𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐢𝐝𝐠𝐞 𝐎𝐟 𝐅𝐢𝐫𝐞

𝟏𝟑. 𝐁𝐞𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐲𝐚𝐥 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬𝐞𝐝 𝐈𝐧 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞

I was left alone with my thoughts in the same position. The candle in my table started flickering, briefly asking for my attention. I didn't see any laughter in James eyes or a smile twitching at his lips. His sockets were laying as inky pools, weak, black only illuminating enough to seem more spooky. His eyes had something similar to the fire inside them, there was something wanting to come out, newborn flames licked his green eyes with their wrath and fury.

My thoughts were separated between James and Alice, I didn't enjoy leaving her alone but she hadn't given me any other choice. She was acting as if nothing was real, nothing was happening. She couldn't see with my eyes and I couldn't possibly see with here. I wished that she was here with me but something like that wouldn't happen.

The truth is that I needed Alice in everything I did, I needed her with me. She was everything I had left and without her I never felt safe or sure about anything. I had to talk to her again, wishing for her understanding but for now, my mind was occupied with aunt's Grace diary. Once again, I re-opened it, shuffled the pages and found her next entry to continue reading.

" November 30/ 1956

My grief is like the ocean, it comes in waves, engulfs and overwhelms. Amelia was everything I had and now she is gone. I am blinded by the tears in my eyes as I write this, relief, comfort and peace refuse to hug in my soul. While this pain continues to abuse me I am lucky to have Elias in my life.

The dinner with Elias was the best thing that could happen to me this month. He had asked me to go with him to Australia and I had said yes. As he was asking me all I could think about was his voice, it was more like a gentle hymn than simply words. None were sung, yet there was a melody to them, one more beautiful than any ever put to an orchestra.

We agreed that I would stay some days in his house, probably we are moving too fast but our love is real. I will go there tomorrow and take some of my personal belongings with me, I think we are going down a serious road"

Her entry was quite small this time, she didn't wrote many things but even in those few things it was as if she said everything. I just wanted to move on, keep reading her diary and finally find a clue about the deaths. Nothing was helping me anymore, not my sister and not this diary.

I was now standing alone with tall walls slowly rising, closing me in them. Life always had a strange way of showing me the things that needed to be seen. It was as if a veil was blinding me, I couldn't see the truth, I couldn't understand the meaning behind her words. The thing that made me furious was the fact that I was the only one trying to solve this and no one was actually helping me. I was alone, as always.

I let the diary fall firmly closed on the table in front of me. It made an exhausted sound, like a padded door shutting, by itself, at a distance. The sound suggested the softness of the thick old pages, how they would feel under my fingers. Soft and hard at the same time, like petals and rocks.

I slowly rubbed my tired eyes. There was a kind of tiredness that needed a good night's sleep, and another that needed so much more. My tiredness was coming together with my tired body. It became an ingrained part of my life that wasn't alive, but it was barely surviving.

I wasn't born for that. I didn't come to be on a planet full of such beauty and abundance to live like this, so drained, stressed, too tired to cope with life's storms. When will the time come for dancing, for long evenings with friends. All I ever wanted was to spend some time at my aunt's house with my sister. It was again strange, how life was pushing me everyday.

There was only one route for the truth and it was by reading as much as I could so I ignored my tiredness and found myself in the next page.

" December 5/1956

The demon came with a small briefcase, came to bring us our salvation, salvation from death. He came dressed as a normal person, as a person full of light that was hiding a blackness that nobody had ever seen before.

The demon came to save us from death itself, but how can a demon save us when he has befriended death. The demon came in the form of an angel and deceived everyone in its path. A path that was painted with blood.

A path that I followed with my eyes closed. I fell right into hell. I was trapped inside hell for god's knows how much. It was burning my skin, ripping forcefully my flesh and touching the deepest places of my soul, of my heart. How could I stop a job that had started long time ago. I couldn't.

Hell was indeed full of nightmares but nobody ever told me that my nightmares would be included. If I am disgusted I can't help it, it's an emotion we can all feel. I had to listen to that little voice of repulsion. Maybe, just maybe, it was there for a reason.

My heart is hurting, my body is shaking, from my eyes hot tears are falling burning my skin. It all happened so fast. I never knew. I never knew..."

Pages after pages, I was reading like a maniac, I couldn't understand. Who was that demon? My thoughts were my tyrants and I was caught up in the middle of something tremendous.

" December 13/1956

Ten days ago I went to Elias house, he had called me again to have dinner together. He was finally allowing me to enter fully to his life, we were a couple. A very happy one, or at least that's what I had thought.

I went to his house. Home was wherever he was. Bed down in a barn and that was my home. Sleep under the stars with him and it was my home. Home was a state of mind and I was home wherever he was because I was there too.

However, everything changed.

I felt his knife before I even saw it. It was him, my love. The eyes that were once filled with so much purpose and love were now replaced with something else. The only thing that showed any resemblance to my love was the shell that strange soul inhabited. My love was gone forever, my happiness was gone forever.

Everything was gone forever.

At that point, I was sure that it actually felt like a betrayal, like pure and unending coldness that reached my heart. Cutting it in a thousand pieces."

Her final words made me quite worried. I couldn't understand what was happening. Something had changed in her. Maybe indeed, some things were best to stay buried. Buried in the abyss of our minds, so that no one could ever find them.

What was hiden behind the lies were truths that failed to get to the light. I knew that these truths needed to be uncovered, we had to respect our aunt's Grace final wish and uncover the truth. What lied behind his betrayal may had been easy to understand at first sight but in the end it wasn't.

I was confused but I believed everything would be revealed when the time was right.