Alive at Sunset (Rituals of the Night Series Book 2) (26 page)

“Maybe I’ll see you around,” he said, unable to look at her. He turned to begin walking away, knowing it was the last time he’d see her. The pain in his heart was the deepest yet. As the distance grew between him and Luna, he wanted to disappear.

Once I die, everything will be okay. When I’m gone, I won’t hurt anymore -and neither will she.

Luna watched him go in silence. In the distance, she could hear fire trucks and knew they were headed her way. They were coming to clean up the bitter remains of her life.

A
solid week had passed since Chance killed Amanda. Luna’s heart was heavy, and her face was stained with water marks from all the times that she cried. She was careful as she moved, her arms full of flowers. She trudged across the cemetery, hoping she wouldn’t drop the bouquets. Finally, she neared the five graves and quickly she sank to her knees by the closest one. She let the cluster of flowers slide gently to the ground.

She read the plaque that sat in the ground. “Max Cazmea.” She turned her head in grief as she thought about him. After all the time that had passed, his death hurt as much as it had the day it had happened. She sniffled and picked up the closest bouquet and put it in the open spot in the plaque. She looked away from it to the second nearest tombstone. “Violet Bulrney.” Luna felt grief looking at her late best friend’s grave of course, but it was nowhere near as strong as it was for Max.

Luna knew it was awful, but she kept thinking of all the ways Violet had wronged her before Chance had murdered her in cold blood. The thought of that was enough to free a tear from her eye. She put the second bouquet on Violet’s plaque. She brought herself to turn away to finally face David’s grave. The thought alone caused her to choke in grief. She tried to hold herself together as she swept the dirt off of the plaque.

When it was clean, she noticed a dirty, ripped piece of paper that had been folded neatly in half. The outside of it was rugged, studded in dirt. Another tear dripped from Luna’s eye slowly as she reached for it. She picked it up gently and unfolded it, wondering what was written on it.

Luna,

I really am sorry for what I’ve done. I hope you know that I mean it. You’ll be a wonderful mother, our kid is so lucky to have you. I suggest you read the paper, I think it’ll cheer you up if nothing else.

-Chance

Reading his name made the tears freeze in their place. Had he confessed to everything that he had done? The desire to find out made her anxious. She set the final bouquets of flowers in place for David, Sarah, and Amanda. With a long, pained glance at each of the tombstones (her comrades that had fallen to Chance) she stood up and ran.

A few minutes later, she had made it to a small store. She stepped inside, panting heavily, but tried not to let anyone see how exhausted she was. She walked over to the newspapers and tucked it under her arm. She hurried up to the counter and threw the exact amount of change at the clerk before she left. She walked a few paces from the store before her curiosity won out. She held the newspaper in front of her as she looked at it.

Immediately, the front page story caught her attention. “Missing boy of ten years commits suicide.” Luckily, there was a bench behind her, because Luna’s legs gave out. She brought herself to look at the cover again.

Local twenty-one year old, Chance Welfrey, passed away today when he jumped from the roof of a six-story building. Cops tried talking the young man down minutes before he jumped, but they were unsuccessful. His body was taken to Lakeside Morgue. Nobody stepped forward to claim the body, however, because rumors began circulating about his identity.

Unsure policemen ordered a DNA test and were shocked with what they discovered. The young man who had been known as Chance Welfrey in the small town of Lima, Ohio, wasn’t really Chance Welfrey at all. DNA tests came back to reveal that he was Stephen Harris, the young boy who went missing from Illinois ten years ago after the twin brutal murders of his parents.

Survive at Midnight
(Rituals of the Night Series Book Three)

Months have passed since Luna learned of Chance’s death. Carrying his baby makes her wonder about the future before her. No matter how hard she tries, she finds that she cannot untwine her life from his. Birth brings a new wave of complications to her life when she realizes her problems aren’t over yet.

Her biggest nightmare is herself.

                                                                                                  Chapter 1

Luna sighed as she relaxed into the leather couch. It did little to comfort the pain in her spine. She flicked through the channels on the television slowly, hoping to find something to pique her interest. After dropping out of school she was desperate to learn anything she could. Finally, she came to a rest on the news. She swallowed heavily as she watched the familiar story.

Lima’s tragedy, the title read.

Luna felt herself getting sick. Chance’s suicide had been a tragedy. An unheard of destruction of her hometown’s youth. It was the worst thing to have happened to since Kate and Susan’s deaths three years prior.

If only they knew the truth,
Luna thought, flicking through the channels.

It seemed as if she couldn’t escape that day. She was the only one that knew the reason for his action, and she couldn’t tell a soul. The rest of the town had been blindsided. Luna flicked to a different channel to see another version of the Chance story. She watched in disbelief as video footage showed him as he stood at the top of the building. His face was pale and calm. If he was feeling anything in that moment then he certainly didn’t show it. Luna’s heart rate increased as she watched him bay at the edge.

They aren’t really going to show him die…are they?

In the next second, Chance took a breath and stepped over the edge. Luna closed her eyes as the television sounded the thump of his body.

Why would someone record that?

Despite how much she had hated him, she had never wished to watch him die. She knew that it should have been enough to concrete the idea that he was gone, but instead, it left an odd feeling in the pit of her stomach. It was a strange time to focus on old news -it was Halloween. Chance’s death was supposed to be a reminder that death wasn’t a joke. To Luna, their approach was wrong, plain and simple.

They’re taking it too far. Why does the FCC allow this to play on t.v.?
she thought.
He really died…this isn’t a movie.

Luna heard two careful footsteps as Rose walked into the living room. “Oh, Honey,” she said. “You don’t need to watch that.”

“All day they’ve shown it. What do they think it’s going to accomplish?” she asked.

“They want people to be careful today,” Rose said, scooping the remote out of her daughter’s hand to turn off the television.

“They’re immortalizing him, making it seem like his death wasn’t an accident,” Luna pointed out. “He chose to do it. Why pretend anything else?”

“Either way, the town is reeling. It’s terrible to see someone so young choose something like that.”

Luna sighed. It had been four months since his death, and it seemed as if the news found every opportunity they could to remind everyone of what he had done. He had been a popular person, and she was sure that the culprits of the stories were old friends of his that had chosen to go into the reporter field.

It was still hard for her to believe that he wasn’t alive anymore, to grasp the fact that he had ended his own life. The thought that she was free was one of the hardest concepts for her to accept. When she lie down at night, it was hard for her to relax, to accept the idea that she wasn’t being hunted anymore. Chance was no ordinary man, though to the many people that worshipped him he was.

Anyone that he resented ended up dead.

Luna glanced at the deep purple scar on her arm and knew she had a matching one on her stomach as well. They were wounds left by his rage, his hatred, and his desperation. She had almost fallen victim to Chance on multiple occasions. For some reason, however, he had always changed his mind and let her live. Of all the people that he had no problem killing, she was the only one that had ever made him think twice.

He had haunted her since they met in elementary school. It was hard for her to believe he was actually gone, just like that. She should’ve felt relieved, but she didn’t know how she felt. Her insides yawned with a hollowness left by the absences of her lost friends. After her most recent ordeal, she was numb.

Luna rubbed a hand over her pregnant stomach. At twenty-one years old, she wasn’t ready for a baby, but she didn’t have a choice. In May of that same year, her baby had been conceived though her memory of it was still hazy.

All she knew for sure was that Chance was the father.

She frowned down at her stomach. She wasn’t mad at her baby but rather herself for the situation she was in. Every time she remembered how her baby was conceived, she always thought of Chance. It was unavoidable.

All she wanted to do was forget and move on with what was left of her life.

I should know better than that by now.

“Why don’t you go for a walk, Dear?” Rose asked, sitting in the armchair across the room.

Luna nodded. “I guess, Mom.”

“When you get back, dinner will be ready.”

Her baby stirred with hunger, but she herself had no desire to eat. She got up without a word and went outside. She stuck her hands in her pockets as she walked down the street. Trick-or-treaters ran down the street, and Luna made sure to avoid looking at them directly. She had seen enough gore in her lifetime to keep her from ever taking part in Halloween again.

A kid in a skeleton costume ran past her giggling as he ran from his friends. She shuddered at the thought. Skeletons were all that were left of most of her friends.

She glanced at the decorations on the nearest lawn. There were fake tombstones and coffins. Luna sighed, feeling herself dropping into a steady level of depression. What most of the town saw as fun, she saw as a constant gaping reminder. Coping with it all made her feel so alone.

She felt a gnawing in her stomach suddenly and turned as she decided to go back home before the flashbacks started. As Rose had promised, dinner was ready by the time Luna walked through the door. She picked at it, eating only a bite or two before she began to push her food around the plate. Her long, black hair created a veil on either side of her face as she stared at her food. When she was sad, she usually skipped eating altogether, but she couldn’t afford to do that anymore.

“How are you feeling?” Rose asked her after she swallowed the bite she had taken.

Luna shrugged. “It’s hard dealing with today. Why do people think it’s fun to celebrate death?” she asked.

Rose frowned at her question. “Honestly, I don’t know. At one time you were one of them. You can’t blame them for being naïve.”

Luna titled her head to the side but didn’t say a word. Her memories of her old, normal life seemed like a faraway dream.

“Are you thinking of Amanda?”

Luna pursed her lips. Halloween brought to mind the deaths of all her friends –not only the most recent one. “Her and Dad, really. This is the first Halloween without him.”

“The living room seems so quiet without him,” Rose remarked with a small smile before she looked at the table. “Things will get easier with time.”

“Will they?” Luna asked. “That sounds like denial. We’ve been saying it’ll get easier for months, and so far, nothing has.”

“Do you want to go visit them later?” she asked.

“No. I want the memories to go away,” she said as she stood from the table and lumbered to her room in the hope of escaping the vicious trap of her mind.

About the Author
 

Kayla Krantz
was originally born in Roseville, Michigan but traveled across the country to Texas where she now resides with her husband and son. She has a fascination in all things dark and macabre and draws her inspiration from Stephen King.
She has written handfuls of short stories, and a dozen novels, some of which are available for free online.

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