Darkheart

The Past: Name & Claim

She played a game with herself, in her head. Crystal began naming the things she saw around her. As bizarre as it was, considering she stood naked and masked outside a lighthouse surrounded by people, the game diverted her attention. She named the lake and the seagull she couldn't see but heard above; she named the lighthouse itself and the boats bobbing gently on the water. She named the fog and the beetle moving across her foot and the cloud-covered moon. But she wouldn't name the people. They didn't deserve names. Somehow, the game took her thoughts away from not only the embarrassment she suffered but also the intense, growing pressure within her abdomen. They'd taken her clothing--all of it! And she was concerned about what that might mean for her (beyond the obvious distress) because she'd been so irregular, lately--had hardly been menstruating long enough to know what regularity was but had assumed it'd meant once a month; that's what she'd always heard, anyway. But her period had been something like every other day in the time since she'd blanked out at the resort, and she was due to start again, if that pattern were going to continue. The knot twisting in her stomach, now . . . what was it? Was it terror or was it something else? She couldn't tell, but she thought if maybe she stood still, legs tightly together, she'd be able to hold in whatever might be fated to come out.

By the time someone at last pulled her away from the lighthouse, she'd closed her eyes and begun praying to the powers-that-be to somehow delay the inevitable. They'd taken all the others into the lighthouse by that point, and she'd tried to will herself to say or do something when they'd gone in, but no one had allowed her to move an inch; the first time she'd tried had been her last when two people had held her back. There'd been no noise from the interior of the building against which she stood except for Jeremiah's manic desperation, and Crystal had nearly begun to pull on her hair when she'd heard him, but his pleading had ended soon after it'd begun, and the fear of what that might mean took dominance in her list of concerns. She didn't want to go, but she knew she had to because the others had, because they'd all become too entangled to free themselves. She had no choice, now.

They pulled her in, as they had the others, and through the limiting eyeholes of her stupid mask, she saw Ms. Kensington looking for all the world as if she were sorry, but before Crystal had any chance to beg for an explanation, someone pushed her, the ground beneath fell away, and all went dark.

Shortly after, the girl found herself standing in complete pitch, though she had no recollection of actually landing. Somewhere far--or maybe near?--were strange sounds, echoes that weren't quite echoes. Not dripping water nor necessarily indicative of any movement but more the nondescript desolate tinkling of space, of hollowness, of a cavern so great it moved beyond its own walls into the infinite. Crystal couldn't understand it. In one fierce movement she pulled the mask from her face and flung it to the ground, though her movement felt strange. Her limbs were different in this blackness, not quite hindered and yet somehow in contact with some amorphous presence, something everywhere all at once, which wrapped itself around her like fat tentacles of moist air. What was this? Fear snaked its fingers into her heart, fear unlike the apprehension of what she'd felt above. This was something deeper, more animal, an instinct to escape, and yet, where could she go? Her hands touched nothing; there seemed no walls, no ceiling, only the ground itself, and even that was uncertain.

Her breath was small, quavering; her heart was a rabbit's, a scarlet pomegranate seed palpitating in a handful of fur. She shivered yet felt no cold, not really, only the absolute awareness that while she saw nothing, knew nothing was going to jump out of the dark at her, she was not alone . . . something watched, waited.

All she could think to do was walk, so she did. Every step was one taken in trepidation because Crystal was sure she'd run into something, used her hands to feel for the impediments she was sure to stumble over. But there was nothing in her way, and the farther she tread, the more she realized the enormity of her isolation.