Darkness Girl: Trickster God

Chapter Thirty: Past Lives

The hospital hallway smelled like antiseptic and cheap ammonium floor cleaner. The little girl sat on a hard aluminium bench against the wall and hugged her knees under her hospital gown. Someone had given her tea in a styrofoam cup. It sat beside her cold and untouched. Two nurses walked past pushing an empty gurney and gave her a worried look. 

'...both dead,' she heard one whisper. 

'Both of them? Has anyone told her?' 

'She just sat there -- didn't even cry. Just thanked the doctor and walked away.' 

'She didn't cry at all? Is she some sort of monster?' 

'You don't know the half of it.' 

'Shh, she'll hear you!' 

The nurses disappeared around a corner. The fluorescent light above the girl emitted a dull buzzing that worked its way into her skull and settled in her brain like a parasite. A plastic clock on the wall showed it was almost 3:00am. The girl didn't move. 

She felt a draft brush her cheek as a shadow passed across her knees, and looked up with disinterested eyes. There was a girl looking down at her; a girl with brilliant white hair and a black military coat. Her skin was so pale it looked like she was made of porcelain, and she had the compact, athletic build of a fighter. There was something about her presence that pushed everything else into the background until it felt like a dream. It was as if she was leaching all of the colour from the environment around her.

'There's blood in my hair,' said the little girl.

A look of confusion passed across the pale girl's face. She leant down to examine a lock of the little girl's mousey brown hair.

'Your hair's fine.'

'No, they tried to wash it out but they couldn't.'

The pale girl straightened and withdrew her hand.

'They say your parents are dead,' she said in a voice devoid of sympathy. 

The little girl nodded. 

'What happened?' 

'Are you an investigator?' 

'Answer the question.' 

'It's hard to remember.' 

The pale girl let out an irritated sigh. 'Try.' 

The little girl hugged her knees harder and burrowed down until her face was buried in her gown. For a moment, it seemed as if she wasn't going to talk.

'We were in the chemist. A car crashed through the front window. Then there were people shouting at everyone to get down on the floor.' 

'Were they armed?' 

The little girl lifted her face out of her gown. 'What?' 

'Were they armed?' 

'They had swords. I don't know when they started using them. There was so much screaming and blood.' 

She looked down at the floor as if she could see through it. The pale girl allowed the silence to stretch out between them like a chasm. 

'I've talked to some of the other people who were in that pharmacy,' the pale girl said finally. 'Do you know what they told me?' 

The little girl shook her head. 

'They say you weren't inside the shop -- you were outside on the street. They swear they saw the car drive into your family and send you through a plate glass window, before it lodged itself in a display case. The details get a bit hazy after that. The thieves got their hands on the money and pills they came for, but there was a confrontation of some kind as they turned to leave. There was a lot of shouting, and at some point a shop assistant got a sword through the chest. It's all a bit unclear, and different people remember different things, however, there's one thing they all agree on.' 

The little girl was watching her now, but it wasn't clear if she was listening. Her expression remained neutral, as if she was absorbing the sound of the words but was disconnected from their content. The pale girl ignored her blank stare. 

'As the thieves were about to leave, a little girl pulled herself out of the wreckage at the front of the store and placed herself between them and the car. Do you remember what happened next?' 

The little girl shrugged. 

'Two of them are dead and another looks like he won't make it through the night. The last one survived, but he'll probably never walk again, not with that shard of glass you jammed into his spine.' 

The pale girl crossed her arms, and her coat fell back to uncover the hilt of a sword.  

'I hear you caught a sword blade with your bare hand. Is that true?' 

The little girl held up a hand. There was blood soaking through the bandages wrapped tightly around her palm.

'Am I in trouble?' 

'I couldn't care less about some dead scum. What I want to know is how a little girl managed to put down four armed men.' 

'I don't know. I just--' 

The little girl looked away and stared into the darkness at the end of the empty corridor. She looked like she was staring over the edge of an abyss. 

'When I woke up, I thought I must have been in the rain. Everything was wet. My hair was stuck all over my face, and I was lying in a puddle. It wasn't water though. When I opened my eyes, there was blood all around me, and I saw these men walking past like devils on their way back to hell. As I looked at them, there was something inside me that told me they needed to die. It was like someone had put a little sun inside my chest.' 

'And now?' 

'The sun is still there. I can feel it burning even now.' 

'What about the killing? Most people would feel pretty awful after doing something like that.' 

She gave the pale girl a questioning look. 'They were alive and then they were dead. It was easy.' 

'How would you feel about doing it again?' 

'It's strange. I don't feel anything. I know I should, but I don't.' 

The pale girl looked away as if she was impatient to leave. 'You probably won't survive if you come with me. If you stay here they might be able to find you a foster family, but it's unlikely. The stories are already floating around about the little killer girl. No one will want you when they find out what you did.' 

'Are you saying I have to go with you?' 

'You always have a choice. You just might not like the options.' 

The pale girl turned and started to walk away down the corridor. She didn't look back. 

The little girl stayed in place until the pale girl was a few metres away then slipped quietly off the bench to follow her. She trod lightly. Her bare feet made no sound on the cold linoleum floor. 

'What's your name?' said the pale girl. 

'Regan.' 

They walked into the darkness. 

'Regan, you can call me Kessler.'