DRIPPING DARKNESS

Ch-23: The banshee's premonition

She treaded forward slowly, stepping on the uncountable dry, crisped, and sun-baked leaves scattered on the ground, which was quite spooky and illogical in comparison to the weather and atmosphere she was in. The path at her feet faded as it led into the darkness of the woods, yet she followed it for the sake of her friends. Somewhere in there were the answers she needed, somewhere in there was a victory, if she witnessed her fears then, and so her feet followed the narrow strip of naked earth among the giants of root and leaf.

She let her hands touch the freezing coldness of pitch-black darkness as she passed, feeling their gentle spirits soothe her own. For this was their world as they stretched towards the light they never saw yet sensed, and she must do the same... open up her other senses... to sound, to the aroma and listen so very carefully to every instinct.

She navigated the path not by sight yet by faith, memory, and confidence. It released the sounds of a plethora of nocturnal ghosts, of they who may move safely within the hug of grey shadowed night. those weren't real ghosts trying to seek revenge from those who took their lives, those ghosts felt like real people who had no clue that they were about to be dead in the near future.

And then at the next moment, Lydia stopped.

She froze at the sight of a horrible visual. In front of her were the dead bodies of many persons, but not just random people, Lydia believed she knew them after taking a look at their physical features. The more closer she went to those bodes, the more disbelieving she started to find it.

At that time, those dead bodies were the most horrifying thing to look at in the whole world for Lydia, not just because those were lifeless corpses, but because those were the bodies of her friends, and the two of the dead bodies which were clearly recognizable were of Scott and Stiles. Behind them were the bodies of Theo Raeken, Derek Hale, Isaac Lahey, and Mason Hewitt. She even saw and recognized many of her old high school classmates, her house neighbors, the sheriff, but all of them were lying lifeless on the ground.

Their souls, however, didn't seem to have been passed into the arms of angels, to whom it took the soul to its rightful home. the souls looked like they were left there because nobody bothered to pay their last respects to them, it looked as if nobody cared for them. She felt that some apocalypse had arrived without fanfare because everyone got killed so quickly.

When she looked at those bodies in the coldness of the night, there was no love in those eyes, all she saw was deadness. Their souls were not meant to be over with. It belonged to Lydia, who reclaimed what was rightfully hers. She still had a life left, a life with her friends and loved ones and her allies, which she wanted to cherish with all her heart. Those were her friends, her family.

"You did this...Lydia...It's all...because..of you...You killed them all!!"

She couldn't believe it.

That voice, the same old voice that was with Lydia all those times back in her high school, the voice that previously wanted to show her love, warmth, and support. It was the same voice that was blaming Lydia for killing all her friends. It was the voice of Allison Argent. But she could neither see her nor find any traces of her presence near those bodies.

"No...NO...NOOO..." She was starting to lose it, Lydia was starting to lose her mind. Sure, she saw plenty of premonitions before..but this? this was not just a nightmare, it felt like the end of the world.

Lydia screamed out in frustration and confusion as she ran her way towards those bodies for letting out her grief. After all in the sorrow of death is the proof of love, of the bonds that exist beyond our reality, beyond the spacetime, matter, and energy that makes our world real.