The back of my neck prickled as awareness arose through me. Someone was watching me. Someone was there.
I turned around, looking at the trees lined behind me, only to see the figure of a man standing quietly, his eyes firmly on me.
"Who are you?"
I slammed back into reality, breathing heavily as I gathered my bearings, trying to calm my racing mind.
What the fuck was that? What in the actual fucking fuck did I just see?
My fingers dragged through my hair, feeling the sweat gathered on the back of my neck and just like in that vision, memory, whatever it was, the hair on my nape rose, alerting me of a presence. Of someone watching me.
Scanning the road in front of me I could see there was nothing but emptiness and a sign I couldn't read from this far, but the moment I turned toward my right, I saw him. I saw them.
The shadow of a man stood hidden between trees not too far away, shrouded in the morning mist and making it impossible to see his features. I took a step forward before catching myself and stopping in my tracks. He wasn't alone and I didn't need to be close to understand it was a dog next to him. A massive fucking dog.
The morning mist swirled over the surface of the ground, as if it was rising slowly, hiding the person from my eyes.
"So it's true then?" came from my left, and just like earlier this morning, I jumped, turning toward the source of the voice. A woman stood close by, staring at me as if she had seen a ghost, when in reality I should've been the one looking at her like that.
Her eyes were colder than my mother’s, her hair lighter, but I had no doubt about who she was.
"What is true?" I finally found my voice, unable to stop staring at her. My lungs contracted as memory after memory of the woman who gave life to me kept playing behind my eyelids.
They looked so much alike, yet also so different in the way this woman moved. In the way her sharp eyes dissected me even before we fully spoke to each other.
"She's dead," the woman added, taking a couple of steps toward me, letting me see her clearly. The black dress she wore couldn't have been comfortable in this weather, but she didn't seem to mind the cold. Its long sleeves covered her entire arms, going over her hands. The bottom seemed to have been haphazardly sewn together, making it look like it was made from different types of fabric ending just underneath her knees and touching the tops of her black boots. "Your mother," she clarified as she came even closer, letting me see her eyes properly.
She looked just like Daniela, like my mom. Past and present collided as she continued toward me, scanning me from head to toe just as I was doing to her.
"Who are you?" I asked for good measure, although I was pretty sure I already knew the answer.
She smiled but it never touched her eyes, and as she stepped right in front of me, looking me over as if she was as shocked by seeing me as I was by seeing her, she couldn't stop her eyes from dragging all over my face. "I think you already know who I am, Kaira. The question is…" She looked into my eyes, narrowing her own as if she was angry at me being here. "What are you doing at Nevermere Island?"
10
KAIRA
Darkness livedin every one of us, or at least that's what my mother always said, and it was up to us if we would let it consume us or if we would decide to fight it until our dying breath. As I followed Alyana, my aunt, through the empty streets of the town not far from the docks, I wondered if this entire trip was me or the darkness pushing me forward.
The fog seeped from the looming forest I could see on the edges of the town, flickering through the streets as if it owned it, slowly caressing the buildings that looked like they belonged to a seaside town somewhere in Europe instead of the Pacific Northwest. The facade was crumbling on most of them, the shutters closed on every single building, and not a single person could be found roaming around the streets as we walked.
Had I not known better I would've thought we had entered the set of a horror movie, with monsters lurking nearby, waiting to snatch us. The sun I saw earlier was short-lived, quickly replaced by dark, looming clouds violently dancing above the island, no doubt preparing for the storm Jacob had mentioned earlier, and for the thousandth time since I left the mainland, I let regret flicker through my body for chasing a past that was probably better left alone.
Alyana wasn't happy to see me, that much was obvious, but she didn't tell me to leave. She didn't push me away when a single tear rolled down my cheek because I couldn't stop myself from seeing my mother in her eyes, in her movements, in her hair. I couldn't stop myself from reaching for her, to potentially the only living relative I had left.
So she hugged me, and wrapped me in her arms as if I was a mere child with bruised knees and a hurt ego after falling down one too many times. But this entire last year had felt like one big failure after another. My entire existence was rendered to empty nights and a hollow heart where love once used to live, and I was tired of standing against the world all on my own. I was tired of putting on a brave face for the sake of those I still had in my life.
I was tired of trembling when the storms passed over and when the thunders seemed too loud, too fucking alone, and I was too fucking scared to even get up and close the window. My life felt like a never-ending storm, threatening to destroy what little I had left, so I clung to an old woman just a little bit longer, letting out the fear, the guilt, the anger…
Most of all the anger.
Anger at myself.
Anger at God, the Universe, or the Gods that had allowed for this to happen.
My story was nowhere near finished, but standing with Alyana at the entrance to this island, it felt as if everything I knew had suddenly collapsed, leaving me bare, open, threatened by even the smallest of things. So I cried for the girl I used to be, for the safety I no longer had and for the uncertainties surrounding me right now.
I cried from the fear rotting inside my very soul. Fear I never knew before but could feel now as if it was a part of me.
