mouth. My eyes watered, feeling my
screams bouncing off the roof of my mouth and the tip of my tongue.

My head suddenly turned to where I stood outside my body. The girl with my face smirked. The malice I caught in my eyes sent a pang of
terror throughout my mind. Horror stricken, I watched myself as my two fingers pulled on the wire that was tied in a tight knot at the corner of my mouth. An instant strip of pain shot from the insides of my cheeks, paralyzing the roots of my teeth in my gums. I tried screaming, but the scream stuck in the back of
my mouth. My hand pulled the wire until it slipped out of the knot. Then slowly, my hand tugged the wire further up its length so that it was pulled through the first small hole, puncture above my lip.

The pain surged again, electrifying every sense within me. My eyes spilled over with tears as I watched myself pull the wire from each puncture wound, slowly releasing my throbbing lips. The skin on my lip made a
pop, the sound drove me to near madness that rocked within my brain and shot more pain down my spine.

"She can never tell." The wind from the left echoed.

"He can't save her." The right followed.
"It's his fault."

"She's not dead."

The last voice from the left was faint, but distinct. The thunder clapped directly above us, vibrating the trees into a dance swaying
from one side to the other. The unendurably excruciating pain scratched and pulled at the flesh inside my mouth. I watched as I continued to pull at the wire in my mouth until my scabbed lips were free and dripping with fresh crimson that trickled over my chin and slid down the side of my neck.

"She's not dead yet." The words echoed in my mind.

The spine tingling scream vibrated through the house as my eyes snapped open. I shot up from the couch, my chest heaving and my forehead
dripping with what I first assumed to be blood. My hands came away from my face to find the warm liquid was sweat. I sighed, but it escaped my mouth in a whimper that left my body shaking. I needed to get up.

I slid off the couch and peered at myself in the mirror hung in the hallway. Beads of moisture balled up at my hairline, wetting bits of my tangled hair. I scowled, feeling how gross and oily my hair was. I needed a
shower.

The previous events of the day flooded back to me at once. I left school early, claiming bad cramps to the school nurse. When I got home, I crashed on the couch without making my first run to the fridge, which was where
I usually went right to after school. My mom wasn't there when I came home so I didn't expect her back until the morning. My eyes trailed over to the clock on the microwave. It was just past six. I was supposed to meet Ben at eight, which gave me time for a shower and a visit to the graveyard. I needed my brother.

My shower wasn't long, despite my longing to stay locked away within the tile walls with the steaming water pouring over my body. I quickly changed into comfortable black jeans, a red tank top and pulled another
longer sleeved black shirt with a neckline that exposed my shoulders, over it. I decided with my plain black converses. I was out the door fifteen minutes after waking up from that horrible dream.

I decided to walk, rather than drive to the graveyard. It
took only fifteen minutes of a light jog that I desperately needed to stretch my legs that ached from the tense position I slept in. My small run allowed my darker thoughts to evade me and I could picture nothing more than my brother's
headstone.

The graveyard was behind an old church that was abandoned a few years ago due to financial issues. Apparently, the priest wasn't so holy after all. The church itself was your stereotypical building with faded white
paint, a pointed roof, and a cross at the tip. Although some kids in the area must have taken a slingshot to it with full force because when I looked up at it now the top part of the cross was missing.

I moved around the side of the old church, purposely
removing my gaze from the broken stained glass windows that allowed peaks inside. I didn't want to picture the sort of creepy things my imagination told me lived in there. I quickened my pace and pushed past the iron gate and broke
into a sprint for Noah's gravestone that was located near the back of the home for lost souls.

I sighed when I read his name across the headstone that I had become familiar with over the past six years. Brown roses, once red and fed
of life, withered to nothing but crippled petals and a shriveled stem on top of the stone. With a sad smile, I picked them up, feeling the fragile pieces of dry plant crush in the palm of my hand. I tossed them to the side and wiped
away the remains. The caretaker of the graveyard was arrested for battery a couple months back and no one bothered to hire anyone else to check up on the graveyard.

I glanced down at his name engraved in the dark stone.

Noah William Moore

1989-2007

Brother, son, friend...among other things.

I laughed again at the short and simple scripture that I had
read hundreds of times in the past. It was what he would have wanted. Noah was a character that scarred the entire town when he left. His personality still lived in my heart as it did in the others he'd affected.

I plopped myself down in front of his stone and leaned my
forehead against the cold grainy surface. The nightmare washed over me, but I refused to let it consume me completely. I remembered bits and pieces, including the pain. I could feel it in my sleep, but the second the dream
snapped back from my conscious the pain disappeared.

"Hi Noah," I whispered softly. Of course there was never a response, but I always waited. I knew he could hear me or at least hoped he could. Maybe that stretched the line of my sanity to its peak, but I
didn't care.

The wind whirred. My eyes shifted to the side where the end of the graveyard met the woods. The trees thrashed from side to the side, making me wonder if there was a storm coming I hadn't heard about. The thought
of the storm brought the dream back. There was a storm in my dream just before I felt the pain...

It didn't mean anything, but I didn't like parallels connecting reality to my imagination. My dreams were usually the same. Ever
since The Masquerade concert last year I lost the dream of the girl who was being mutilated by the stranger. That dream never once surfaced after my first encounter with Ben. However, others nightmares followed where my demons taunted
me and I woke up screaming with my bed sheets drenched in sweat.

"I hope you're okay, wherever you are," I said, trying to give him a real smile. "If you've tuned into my life recently then I'm sure you know I'm not exactly okay. I don't. I just. It's like,"
I paused and finally let out an exasperated breath. "I really don't know what the fuck is going on anymore."

As if on cue, a scream pierced through the woods around me.
I jumped, startled by the pain induced sound. With my heart beating rapidly in my chest, I glanced around the woods searching for the source of the sound. Seconds passed and I almost thought I imagined it until another shrill ripped through the trees.

I sat frozen, my ears now tuned as I waited for the sound again. The high-pitched scream echoed throughout the area a third time allowing me to realize two things. The sound belonged to a girl and she was hurt. And I sat there doing nothing about it.

I got to my feet. My hand reached into my pocket for my phone and found it empty. I groaned, remembering that I put it on my nightstand just before my shower and must have left it there. Who would I have called anyway, the police, because I heard some girl scream? It would have taken them
an hour to get to the church to investigate and by then it would be useless.

My tooth dug into my bottom lip while I debated playing hero or just going home. Another paralyzing scream shot through the trees. I
couldn't help but think she needed someone and the only person around was me. Whoever she was, whatever was wrong, she needed help. I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if something horrible had happened that I could have put a stop
to.

I ran to the back to the end of the lot where the rod iron fence linked around the perimeter of the graveyard, caging me in. For the second time in one week I jumped a fence, although this time I managed to
carefully maneuver my body over the other side without hurting myself. Once on the ground, I was at the foot of the woods. Before I could hesitate I surged into the darkness, unsure of where I was going, following my memory of where the sound had come from. It wasn't the smartest decision in the world, but it
was the one that would allow me to sleep at night.

Another cry came from the direction I was running. The pauses between her screams grew longer, so I picked up my pace. Apprehension
rather than adrenaline pumped through my body. I feared what I would find, if I found anything at all but I managed to run faster in spite of my fear. When I heard a voice closer to me than I expected I skid to a stop.

"Oh God, please no," the voice muffled into a
choked cry. A faint gargling sound followed.

I ran, jumping frantically over vines and tree stumps. As I moved through the woods I started to see a clearing with a dark, glistening
pool of water in the middle. I judged it to be a pond, but I wasn't exactly sure until I approached the clearing. I stopped myself abruptly, my shoes scuffed into ground, flinging a cloud of dirt into the air. I was out of the woods before I had a chance to brace myself for what I would see. I kept my
hands back, grasping two trees behind me as a sense of false security while I overlooked the scene.

Three figures came into view. Two were kneeling while the other was lying on the ground. It was difficult to make out faces or even tell
genders in the darkness. I squinted and noticed the girl on the ground first. She had to be the one the screams belonged to. One of the guys kneeling above the girl, wiped his mouth, a dark liquid substance spread over his chin caught
my attention when it glistened under the dim light of the moon. The other guy was bent down, his face at the girl's throat. I thought he was kissing her at first until I heard the loud gargling sound from before and then the noise I'd
come to refer to as paper ripping, or flesh tearing.