Nightfall ✓

Chapter 29

• chapter twenty-nine •

I put down the brush and stepped back to admire my work: an abstract painting with blues and whites and cyans and indigos. I had put in all the shades of blue I owned. It would look great in our bedroom, because I was going with a nice, peaceful, blue theme there.

I saw Liam walk past the doorway. "Lemonade?"

He stopped and came in. "Yeah?"

"Look at this."

He did. "It's beautiful." He kissed the side of my head. "Just like you." But his preoccupation was obvious. He wasn't really looking at it. He started to walk out. I wrapped my fingers around his wrist, pressing my body against his. "What is it?" He had been exhibiting this absent-minded behaviour for the past two days. I had dismissed the thought that something was wrong by convincing myself that he was busy pondering over an idea for a new novel. But no. Something was off.

"What is what?" he asked.

I placed a kiss on his jawline. "You're lost somewhere. Your mind is wandering."

" 'Not all those who wander are lost', " he quoted.

"No, seriously. What's bothering you?"

He sighed. His breath tickled my neck. "Do you have to have this baby?"

I let go of him and crossed my arms. "How many times are we going to talk about this? I want this baby. I love the baby."

"Hazel  — having a baby puts you at risk. That ghost  — she'll target you."

My blood went cold. A terrible, terrible feeling started gnawing at my gut. "What makes you say that?" My voice was a barely audible whisper, a rough sound that scraped against my throat before coming out. I wasn't sure I had the strength to hear his answer. Goosebumps had risen on my skin.

"I...uh. I found you missing that night and went out to look for you, and I overheard you talking to the woman."

My fingers trembled, I curled them into fists to steady them. "Why the hell did you poke your nose into something that was none of your business?"

"Excuse me?" he said. "Why didn't you tell me you were meeting an exorcist? Does this thing concern only you?"

"I didn't want to disappoint you. Each time, whenever I try to do something, I get my hopes up, and then they're shattered. It hurts to try and fail, try and fail, again and again. And what good will an abortion do? It will just reduce the chances of me being attacked by the ghost, but it won't totally nullify them, will it? One of us is still going to die." My voice cracked as the memory of what the exorcist had said came back to me.

He took my hand. "We're in this together. There's no you and me. It's us."

"I'm glad I didn't tell you. If you'd heard what she said —"

"I heard everything, Hazel," he said softly, and my head snapped up. He looked up to meet my eyes. "I heard that the curse can't be broken unless I —"

"No!" I snarled fiercely, covering his mouth with my hand. "No. Don't you dare. There has to be another way. That exorcist was inexperienced. You don't have to listen to what she says."

"What she said made sense."

"It made no sense," I said through gritted teeth, grabbing his collar, filling my hands with fistfuls of crumpled cotton fabric. "She suggested a world without you. How can that make sense? Nothing makes sense without you. There can never be a world where you don't exist." I hugged him — burying my head into his shoulder — mostly to comfort myself. "It's not that I can't live without you. It's just that I don't even want to try."

"Can you at least give up the baby till we find the solution?"

"No."

"What are you even trying to do?" He seized my shoulders with his strong hands and peeled me off himself. "You don't want to give up the baby even though you know that the ghost can harm both of you. You don't want to give me up, either. Do you think we can find a solution within eight months; before the baby is born?" There was a pause. "You know what I think? I think you're desperate for a family. You've never had a family who understood you, so now you're probably thinking that you're going to start your own, and you'll do everything right, you'll have wonderful kids and a loving husband, but the problem is that you simply don't care about what I want — you're just going to force this decision on me. Starting a family is the decision of both the people, Hazel. And you can't really afford to fight with me, because let's face it — I'm the only one you have. You don't really have anyone else."

What?

I stared speechlessly at him, watched him as his eyes widened in horror, watched the regret bloom on his face as soon as he stopped speaking. How could he? I raised my hand to slap him across the face, but at the last moment I balled my hands into fists and rammed them straight into his shoulder, saw him wince in pain, then turned around and stormed out of the room.

"Hazel!" Liam called.

"I need to buy grocery," I barked, picked up my jacket, and walked out. I walked a long way before I hailed a cab, and told the driver to take me anywhere, and if he had nowhere to take me to, he should just drive round and round till I told him to stop. He started driving. I rested my head on my arm stretched out over the windowsill, and looked at the cars passing by. I didn't know where I was going to, just that I was going away from Liam, and for the first time ever, that thought seemed to be comforting. 

Some time elapsed. As a child, I'd always wondered how the cars that were going in my opposite direction could run so fast. I later realized that they just appeared to be fast because I was also moving.

The car jerked, causing my neck to snap. "Ow."

"Sorry. I don't know how that happened. Maybe something is wrong with the car."

Before I could even think of a reply, the steering wheel turned under his hands, the tyres screeched against the pavement, and the car swerved sharply to the left. I knew that the driver hadn't done that; it seemed as if something was pulling the wheel. The car crashed straight into the wall running along the road and the window smashed into tiny pieces of glass, digging into my skin. I screamed in pain. I felt suffocated, like I was being crushed alive. That was the last thought I had before blacking out.

  ∞  

The darkness around her was comforting somehow. It made her feel as if she didn't exist. She couldn't feel anything, she didn't even know where she was. All she knew was that she was sinking into something warm ... a warm liquid, that was coming out of her. It smelled like metal.

Blood?

She sank in the warm blood, and soon it changed to a cold, dark lake, where it was silent and so cold that she was going numb, losing all feeling, losing everything.

Gentle hands lifted her, and then her back touched something soft. Instantly, she felt better. 

Somewhere far away, through the water, she heard the faint sound of sirens. And then, through this chaos, a familiar voice rang out, sharp and clear like a girl's: "No! Hazel!"

Hazel. Hmm. That was her name, right?

She swam to the surface, feeling a hand caressing her cheek and slowly travelling up to stroke her hair. She knew the touch. Someone was crying. "This is all my fault."

"She'll be okay," another voice said, but the person sounded unsure.

Then she had a weird sensation, like she was moving. The water around her was moving. She saw something swimming in the cold, dark lake. A picture, a memory. Before she could catch it, it drifted away. There were lots of them. 

A sudden wave pushed her to the bottom and she stayed there, unable to move, paralyzed by the cold.

∞