Dawn to Dark

by Halston James

  I wriggle and writhe but the men’s hold is strong.

  “Please, Red,” Blaxton begs. “Why are you doing this?”

  “You cannot blame her, she is not in her right mind,” the doctor says, breathless, his grip tightening as I try to loosen his hold. “The mad of mind are prone to violence when their delusions are called out. I’ll tell you more when she—” he grunts as I stamp on his foot and smash my head backwards into his nose. I hear a soft crack of cartridge as he swears. “Hold still, you bloody savage.”

  I feel a power from within, like the cosmic universe sparkling from my wound around my body. If I let the doctor convince Blaxton I am mad, then what hope do I have? I have to get the evidence. I have to find some truth. I burst free like a comet.

  “Let me go!” I scream, wide-eyed and breathless. And I can only imagine how I look in their eyes—my night slip wet and translucent with sweat. My hair wild and stuck to my clammy forehead. My desperate eyes darting from memory to imaginations and back to the people in the room, searching for even a hint of belief from their astonished eyes. All the while, they stare back, wearing their doubtful and fearful thoughts on their faces.

  And like some wild and untamed beast, I turn and run barefoot yet determined into the wilderness and the brewing storm outside.

  13

  I have to find Woolsey. I have to make him tell me all he knows. I have to prove I am not some wild monster, a killer. A murderer. A mad woman. Yet galloping through the storm away from the safety of the doctor’s cabin, I realize I am at least one version of crazy. I know running barefoot and barelegged knee deep in snow, wearing only a shift is madness. And surely, my awareness of that means I can’t be completely insane. Though it is insane to keep going.

  But keep going I will.

  The strange storm brings snowflakes as big as overripe apples to blizzard this way and that, obscuring my sight as I run. Though they do not obscure the bloody patch left by the wolf or Kaya, depending on what side of madness my mind rests.

  I stop, my bare feet in the crimson stain slowly disappearing with the covering of fresh snow—like my sanity. No, not a covering, but a concealing. A concealing of truth and I feel my own mind doing the very same thing. Concealing things of which it does not want to see or remember.

  The blackouts.

  There is no telling from the shape left on the ground if this was girl or beast I killed. Blood is blood, no matter from where it comes. But it is my knife. The pewter hilt dim in the overcast light.

  I bend to retrieve it.

  To conceal the evidence.

  More snow falls.

  If only Woolsey would admit to what he saw—my wound, his warning.

  I reach the woods and their barren branches, making my way to the higher ground where magnificent firs call to me. Like some primal instinct I run like a wild thing, seeking protection from the coldness of land and thoughts. I cannot go home. I cannot bear to see what I fear I might. Fractured memories—different to the ones already in my mind.

  And I have a feeling, an urge, a sense I might find Woolsey here.

  I stumble to a halt. Gasping and grasping at my heaving chest with hands that tremble with realization.

  Woolsey did not see my wound.

  He saw my bandage.

  My heart sinks to the frigid white ground, and my body follows as I collapse to my knees. My breath catches and rasps at the back of my dry throat as I stare at my arm. The wounds—the marks, they are pale and gaunt, as if they are sinking into my skin. Sinking into my soul.

  They are hardly there at all.

  And I can’t help but wonder what happens during my blackouts. Are these fractured moments memories or ideas of memories? Do I imagine what happens in my mind as I create an entirely different reality?

  Am I… am I a monster? A murderer?

  I howl. I howl in the relentless snow falling from darkened thunderclouds, watching as lightning crackles across the sky, illuminating the black clouds with gold. Rumbles near and far charge across the land.

  I don’t know who I am.

  Another growl stops my sinister thoughts. And another. Another. And another. A pack of amber eyes coalesce through the thick blizzard. Yapping and spitting between bared teeth as the wolves circle close. I’m surrounded. They stalk ever closer. I squeeze my eyes shut and open them again. This isn’t a dream, is it? This isn’t another blackout? These aren’t just my thoughts stalking me? Or are they?

  I clamber to my feet with movements so slow I barely seem to move at all.

  My heart pounds.

  This is all in my head. This is all in my head. This is all in my head.

  But still, the beasts encroach.

  Growling, snapping, snarling. They keep coming. My thoughts or monsters, I cannot tell which.

  A flash of white fur to my right, swift as lightning. Loud as thunder as it growls and roars and yelps.

  A white wolf. The white wolf?

  Images flicker the canvas of my mind; bared teeth crunching down on bone and sinew.

  Eyes wide, I have nowhere to go. The beast has me in its sights, again, and it’s galloping toward me with impossible speed. Snow flickers up from its paws, saliva spits from its mouth. The surrounding wolves draw ever closer, my world ever smaller.

  If I am mad, none of this matters.

  If I am not, then I am as good as dead.

  The majestic white wolf launches through the air, over the circling wolves, pounding into my body.

  I scream as we tumble. The world spins, faster and faster as we plunge down the hill. Out of control in a fall that would have killed us both if not for the snow-laden slope. Pounding bodies and white fur and flesh. The paws grip me as we continue our plunge. The beast is no longer snarling. Instead, our faces lock as we plummet. It’s golden eyes, hungry. I’ve seen this look before. And nothing else matters now as the white world blurs.

  In my right hand, Grandma’s gutting knife. My fingers close around the handle tight. But my mind pauses.

  What if this is not a wolf?

  What if this is another, saving me from the beasts within my mind, saving me from my beastly thoughts? What if, in attempting to save myself from this fate—these thoughts—I kill again?

  But I feel the wolf’s musky breath on my face. Its fur in my clutches. My wound tingles beneath my skin. The knife feels ready. Surely this cannot be all in my mind? The fear grows. Survival instinct kicks in. The white wolf stares.

  I roar, and plunge the knife into its side.

  14

  It howls, short and sharp. Eyes staring into mine, the beast’s face, its fur, its shape is changing. Morphing. Reforming.

  I pull the knife from its side, and the blade sucks as if not wanting to let go of flesh. Warm blood trickles down the blade to cover my fingertips. I unfurl my fingers; the blade slips from my grip and I fear I have killed another as I did poor Kaya.

  The tumbling ceases with an abrupt thud as my back crashes into the plateau. I let out a groan, and although we are both motionless, the world still somehow spins on its axis. I can barely breathe, as if a single sound will break this spell. His face is so close to mine I can smell his spicy breath hot against my own. His hungry honey-amber eyes bore into my soul. He’s trembling, the entire weight of his quivering body warm against my own. I no longer feel fur in my hands but warm, soft skin.

  Did I ever feel the fur?

  “Are you okay?” Woolsey asks.

  My eyes widen. “Am I okay?” I ask, incredulous. “I just stabbed you and you’re asking if I’m okay?”

  My heart pounds on the verge of breaking. My mind swirls. I can barely breathe with the mass of confusion and craziness.

  “Shhh,” Woolsey whispers. “I’m okay, I promise, look.”

  With his warm hand atop of mine, he guides my touch across the contours of his lean, muscular body, and although covered in warm blood, there is no wound. I grasp at his exposed torso, feeling for something I know is not there—it remin
ds me of my own wound.

  “Shhh,” he whispers again. He takes exaggerated and purposely slow breaths, encouraging me with a nod to do the same.

  I watch his perfect lips move but cannot speak. Instead, I copy his breathing, trying to make sense of the insensible world playing in my mind. His arms are wrapped around me, and mine around him, where I once clutched white fur. Snow has caught on his long black eyelashes, a flush of red raised to his cheeks. He trails his fingers gently down my face, fingertips burning against my skin. They stop, and trace the contour of my lips, that I open, hungrily.

  He leans into me, I feel his lips brush against my own and I can’t fight the opposing desires from within. Breathless, I raise my hips and my lips to his own and…

  The curdling of Grandma’s blood stuck in her ravaged throat as she dies.

  The ice white fur of the attacking wolf. Hungry, amber eyes.

  The pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together.

  “You?” I growl. “It was you who killed Grandma, you bastard.”

  My hand fumbles in the snow as I grapple for the knife once more. It takes only half a breath to find it and plunge it into his body.

  He screams, grabbing my hand on the knife and pulling it out of his sliced skin. He snarls, and morphs, and growls, changing back into a wolf. And as he does, I watch the wound. I watch how it closes as his body changes. Watch how the skin knits together with the metamorphosis.

  And it makes sense.

  That’s why Woolsey had no wound after I stabbed him when attacking Grandma.

  They don’t take their wounds with them when they change.

  I think of Kaya. She was a wolf, no matter what the doctor believes. I can only assume I just didn’t give her the time to morph into a healthy new skin with my frenzied attack. And at this point, I don’t know if this fact makes me sad or glad.

  But Woolsey.

  I now know his secrets. His warnings. His appearances at strange time and places. He did know about my wound, regardless of the bandage. He knew because he made it.

  “I’ll kill you, you bastard, if it’s the last thing I do.”

  But he turns and gallops away into the firs and snow.

  I think back to the gun used to put Blaxton’s poor horse out of her misery—by a wolf attack probably carried out by Woolsey himself.

  Another fear creeps into my mind as I relive the animosity between Blaxton and Woolsey at Doctor Revel’s cabin. The loaded looks. The heavier silence. And I don’t know which I need more; to warn Blaxton of Woolsey’s wolfish ways, or to grab Blaxton’s gun and kill the beast myself.

  15

  By the time I reach the pathway to Blaxton’s cabin, all my fight has gone.

  My legs burn with fatigue, my body convulses with a coldness seeping deeper into my bones, and my lungs rasp in retaliation of the icy air. Though I am thankful the storm has ceased, the storm within still rages—all jagged edges grating upon my soul. I’m just too exhausted to allow it to surface.

  I clamber up the steps to his veranda, almost on hands and knees, and push at the door with what little strength I have left in my body. The door swings open with a squeal, the innards of his dwelling blue and cold in the hostile light.

  “Blaxton?” I call, my voice weak. “Blaxton?”

  Everything goes black.

  I must have fallen asleep—a beautiful dreamless sleep, for Blaxton has set me down by the empty hearth, smoothing my hair.

  “You’re freezing, my love.” He pulls off his wolf-skin jacket and places it over me, tucking it around my body so the fur tickles my chin.

  It feels warm. It feels right.

  “I’ll get the fire going…” his voice trails off and I can hear the concern in his unspoken words.

  My teeth chatter too much to reply, and so instead, I take pleasure in watching him begin the simple ritual of fire starting. A pile of dried leaves. A selection of brittle twigs and kindling. Small logs that will light easily. Flint and steel.

  In moments, there is a crackle and smoke smolders from the leaves, wafting with the aroma of pine and forest. A small amber light glows, getting bigger as each flame touches another. And I stare at Blaxton now, knowing this is how our love developed. A small flicker, growing with each touch, each kiss of burning passion. And yet, the flames have not engulfed us entirely—not yet. For I have been smothering the final flame. Saving my virtue.

  Wait for marriage. Passion will kill you. Love will keep you alive, that’s what Grandma used to say. And I wonder whose love kept her alive, and whose love killed her. I know nothing of my grandfather, or my father for that matter. I have no real knowledge of men at all other than they have only become alluring this past summer. One more than any other. But I do know one thing—Grandma needed no love from a man to keep her alive, and in some ways, I think she wished the same for me.

  But I am not her, nor my mother. And now, more than ever, I need to feel the touch of a true flame to sate the burning wilderness that has become my thoughts.

  Blaxton’s eyes squint as he watches me, and he holds his breath as if he is building up the courage to speak to me or is waiting for me to speak to him. To give him answers, because the last time he saw me, I ran away like a wild thing into the storm alone. And now, I realize with sudden clarity, I have returned, covered in blood.

  Again.

  It’s my turn to hold my breath, only imagining how this looks.

  Does he truly believe I have lost my senses?

  I want to look at my wound but I am too scared to draw attention to it. I want to tell him about Woolsey but I’m suddenly too worried about what he may say. How can he believe me? How can anyone believe me?

  I need a distraction, a reaction, to stop the crazy thoughts and imaginings for one fraction of a moment.

  Blaxton excuses himself and when he returns with bundles of blankets in his hold, I am staring at my arm.

  There is no wound, I hear the doctor say, yet, it is there, glimmering beneath the surface of my skin.

  Four Full Moons.

  Blaxton drops the blankets in a heap on the ground and sits with me, taking my arm in his hand. He kisses my fingers, the palm. His lips trail the soft underside of my arm from wrist to elbow where pale and unexposed skin sings at his touch. And he kisses what was once my wound. Each place the wolf’s fangs pierced. I squirm with unease. Exactly where the wounds were.

  Blaxton stops, aware of my sudden tenseness. “Shhh, Red. They have gone.”

  Yes, they have gone. Disappeared, sunk into my skin. Wait. “What has gone?” I quiz him.

  How would he know? I thought he had not seen the wounds. I thought they were only in my imagination and…

  “The hallucinations,” he says softly, his lips tracing a line to my shoulders, his breath hot now against my neck.

  I try to forget my swirling thoughts and my need to hang onto my memories, whether real or not. They felt real and I can’t stop wondering what this means for me.

  Let them go.

  They have gone.

  I clench my jaw. Yes, the hallucinations have gone, for now. The wounds have gone. Grandma and Kaya too. What happens when another blackout occurs? Will another one come to me like an unwanted haunting from a long gone friend?

  I shudder. But this time with bliss.

  Blaxton’s hands grasp at my thighs, my hips, hands tracing forbidden lines beneath my white night shift toward my heart. I am cold no more, but I am breathless.

  His tender hands turn into a strong embrace, pulling my body into him. And I allow him, melting into his skin. My fingers grasp at his sandy blond hair and we soften to the ground, the soft blankets surrounding us. He stops and stares at me, looking past my eyes and into my soul. A soundless ask for permission and, biting my lip, I nod.

  Yes, I want this. I want you.

  Without taking his honey eyes from my own, he pulls the slip up over my body, inch by inch. Each glimpse of skin revealed a delicate and terrifying exposure.

&nbs
p; “Are you sure?” he asks, breathless. Eyes wide, wandering over my body, he tries his hardest to keep eye contact, then shakes his head. Blaxton moves toward me, cupping my face in his hands. “You are beautiful,” he whispers. And in this moment, I believe him. And I want nothing else but him and I together. “I want to make you mine.”

  You can’t have her.

  It whispers in my mind and I want Grandma to shut up and leave me alone. Leave me alone and in peace for this one perfect moment.

  I pull at Blaxton’s homespun top, ripping it over his shoulders and head as he lays me down, his body atop mine. His skin is soft and warm and the fire crackles, flames stronger and hotter now. I feel like we, too, are flames—dancing with one another. Becoming one another as he parts my thighs that quiver with nervous excitement.

  “Are you sure you are ready?” he asks.

  And I am.

  I am.

  I am.

  I feel him and pull him toward me, deeper, running my hands down his back.

  I freeze.

  “Do you want me to stop?” Blaxton asks, pausing.

  And I say nothing, I just stare wide-eyed as a million thoughts and ideas flash through my mind.

  Tentatively, I run my hands down his back once more, feeling for the shape, the curve. And though I have not felt this before, I have seen the shape of this mark. I will never forget it.

  No!

  This can’t be… another hallucination?

  I squirm away from him, panicked.

  “Red?” he asks, concerned. I grab at the night slip and pull it over my exposed body, scrambling to my feet.

  He grabs his shirt on the ground.

  “No!” I scream, ripping it from his hands. “No, let me see.”

  I run around him yet he follows me, circling on the spot, a daze of confusion clouding his face.

  “Let me see,” I scream again.

  The door pounds open and he turns.

  And I see it.

  And I see Woolsey, storming through the door with murder on his face.