The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 9 🔻 Breakthrough

Back on ground level, I stared while noise deafened me and lights blinded me. I did an awful lot of staring as of late. Over the celebratory exclamations of the reveling ghosts, music filled the air and took up residence in all the empty spaces within me and made me shiver. It was unlike anything I'd ever heard on Earth. Singers sang in their native tongues, languages that I never knew existed. Other hollows wailed on a plethora of found instruments, all hooked up to a literal mountain of throbbing amps. Entire blocks quaked. In life, I'd never gotten the chance to join a real party at college. I got the feeling they really couldn't compare to this, anyway.

A meaty hand clapped my shoulder. I flinched and turned to meet the reddened and hairy face of Orville.

"Glad yew kids made it!" he slurred. "Rarely see yew joinin' in the fun, Vale."

Vale pried his other paw off her shoulder, grimacing. Orville belched loudly in return before wandering off into the crowd.

I tilted my head at where the gross old man had disappeared. "Is he...drunk somehow?"

Webb wrinkled his nose. "Nope. That's just how he is."

"Alright. Well," Vale said over the commotion. She rubbed her temples. "You and Webb have fun, Skye. I'm just gonna—"

Before she could slink away inside the nearest building, I grabbed one of her wrists. "Please don't leave!"

It was as if I saw After in a new light. All these people from different backgrounds and time periods, all doing their best to find meaning in life eternal. Together. I had felt so alone upon my arrival here, but now I saw that no one was alone in After. Not even the sleeping ghosts in After's graveyard. Not me. And not Vale.

Near us, a little girl hollow who looked no older than three tugged on what I assumed was her mother's hand. Excitement made her enormous eyes sparkle, and together, the pair joined in the spectacle.

There was no hesitation this time. I made a move to follow, but the other hollow I clung to dug her very tall weapons-grade heels into the ground. I looked back to smirk at her, amused at how quickly our roles had reversed. Vale had a toned arm wrapped around herself self-consciously. It was strange to see someone who could only be described as a statuesque warrior suddenly look so...meek.

"What?" I said with a giggle. "You can scale skyscrapers and fight off shadows with a gosh-dang machete, but dancing is too scary for you?"

Vale's mouth was a thin line. "I'm not scared!" She let out a yelp when Webb suddenly shoved her from behind.

"Oops!" said the laughing blond hollow.

Grinning, I pulled Vale into the crowd. "Damn you, Webby!" she shouted over her shoulder. "You traitor!"

Webb just saluted the two of us, grinning from ear to ear, before wandering off, tailing some attractive guy.

The music was lulling. It drowned out all my numbed senses and filled the cavernous hole in my chest. Every hollow that writhed around us was no doubt as empty as we were, but they made do with what they were given as they danced against each other; all trying to awaken any semblance of a spark of humanity within themselves.

I, too, could almost ignore the tugging sensation that pulled me toward the Dark beyond the wall. Was that Crow pulling on my heart?

While the red lights flashed and the bodies around us surged, I turned back to Vale, who still appeared to keep her distance from the other hollows. Her grimace slackened when I smiled at her. I let go of her wrist and grabbed her hand instead. My eyelids fluttered. Breath that I didn't need hitched in my ribs. Some kind of unseen flare passed between our hands. As if I was watching a painting come to life under an artist's brush in real-time, visions of swirling color that didn't exist in this world spiraled in my brain at our touch. Strange. I swore my dead heart had almost skipped a beat. Vale's face mirrored my confusion.