The Risen (Book 4): Courage

by Marie F. Crow

  Every step we take is mirrored by the Risen that follow us. Their legs twist with their movements to defy muscle commands following us in disjointed steps as if their lower body is disconnected from their spines. Their heads cock to each side in drawn out actions to avoid having to move their eyes. They have spread around us again in the few seconds we took to collect ourselves.

  I hear Marxx sigh seeing that they are not going to rush us, but wait for us to wear out and bringing ourselves down. “If I run, they will follow me,” Marxx says. His voice is so filled with grief and exhaustion that my mind fights to hold onto any last thoughts of making it.

  “If you run, I’ll follow.” I tell him, shaking my head as Mother Nature kisses my face with her swirling snow. Even she is starting to accept the inevitable. “No more hero bullshit, remember?”

  “They aren’t going to rush us, Sweetheart. They are just waiting for us to fall.”

  “Then your ass had best stay on your feet.”

  Marxx chuckles, tripping due to his exhaustion and it cause the ones closest to him to open their eyes wide with excitement. Their voices rise with the hopes of this standoff ending. My legs threaten to give way and I have to focus on each step we take. My feet feel as if they are weighted, dragging instead of lifting with my sideways path to the vibrating window.

  How many have we lost? How many are now around me lining the pathway with their spilled entrails and blood? The question brings my eyes to stare into the landscape around me. I watch as fists are punching into bodies, ripping pieces from the torn flesh. I see the many mouths that are dripping with blood as they chew from limbs that have been severed. Ashes from the burning fire whirl around me with the winter wind casting them in different directions. A light snowfall is dusting the same wind heavier than the ashes that battle against the pure white perfections. There, in the backdrop is Lilly in her white nightgown she loved. The same nightgown she wears when she haunts me.

  I watch as she runs with a smile on her face across the spans of the courtyard. Her ghostly feet leave no tracks in the thin layer of snow. She runs, spinning and reaching for the winter flakes with tiny hands that used to hold mine. She turns to me, her blue eyes glowing with the joy of youth and reaches for me. Her hand pulls on my tired soul like a familiar handshake and I want to go to her.

  “Helena,” she calls to me. “Helena, come on.” Her bell-like voice still holds the power to make me smile.

  “Helena,” her mouth moves with my name, but it is coming from behind me. “Helena, come on!” My shoulders shake with a rough hand that pulls at me. It’s pulling me in the wrong direction. Lilly is in front of me, not behind me.

  “Helena!” It’s Marxx who is shouting my name and not the bell-like innocence of a five-year-old that I crave to answer. “Keep moving!”

  Marxx’ shouting has excited the one he has turned his back on. It lunges now, seeing an opportunity that was denied to him before. The weight of the attack takes Marxx to his knees beside me. It pulls me off balance and I land with one knee colliding into the cement. I turn to pull the attacker from his back, exposing my own.

  I realize my mistake too late. Hands are upon me before I can brace for them. They force me onto my back, bending my body backwards with my legs still stuck underneath me. I watch as the first face comes into view. I can hear Marxx screaming in pain just a few inches from me and I close my eyes to hide from Death. Just one last breath and I wait for it all to end. I wait for the pain that will free me from it all. The smell of their baby shampoo blocks out the scent of blood that clings to me after being surrounded by it for so long. The sounds of their laughter fills my ears, saving me from having to listen to Marxx’ screaming death.

  I can feel their hands pulling at me, trying to drag me in different directions like wild dogs fighting for their food. The first set of teeth bites into my shoulder, worrying the joint with tiny piercing blades, trying to tear through the winter coat. The pain tears a scream from my lungs. The feel of my blood from the reopened wound on my arm is warm, and it washes over me, stealing my breath, choking the screams in my throat. Sharp nails rake across my chest trying to tear away the layers of clothing like the peelings of fruit to expose the juice-filled pulp.

  The winter coat is delaying their destruction and they become demented with the distraction. Their hands tear through the lining and its inner shell of padding with a frenzy, jerking my body with their desperation to feed. My legs are trapped underneath me. My arms are dead weights with fatigue. Not even the adrenalin that propels my heart into erratic rhythm can stimulate my body now. I am being forced to watch them find their way to my candy-red center because they are not content with the meat on my arms or the font of my neck. They want the sweet meat of my core. How many licks does it take to get to the center of one’s spleen? I guess I am about to find out.

  I close my eyes and scream. I scream into the wind and the snow that caresses me. I scream along with the man that lies somewhere near me, enduring the same death. I scream because there is nothing else I can do. I am screaming so loud that I don’t hear the car horn at first. I don’t notice how their hands have stopped, prolonging my death even longer and preventing my escape.

  Feet rush towards me. Voices float over the thin strand left of my sanity as Lilly’s and Conroy’s laughter fills the darkness of my mind. Ashley’s shadow shrouds my purgatory as her voice whispers into my ear, “Not yet. No, not yet. One more time.” as I feel my face splashed with thick wetness. I gasp with it, opening my eyes to squint against the sun. The shadow of a dark shape stands over me. I watch the outline kneel to me and a female voice says with laughter, “God is on your side today.”

  “There is no fucking God.” I laugh with my bitterness and watch as the dark outline expands, filling my whole vision with the growing shadow. I let the darkness take me. I let it all go. It’s not children’s laughter I hear now as my eyes flutter close. It’s the Devil’s. J.D. is laughing and I laugh right along with him.

  CHAPTER 12

  The grass underneath me is beautiful. The deep jades and emeralds of the greens blanket the ground and the trees stand envious with their foliage of budding flowers. The grass blades are warm from the summer sun and bend around my bare feet, climbing into the spaces left between my toes as I walk to the many children in blinding, white clothing. They play with brightly colored inflated balls that soar into the air around them before being caught with fits of giggles. Their laughter is contagious and I find myself joining in their game as a bystander. I clap for the boys who toss the vivid balls between each other and laugh with the girls who manage to “steal” those same toys with mischievous charm. They chase one another around with false anger and playful motives just as if they were back on the school’s playground.

  “They look happy,” Marxx says, standing beside me with a genuine smile. He is without his vest or frowns, taking years and the hardened edge from his appearance. Seeing him widens my smile and I take his hand in mine as we watch the children play. “You look happy,” he tells me, returning my smile.

  “When was the last time you laughed like that?” I ask him, my eyes roaming the children with my twist of sad thoughts.

  “It hasn’t always been so bad.”

  “It hasn’t always been so good.”

  He pulls on my hand and I follow the motion to stand facing him. His eyes stare at me with confusion and pity. He tells me, “It’s not about the bad, Helena. You always cling to the worst, letting it over shadow any hope or good. When you look at the world, you don’t see the sunshine. You cling to the rain. You think that makes you strong. You think this obsession of yours with the dark will spare you any misery. The truth is, Sweetheart, you cause your misery. You cling to it. You have to learn to let it go. Whatever it is you think you are hiding from, it won’t go away until you let it go.”

  I look back to the children playing so innocently with their laughter and ignorance of suffering. “Marxx, you have no idea.” I watch a girl’s
red pigtails hover in the air weightless as she spins in circles. She is dressed in the same white dress as her friends and it expands around her ankles as she spins. Conroy had called her Margaret. To me, she is the embodiment of my sins.

  “You killed them.” Marxx whispers it to me like a sinner exposed. He’s right. I am.

  “I had to.”

  “Did you?”

  “It’s not my fault. They would have killed me. They killed Ashley. They had Conroy.” I am whispering, confessing the transgression like a sacrament my heart has repeated every day since it happened.

  “…and what of Lilly? Where is Lilly, Helena?”

  “Carol killed her.”

  “Where is Carol?’

  “I killed her.”

  “You killed them all. If you hadn’t been running late, you might have been able to be there to stop it. You know that.”

  My heart is punctured with the words I have not been strong enough to string together. The same words which Marxx now tortures me with.

  He continues his torment, “You were with Lawless and Aimes, avoiding having to return to those kids. The kids having somehow become your responsibility by parents who hated you.” He pulls me to his chest, and forces me to look at his face as it fills with rage. “It was never really about Leslie. You needed a reason to hate him because you hated yourself. You blame them both for your failures. You let them take the fall for what you couldn’t face. It was so easy to crawl into that little hole of self-pity when the world was convinced you were the wronged, but you were really the culprit. You let them all die. Here, to think you labeled Aimes as the traitor when it was you. It’s always been you, bitch!” He is screaming at me. He is screaming the words I have hidden from in my mind. The very words that whisper to me when the sun’s warmth is gone and the dark of the lonely night forces you to face the many truths of your life.

  “I didn’t know…” My voice cradles the guilt and anguish that is as familiar to me as my shadow and it follows me just as closely.

  “If you had, would you have gone home? If you had known what was waiting for you, would have gone to those kids? Would those children be dead now or would they still be alive? Or, would you have stolen those few more hours with Lawless, letting them all fall to your weakness?” He is whispering to me now, daring me to finally see into the cavernous hole of myself.

  My jaw hangs open with the truth I am too ashamed to admit; my secrets that have been the catalyst for it all. I have thought my biggest failure was not saving them, but it wasn’t. My biggest failure was not wanting to and I finally claim it. “No,” I say aloud, letting my secret fly like a caged bird that has been living behind bars for too long. “No.” My body sags with it finally being free.

  Marxx lets me fall with disgust plain on his face and it shatters my already bleeding heart. Like the red glitter I had left in Carol’s hair, the tiny shards of what is left of my heart are now cutting me even deeper with my shame.

  I never wanted any of it. I never wanted to have to save them and if I could do it all over again, I would never return to that house to find them. I would have never started this journey, this trial by death and fire.

  I fall to the ground and the greens darken around me. The blades of grass become like razors as I fall, slicing my legs and feet. The ground is so covered in blood that the red from it splashes onto my hands and arms. It sprinkles onto my face, burning me with molten warmth when I fall. I lift my hands to stare at them. I watch the blood climb, covering me in it like a living thing. The blood climbs up my body inch by inch coating me in red death.

  “You’re wrong, Helena. It is your fault and their blood will forever be on your hands.” Marxx stands over me with the same look of disgust, but now it is mixed with a hatred that burns hotter than the blood on my body.

  I hold my hands up to him, pleading for his forgiveness with shoulder-shaking sobs. The blood drips from my arms, keeping vigil for each life I have taken. The children now stand around me. Their white clothing is dotted with the blood they have splashed through to find me. They are not the monsters that I killed. They never were. They were just children. They were never really dead and now they stand around me with judgment on their faces. As I watch, wounds form on them that bleed like scarlet letters of my shame. I watch each stab I have placed on them form, adding more blood to the ground at their feet as it runs down their perfect legs and arms. It destroys the innocence of their glowing white clothes just as I destroyed the innocence of their glowing youths.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whisper it, too weak with shame and sorrow to add any volume to my voice.

  “Where is my mommy?” One asks me.

  “I want my daddy!” One little girl cries out.

  “When can we go home?” A little boy asks.

  They fill the air with their innocent questions as each begins to cry and plead for help. Marxx turns to leave me, giving me his back to face my sins alone.

  “Marxx!” I scream, begging for him to stay with me. Begging him to, but I know he won’t. “Marxx…” I fill my lungs with his name over and over, but he never turns around. He never looks back at me as the children bleed around me with their white clothes becoming as ruined as I made them months ago.

  “Marxx!” I scream again and my eyes are blinded by a bright overhead light. I blink against the glare, pulling the room into focus through the tears that give it haze.

  “What?” His gruff voice comes from beside me and I am almost too afraid to turn my head. He is sitting on the examining table looking at me with confusion and amusement. His arm is suspended in a sling and butterfly bandages cover a raw, red line on his forehead. I sit up, looking at my hands as if they are not my own. I flip them from palm-to-top several times as my brain catches up to what has happened. My winter coat has been removed along with the vest I have claimed as my own. The shirt I wore over my tank top is missing. With just the tank top and jeans, and my now trademark scuffed boots, the room is chilling.

  My shoulder is an uneven ring of shading from the bruising that has started. My arm bears testimony to Chapel’s earlier suggestion for stitches. My stomach stings and lifting the tank top I see the crisscrossing of lines that look like fine paper cuts, but I am alive. I am alive and not on a grassy field with children bleeding from their death; deaths that I caused.

  “It was just a dream. You were there and - ” I close my mouth against the nightmare, letting the sleeping demons lie.

  “Yeah, he was there, I was there and a lion was there. Time to wake up, Dorothy. You’re back in South Carolina.” Rhett’s voice cuts through my confusion with a welcoming hug. He grips me tight and says, “Thought you were told to get back here. When are you going to listen?”

  “Not my strong point,” I say to him with a smile. “Law and Chapel?” I ask, not seeing them in the room.

  “With the crazies.” He rubs the top of my head roughly and turns to leave, holding the door to the adjoining room open as he waits for Marxx and myself. He stares at me and leaves the things he wants to say in his eyes. His eyes tell me how I scared him. They speak of the thoughts he was enduring as he watched us through the window. His trembling hand shows how bad he wants to hold me, but whatever is waiting for the three of us through that door is preventing him from showing any of it.

  “I thought you were the crazy one?” I ask him, pausing before going through the doorway.

  “Different kind of crazy.” Rhett lets his voice drop low while his smile reaches high. Grinning Riders In Torment, that is what they call themselves because sometimes all you can do is grin when the pain is too great when there is nothing else to be done. Rhett does that now. He grins at me and lets the imagined laughter cover over his true emotions.

  “Where is Aimes?” I ask, trying to delay having to face the unknown.

  Rhett nods with his head into the room I am stalling from facing. “Being prayed over.”

  “… by Chapel?”

  Marxx exhales behind me placing his h
and on my shoulder to guide me through the door. The memory of the nightmare is still too close to the surface and I flinch without meaning to. He drops his hand and puts on his mask refusing to let the sting of my action show.

  “Not Chapel. Now move.” Marxx falls back to his limited vocabulary and blank eyes and shoves me forward.

  The large sports medicine room of the gym is filled with faces that make my chest ache with gratitude. Lawless meets me half way and we hold on to each other as if it has been years since we were allowed to touch. We embrace as if years have kept me from his arms instead of a few hours, and if today had gone differently, it might have been true.

  He is showered and wearing new clothes since he had commanded me to leave him. His skin smells of the gym’s soap and the scent enfolds me as I cradle into the space of his neck and shoulder. I ignore the warnings of pain and cling to him, not letting even air come between our bodies. His warmth and his scent engulf me and it’s the first real touch of his comfort I have had all day. It brings tears to my eyes that I blink to deny.

  I stare over his shoulder into a room where people are waiting with nervous anxiety. Simon is to one side with Richard and Dolph. Dolph stares at his feet to avoid watching Lawless and I, and he is not the only one in the room who is not thrilled with our reunion.

  Leslie leans against the wall somewhere between the middle of their group and ours with a space left between her and Rhett. I know who filled that space. It is empty because he is now in my arms and I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my lips. Petty? Maybe.

  Chapel is standing in the center of the room with Paula. They are keeping watch on Aimes who still sleeps with her coloring a pale imitation of her natural skin tone. In the middle of it all, stands a man and a woman who’s smiles at first strike me as venomous. The woman stands watching us with clasped hands to her face as if praying in front of curved lips. The man is older than her. His hair is more salt than pepper, and the two-toned combination hints of his age. The wrinkles at the corners of his eyes along with his smile emphasize it even more. Something about them both makes me subconsciously pull closer to Law. It must have shown in my eyes.