Лиза Смит - The Return - Nightfall

Something is going to happen tonight.

I can’t talk or write, and I don’t remember how to type on a keyboard very well, but I can send thoughts to Stefan and he can write them down. We don’t have any secrets from each other.

So this is my diary now. And…

This morning I woke up again. I woke up again! It was still summer outside, and everything was green. The daffodils in the garden are all in bloom. And I had visitors. I didn’t know exactly who they were, but three of them are strong, clear colors. I kissed them so I won’t forget them again.

The fourth one was different. I could only see a shattered color, laced with black. I had to use strong words of White Power to keep that one from bringing dark things into Stefan’s room.

I’m getting sleepy. I want to be with Stefan and feel him holding me. I love Stefan. I would give up anything to stay with him. He asks me, Even flying? Even flying, to be with him and keep him safe. Even anything, to keep him safe. Even my life.

Now I want to go to him.

Elena (And Stefan is sorry about writing in Elena’s new diary, but he has to say some things, because someday maybe she will want to read them, to remember. I’ve written down her thoughts in sentences, but they don’t come that way. They come as thought-fragments, I guess. Vampires are used to translating people’s everyday thoughts into coherent sentences, but Elena’s thoughts need more translation than most. Usually she thinks in bright pictures, with a scattered word or two.

The “fourth one” that she talks about is Caroline Forbes. Elena has known Caroline almost since babyhood, I think. What bewilders me is that today Caroline attacked her in almost every way imaginable, and yet when I search Elena’s mind I can’t find any feelings of anger or even any pain. It’s almost frightening to scan a mind like that.

The question I’d really like to answer is: What happened to Caroline during the short time she was kidnapped by Klaus and Tyler? And did she do what she did today of her own free will? Does some remnant of Klaus’s hatred still linger like miasma, tainting the air? Or do we have another enemy in Fell’s Church?

And most importantly, what do we do about it?

Stefan, who is being pulled from the computer

The clock’s old-fashioned hands showed three A.M. when Meredith was suddenly roused from a fitful sleep.

And then she bit her lip, stifling a scream. A face was bending over hers, upside down. The last thing she remembered was lying on her back in a sleeping bag, talking about Alaric with Bonnie.

Now Bonnie was bending over her, but with her face inverted and her eyes shut. She was kneeling at the head of Meredith’s pillow and her upside-down nose almost touched Meredith’s. Add to that an odd pallor in Bonnie’s cheeks and rapid warm breath that tickled Meredith’s forehead, and anyone — anyone, Meredith insisted to herself — would be entitled to a half-scream.

She waited for Bonnie to speak, staring in the gloom at those eerily closed eyes.

But instead, Bonnie sat up, stood, walked backward flawlessly to Meredith’s desk, where Meredith’s mobile lay charging, and picked it up. She must have turned it on for a video recording for she opened her mouth and began to gesture and speak.

It was terrifying. The sounds that came out of Bonnie’s mouth were all too identifiable: backward speech. The tangled, guttural or high-pitched noises all carried the cadence that horror movies had made so popular. But to be able to speak that way on purpose…it wasn’t possible for a normal human or a normal human mind. Meredith had an eerie sense of something trying to stretch its mind toward them, trying to reach them through unimaginable dimensions.

Maybe it lives backward, Meredith thought, trying to distract herself as the frightening sounds went on. Maybe it thinks we do. Maybe we just don’t — intersect….

Meredith didn’t think she could stand much more. She was beginning to imagine that she heard words, even phrases in the backward sounds, and none of them were pleasant. Please let it stop — now.

A wailing and mumbling…

Bonnie’s mouth shut with a clash of teeth. The sounds stopped instantly. And then, like a video being rolled back in slow motion, she walked backward to her sleeping bag, knelt, and back-crawled into it, lying down with her head on the pillow — all without opening her eyes to look where she was going.

It was one of the scariest things Meredith had ever seen or heard, and Meredith had seen and heard a fair amount of scary things.

And Meredith could no more have left that recording until morning than she could have flown — without assistance.

She got up, tiptoed to the desk, and took the mobile phone to the other room. There she attached it to her computer, where she could run the backward message forward.

When she’d listened to the message in reverse once or twice she decided that Bonnie must never hear it. It would frighten her out of her senses, and there would be no more contact with the paranormal for Elena’s friends.

There were animal sounds in there, mixed up with the twisted, backward voice…that wasn’t Bonnie’s voice in any way. It wasn’t any normal person’s voice. It almost sounded worse going forward than backward — which maybe meant that whatever being had spoken the words normally spoke the other way.

Meredith could make out human voices over the groaning and distorted laughter and the animal noises straight from the veldt. Though they made the hairs on her body stand up and tingle, she tried to put together the words in between the nonsense. Putting them together she got:

“Aaahhh…waggge…n…ing wuh illllilll…be…sud-ud-ud…den…ANDshhhh…ohhh…ging.YOOOOU …hand-and-nd…Iiii…mmmust…BEtherefore…herrr…aaahhh waggge…ning…Wewone…BEtherefor-or-or-or-r”—(was there a “herrr” next, or was it just part of the growling?)—“LADE…errrrrrrrrrrr…ahhn. Thaaass …FORRRRR…oththth…ERRR…handandnd…ssssssssss…t-t-todo….”

Meredith, working with pad and pen, eventually got these words on paper: Awakening will be sudden and shocking.

You and I must be there for her Awakening. We won’t be there for (her?) later on. That’s for other hands to do.

Meredith put the pen very precisely beside the deciphered message on the pad.

And after that Meredith went and lay hunched in her sleeping bag watching the unmoving Bonnie like a cat at a mouse hole, until, finally, blessed tiredness took her into the dark.

“I said what?” Bonnie was honestly bewildered the next morning, squeezing grapefruit juice and pouring cereal, like a model host, even if it was Meredith who was scrambling eggs at the stove.

“I’ve told you three times now. The words are not going to change, I promise.”

“Well,” Bonnie said, suddenly switching sides, “it’s clear that the Awakening is going to happen to Elena. Because, for one thing, you and I have to be there for it, and for another thing, she’s the one who needs to wake up.”

“Exactly,” said Meredith.

“She needs to remember who she really was.”

“Precisely,” said Meredith.

“And we’ve got to help her remember!”

“No!”said Meredith, taking out her anger on the eggs with a plastic spatula. “No, Bonnie, that’s not what you said, and I don’t think wecould do it anyway. We can teach her little things, maybe, the way Stefan has. How to tie her shoes. How to brush her hair. But from what you said, the Awakening is going to be shocking and sudden — and you didn’t say anything about us doing it. You only said that we have to be there for her, because after that, somehow wewon’t be there.”

Bonnie contemplated that in gloomy silence. “Won’t be there?” she said finally. “Like, won’t be with Elena? Or won’t be there, like…won’t be anywhere?”