“Does your dad know about this?”
“Dad doesn’t know anything,” Jessiah said.
“You’re putting your family in danger.”
“She bit me nearly two months ago. She doesn’t have what they have.”
“What are you saying?”
“It’s…it’s not whatever makes them come back.”
“You’re saying this is something different?”
“It has to be. It doesn’t affect animals. Nothing has brought the animals back to life. I should be dead by now.”
“Is this the reason you’re so sick?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was healing, Dakota. I’ve been treating it since I got bit and it looked like it was getting better. Then the skin started to turn black and I got this weird chest cough…my god. It hurts so fucking much.”
“It’s ok,” Dakota said, stepping forward. “You’re gonna get better.”
“Don’t touch me!” Jessiah cried, pushing Dakota back when he came too close. “Don’t touch me, Dakota. I don’t know what’s happening to me. I don’t want to die!”
“You’re not gonna die,” Dakota said. “Don’t think that.”
“It’s kind of hard to believe when you look that,” Jessiah said, pointing. Dakota turned his head. Diana’s nostrils flared at the sound of his breath passing from his lips. “You better go, Dakota. Someone’s gonna get suspicious if we’re both gone.”
“What about you?”
“They’ll just think I’m out smoking. Besides, I need a moment alone.”
Unsure what else to say or how else to comfort the younger man, Dakota turned and made his way out of the barn, but not without taking one last look back at Jessiah and the dead creature that had once brought the young man happiness.
Upon returning to the cabin, Dakota crept through the front door, took his shoes off, and made his way up the stairs, all the while cursing the wood beneath him and its seemingly-endless protest against him. It was as though they were alive and trying to scream the secret that so desperately wanted to be told, but couldn’t because it was trapped beneath the floorboards.
For a brief moment, Dakota entertained the notion that it was ghosts underneath the stairs making all the racket.
Help us, they said. We want them to know the truth.
When the image became too powerful in his brain, he shook his head and pushed open the door to the spare bedroom. It took less than a minute for him to crawl into bed and curl up alongside Jamie.
“Hmm?” Jamie murmured.
“Nothing,” Dakota whispered, turning his head up to look at the man. “Go back to sleep.”
Jamie’s featured softened almost immediately.
He didn’t hear me come back in.
Then again, there was always the distinct possibility that Jamie could have heard him leave earlier. Dakota didn’t dwell on it though. His thoughts kept returning to the barn, to that cold, dark place festering within the slowly-rotting structure and the morbid creature inside it.
She may be blind, but she can still hear your footsteps.
Could the dead understand that you were there? Could they, when physically materialized but emotionally gone, sense your feelings, your doubts, your fears? They said that ghosts lingered in places strong in power, but could they truly inhabit the dead once spiritually gone from the world?
“Do they?” he whispered into the room. “Do they even…?”
Though he didn’t finish his sentence in the hopes that the thought would not occur to him, it came anyway, drawn to his doubt like blind insects on a dark, lonely night.
Do they even have souls?
Shivering, unnerved at the prospect that the dead were nothing more than dry husks, he drew up against Jamie’s side and tried to block his mind from any further assaulting thoughts, but was almost immediately targeted by his own aggressive emotions. The next thought to occur to him shook him even more, forcing him back to a childhood unguided and full of wandering doubt.
Forcing his eyes shut, he gave in to the thought that threatened to send him into hysterics if he did not let it speak.
Do we have souls?
The dagger slid into his heart.
A startled sob escaped his frame.
He couldn’t allow himself to dwell on that question.
Madness begins in such small ways. When breath is allowed, life begins.
Dakota stayed in bed for most of the morning. When Jamie woke and tried to rouse him from sleep, he complained of a stomachache and said to leave him alone. He didn’t bother to mention that he hadn’t slept for most of the night, nor did he say anything about the shadows that flickered in the corner of the room, casting doubt over his eyes like black tape sewn over his eyes with knitting needles. He kept expecting Diana to appear from the darkness and to look at him with her hollow, dead eyes, to judge him in ways only the dead could.
If she can even see.
Though Jessiah said she had no such ability, he knew better.
Earlier, in that cold, dark barn, he had felt something looking at him.
The blind couldn’t see. He would have felt no such thing had Diana lost her vision.
Curling into a ball in the hopes that he could steal the last traces of Jamie’s warmth, he wrapped the blanket around his body and sunk back against the wall, willing himself to close his eyes and to force light over his darkened frame of mind.
Force it, he thought. Force the light to come.
He squeezed his eyes together as hard as he could.
Pain blossomed in the corners of his vision.
A faint light winked in the distance.
There. You did it—it’s coming! It’s—
Two black eyes burst into view.
Frozen, Dakota could only watch as Diana’s lips curled back over her teeth. A wisp of air escaped her cracked nostrils like steam hissing from pipes. Her mouth opened.
The most horrible sound Dakota had ever heard echoed forth and yanked him from sleep.
Unable to sleep any longer and with fresh tears in his eyes, he pushed himself out of bed and ran toward the door.
If he could not fight the wolves, he would face the sheep.
“Hey,” Jamie said, looking up as Dakota entered the room.
“Hey,” Dakota replied, collapsing in the seat next to Jamie.
Leaning forward, Dakota pulled his socks up his feet and laced his shoes, sighing when he turned his head up to face the stares that greeted him. Most turned their eyes immediately, like the younger boys, who feigned interest in something else, while Desmond and Kevin looked on with wary, unsure eyes. Jessiah, meanwhile, watched him like a hawk, gaze indifferent as Dakota locked eyes with him.
You know, he wanted to say, but kept his words to himself.
“Your stomach better?” Jamie asked.
“It’s better,” Dakota nodded. “Did you ever get the map?”
“We got it sorted out,” Kevin said, leaning over the couch to set a half-empty can of apples in Dakota’s hand. “They’re fresh. Well, mostly…we canned them a few months back.”
“Thank you, sir.” He accepted the spoon Kevin offered and glanced back at Jessiah. The young man offered a smile Dakota wasn’t able to return. “What were we doing wrong when we drove in here?” he asked, using the question to defer Jessiah’s gaze and allow him to glance back without being suspicious.
“Driving around in a circle. I pointed it out to Jamie so he wouldn’t repeat the mistake, but there’s a road that’s almost always hidden by a pair of shrubs some jackasses decided to plant on opposite sides of the road. I gave Jamie a hatchet so you can cut them down before you leave.”