The Dead of Night

Chapter One

Chapter One: The Eyes

I remember everything and nothing …

I opened my eyes and glanced up.

Tonight the sky was utterly black. Perhaps there was no moon tonight—a lunar eclipse, a new moon.

A new moon. I shivered, though I wasn’t cold. I saw nothing but black before my eyes began to adjust. I blinked slowly; once. Twice.

That was when I saw them. That was when I saw the eyes.

Even in the pitch black night, they almost seemed to glow a dim, eerie blue. I squinted in a vain attempt to see the owner, but my eyes refused to focus.  I could vaguely make out what looked like a human physique. Pale. Almost feminine. The form stood, staring at me, in the brush roughly five yards away. I wanted to call out, to demand to know who was staring at me, but my mouth, like my body, was too numb. I continued to stare for what seemed like hours. I stared until I heard them calling.

My eyes darted to the side. Someone was shouting my name. It was muted, muffled by the wet growth that surrounded me, but it was definitely my name. I didn’t recognize the voice. I thought about answering, but I was dazed and curious about my spectator. It took a long time to come to the conclusion that I should answer, but by then, the calling had stopped. I glanced back to the eyes, but they and their owner had vanished.

I breathed a heavy sigh and turned on my back. I glanced up into the branches above me. Perched up in the tree above was the pale form with the glowing eyes. I almost screamed in surprise but all my lungs could afford was a gasp. The figure cocked its head to the side, almost in confusion. It was then that I remember something; a conversation from what seemed like another lifetime.

“Don’t go into the woods alone,” he had said to me.

“Why?”

“I’m not always the most dangerous thing out there. Let’s leave it at that.”

My mind began to race with all the possibilities: could another vampire, a non-vegetarian, have happened upon my scent? Was I dinner tonight? Or was it something worse, something that I had not prepared myself for?

Prepared myself for? I thought bitterly, as if I could have ever, truly prepared myself for anything that had happened in the past year. Maybe this was just a hallucination; maybe I was so grief-stricken and tired that I was seeing the one being that might make me feel safe.

If that’s the case, I thought to myself, why am I seeing someone or something I can’t recognize? Another sigh escaped my lips slowly. I wasn’t sure if I was utterly exhausted, or my mind had reached its limit, but sometime during my private conversation, I fell into a dark, dreamless sleep.

Sometime later, the rain woke me up. I don’t think I’d really fallen asleep; I was just lost in an unthinking stupor, holding on, with all my strength, to the numbness that kept me from realizing what I didn’t want to know.

The thought of the eyes staring at me in the night clawed its way to my memory. I glanced up, expecting to see the pale figure perched in the tree, but, to my disappointment, the tree was empty. The rain bothered me a little. It was cold. I unwrapped my arms from around my legs to cover my face.

It was then that I heard the calling again. It was farther away this time, and sometimes it sounded like several voices were calling at once. I tried to breathe deeply. I remembered that I should answer, but I didn’t think they would be able to hear me. Would I be able to shout loud enough?

I decided that I should make an attempt. I sucked in a deep breath to call out to the voice.

However, a half second before I made my attempt, there was a gigantic burst of light. The entire forest was illuminated for a split second.  The lightning danced across the sky in a jagged, white line. The light was bright and continuous; long enough for me to see them.

They stood in a semi-circle, about ten feet from me. One, the pale one with the blue eyes, the second a tall one with long, rain-soaked hair, and the third was shorter but muscular. They stood next to each other, only inches away from each other. All three of them were extremely pale and stiff. They stared at me with curiosity. The lighting flash in the sky faded and burst, almost instantaneously again. However, the three figures had disappeared.

Suddenly there was another sound, startlingly close. A kind of snuffling; an animal sound. It sounded big, and I wondered if I should feel afraid. For the strange sound or the odd figures that hovered in the area. I wasn’t afraid. Just numb. It didn’t matter. The snuffling went away.

The rain continued, and I could feel the water pooling up against my cheek. I was trying to gather the strength to turn my head when I saw the light.

At first, it was just a dim glow reflecting off the bushes in the distance. It grew brighter and brighter, illuminating a large space unlike the focused beam of a flashlight. The light broke through the closest bush, and I could see that it was a propane lantern, but that all I could see—the brightness blinded me for a moment.

“Bella.”