Kate Brian - Endless

“Roreeeee…” Krista called out. Sweat had pooled between our palms and turned to ice.

“Don’t worry. Everything is gonna be fine.”

This was for my family. This was for my dad and Darcy and Aaron. As much as I hated to think of him at that moment, I closed my eyes and conjured up a picture of Steven Nell, gasping and sputtering as he took his very last breaths. I held my own breath and whispered, “I took another person’s life.”

There was a loud bang, like the sound of a dump truck lowering its metal lift to the ground without care. The bridge beneath us shook. Krista somehow tightened her grip on me, squeezing my fingers until I thought my hand would shatter. The mist in front of us started to move, haphazardly at first, like smoke being waved off a fire, but it quickly organized itself into a vortex, swirling before us like a sideways tornado opening its mouth. We stood there, but we felt no wind.

I was staring at an endless depth of blackness, darker than anything I’d seen on Earth, and I was sure that I had been duped. I was certain that at any second, something cold and gray and slimy was going to reach out and grab me and Krista and drag us into hell.

She was going to spend eternity suffering in the Shadowlands, and it was my fault.

“Krista,” I said through my teeth. “Run.”

“What?” she whined.

I was about to turn and push her as hard as I could back into the mist, but then—right then—I heard her. Her voice was so close she couldn’t have been more than two feet away.

“Rory! You came!”

“Darcy!”

I reached into the darkness—reached toward the voice—and my fingers found cloth. A sleeve. I dug my fingernails into it as hard as I could and pulled. I had her. I had Darcy. Then the person I was clinging to appeared, and it wasn’t Darcy.

It was Steven Nell.

He looked exactly the same as he had the last time I’d seen him. The stringy dark hair falling over his forehead. The thick glasses perched on his nose. The cruel smile on his thin, pale lips.

Suddenly time stopped. I felt the blade of his knife in my stomach as if it had just happened. Saw the blood in my sister’s hair. My father’s body crumbling to the ground. It was as if every nightmare I’d had for the past month was suddenly coming to life in vivid, horrifying, excruciating detail.

“Rory Miller,” he said gleefully. “You’ve come home.”

Suddenly I knew. He wanted to do it again. He was going to do it again. He was going to murder us, slaughter us, over and over and over again for as long as the universe existed. Until the end of time. He was looking forward to it.

I let go of him and ran. Right into Krista.

She looked up at me, her blue eyes dark with rage.

“Krista?” I whispered.

“Welcome to the Shadowlands, Rory.”

Then she shoved me with a strength I never would have imagined she had in her, right into Steven Nell’s waiting arms.

I stared at Krista, feeling Steven Nell’s awful breath warming the back of my neck. She was the accomplice? It wasn’t possible. She was my friend. My best friend. I’d treated her like a sister, and she had done the same for me. How could she have done this? How could she have tried to pin everything on me, dragged my family to the Shadowlands, plotted behind our backs, and lied to our faces?

Krista smoothed her wet hair back from her face and lifted her chin as she stared me down. But she was still Krista. Still a sweet, pretty girl who wanted nothing more than to be everyone’s friend.

Wasn’t she?

“I can’t just take her. You know that,” Steven Nell said, his watery eyes flicking over Krista like she was beneath his notice. “Rory Miller must come willingly.”

He held his right arm around my middle like a vise, my back against his torso, and reached up to run his frigid, dry knuckles down my cheek. I could feel the random stubble on his chin pinching my skull through my hair as my head rubbed up against it. Bile rose up in the back of my throat. I squirmed, trying to wrench away from him, but he was strong. So much stronger than he’d been in life.

“Krista?” I said, pulse pounding furiously in my veins. Every inch of my body trembled, which pissed me off. I hated showing fear in front of Nell. “What the hell is going on?”

From the corner of my eye, I saw something shift in the darkness. A whisper of a figure. My father? Darcy? Could I still save them?

“I just want to go home,” Krista said simply. “I don’t belong here.”

“That’s what this is about?” I demanded. “You getting to go to your damn prom?”

“Don’t you get it, Rory? I wasn’t supposed to die,” Krista snapped, bending at the waist. “You know it. I know it. And that night I brought Steven Nell up here, he told me the universe knew it, too. That it upsets the balance when someone takes their life by mistake. So he made me an offer. He wanted you for his eternal pet, but the Shadowlands won’t just take a goody-goody Lifer like you unless you come willingly. And he knew how to make that happen.”

“What about Darcy? She didn’t come willingly,” I said.

Krista smirked. “You forget: She wasn’t a Lifer yet. Not officially.”

“You’re insane,” I said, shaking my head, trying to pull away as Nell stroked my hair. “There’s nothing that could make me sign up for an eternity with him.”

“Oh, I think you will,” Nell said lightly.

He lifted a lock of my hair and slowly drew it under his nose, sniffing it. A disgusting shudder of sheer pleasure rocked his entire body before he reverently touched it to his lips. My bottom lip wobbled and I closed my eyes, trying not to give Nell the satisfaction of hearing me sob.

“He gave me the tainted coins. He told me that if I ushered eighteen souls to the Shadowlands, including your little family”—Krista spat the word as if it had singed her tongue—“I could have what I wanted. I could have my life back. I got Pete to help me because I knew I couldn’t overpower those people alone. Told him the Shadowlands would repay him for his hard work, too.”

“What did you promise him?” I bit out.

“He wanted to see his brother again. Kid died when Pete was only eight years old. So I told him he could go to the Light and see him.” Krista shrugged.

“And I’m guessing you never intended to deliver on that promise.”

Krista smirked. “How could I? I’m just little old me. Little old persuasive me. It was just too bad Cori followed me, when I went to meet up with Pete that night after he ‘disappeared,’ and overheard us together. It really sucked, having to push her off that cliff.”

My throat burned, and tears stung my eyes. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Couldn’t believe it was coming from Krista Parrish’s mouth.

“Why eighteen souls?” I asked. “Why take my family?”

“Because he knew if I did that, he’d be able to cut another deal. With you.”

I swallowed hard. My scalp tingled every time Nell’s fingernails brushed my hair. “What?” I asked. “What deal?”

Krista took a step forward. Her eyes looked dead as she tilted her chin and got right in my face. “Your eternal soul for theirs.”

My heart free-fell into my stomach. Nell started to laugh. I felt the breath of it against my ear. His scrawny body shook from the force of it, jarring against mine in fits and starts. I turned my head to gaze into the endless black. My family was in there somewhere, and I was the only one who could save them.

As long as I sacrificed myself.

Not that it was even a choice. Was there any way I could ever choose myself over them? They wouldn’t even be dead if it weren’t for me. If I hadn’t gotten away from Nell that day in the woods, Darcy and Dad would still be alive. They’d be sad without me, sure, but they’d be alive and they’d move on. Instead, their lives were over and they’d just logged a few days in hell to boot, thanks to little old me.