The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 10 🔻 Can't Wake Up

Both Webb and Vale had me cornered back on the rooftop beneath the painted pylon. That fierceness had returned to Vale's eyes as she stood tall over me. "You need to stop challenging Blackburne if you know what's good for you!" she warned.

Beside her, Webb shook his head like a disappointed parent. "You're gonna get thrown into the Pit, Skye!"

I unburied my face from my scarf. I'd heard that word before. It was used as a threat the first time, too. "The Pit?"

Vale sighed. Having no need for breath, I knew her sigh was purely for dramatic effect. "The Pit is where disobedient souls are imprisoned. It's a big-arse hole that the echelon tosses you down. Then they leave you there. Forever."

I shuddered at that thought. Being stuck in an eternal prison would be so much worse than death at the claws of ravenous monsters. I met Vale's distant gaze. "You and him have a history together, don't you?" I said. "You and Blackburne."

Vale shook her head with the weakest of smiles. "You caught me. Once upon a time, a friend and I used to run with his echelon in our early days. It was like Webb said, we all lived like royalty in his palace." Her face fell. "I've seen many souls thrown down into the Pit, too. No. That life wasn't for me, especially after Chri-" A pause. "After I lost someone. After that, I went off on my own."

"And then she found me," Webb interjected with a grin. "And we've been partners in crime ever since!"

It was hard to imagine Vale as one of the king's bullies. While Webb and Vale snickered and elbowed each other, I scowled to myself as I watched the hollows in the street below. From up here, I had to squint to see Orville in front of his shop with that little girl clinging to him. Orville had been around since the Civil War, and countless other hollows were even older than that. So if Blackburne was the first ghost, then how long had he been here? What had Earth been like when he left it?

What must it be like to be dead for far longer than you'd been alive? At what point did the afterlife become...just life? And your brief time alive became nothing but a distant memory? Just something to reflect on every once in a millennium in a hey-remember-that-one-time? kind of way.

I shook my head to purge Blackburne's cruel, scarred face from my mind. Webb's and Vale's postures had relaxed, but they still side-eyed me as the space between spoken words lengthened. Finally, I broke the silence with yet another question. "Since you know him so well, do you know how Blackburne got those scars? They don't look like normal burn scars."

"Dunno," was Vale's answer. The former echelon ghost started gathering up spray cans as she spoke, in search of specific colors. "I don't think anyone knows that. That's the one secret Blackburne keeps to himself."

She set up her supplies next to one of the few sections of wall space not covered by a mural, and set to work, filling the rooftop with the sound of rattling cans and hissing paint. A dreamy haze of luscious pinks and pale oranges soon concealed every blemish on the formerly barren canvas.

Webb and I reclined against the legs of the pylon, watching a misty morning scene unfold. My vision blurred, and my mind kept wandering. I touched a finger to my cheek where Blackburne had slashed me. My skin was as smooth and unmarked as it had ever been, with no trace of a scar. "But hollows heal, right?" I said over the hiss of paint. "And when they show up here, they're all intact. Orville said he was taken out by a freaking cannonball, and yet he lumbers around all in one great big piece. Blackburne's scars look like burn scars, but I haven't seen any ghost that burned to death covered in horrible-"

The spraying stopped.

Webb kicked me in the shin. It didn't hurt, of course, but I got his message loud and clear.