Beckoned Through The Dark

103 // Abigail // Red Sea

"No, not my daughter!" Betty screamed, shaking and scratching her head.

"You are right - she's not your daughter.”

No mother in her right state of mind would kill her own daughter. I rushed towards Karabelo’s who was surrounded by blood. Not that the others did not bleed, I swear there was enough blood on the floor to satisfy a vampire and his life mate for life.

She was leaning against the wall, with her hands on her stomach. I took off one of my shawls and used it to apply pressure on her wound, it was bad.

She seemed to have forgotten that she was not invisible nor was she indestructible anymore, she had not even taken a step before Betty shot her, it was as if she had sensed that Karabelo’s brain had been jinxed, she was no longer interested in whatever their mission was here today.

“Aren't you going to call them to fetch her?" Vincent yelled.

"Shut up, shut up! Shush."

I never liked Karabelo from the moment I met her, she was full of herself and had this dark energy I couldn’t stand. For the longest time since I knew her, I wished she could disappear, to the point where I wanted her dead.

But I needed her alive right now, I needed her to live so that she could tell me how to save my sister.

I just wish she'd listened to me when I pleaded with her not to do anything stupid; this was not the spiritual realm where she was powerful.

"Call the bloody paramedics!" Vincent barked at his sister, snapping her out of her silent thoughts.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! What do you think I'm doing?" She snapped. "Oh, Vincent! Don't tempt me, you are not part of the list, so I suggest that you shut up!" Before Vincent could say anything else, she made an even bigger threat. "From now on, if Vincent speaks or does something against me, I'll take a life." The tension in the room multiplied tenfold. "You hear that, Vincent? You talk and I kill someone in your place. Think about your wife and mother-"

"I don't have a mother!" He cut her off with the most poisonous tone I'd ever heard, leaving Cecilia looking dejected.

Betty laughed hysterically as if her brother had just told an inside joke. "Wow. I'll excuse you for that one." She smirked.

"You haven't said a single word to me ever since I arrived,” Cecilia whispered, "I never abandoned you, if that's what you are thinking."

"Anyone who speaks, or whispers will get the next person killed. This is not some kind of a family reunion, because you are all going to die." Betty says sitting on the floor.

I didn't realize that Dineo had fallen asleep until now- she did not backchat Betty. She would have said something in the lines of: ‘It is a family reunion; we are actually going to have a second one in heaven while you rot in hell!’

The conversation between Cecilia and Vincent resumed. "I swear, I did not abandon you, son."

"Then tell me what happened,” he demanded.

"Oh, little brother, I'll tell you what happened." Betty squatted in the centre of the room while facing everyone.

"I. Am. Not. Your. Brother."

"I'll let that go as well,” she mused, “Our dear mother here found out about what I did five years after it happened. Long story cut short, I locked her up at the basement in the mansion and burnt one of the maids in her car. Everyone thought it was an accident and everyone BELIEVED that the famous Cecilia Nichols-Edwards was dead."

“Why doesn’t Lesego remember anything from her past?” I asked.

Betty looked in my direction and gave me a wide grin. “When the twins turned 12, they started their high school journey, but they happened to cause a lot of trouble together, so I decided to separate them. And if you must know,” She said, looking in my direction once more. “Your mother over here helped me to erase Lesego’s memory after initiating her.”

Bridgette threw me a panicked look, but truthfully, I wasn’t even surprised. "Honey, I'm so sorry," she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "This is all my fault."

I felt so numb, I didn't even have the energy to answer her. Of course, it was her fault!

She was the one who got Claudia involved in this whole mess.

"Which honey are you referring to, your daughter or your husband?" Karabelo commented.

I knew Sello was my father the moment I saw him but could only be certain when I unlocked his chains, because he had a similar scar on his wrist just like in the picture I got from Claudia.

My eyes were trained on Karabelo leaning against the wall in the pool of her own blood, with each second that passed, she was slowly fading. She was dying, and there was no saving her, I could feel it deep within my soul.

"Karabelo, at least tell me how to save her, please. Please tell me what I must do to get Claudia back," I cried, my heart in indescribable pain.

"What happened to Claudia?" Sello asked.

"Please," I begged.

Karabelo gave a wry smile. "She's so lucky to have you, you know that. She doesn't even deserve you," she said weakly, blood coming out on the corners of her mouth.

"Will someone tell me what's going on?" Sello asked in panic.

I scoffed. "Why do you care? You left them!"

Karabelo chuckled, I wish she could just stay calm and stop putting pressure on herself. "You all think you are so perfect, like you've never committed a sin against anyone."

"Is that what you told them, that I left?" Sello yelled in Bridgette's direction, a part of me already knew where this story was headed. "YOU left! You took my daughter and ran away after I found out about what you did to my sister; you murdered my sister!"

How I wish Lesego was here so that she could hear all this madness with me, we were related. This evil girl bleeding to death was my blood cousin, my aunt's daughter.

This supernatural being sitting a few feet away from me was my late aunt.

How amazing! And people had to die for all this to come out.

We surely don't choose our families.

"Let me guess, you found them, and then Bridgette and Betty captured you and locked you up in the basement?" I quipped.

He gulped, his eyes painfully watching my dear mother. "She set me up, sent me a message and asked to meet up. I arrived at the location, and the next thing, I woke up chained in the basement," he recalled, "Bridgette's plan was to have me murdered, but Elizabeth decided to keep me alive as insurance."

"What a thoughtful gesture," I muttered. "So, what now, are we supposed to thank her?" My comment caused Karabelo to have a go at a chocked chuckle.

"You are angry at me, aren't you?"

"You don't deserve my anger; I don't care about you or your wife. The only person I'm concerned about is my sister." I knew he was innocent, but he couldn't expect me to confront my feelings right now. "Betty, call the paramedics, she's dying!"

Betty banged the pistol against her head continuously while yelling, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

I sucked in a deep breath and stared at the ceiling.

When is this going to end?

I kept applying pressure on her wound, and she just sat there, ready to die. It was as if she didn't care.

"Why won't you just let me die?" She asked quietly. "This is what you wanted for a long time, and now you are sitting here covered in my blood." The irony! On a different day, I would have loved to watch her bleed to death. "I envy you... And Lesego. Look at all those people." I followed her eyes to every hostage in the room. "They would do anything for you, good or bad, all in the name of love, because you are good people."

"Why do you insist on talking?"

"Ryan," she said his name as if he was the answer to everything. "He was always talking about you; you were probably the last thing on his mind before he died." She tried to laugh, but only ended up choking. "I never loved him, you know. I just enjoyed the thrill of destroying the one thing in this world he cared about, you. I just could never understand how it was possible for someone to love another person like that. I didn't understand until I met Clay, but he didn't want me. He didn't want me." She was getting weaker by the second, putting pressure on her wound was not helping since she was insisting on talking. “Abigail.” I looked up at her. “Lesego… Tell her…” Blood spluttered out of her mouth, and she started to breathe heavily. She convulsed, and then her body went limp.

“Karabelo?” I called, hoping she would do anything to show that she was still here, but her body was bare, soulless. The room fell deadly silent as I stepped away from her.

I'd just killed my sister. I let Karabelo die, and she took Claudia with her. I lost two people that I love on the same day, and I didn't even have a proper goodbye with either of them.

Every second we spent sitting here, we were risking another person losing their life to this maniac, she was relentless.

Tiffany looked so hopeless, she came here thinking this was going to be a fair fight where at the end of the day, she would walk out that door with the accused cuffed; but obviously Betty and her troop had planned this -  get everyone under the same roof and kill them all.

There was no way out, there was no escape; there were only two entrances to the house, the front door and the kitchen door linking to the garage, and Betty had made sure they were all secured.

Not to mention that all she had to do now was to pull the trigger once and set us all on fire.

We were trapped in here, and if we didn't think of a quick way out, we were all going to die.

It was all of us against Betty and her lapdog, Lwandle.

Oh, how I wish Nomalanga was here to see what her actions had led up to. At least her baby was safe out there, I'm glad I left her with Duncan at Bridgette's.

But still, she should have been in here with the rest of them, because somehow someway, they all contributed to this misfortune.

“Abigail, are you okay?” Tiffany asked, her brows furrowed. “You look…pale.”

I frowned in response and stood still in the centre of the room, I was feeling weird, very weird. It was as if the room temperature had suddenly dropped to below zero, I felt cold and paralysed, and I felt like I was losing control over my body.

My eyes bulged out as it dawned on me what was really happening. “No,” I managed to breathe. “What’s…what’s happening to me?”

Everything stopped for a second, and I heard voices calling my name, and then it started again, and this time, it brought me to my knees.

In no time I was pulled into a familiar deep sea, and then everything went blank.

No.