The Knight Of The Rose (41 page)

into the memory—not a message for Jason to deliver, but a part of the story before the end. David

will hear it when Jason shows him the memor y, and he’ll know that, even in death, it was
his
name

on my lips.

The stars blurred into one t hin silver line, and the ni ght sky surrounded me. For a second, I

saw them; Mum and Harry—not hing more than a flash—just a flicker of a memory—standing there

behind Jason. They were waiting for me. I wanted to run to them, call to them, ask them to help

me—for anyone to help me. But I knew they weren’t really there, an d that even if they were, they

couldn’t help. There is no help. People die every day. People suffer every day. Who’ s there

for them? Who comes to save them?

No one. And no one is coming for me.

I’m dying, Mum,
I whispered inside,
look what he did to me.

“I know.” The memory of her nodded, reaching for me. “Come on, it’s time to go now.”

But I’m not ready. There’s still so much I want to do. I want to see David again, tell him I’m

sorry—tell him I’ll love him forever—and I
will
become a vampire.

“I know,” she said with a symp athetic smile, like everything was okay. But it wasn’t. Not at

all.

Mum, please, help me. This is life. It’s not a joke. Please, this can’t be it. I’m not ready to die.

“Death is only the beginning, Ara. There is so much more for you now.”

No! No. I want to go home!
“Please, take me home?” Cold air brushed out past my lips—

colder than it should be. I thought I felt my hands shaking, but wasn’t sure. The only thing I knew I

felt was the warm, mucky feeling of something sticky under my head and all over the side of my

neck. I struggled to open my eyes—to remember where it was I had fallen asleep—or how I got

there. I fought against t he blackness—screaming inside my head. I couldn’t move anything,

couldn’t even envision myself fighting, because there was nothing left to fight with—nothing in t he

room; no sound, no air, no light. Like I was buried underground.

“Mum!” I screamed. “Mum. Am I dead?”

But she was gone. Everything was gone.

The strange wor ld smothered me, ti ghtening around my ribs and maki ng the air thin and

humid. I felt like I was being pulled down—like I was swimming against a strong current and losing

the fight. I tried to ki ck my legs, to clutch at my throat and tear the belt of restraint away, but my

hands were gone, there was nothing to move, nothing to free me from the sweltering wrap of my own

death. And then, from deep in the darkness, a warm grip pulled me back to the night. A hand.

Something waking me fr om the depths of my own fear. I held ont o it with my mind, focused on it

with all of my strength until I heard a voice; “Ara? Baby, oh baby.” It echoed like an old memory.

“God, what has he done to you—?”

“Mike?” I think I whispered.

“Ara.” His golden voice hit the walls of my subconscious and bounced off the empty space

around me. “You stay with me…with me…with me,” it echoed again. “Ara, pleas e—don’t let go…

let go…let go—” I felt a hand around t he back of my head, and a heavy co ld settled on my limbs,

making me wish I could sleep. Just fall asleep and everything would be okay.

“Mi-ke.”

“Oh, God!” his voice became rough and distraught; “Get help—please, she’s losing too much

blood. Get help!”

Nothing. No stars, no sound. I tried to open my eyes to see against the black, but as I truly

noticed the emptiness for the first time, I felt my heart stop; my eyes were already open.

“Mike?” I called, but my own voice fell flat in front of me, as if I ’d spoken into cupped

hands. I waited; waited past that moment you expect everything to be okay, past the breath you held

when you thought you heard something, and finally felt myself realise what happened.

I’d let go.

Perfect silence. Complete weightlessness, it almost made me breathless—like I needed sound

or orientation to remind me how to breathe. I couldn’t breathe—couldn’t suffocate because there was

only emptiness where my lungs should be.

The only thing I could actual ly feel were tiny dancing butterflies in every inch of me,

fluttering across every part of my body that had turned into air.

I tried to clench my fist, to wri ggle my fingers and toes, but they were gone—all of them,

everything, just gone. I felt tied up , restrained, wrapped in clear film and stored in a tig ht space. I

wanted to break free, but there was nothing to break free from.

I was gone.

Mike was gone.

The world was gone.

Everything was gone...

Floating through space and tim e—for how long, I didn’t k now—I hoped morning would

come. But days or maybe years seemed to pass. I’d waited, losing myself in the weightlessness of

this world, with no way of measuring the unbearable solitude—the existence of nothing.

Maybe this is hell.

It reminded me of the time I went swimming as a little girl; I’d closed my eyes and floated in

the water for a while. With my ear s under the cool water, I could hear only the rushing of the ocean

and the sound of my own thoughts. I thought it was peaceful then, but here in this blackness, all

alone, still floating and unable to find the shore—it was just unimaginably confining.

I always wondered what death would be like. I thought it would be peaceful. But the only

thing in the afterlife was memories, hidden behind shadows in the darkness. And when the darkness

got too much, those memories became nightmare s—unhappy endings I ’d keep going over i n my

mind—over and over again, never able to find the conclusion, because there’d never be a conclusion.

Not for me, anyway.

My last breath would have been taken in the ar ms of my best friend. I wanted to cover my

half naked body—to tell Mike that Jason didn’t ra...well, that he didn’t do what everyone will think

he did. Tears of frustration and anger wanted to release from my eyes, but with no face and no eyes

to cry from, they became trapped in me, lodged l ike a rolled-up sock in my chest—quivering and

growing into a feeling I had never kno wn before. I wanted to rattle the bars of my cage, to scream at

those responsible.

But rage always wore down t o misery, and when mis ery was unreleased, trapped in by

nothingness, it turned to fear, then to rage again. It was an endless cycle. And even that made me

mad, because there was just nothing...nothing I could do to make it stop.

“Let me outta here!” my mind called into the dar kness. I imagined myself circling around,

gripping my hair with both hands, falling to the floor with my head in my knees.

It did no good to picture it though. I still felt just the same.

“Mike!” I imagined myself looki ng up—to wherever up was. “Mike,” I said. “He didn’t rape

me!” I needed him to know that. I needed him to know how sorry I was for leaving the dance—for

trusting Jason—for being so damn stupid.

“Mike? Please, please be there. Please be there.”

But nothing ever answered back.

The rage subsided agai n and I watched my im agination fall to her kn ees. She looked so

fragile and human, so broken and alone.

You were nothing to him
, she thought in her own mind.
You were human, and vampires rarely

fall for humans—since they eat them. He tried to tell you, Ara-Rose, but you didn’t listen. You never

listen...and now you’re dead.

Dreams had happened in the blackness. Once or twice I’d seen myself somewhere else, only

to wake in the nothing again.

As I wandered forward, of full body, like the last dream, I knew this was just another one.

The emptiness around me was coloured with blue plumes of smoke, r ising up, gripping my

ankles and hips wit h creeping fingers. The messa ge I’d been trying t o get to my fiancé was still

trembling on my lips, stuck, like a ghost t hat couldn’t cross over. “Mike?” I said weakly into

the darkness. “Mike, please listen.”

With each step I took, I could feel the fine, tickly tips of the grass between my toes. I walked

through the smoke, reaching out to find anything at my fingertips. I’d take a tree in the head ri ght

now—just to feel.

When the sound of soft, ragged breaths came from somewhere ahead, I looked deeper into

the darkness—past the blur, past the shadows.

Then, I saw him.

“Mike?”

He didn’t look up. As he became completely visible for the first time, so too did the world

around him—but not me. The storm clouds overhead raged and swirled, lapping the horizon with the

promise of a wild night, but my hair, my dress and my existence stayed frozen in time.

Mike stood hunched and shaking, one hand spla yed out on something stone, whil e his lungs

fought to find the breath that would make it all okay. “Ara, baby. I’m so, so sorry. I—”

I watched on, my lip trembling, my tears edging tightly on the brink of hysterics, while Mike

lost his words to grief, reaching into his pocket and removing a tight fist.

My thumb landed on my ring finger when the gentle tink of glass forced my eyes to see what

he placed atop the headstone. “This is where it be longs now,” he said and backed away, wiping a

weary hand across his lips. As his shadow receded, allowing th e light against the wor ds on t he

headstone, the core of my being imploded:

‘Ara-Rose: Never made it home.’

All life drew from my soul, l ike my existence happened in reverse for that spil t second, and

the remains of the ring I once wore for love bled out over the stone—weeping crimson tears across

my name.

I stumbled on my heels, reaching out for something to ground me. The dream slipped away—

becoming smaller until it was no longer visibl e, swallowed up by the black, but s

till existing

somewhere out there—somewhere I could never go to . They all existed out there somewhere, and I

would never know their smiles, their voices, their warm arms, ever again.

Ghosts are supposed to watch—to see who was at their funeral, to see who mourns them. I

was supposed to see David again. I was suppos ed to know if he came to my grave to mourn me t he

way he did his aunt . I was supposed to sit beside him, comfort him though he’d never know I was

there. But it was all gone. Just gone. Like Mum and Harry. They were only a memory or a dream or

a hope. Who knows, maybe
I
never existed. Maybe my entire life was just a dr eam. Maybe David

was.

“Or maybe this is the afterlife,” my imagination said. She appeared in full light, a soft, golden

glow in the darkness, her pale dress billowing like the fingers of a ghost.

“Maybe,” I thought. “Maybe death is nothing like the story-books. It’s not peaceful—there

are no happy reunions with those you love, and...from what I can see....” I looked around again, “no

God, either.”

I had called to him, called to everyone I could think of —even called to Rochel le. But she

wasn’t there. God wasn’t. Buddha. Anyone. Just me. Just me and my regrets.

“And me,” said my imagination.

I wanted to shake my head. She wasn’t there either. I wasn’t sure there was even a mind. I

knew only an eternity of nothing—my punishment, I guess, for condemning David to an eterni ty of

longing, without me.

It was the little things I missed the most in this hell; like a smile or colour or twisting my ring

around on my finger—my ruby rose. Mike will be so sad that I can’t wear it anymore. And I once

thought David would be so sad that I did wear it. But I guess time changes our assumptions.

“I wonder what he’ll do—David—when Jason shows him the memory of what he did to us,”

the imagination said.

We didn’t need to wonder though. “David will hate me for letting Jason hold me the way he

did in the tree, so close and so intimate, like I had loved him before.”

He told me once, so long ago, that the touch of human skin to a vampire is like a thousand

kisses of ecstasy; like satiating an eternal hunger with the warmth of one breath.

He wanted so badly to rest my bare skin against his ches t and hold me cl ose to him again—

like we did by the lake.

I wish I could go back—t ell him I’m sorry. I should have st ayed on t he dance f loor with

Mike; I should never have gone with Jason.

“But you knew that then, didn’t you?”
she
asked. “You went with Jason, knowing deep inside

that he was dangerous. You tempted fate, tempted danger, so David would realise how precious we

are to him, and stay with us forever.”

I thought about it for a second. “If that’s true, then I am one big, epic fail, and I will never

have a another chance to learn from my mist akes.” And I will never know why David di dn’t show

for the last dance.

“Don’t you remember?” the imagination said, smiling. “He told you that vampires leave and

move on without saying goodbye, without telling people why.”

I nodded. “Yes, because it raises more suspicions when questions are asked. They simply

send a let ter resigning f rom jobs or school, and they are never seen again...” As I finished the

sentence, realisation struck me worse than shock. “Is that what he did to me? Did he leave me, and I