A single knock at the door woke him from sleep.
“Dakota,” Jessiah whispered. “Dakota.”
Dakota rolled out of bed and opened the door.
“I want you to come with me,” Jessiah said, before Dakota could even speak. “I need to show you something.”
“Show me what?” Dakota asked, taking a moment to examine the boy’s red eyes and his hollow cheeks. “You don’t look good at all.”
“I feel like shit. Come on.”
“Give me a minute.”
Closing the door, Dakota made his way over to the bed, grabbed his shoes and pulled them onto his feet. He took a moment to look at Jamie and reconsider his actions before he left the room and started down the stairs, following close behind the younger boy’s heels.
Should I go alone with him?
Though he could easily understand the younger boys’ childish excitement of having new and possibly-exciting people in the house, he couldn’t fathom why Jessiah, a boy only one year younger than him, would want the attention.
Maybe he’s lonely.
Regardless, his unease at the young man’s quickly-deteriorating condition didn’t put him in any heightened frame of mind. If anything, it made him all the more uncomfortable being around him.
Maybe you’re just overthinking this, he thought as Jessiah opened the front door. Maybe he really does have bronchitis, like he said he did.
Jessiah coughed. Dakota froze. “You coming?” the younger man asked.
Dakota stepped out of the doorway as Jessiah shut the door behind them “Where are we going?” Dakota asked.
“Out to the barn.”
“What do you want to show me?”
“You’ll see.”
The hairs on Dakota’s neck stood on end. It was like something had just taken its finger and drawn it slightly over the skin, just high enough to where he could barely feel the sensation of being touched. He took a moment to consider the fact that it could have been the wind or just his imagination playing tricks on him, but after a moment, he stopped in place and refused to move any further.
He just wants to show you something. He watched the boy continue to make his way across his field. He’s sick and probably losing his mind from not having anyone his own age to talk to.
Jessiah stopped moving.
Dakota swallowed a lump in his throat.
“Are you coming?” the younger boy asked.
“How do I know you’re not going to hurt me?”
“You think I could hurt you?” Jessiah laughed, turning, the effects of sickness more than clear on his face in the paling light. “You’re joking, right?”
“Why won’t you tell me what we’re going to see?”
“Why won’t you tell me about you and Jamie?”
It’s always obvious, something said, when you’re trying to hide the thing that can hurt you the most.
“What?” Dakota asked, a laugh escaping his chest.
“Just because Dad’s too stupid to see it doesn’t mean I can’t.”
“What’re you talking about?”
“I know what’s going on, Dakota. I know you and Jamie are more than friends.”
The same finger that had graced his neck moments before returned, this time complete with its fellows. Five individual fingers waltzed up his neck and slid into his hair before encapsulating the base of his scalp within their palm. The tips of each finger stroked his head as though they were his mother and he were her child, a bad boy sulking after he’d just been punished for doing something wrong.
“I don’t understand,” Dakota said. “What do you mean?”
“You reach to hold each other’s hands, then stop before you do it; you look at each other differently than how two normal guy friends would; you’re almost always too close for comfort.”
“What are you getting at?” Dakota asked. “What’s the big deal?”
“That’s what the people who came here before you asked, when they tried to steal a few cans of food before they left. ‘What’s the big deal if we take a few cans of food? It’s only a few.’ That’s what she said. Dad shot the bitch in the face when her boyfriend pulled a knife and pointed it at my little brother.”
With nothing to say in response, Dakota let the breath he’d been holding escape his chest and allowed his hands to ball into fists at his side. It took more strength than he imagined to keep himself from shaking.
“You still coming?” Jessiah asked, turning to start toward the barn.
“What if I don’t?”
“I’ll tell Dad. He probably won’t shoot you, but he’ll sure as hell kick you out. He doesn’t like it when people keep secrets from them, especially when those secrets can turn out to be bigger things.”
Dakota said nothing. He simply started forward and continued on toward the barn.
“I need you to listen to me before I do this,” Jessiah said, turning to look Dakota straight in the eye.
“Ok.”
“Whatever you do, don’t make any loud, sudden noises. Keep your hands away from the stall and don’t get any closer than you have to. She may be blind, but she can still hear your footsteps.”
She?
Jessiah narrowed his eyes, waiting for a response. Nodding in acknowledgement, Dakota steadied his posture and allowed himself a deep breath before the younger man stepped forward and undid the two latches that made up the top half of the stall door.
“Quiet,” Jessiah warned.
The young man pulled the door open.
Dakota braced himself for what he might see.
Does Death hide in dark places, or is He all around us?
Darkness shrouded the inside of the stall.
“Diana,” Jessiah whispered. “Come out.”
A flicker of movement shifted inside the hollow, dark place.
When the thing known as Diana stepped forward, revealing herself to the world in brutal, ugly detail, Dakota felt as though the last shroud of innocence had faded from the world like a moth slowly dying once caught in a candle’s flame.
“What is she?” Dakota asked.
“My horse.”
Her face had lost most of its beauty during the undetermined amount of time she’d been locked in her stall. She would have been beautiful during her life, glorious in the face of creation and remarkable in the aspect of pride. Sterling, they would have said, a creature marked for her soft white fur and her gorgeous black locks. Death had not treated her kindly, though he had spared her mercy. Her eyes were no longer existent, long-since gone into the back of her head, and her nostrils had dried out and resembled nothing more than cracked paint on a dirty wall. Perhaps the most ominous of her features, however, were her lips. Bloated, drawn away from her teeth to reveal porcelain-white bone tipped with flecks of grey, she appeared to be a fly poised at the funeral of her feast, her lips puckering and retracting in the shadows of her glorious night.
While looking at her, heart trembling and eyes slowly beginning to weep, Dakota felt sorrowful. Just the sight of such a beautiful creature ravaged in undeath was enough to force tears from his eyes. “What happened?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Jessiah said. “I thought she was sick, so I brought her into the stall the first day we came up here and tried to get her to go inside. She wouldn’t cooperate with me, so I thought something was wrong. I’ve had her since I was thirteen and thought I knew everything about her. It turns out that I didn’t know she’d died and come back to life sometime before we got here.”
“She bit you, didn’t she?”
Jessiah popped the first few buttons on his flannel shirt and parted its collar, revealing a slowly-blackening bite on his shoulder.