Ghost Towns

Two

Her mother was laughing again, illuminated by the hearth. The light danced in her chestnut hair, and twinkled in her eyes. Across from her sat Mr. Winslow. Her father thought himself to be quite funny, and while Rye laughed to be polite most of the time, her mother's amusement seemed genuine. Rye smiled to herself where she sat with her sewing and the kitten. She didn't care much as long as the house was happy.

The kitten jumped from her lap to the basket holding the embroidering thread, and Rye let out a quiet chuckle. It was a restless creature, that cat, and she knew the moment she held it for the first time weeks ago that it was one she absolutely needed to take home with her. She called him Goldie, for the way he rummaged through the garden as though he were digging for treasure.

She watched for a while as he tangled himself up in the spools of thread and the sequins and the cotton stuffing. She would have to cut the knots out. Secretly, that was her favourite part.

A draft whistled through the attic, and Rye remembered at once what she was supposed to be doing. She set the sewing neatly aside - on top of the kitchen cupboards where Goldie couldn't get at it - and tied her boot laces tight.

"I'd better go and get the things from the baker," she said in the direction of her parents as she slipped on her coat.

Her mom waved cheerfully.

Her dad tossed her coins, one by one, and she caught each of them in the air. "Have fun," he said and she smiled at him.

She opened the door to their tiny house and stepped out onto the front porch under the sunrise.

There are some moments that turn into incandescent memories. In that moment, Rye knew that this was one of them.

The sun burned red and low in the sky. Everything was so perfect. So dainty, so fragile.

She stuffed her hands into her coat pockets and made to set out into the town, a content smile across her lips.

The second she stepped off the porch, the vision melted away like wax dripping off a candlestick. The red of the sun, the orange of the clouds, the gorgeous rose sky...

Fire.

Fire blazing through her window, her turning to the woods...

The screaming.

The inexplicable feeling and the surety that the forest would protect her, that there she would be safe. Only this time, she wasn't safe. She was there, burning too, every inch of her body in flames. If everyone had to suffer then she should have too, should have went with them, wherever they went. She would follow the people she loved to death and beyond.

It all melded together- the real and the imagined- in a whirlwind of flashes, snippets of memory jammed disharmoniously together.

Everything went black, agonizingly slowly. She did not want to see this. She did not want to live it again.

For a long time, Rye drifted in the dark, unable to see or hear or think. The numbness was like a drug to her after the sensation of burning, and she relished it while she could. There were no dreams. There was no pain.

It made waking up all the harder. She could see the shore, far away, but getting to it was like wading through a river of molasses.

Her body was reluctant to move, to go to consciousness again. But her mind was restless and afraid, making rest impossible.

All her focus converged on her right hand. All she had to do was move a fingertip. To prove to herself that she could.

It took an eternity. But eventually she moved one finger and then two.

Her eyelashes fluttered.

Moments later, Rye managed to open her eyelids. The second she did, the pain struck her. Hard.

She gasped, sweat beading across her eyebrows. For several long minutes, all Rye could focus on was the sensation of every one of her nerves in splitting agony. This was the feeling of fire she had felt, even through the haze of sleep.

She clutched at her chest, forcing herself to take longer and deeper breaths, until at last her heartrate was as close to steady as it was going to get. Once the pain dulled, the panic set in.

At once she realized that she was not at home, nor anywhere she had ever been to in the town. She had no idea where she was, or how she got here. Everything was so unfamiliar, right down to the taste of the air. The grate of the sheets were different. They were not hers.

In one swift movement - because she knew she wouldn't have the courage to weather the pain of doing it slowly - Rye hoisted herself up to lean against the headboard of the bed. She sat there, half buckled over, in a slouched sitting position, tasting blood in her mouth where she bit on her tongue when she screamed.

Her exhales came out so ragged she wondered if they even helped.

Through the tears that blurred her vision she saw the blood soaking through the torn white linen wrapped around her arm. The sight of it was somehow even worse than the pain. The knee-length nightgown she had been wearing was cut clean off from the hip. Her legs were bandaged sloppily, and laying atop the sheets. Rye did not want to know what her chest looked like, when the wounds in her shoulder hurt more than anything she could have ever imagined before this.

It set in, finally, that she was going to die. And it surprised her, that even in her worst moment, she refused to accept that. Despite every horrible thing that had occurred, and the ones that undoubtedly lay ahead, Rye was not one to succumb to defeat so easily. She only hoped that she'd be given the chance to choose to live.

Though the sound was distorted and her vision so clouded she could barely see across the room, Rye looked up when the door burst open, staring in only half-awareness when three figures ran inside, the urgency evident in their faces. When they saw her awake and sitting up, all three of them froze in their tracks.

"You said she was unconscious," one of the men said to the other, but Rye was too far gone to know whether it was accusatory or simply disbelieving.

The other man, the tall one, seemed unable to say anything. His eyes were blown wide, almost comically, as he stared and stared and stared. Absently, Rye figured she must look like a nightmare, sitting there bandaged like a mummy, blood dripping down her chin and fingers. 

It was the woman - a hazy figure with blonde hair and a soft face - who came to her senses first.

"Good morning, dear," she said, after a drawn-out moment.

Rye could only smile back, teeth covered in blood. 

And then, for the second time, the darkness pulled her under.