Lights Out (Book 3): Front Lines

by Cal, Sarah

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Emma went back home and slammed the door closed behind her, then leaned back against it. Chase would probably stay outside working through his own demons before he made his way back home.

  But she was decided, and he wasn’t going to sway her.

  Well, she had her own doubts, but her demons were being mercilessly punched to fit her goal. She needed a new driving force, and if this was it, then she was going to run with it because to her, it was definitely worthwhile. The planning would give her a bit of a headache, but whatever. She could work with anything as long as she got to realize her goal.

  She sighed and slumped against the door.

  There were other things that needed her attention too, and she couldn’t afford to start dragging her feet now. But she really wished she could get some rest. Not the kind involving sleep, she couldn’t let herself sleep just yet. Somehow, she had to avoid getting nightmares, or they'd just mess her up further, and she needed to keep her head on straight for this if it was going to work at all.

  First thing, she went upstairs to look for her sister. They needed to talk about Janice at some point, preferably before her body started to rot and smell in the house. Even if they got rid of the smell, it would haunt her. They couldn’t give her anything elegant, but they had to stick to their means from now on.

  She got to her sister's door and knocked. She didn’t immediately go in like she usually did, instead waiting to see if Merry would let her in herself. After a moment, she sighed and leaned on the wall beside the door, knocking again.

  "Merry, it's me, Emma. Can I come in, please? We really need to talk."

  She waited and listened some more, but still nothing, and she sighed again. She turned so her back was against the wall and slid down into a crouch.

  How was she going to handle her sister? She was a little worried about going inside, wondering what she would find. Now that her anger had cooled down her mind a little, made things much clearer her emotions had sharpened as well. The emptiness was slowly making way for something other than fury, and she didn’t need that just then.

  But she couldn’t stand to watch her sister suffering either. Merry had already gone through that, and it had been a lot worse for her than the rest of them. Emma had felt discontent with her life, spending it looking after her family and giving up her own dreams, but Merry had done the same thing. She locked herself inside the house, gave up her friends and whatever future she'd been looking forward to. The demons she'd had to live with for a decade, Emma couldn’t even compare to how she was feeling right then.

  If she reacted as badly as the last time, how long would it take her to snap out of it? And how could Emma help her, all on her own with no experience with dealing with this sort of thing. Watching her sister fall apart would undo her, too.

  But she couldn’t just leave her alone, either. Her grandmother wouldn’t want her to do that, and neither would her parents. She firmed her determination, using it to push back the pain in her chest, and she stood up. She knocked on her sister's door again, and when she received no answer this time, she went inside.

  Emma found Merry sitting on her bed, with her back against the headboard and supported by a bunch of pillow, crying. She'd hoped to find her still asleep, and she would have waited for Merry to get up, but even though this was convenient she liked it less.

  Of course she was crying. Emma hadn't done more after she got Merry and Janice's body in the house, but she was just fighting the urge down, instead using it to feed her anger and need for revenge. But Merry still needed to let the grief out somehow, and people usually used tears for that. Emma just didn’t like crying a lot.

  "Are you all right?" Emma asked, feeling stupid for it the second the words were out of her mouth.

  She'd just been outside, and gotten mad at her neighbors for asking her the same thing. Why would she ask this of her already unstable sister? Merry sent a glare her way, and she couldn’t even complain because she totally deserved it.

  "Of course I'm not!" she snapped, her voice breaking on the words.

  If anything, Emma intruding and asking stupid questions seemed to only make her worse. Tears slid down faster, and she raised her hands to her hair, tugging it as she grimaced and made light whimpering sounds.

  Emma's heart was breaking just seeing Merry like this. The past times once they got home, she'd only cried silent tears. But this looked like it was getting close to her initial reaction. She went closer to her sister to offer what comfort she could, pulling her hands away from her hair. She combed her fingers gently through the dark strands, and her fingers passed through almost smoothly because Merry had actually paid attention to it just recently.

  She wondered about what to say as she soothed Merry's scalp. There were a lot of things she could say, plenty she probably think but was pretty sure she couldn’t. It was a little difficult, being the one in this potion.

  Because she had been a child when her parents died—because fifteen was a little older but still considered way too young—the people around her treated her as a child when they talked about anything to do with the accident. The nurses at the hospital, then later her grandmother once she was called in. then well-meaning wishers came after, but she hadn't appreciated any of it. They kept telling her things she didn’t want to hear, because they didn’t really help anything.

  She understood now, that there wasn’t really much that could be said for such situations. People apologized, because they didn’t know what else to say. Emma would have preferred they just didn’t say anything at all, but her sister wasn’t like that. Emma locked herself up in her mind and made people think she didn’t need comfort, but Merry had never been one to do that kind of thing.

  "Look," she started, her voice low. Then she stopped, wondering how to continue, before clearing her throat and continuing. "Merry... I know that it is a hard situation, but there's a way we can make things better."

  If Merry was anything like her, she would appreciate Emma's plan.

  "Nothing will ever be okay again," Merry claimed in a broken voice. "Our grandmother is dead, Emma. How could anything ever be okay when she's not here? It's just not fair. Why did she have to..."

  Her voice cut off as she grit her teeth and squeezed her eyes closed. She snapped them open a moment later. She probably saw what Emma did when she closed her eyes and wanted to escape from it. But for her, it would be a different angle—seeing someone running at her with a gun pointed at her, Janice jumping in front of her then crumpling to the ground.

  Of course, they'd both seen all the red, but Merry had been the one to feel all that warm blood soak her hands. Emma had gotten her hands dirty with blood in the previous attack on her street, but because she was running on anger and adrenaline, she'd only felt satisfaction. She could only imagine what Merry had felt, that the blood on her hands wasn’t that of an enemy, but of their beloved grandmother.

  "You're wrong, though," Emma murmured. "It just feels that way. And yeah, Merry, I do think I know how you feel, because I'm right there with you. You're not alone, okay? It's bad right now because it's too fresh. The pain might never fade, but you'll learn to live with it, as will I, like we both did last time."

  Merry looked at her with such devastation in her eyes that it felt like a punch to the chest. "But this isn’t like how Mom and Dad died Emma, not even close. She was right in front of me. If it hadn't been for me, she would still be alive."

  Emma opened her mouth to protest, only to be cut off by a slash of Merry's hand in the air.

  "No, Emma, it's true. It may not be entirely my fault, but I played a big part." Emma couldn’t say anything, so she kept her mouth shut. "I always blamed myself for their death too, you know?"

  Emma nodded. Merry had a bad feeling before the trip but failed to convince their parents to cancel the trip. After they died, she believed herself capable of seeing the future and making predictions, and that the feeling she had was what that was. In her
mind, they died because she knew something would happen but failed to stop it.

  Life was so cruel, to have something like this thrown in her face twice in a lifetime.

  "I know now I probably... was wrong about a lot of what I said. I did get a bad feeling about the trip, but it could have been anything, so it wasn’t as concrete. Then. This, though... she was right there, Emma. If she hadn't thrown her way in the way of that bullet, I would be the one dead right now."

  Emma didn’t like either option, really. She would have preferred they all survived, even if they had to do it injured.

  "But it was still her decision to make, Merry. She gave up her life for yours, because that was how much she cared. Just imagine how she would have felt if she was the one in your place? After how she lost mom, she wouldn’t have survived this if you were the one to die, not for long."

  Merry didn’t look convinced, and Emma sighed. She couldn't leave Merry like this. Her condition was delicate enough as it was, if it degenerated because of this...

  Emma hadn't been there for her sister last time. She had been the younger sister, of course, but she got comfort from other people and never thought to give any to her sister. Merry's mental health had gone down while Emma isolated herself from the first few months. Maybe, she had done something then, she wouldn’t have lost her sister for a decade, and she wasn’t going to lose the chance a second time.

  "If you want to think like that, Merry, then shouldn’t this be my fault?"

  Merry actually stopped crying and looked up at her, tears still coming from her eyes. "What do you mean?" she asked, her voice watery. "She jumped in front of me because—"

  Emma thumped her lightly on the forehead with a loose fist to catch her attention. Her sister looked up at her with widened eyes, looking shocked.

  "Think of it this way. The only reason Janice was even outside, is because of me."

  Her sister looked confused. "But I asked—" she complained.

  "And I shouldn’t have allowed it just for that reason," she countered. "I told you it was dangerous, that it wasn’t a game. And yet, I took you out anyway, knowing the risks. If it had just been you, things might have ended differently, but then Janice followed me outside—"

  "Because of our argument," Merry cut in. "Because I was stubborn, and selfish, I refused to listen when she tried to talk to me, that was why she followed me outside. If I hadn't taken out my anger on her, she would never have followed me outside."

  Emma watched as Merry started crying in earnest, now. She kept wiping at the tears that fell, but they were quickly replaced with more.

  "Listen, Merry. Even if the two of you argued, I made it my job to protect the two of you. That means from yours own stupidity as well." She took a deep, watery breath before taking one of Merry's hands and squeezing it between both of hers. "I could have done something about your argument, but I was selfish too, and I'm sorry. I was also angry at you, because of how you talked to me and grandma. I could have chosen to interfere, but I told grandma to let you cool down, and I didn’t try to talk you into reconciling like I should have, because I was focusing on other things. Janice was unhappy, I knew that, but I thought it would be enough for her if I spent more time with her."

  Emma stopped to swallow the lump in her throat. It was hard, admitting she was wrong, but this had to be done. She couldn’t let Merry take all the blame for this. It would be too cruel.

  "Look, I should have done something, but I chose not to because it was easier. I was focusing too much on our family's safety, and not thinking enough about your happiness, and I am really sorry for that, Merry. I'm sorry that I failed you."

  She didn’t mention how their mom and grandmother were having problems, too. She knew, unless she'd forgotten. Their grandmother had taken to caring for them, because she felt the need to apologize for being a poor parent to their mom. Emma still wasn’t sure what went on between them, but they had definitely been fighting a lot, the times Emma heard them together when they didn’t know that she could.

  It was almost ironic, how something so similar occurred a decade later. It probably had part to do with why she had been so stressed about their argument, too. She felt her daughter died with them angry at each other and didn’t want the same thing with her granddaughter, not with how unsure everything had gotten recently.

  As Merry fell apart crying again, Emma reached out her arms. Merry moved into them gratefully, ducking her head into Emma's shoulder and quickly soaking her shirt with tears. She rubbed Merry's back, carded her fingers through her hair. After some moments, she was calm enough for Emma to push her back a bit to look at her face.

  "Merry, did you take your tablets?"

  Merry remained quiet, and Emma sighed in exasperation. No wonder her sister was awake right then when Emma had left her sleeping maybe an hour before. She must have been woken up by a nightmare and just sat there. Emma would have preferred she get some proper sleep.

  "Could you please just take them?" she said persuasively. "You'll need to sleep sometime, and you're going to need those tablets. Frankly, I would want something like that just to escape from this nightmare. You should use them properly, don’t you think?"

  Merry didn’t say anything, but Emma took the lack of complaint as a good thing. She and her sister could talk things over properly, but only after she had some good amount of sleep.

  "She meant a lot to me, you know," Emma murmured. "Janice, I mean. I probably didn’t act like it much, but she really did mean a lot to me, Emma. I can't believe I never told her how much, and I'm only remembering it now."

  Emma was surprised Merry was opening up at all, but she stayed silent and listened. It was a rare thing for Merry to speak about how she felt. And if Emma had some idea, she could think of a better way to help her sister through her grief.

  "Janice was my rock after Mom and Dad died," she went on. "I felt like I couldn’t talk to anyone else for a long time—especially you, because you were so young when it happened."

  Well, technically, Merry had been young herself, too. She was only nineteen when it happened, being four years older, yet some people thought she should have taken it better, being the older child. Carol's sister, the person she'd gotten Merry's medicine from, had even said she would expect Emma to be the more messed up in a situation like that.

  How could so many people have thought she was an adult and expected her to take the news like one, just because she was nineteen and not fifteen. Emma ended up having it easier, but her way hadn't been healthier psychologically either. She isolated herself from people even more than she already did, and the lightest thing could make her crack. She hung on the edge of depression every time things got too bad, and she dealt with it by locking it all away. If she'd ever snapped, she probably would have come out a lot worse than Merry did.

  "And now, with Janice gone, I feel alone again, Emma. Why did she have to die?"

  Her voice, full of tears, made Emma's heart clench. She didn’t have an answer for her sister to do with that, but she really wanted to have it all. Because Merry didn’t sound like she was the older sister at all, even though she was nearing thirty. Emma felt like she hadn't matured a lot past her age, while Emma was forced to grow up way too early after what happened. The line between older and younger had been way too blurry since then.

  "You don’t have to worry so much, Merry," she said instead. "I promise that I'll always be here for you—even when things are at their worst. You're the only sister I have, you know? I lost Janice, too, but I don’t intend to lose you too, so just try to hang on. We need to stick together and destroy the people that killed Janice."

  Emma watched as Janice smiled for the first time in a long time. "That sounds perfect."

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Before they could deal with anything else, Janice's came first. It had to be dealt with, and soon, before they both got sidetracked by other things.

  They both knew what to do, the only thing they could do, really
. Neither of them wanted to think of it, but they had to, so they did. Emma took most of the responsibility to get some weight off Merry's shoulders, and of course Chase was there to lend them a hand.

  It was another whole day before either of them could walk into her bedroom. They didn’t want to leave it to Chase to deal with. Emma had covered her body when they brought her—it—inside, at least, so they didn’t have to look at it. They each said their goodbyes, before wrapping her body properly in her sheets.

  Emma would have preferred to give her better treatment. At least to change her out of her bloody clothes and clean her body, wrap her in clean sheets and not what her body had been lying in for nearly two days.

  But they didn’t have options, and Emma wasn’t willing to ask others for help to open any possible options. Janice knew a lot of people that would probably want a proper funeral, but this was just for Emma and Merry. She might have been friendly with a lot of people, but they were her family. Besides, they really should have done this a lot sooner than they did.

  Emma and Merry gathered together some of Janice’s belongings to have a funeral in the garden. It had taken a while before they even got to that point, so they intended to do it right. Merry had broken down crying again when she realized they'd have to bury their grandmother in a hole in their backyard, and Emma had even joined her a little.

  Chase was outside, digging a hole where they could bury Janice. Emma would have done it herself, or at least helped, but when she'd gone to do it, Chase stopped her and insisted on doing it all by himself instead. He told her to just focus on her sister and leave the heavy work to him.

  Well, she hadn't exactly been taking proper care of herself since her grandmother's death. She wasn’t sure she could have handled it for much, either way, but she would have tried if it killed her, because Janice deserved at least that much after everything they'd done for them. She only gave in, because he'd given her the idea to do this with Merry.