Alive at Sunset (Rituals of the Night Series Book 2) (10 page)

“
W
hat!?” Luna said, and that time it was her that was shrieking. How had her father’s condition taken such a dramatic turn for the worst?

“It happened during the night” Rose sobbed loudly, her pain was evident.

“How did he die, Mom?” Luna asked. He had only looked like a corpse the day before, but that day had changed him into one.

“Luna, he had a heart attack,” Rose finally managed to say over her eerie wailing.

Luna held her hand over her mouth, much the way Amanda had when she had seen David in his coma. Luna couldn’t believe what she was hearing. Heart attacks rarely killed anyone with the advanced medicines and procedures. Yet her father had been one of the unfortunate cases that slid through the cracks.

“Di-did he wake up from his coma before it happened?” Luna asked. She didn’t want to say ‘heart attack’ to her mother yet. She felt like she had to ask, for some reason she felt as if the answer to that question was important.

“No, he never even stirred,” Rose managed to choke out in gasps of air before she went back to sobbing.

Luna was silent as she listened.

“Will you be coming down to the hospital today to see him?” Rose asked, and the sorrow was thick in her voice like an accent.

Luna’s hand dropped from her face. “Yeah, of course, Mom. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Well, I’ll see you then,” Rose said. Luna could hear the heaviest part of her sobbing start again before she hung up.

Luna moved the phone from her ear but had no conscious thought of doing so. Her mind was focused on her life. Why did everything seem so upside down? Why had her father and her dog died in the prime of their lives? Luna knew she was sad, but no tears dripped from her eyes. The corners burned with a familiar tingling sensation, but she had no desire to cry. Her life didn’t seem real, none of it truly felt real. She almost felt as if she was having an out of body experience.

She prayed that she was in a dream, that she would wake up and none of it would be real. No matter how much she tried, she was standing there in front of
The Burger Shack
with the news of her father’s passing fresh in her head. Luna blinked, trying to pull herself into reality. Wishing her life away wouldn’t solve any of her problems. After a few minutes, she was successful in pulling her attention to the world around her.

She was aware of the weight of the phone in her hand. Part of her wanted to do nothing but chuck it across the drive through and into the street beyond where it would meet its fate underneath the tire of a car. Luna certainly wouldn’t mourn its loss; it’d be the one thing that she’d be glad to see destroyed. She knew she’d get an odd feeling of satisfaction by watching it crumble. The phone did nothing but bring her bad news anyways.

A voice reminded her that even if she broke her phone, nothing would change. She couldn’t fix what the world had broken. Luna sighed and turned her attention to the tiny (rapidly diminishing) rational part of her brain. She dialed Amanda’s number and held the phone to her ear.

“Hey, Girl! How’d the interview go?” she asked cheerfully.

Luna smiled a wide, sardonic smile; she couldn’t stand the fake bliss. “I got the job.”

“That’s great,” she said. “I hope you like it.”

“Thanks, but that’s not the reason I was calling,” Luna said. The deranged smile fell from her face. There was no point for her to pretend that she was fine anymore. Her life was in shambles.

“What’s the matter?” Amanda asked worriedly. She could guess that what Luna had to say wasn’t good news.

“My dad died last night,” Luna managed to say; the grief threatened to break through.

“What? How? He was alright when we saw him yesterday!” Amanda said in surprised sympathy.

Luna sighed -she hated being pitied. It was one of the reasons she always tried to handle her grief alone. “He had a heart attack; I don’t really know all of it yet. My mom was crying too much, but she wants me to come back to the hospital in a few minutes. Can you drive me there?”

“Yeah, of course,” she said, sounding surprised that Luna was reluctant to ask. “Where are you?”

“I’m still outside in front of
The Burger Shack
,” Luna replied, “the one right in the middle of town.”

“Okay, just hang tight, and I’ll be there in a few,” Amanda promised. “I’m sorry about David.”

It was Luna that hung up the phone. She didn’t want to hear her roommate’s sympathy. Luna crammed the phone back into her pocket before she sat on the curb. She watched the horizon, watched how normal people got to live their lives. She watched them walk past down the sidewalk in loose groups. Some had cell phones and some didn’t. A few people walked dogs while some mothers pushed strollers.

Luna wished more than anything that she could pick one of the people to switch lives with. She wouldn’t regret her choice for an instant. Luna bowed her head to bury her face as she waited as patiently as she could for Amanda to arrive. She could feel that she was losing herself in her emotions. Burying her face was the only thing she could do to keep herself from going into a fit.

Luna felt so helpless knowing there was nothing that she could do to help her father. Somehow his passing seemed oddly emotionless. She knew that a part of her didn’t believe that he was actually gone. After a few minutes, she heard the sound of a familiar engine. She looked up as Amanda pulled up beside her. She pushed open the passenger door to peer at Luna.

“Come on, get in,” Amanda said to her stiffly. Her voice was empty of emotion, and Luna guessed it was because she didn’t know exactly how she should be reacting. She was prepared for Luna to be hostile.

Luna nodded but didn’t speak as she stood slowly to her feet. Luna circled the vehicle and sat down in the passenger seat before she closed the door behind her. Amanda gave her a small sympathetic smile as she began to drive.

Luna looked down at her hands trying to block out everything around her…especially Amanda. Luna didn’t want to think; she didn’t want to feel. She wished she had an autopilot mode to help get her through the rest of the day.

A few minutes later, Amanda got them to the hospital. Together they walked up to the building. Amanda shot Luna worried glances as Luna pretended not to notice while lumbering a few feet behind her roommate. Once again, Rose was outside waiting for them to arrive.

“Luna!” she cried at once as she spotted the two girls.

“Hi, Mom,” Luna said, more or less emotionlessly as her mother hugged her. She got a feeling of déjà vu.

Rose pulled back to look at Luna. She looked like she was studying something on her face. She brushed a lock of raven colored hair from her daughter’s face.  “You look terrible,” she commented.

Luna nodded up at her mother, not even caring to fake her emotions. “I haven’t been sleeping well.”

Rose smiled, but the look stung. Luna could tell that it wasn’t a real smile. “Yeah, me either.”

“So, what happened to Dad?” Luna asked sadly, peering at her mother through glittering eyes.

“I got a call this morning saying that he passed away during the night. Apparently, he had more heart damage than they noticed when they brought him in,” Rose explained as a tear dripped from each eye.

“This is a hospital, aren’t they supposed to watch for that?” Luna asked, feeling a bit outraged despite her grief. If a hospital could mess up that severely then was there anyone to trust?

Rose shrugged at her question and more tears dripped from her eyes. “Would you like to see him, Luna?”

Luna looked at her mother for a long moment deciding what would be the best course of action for the next hour. She knew it would help her get over her grief a bit if her daughter came to pay her respects to her newly lost father. Luna couldn’t help but feel that she’d rather avoid the situation altogether. The thought of visiting her father’s corpse brought back flashes of when she had seen Violet’s body in the woods.

Visiting his corpse meant facing the reality that he was gone.

“Luna, come on,” Amanda said. The sound of her voice broke Luna from her thoughts.

Luna realized Rose had already begun walking inside the hospital, and Amanda was right beside her. She grasped her gently by the elbow to help steady her pace as she stepped uncertainly onward. Luna felt herself collapsing inward as she trailed behind them. She didn’t want to see what she knew she would when they got to the room.

When they finally reached David’s room, Luna didn’t know how she felt. The looming thought of what would be in the room was all that seemed to occupy her mind. She didn’t have much time to dwell on the thought before the three women arrived.

There was a small nurse and a doctor already inside the room that turned to look at them as they approached, almost as if they had been waiting for them. Rose rushed to crouch beside David’s bed, holding his hand and crying. Her face was bowed to hide her face, but her grief was still blatantly clear. Amanda stayed standing by the door. She wasn’t crying but held a hand over her mouth to hide her expression. Luna could see that her eyes weren’t focused on the corpse in the room.

Luna stood in the middle of the room, in the middle of all of it, staring at her deceased father as if he was an otherworldly visitor. He was as pale as the bed sheets; his joints looked stiff and awkward. She realized that his ghostly color yesterday was nowhere near as pale as he could’ve been. His eyes were closed, and he could’ve been sleeping.

But Luna knew better; they all knew better.

Luna felt the doctor grasp her shoulder suddenly. She looked down at the floor as she waited for him to speak.

“I’m sorry. We did everything we could, but it wasn’t enough to save him,” he said to her.

Luna knew how she felt in that instant. She felt her rage flood her veins again because if they had done everything, they would’ve noticed his fatal heart condition. She didn’t want to listen to his lies. She smacked the doctor’s hand away and ran from the room as fast as she could manage with tears streaming down her face.

Luna’s heart was pounding in her chest as she ran down the hallway. She kept her hand cupped over her mouth, stifling the sounds of her wild sobs as her eyes welled with tears. She could feel the salty liquid staining her cheeks with red marks.

She could hear footsteps behind her and knew that Amanda was trying to keep up. She did her best to try and lose her in the crowd, but she paid her little mind. Patients and nurses parted like ghosts as she passed, staring at her with shock in their eyes.

Luna turned to the door that she had seen every week for the past three years. She flung it open without missing a beat and dashed inside before she stopped in her tracks. She looked at the neat, empty bed feeling the horror spread. She ran over to it, tossing off the covers as she searched for some sign of Chance.

She twirled around, surveying the entire room before she crumpled to her knees in defeat.

W
hen the following Monday came, Luna found she had still not gotten over the sight of David in the hospital. His death hit her as hard as it had when she had first found out. She knew she needed to pull herself together. She should’ve been excited for her first day of work, but she felt listless.

She wasn’t sure if David’s death or Chance’s empty hospital bed was affecting her more.

The sight of the boy gone from his prison made her want to curl up beside her father and die with him. She felt sick down to the core of her heart. He was fine, and David was dead.

She swallowed heavily, trying her best to avoid the coincidence in the two events. Max was sure that something was wrong with Chance. Was it possible he had already known that he had woken up from his coma?

That’s impossible,
she thought.

Luna tried to push away all her thoughts of Chance. Maybe, just maybe, his memory was gone and things were fine. If he had his memory, Luna was sure that he would come searching for her right away. Images flashed through her mind of the night of Lucky’s death. She held her eyes closed for a long moment trying to make it all go away.

It was speculation. That was all. What was real was the fact that her father was dead -Lucky as well.

She needed to get her thoughts in order if she was going to do well at work. She dreaded going, but she needed to show up and needed to be levelheaded when she did so. The only motivation she could use was that she didn’t want to be hired and fired in the same day.

Luna rummaged quickly through the things in her closet to find her new uniform to put on. She rushed to get dressed. The uniform felt hot and bulky, but there was nothing she could do. She left the apartment without the keys to the car. The thought of driving still didn’t sound like a good idea. She was avoiding telling Amanda where she was going because she knew that a conversation with her would only lead to her trying to convince Luna to stay home

Luna had had enough of grieving for a long, long time. She wanted nothing more than to be alone as much as possible. She dipped her hands in her pockets as she walked down the road; her head was bent to the sidewalk to avoid looking at any people she passed. The uniform black hat felt funny on her head, but she was glad that it at least blocked the sun from her eyes.

All Luna could think about was her lost father. It didn’t matter how much she tried to tune it out; she was programmed to hone in on that one thought. She remembered a time back in her senior year of high school when she had viciously fought with her father to the point where she wanted to move out. He hadn’t wanted to listen to a word she had said, always taking Chance’s side over her own. Luna’s emotions made sense at the time, but when she thought about it, Luna found herself questioning every choice she had ever made.

When Luna finally made it to work, she tried suppressing her sorrow into the depths of nowhere. It was hard to do, but she was used to it. She took in a breath before she walked into the building with the biggest fake smile on her face in her entire life. As long as people thought she was happy, they wouldn’t pity her, and if they didn’t pity her then it was all worth it.

She found the manager in the back room as fast as she could. Immediately, he looked for someone to give her the basics of what she needed to know for her first day. Luna got lucky when he picked Sarah to mentor her. She doubted ‘luck’ was the right word to use.

She found her first day wasn’t as hard as she thought it would be. The only downside was that she didn’t quite have enough busywork as she had hoped. Most of the day she stood at the cash register taking orders with Sarah whispering how to work the cash register in her ear. Finally, there was a long break of time where there weren’t any customers. Both girls were relieved for their break.

“So, how do you like your first day here?” Sarah asked her keenly. “You’re doing a good job.”

“It’s alright. Better than I thought it would be,” Luna admitted, keeping her eyes on the counter.

Sarah looked at Luna. Her face scrunched up in thought. “Are you alright?” she asked.

Luna smiled bitterly again. She wasn’t good at keeping her bitter mood hidden. “Honestly, no. I’ve had the worst week.”

“What’s wrong?”

“Well, my Dad died a few days ago, and my dog died the day before that,” Luna said looking at Sarah through bleary eyes. “The thing that gets to me the most is that even though he was in a hospital before he died, they didn’t figure out what was wrong with him until it was too late.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Sarah said, sounding surprised. She hadn’t been expecting the weight of a real problem. Sarah set a hand on Luna’s shoulder to comfort her. “Can you tell me how it happened?”

Luna cringed at the feeling of Sarah’s hand on her shoulder, not caring if she noticed or not. Luna knew that people thought it was polite, but it reminded her far too much of the doctor’s ‘comforting’ gesture.

“It was arsenic poisoning,” Luna replied, trying to ignore the feeling of contact. “He went into a coma after having a seizure, and the doctors ran tests on him, but he had a heart attack during the night from the complications. Apparently, he had more heart damage than the doctors noticed.”

“Hmm,” Sarah said thoughtfully, dropping her hand off of Luna as she turned away suddenly.

“What is it?” Luna asked warily, wishing she had caught the flash of emotion on Sarah’s face. Luna had a feeling that Sarah was thinking of something that she didn’t want to hear.

“Doesn’t it seem a little odd to you?” Sarah asked, looking at her through brightly colored eyes.

“Odd how?” Luna asked, looking away from her again. For some reason, that conversation was a lot harder when she actually made eye contact. In the back of her mind, she felt that it was too familiar.

“It was no accident, Luna. I mean don’t you wonder who could’ve done that…and why?” Sarah asked. “You’re not upset that someone took your father away from you -probably for no reason at all? You’re just gonna take it how it is without questioning anything?”

“I know it wasn’t an accident, and yes I do wonder about their motivations but-“Luna tried to defend herself.

“But nothing, Luna! You can’t accept this without looking into it! When Susan vanished, I didn’t accept it,” Sarah said narrowing her eyes. “I searched and searched as much as I could for any scrap of an answer.”

“Well, what else can I do? All the doctors know is that David ate metal chips somehow. He works with so many different people, with so many different situations it’d be beyond impossible to try finding out the one person that apparently had a very spiteful grudge against him,” Luna said quietly.

“Of course it’s gonna be hard. A murderer isn’t gonna
want
to be found, that’s part of the problem. That’s no excuse to not try though. You have to at least give it a shot, to try to figure out who did this to him,” Sarah said. Her tone was brazen, and Luna knew that she was truly speaking from her heart. “You know that he would want you to get justice.”

“What would you think if I told you I might already know who could’ve done it?” Luna said, feeling slightly embarrassed for some reason that she couldn’t understand. When she thought about it, she knew it was because her idea of her father’s murderer would go against her strongly held belief that Max was wrong. 

“Who did it?” Sarah asked. “If you know or even have an idea, then you should talk to the police as soon as you can. They might be able to dig deeper into it that way.”

“I don’t have a
solid
idea, and I think it would take a long time to explain,” Luna said, glancing down at the floor as she spoke.

“Excuses, excuses,” Sarah said disbelievingly.

“I’m not making excuses, I’ve just hit a wall both emotionally and physically,” Luna said. She felt she should’ve been upset at Sarah’s relentlessness, but she couldn’t bring herself to care. “I just don’t know what to do anymore.”

“Like I said, you should at least try. If you have an idea who did it, all I’m saying is tell someone about it,” Sarah urged. “I mean, there is such a thing as trial and error. If you’re wrong, it’s no big deal, but at least you’ll be closer to solving the mystery.”

“I know,” Luna said. Her gaze was still drifting away from Sarah. She had a feeling that she wasn’t wrong, and that was the part that worried her.

“I’m sorry to be so emotional about it,” Sarah said sounding genuinely sincere. “I really know that it’s not my place to be telling you this stuff. I just know that you’ll regret it if you don’t look into it.”

“I know you’re just trying to help,” Luna said, “that’s what friends are for.”

Sarah couldn’t think of another thing to say. She felt torn. She knew that she wanted to hear what Luna thought about her father’s killer, but it was still too risky to talk about it where so many people could overhear it. From the corner of her eye, she could see a new customer come in.

“Before we go back to work, let me just ask you something,” Sarah said.

Luna looked at her wondering what else she had to say.

“Do you know where that old abandoned cabin in the woods is?” Sarah asked her. “The one that’s about forty minutes out of town?”

Luna felt a horrifying twinge in her stomach as if someone had a vice-grip on her gut. Every day she tried to forget about that mortifying place. It was the place where she had witnessed crimes that traumatized average people; the memories were too much to pretend that it hadn’t happened. How could she possibly forget about all of the death and terror she had had to witness?

That place in the woods had been the place of nightmares; it was the epitome of Chance’s evil.

Ever since Violet’s murder and Max’s injury, the cops had scoped the woods and found the cabin that originally had been the creation of a dream. After they discovered it, its whereabouts had leaked to the rest of the town. Everyone wondered about its true history and were in awe of its mysteriousness. Luna felt sick that she was one of the only people that knew the truth.

“Yeah, I know exactly where it is,” Luna said, feeling uneasy as her stomach tried to un-ball itself. “Why?”

“Okay, well, I’ll be busy this weekend. But the Saturday after that, meet me there around noon,” Sarah said. “That way we can talk without anyone overhearing.”

Luna nodded feeling a little bit more intrigued despite the nagging thought that she’d actually have to see that cabin again. “Sounds like a plan.”

Inside, she wasn’t quite as confident as her words had sounded. Inside, she was faint. Going back into the cabin, the scene of her old nightmares would bring it all flooding back. All the things she had suppressed since her senior year of high school would be free to ravage her mind once more.