The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 5 🔻 The End of the Line

I was torn between two worlds.

My brief flight into the Light—into the world of the living—felt like a dream. Now, I sat with Webb and Vale on the floor of their apartment around a glowing red lantern, still feeling like I still hadn't yet awakened, anchored to a life I couldn't even remember.

Like everything was just a dream within a dream.

"I still don't understand," I said, finally shattering the silence that had followed us from beyond the wall. "How did I end up here?"

That fluttering tarp and the broken glass door it hid wouldn't leave my mind.

Vale perked up from where she sat across from me. Luxlight accentuated the sharp angles of her face. "Are your memories coming back at all?"

"Only in bits and pieces." I hugged my knees to my chest. "Vale. Why are my memories gone?"

The three of us ignored the sudden bouts of shouting and stomping from the neighbors upstairs. Webb took a sudden interest in the lantern separating the three of us, so Vale, after a sigh, explained. "When a ghost arrives here a blank slate like you...it means they died in a traumatic way. It's your mind's way of protecting itself. I'm sorry, Skye."

A traumatic way.

My heart should've sunk in my chest at that, but instead I merely frowned. My resurfacing memories were like fragmented glass strewn across the floor, leaving me to piece together what had happened to me. It was a painful process. The shards were sharp. I hesitated to assemble that puzzle in my head, because I didn't know if I'd like the finished picture.

My fingers aimlessly found the woven bracelet I'd crafted from my pajama pants while we'd sat in silence. I'd hoped it would help me remember who I was. Also, I just liked the cute frogs. "So, how did you two die?" I asked the other hollows. That wasn't a rude thing to ask here, was it? I was still getting used to proper ghost etiquette.

Webb chuckled. "Can't remember."

I drew in a sharp breath. "You're like me?"

"Nah, I willingly let all my memories fade away."

I gaped at him, waiting for him to explain further.

The male hollow rubbed the back of his neck, deep in thought. "This afterlife is like a second start, y'know?" he began. "It was easier to let everything go so I could start fresh. At least, I think that's why I erased my memories." He shrugged with a half-sided smirk. "Don't know who I used to be. Don't know how I died. Don't even remember the second half of my name anymore."

Vale nudged him playfully. "All he remembers is me finding him in the Dark. Right, Webberta?"

Webb sucked his teeth beneath his hood. "Pretty sure that's not my name."

"And you, Vale?"

She turned away from me. "Fire," was her only answer.

The look on her face made that emptiness inside me spiral. It was the same haunted expression she wore when the three of us left Blackburne after his parting words.

That scarred hollow was right. I craved the Light. Even now, at that very moment, high above the streets of After, I craved being in Dominic's presence like it was a drug. I shook my head hard enough to toss up my hair. "Who the heck was that guy out in the Dark?" I blurted. "Blackburne?"

"Only the oldest hollow in After!" said Webb. "And the greatest shadow-slayer out there! He oversaw this city's construction and the building of the wall to keep the shadows out, and he's, like, everyone's hero! Usually old hollows give up the ghost and go all catatonic and corpsey in the streets from boredom, but not Nymandus Blackburne."