Blood of Eden
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
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An hour later, I’m lying on my side, my head upon the pillow, my arm under it, my legs bent. I stare at the pulse monitor, blinking every few moments. My nose has started and stopped bleeding three times already. No reason to, either.
The door is closed, my request, the room dark, also my request.
I know they are here before the hand ever touches the knob outside the door. I can’t hear them. I feel them. Three distinctly familiar things.
I have already begun to remember things, mostly what I saw in my coma. That’s all the doctors or nurses have told me; I was in a coma, a really, really deep coma, and they didn’t know whether I’d live or not. They thought I’d end up dying, until suddenly I woke up, which was today, or should I say, tonight.
A stream of light pours into the room seconds after a clicking noise. I am facing away from the door.
“You can turn on the light. Exactly three feet to your left, Dad. Watch out for the trash can.”
He stumbles over it anyways.
“Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Bright light. It burns my eyes but I go ahead and leave my eyes open, stopping the reflex to blink. All three enter.
There’s an awkward silence as they come nearer. No one knows what to say or even how to begin.
I ask the first question, “How long have I been in a coma?”
Dad replies emotionally, nearly unable to speak at all, “Nine months.”
“Understandable,” I reply. “’Specially since I almost died.”
I turn to face them, sitting up. I can imagine my hair’s a mess and that I look sick, very ill. Only Jamie seems not sad. Sure, she sort of feels sorry for me, but I also see that she was relieved I wasn’t around anymore, but now, my waking up means I’m not gone anymore. She only slightly feels regret and sadness, but not much. Jeana and John have tears and reddened eyes. Both seem to have aged probably ten years since I last saw them. Jeana’s walked around the bed to my other side.
My own tears begin to fall again and Dad puts his arms around me, pulling me into a hug, trying to suppress his weeping form being any louder. Mom joins in. I simply accept and take in the comfort they offer. Both are slightly trembling, and they hold me for several minutes and are hesitant to let me go.
I tell them honestly, “Everything I ever saw was a lie. It was him, he’s not an innocent person like I believed. There is no Dracula, and his real name is Leviath. I haven’t had even a moment of peace since I’ve been in this coma. You people don’t know what a blessing ignorance is. You don’t know what I’ve seen. You’re blind. Wish that you stay that way, that you’ll never know, because he only lies. God help me, that demon only lies…He tried to kill me…”
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Dad doesn’t object, Mom doesn’t object. Neither care what I say. They don’t care in the least. I’m alive, that’s what they care about. I’m alive and awake. I’m not in the coma anymore. Only Jamie hates.
I look Dad in the eye and tell him, “There’s nothing the doctors can do for me. I’m not sick and I’m not dying. I’m not crazy, either…it’s him. He’s done it to me…The only ting any tests will show is an overactive brain.”
I look at Jamie and remember what Tray and his sick friends tried to do to me. “Daman’s friends are no good, Jamie—“
“How the hell should you know?” she hisses.
I become angry, but yet sad at the same time for the same reason. I tell her, nearly choking on my own words, looking her deep in the eye, knowing all eyes are upon me, “What better way to know than them trying to rape me? How else would I know?” My throat tightens into a knot. I shake my head and look away from her, down at the blue blanket.
Mom and Dad are filled with shock, then, moments later, as soon as Dad’s turns to rage, I interrupt him, “I was possessed like at Uncle Reid’s, and I cut Tray’s ear, I think. It might’ve been Eric…It’s hard to remember too clearly. They all ran off and left me alone. Chase and Danique were beat up pretty bad and they woke up when I fell. It happened when I found the school when I’d run away…Michael tried to kill me. I fell…It almost killed me. He had come after me when I was at the Kilbournes’ house. That’s why I ran, Mom. The vision…” I look at my hands, remembering what had happened. I grimace upon the memory. I see a large circular scar and clench my hands. Tears begin to fall harder, “It hurt so bad. It hurt worse than anything in my life…” I try to choke back tears as Mom pulls me closer, resting her chin upon my head, trying to soothe me. “I kept screaming. Three of us screamed. It hurt so bad. It was a woman that it was happening to. They drove stakes into her hands after burning the skin first. But they’d beat her before that…My hands and feet…I couldn’t walk, but I had to…I had to…”
“Shh. It’s alright Marie. It’s alright,” Dad and Mom say.
“It was because of him, though,” I say. “He did it. Just like my arm last time…He’s not what I thought. Michael isn’t what I thought.”
After another few minutes, my crying dies away. I pull away from them and turn again to my side, pulling my blanket up as I lay down, closing my eyes. “I don’t want to talk about anything anymore.”
Dad runs his hand over my head, brushing the hair from my face sadly. “Marie—“
“Marian,” I say pointlessly. “I don’t need a stupid nickname.”
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“Honey…” Jeana says. She looks at John with complete concern.
I look at Jamie, who’s at the end of the bed. She starts to speak, “Sis—“
“Don’t call me sis,” I interrupt. “As you said, I’m not really your sister. Go ahead and hate me. I don’t care. You liked Octavius, too, and I know you still do. You can have him. I don’t care. He made a lie of my life.”
“Marian,” John says. “Please look at me…There’s something…something we need to tell you.”
So I turn enough to look at him. His face is set deep with more worry and more grief and dread. He speaks through sheer effort, “Octavius…um…” he looks up, more tears welling in his eyes as he tries to control his voice. He looks down at me and then tells me, “Octavius went missing the day you ran away, when you had your…vision, or whatever happened. Reid called really upset, he said he’d been talking to Octavius when a huge cut appeared in Octavius’s hand out of nowhere, and it was bleeding really bad. Octavius fell and started screaming. He said there was blood everywhere and that it happened again to the other hand…just like what happened to you…Reid said Octavius cried your name and said he was coming, and that Octavius struggled to his feet and ran out of the house and the phone rang, which was us, when we called him because you were having a seizure. He answered it and ran out to find Octavius, but Octavius was gone. But there wasn’t anywhere to go that Reid couldn’t have seen him in that few seconds—“
“John, I don’t care,” I say, starting to cry. “He’s a vampire. How the hell do you think he found me? The Kilbournes saw him. He asked them where I was, among other things, and they know about vampires. He left right before you came…Ask them to give a description or get a photo of him and ask them if it was him. I have a picture of him and me and Jamie. We took a picture together the day we were leaving. It’s still in my camera. Just need the film developed. Camera’s in my top drawer at home.”
Jeana and John are speechless. John slightly shakes his head in disbelief and says, “So you, after all you’ve been through, suddenly you don’t have a heart? At least we found you. It tore us to pieces that you were going through all this, and it still does, and when we tell you he’s missing, all you say is, ‘I don’t care’?”
I start crying again, and blood runs down from my eyes again, followed a half-second later by my nose bleeding. I sit up and hold the sheets to my nose, though letting my blood tears fall as they will. I ignore Jeana’s and John’s and Jamie’s bewilderment and say flatly, “Ignore this. It happens. This is the fourth time it’s happened. It comes and goes, depending on what I’m thinking or feeling, or my psych. This is the least of my worries or problems. You’ll have to get used to it…When do I get out of here?”
“Marie—Marian,” Jeana says. I look up and she continues, “What happened between you and Octavius for real?”
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“Nothing more than lies and things neither you, nor anyone else, could ever, ever grasp with your minds…Literally. You wouldn’t even begin to understand, and then you wouldn’t believe, just like you’re not doing now. So you can forget about it and drop it now. I hate him.”
“Marian,” John says in disgust. “He could be dead!”
My own anger is beginning to grow again, and not just stronger, but deeper, too.
“I want him to be dead. He lied to me and made a lie of my life…All I know is lies he told. I want it to stop, but I know it won’t until he’s dead, or until I’m dead! I don’t care. I hope he is—“ Suddenly I start choking and I hear sudden laughter in my mind. He’s laughing at me! I can only see the darkness around him. He calls my name tauntingly, calling for me…I can’t breathe!
My eyes begin to roll back in my head as I struggle, trying to fight it, trying to breathe, and I fall back onto my back, clutching at the metal rails and bed and sheets. I gasp in a faint amount of air, but it’s not enough, and I fight to see what’s here, who’s here, not what he’s putting in my head. Again I gasp, this time more air, and I fight harder as it’s cut off tighter. I cry out, “Quit the lies! I know what you are! I know—“ I am completely unable to even barely inhale and I begin to panic and clutch at my throat. My body starts going into convulsions, shaking violently.
For a brief moment, when I manage to suck in the last air I can, I hear Dad screaming frantically for help, and Mom’s just now starting to run to the door, but my hand catches her arm in a death-grip. My eyes are wide and I manage to say, “It’s him…” She fades from my sight as I see her grimace of pain from my grip on her arm, and I let go and clutch at the air. My shaking and convulsions worsen and then I can’t feel anything anymore. My head rests upon my pillow, my heart stopping for a while, blood drooling out my mouth, heart-monitors going off into a constant, high-pitched buzzing, hospital personnel, the doctors and nurses, rushing in at my father’s yelling for help…My eyes are still open. I hear Jeana’s shrieking and out-of-control cries and it fades. I feel them being ushered aside, then that sense fades…
Darkness.
Blood of Eden Chapters
