In the starless dark of night they travel quickly, creating stark and exaggerated silhouettes as they pass briefly through the orange sodium glow of streetlights. She remembers most of this in fragmented pieces: being led in the rain until the little town turned to dirt roads. Mud that caked in the creases of her jeans. A woman grasping her numb fingers, then yanking with a grip like iron, her palm as pale and cold as new frost. The rain grew more aggressive, became needlelike and freezing, though this cold was nothing compared to the cold that made Allison tremble like there was no blood in her veins. The stranger is of little comfort: when Allison falters, she tugs her with sharp finality, refusing to let her stop. Was something after them? No. They were looking for someone. For something, and it was close enough that the hairs on the back of Allison's neck stood at attention.
Or had that been a few evenings before?
When they'd arrived at the graveyard was when her memory began to go fuzzy, become tattered at the corners. Indistinct. She knows they must have dug up the coffin, because in the morning (?) after her nails had hardened dirt under them, gray muck that crumbled easily beneath the pressure of her fingertips, and her shirt was streaked with mud. She remembers being handed the crowbar, the metal so cold that it almost stuck to her hands. She remembers the eyes of that thing opening, as bright and as unnatural as the sodium lamps they'd traveled beneath. The whistle of air behind her ear as the woman drove something sharp into the heart of the creature, and the horrible noise afterward, high and agonizing enough to make her ears pop, as if she were in the pressurized cabin of a jet.
She remembers thinking: good.
After this, she remembers very little at all. Pain most often, which ruled her, a pain like dying. Being cold all the time, feeling empty. Feeling hungry. She thought she should go home, though she could not remember where that was in her current state, because the only place she did know was this old and poorly lit house, where all the furniture was covered in white sheets that reminded her of funeral shrouds. Funny: she could remember those, little snippets of fact and memory, but any attempt at grasping a more substantial thought brought with it more pain, a feeling like hands digging into her skull and pulling it apart. She existed in this state for hours? Days? Weeks, perhaps, the only constant beyond the hunger, pain and confusion being the woman, who would sometimes sit beside her in unsettling quiet, or leave in the night, only to return late in the evening, sometimes dragging something heavy behind her.
In the days before, Allison had refused whatever this was, had been repulsed, but when the woman shakes her awake tonight, her throat is so dry that she can't force out much of anything but a dull death-rattle. She's tired and thirsty, she wants to say. She wants to be left alone. When she tries to push back, she is struck by the sight of what she begins to realize, in a slow-growing dread, is her own hand. Her skin, desiccated,, bruised gray and bone white, the veins beneath her near translucent skin blue-black. It trembles in the moonlight like an old woman's.
Allison lets it fall to her side. Even this slight movement takes incredible effort on her part. When had she ever been this weak? This cold and frail? Had something happened? She tries to ask the woman this, though again the sounds crackle and die in her throat.
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Or had that been a few evenings before?
When they'd arrived at the graveyard was when her memory began to go fuzzy, become tattered at the corners. Indistinct. She knows they must have dug up the coffin, because in the morning (?) after her nails had hardened dirt under them, gray muck that crumbled easily beneath the pressure of her fingertips, and her shirt was streaked with mud. She remembers being handed the crowbar, the metal so cold that it almost stuck to her hands. She remembers the eyes of that thing opening, as bright and as unnatural as the sodium lamps they'd traveled beneath. The whistle of air behind her ear as the woman drove something sharp into the heart of the creature, and the horrible noise afterward, high and agonizing enough to make her ears pop, as if she were in the pressurized cabin of a jet.
She remembers thinking: good.
After this, she remembers very little at all. Pain most often, which ruled her, a pain like dying. Being cold all the time, feeling empty. Feeling hungry. She thought she should go home, though she could not remember where that was in her current state, because the only place she did know was this old and poorly lit house, where all the furniture was covered in white sheets that reminded her of funeral shrouds. Funny: she could remember those, little snippets of fact and memory, but any attempt at grasping a more substantial thought brought with it more pain, a feeling like hands digging into her skull and pulling it apart. She existed in this state for hours? Days? Weeks, perhaps, the only constant beyond the hunger, pain and confusion being the woman, who would sometimes sit beside her in unsettling quiet, or leave in the night, only to return late in the evening, sometimes dragging something heavy behind her.
In the days before, Allison had refused whatever this was, had been repulsed, but when the woman shakes her awake tonight, her throat is so dry that she can't force out much of anything but a dull death-rattle. She's tired and thirsty, she wants to say. She wants to be left alone. When she tries to push back, she is struck by the sight of what she begins to realize, in a slow-growing dread, is her own hand. Her skin, desiccated,, bruised gray and bone white, the veins beneath her near translucent skin blue-black. It trembles in the moonlight like an old woman's.
Allison lets it fall to her side. Even this slight movement takes incredible effort on her part. When had she ever been this weak? This cold and frail? Had something happened? She tries to ask the woman this, though again the sounds crackle and die in her throat.