The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 8 🔻 For the Faint of Heart

I really shouldn't have been surprised when Vale took off running with me in tow.

Everything about her was fast. Even without her beast of a motorcycle, the cloaked ghost that had my hand in hers was like a bullet. When she moved, people moved out of the way. Despite that, we didn't even attempt to fight through the sea of wandering ghosts in After's streets. Instead, much to my bewilderment, we went up.

"Come on!" Vale urged as she leaped atop a stack of crates that leaned against a shanty. She pulled me up to join her, and then, without pause, shimmied up some ladder affixed to the grimy, graffiti-covered wall.

"Again, where are we going, Vale?" I called after her. Only a distant laugh answered me as she disappeared over the roof's edge so high above me. I had no choice but to climb up after her, boots slipping on the ladder's filthy rungs. With a groan, I finally flopped my uncoordinated self onto the roof, where Vale stood with a hand on a hip and a half-sided smirk. She flipped her braids over her shoulder, then whipped around, gunning for the other side of the roof.

"Wait, don't—!" I yelled and reached for her as if I could stop her. But Vale didn't stop. Pigeons and other small birds scattered as she launched herself from the roof's edge and cleared the several-story gap between this building and the next before sliding into a landing square on her feet. The whole while, I stood there staring in her dust.

Evidently Vale had never once heard of the phrase, "rest in peace," because as soon as she landed on the other rooftop, she took off running once more. Never pausing. Never hesitating. I watched her with my jaw hanging open while she leapt from wall to wall, building to building, parkouring with ease. She climbed higher and higher.

—and further and further away from me.

Eventually she paused, blocks away from where I stood rooted to my rooftop. She appeared so small in the distance while the red light of After outlined her striking, svelte silhouette like an ethereal halo. She looked back over her shoulder in my direction. Waiting.

This was a challenge. She wanted to see how far I could go.

I toed the roof's edge and stared down at the gap below. No trace of vertigo made my head swim. No sense of fear or logic told me to step away from the crevice of immediate and painful death, you dummy!

I laughed. Because I was already dead, wasn't I? What did I have to lose?

A sudden breath of wind made my hair fly behind me as I looked away from the drop back to Vale. I, too, wanted to know the answer to her challenge. How far could I go?

I took two steps backward.

Then three steps forward.

And I flew.

My landing wasn't nearly as graceful as Vale's, but that didn't matter to me. Once my body stopped rolling, I untangled my limbs and heaved myself upright. I glanced back at the rooftop I'd leaped from and the gap I'd cleared.

I laughed again. I couldn't stop laughing.

And like Vale, I didn't stop running.

After was now my playground. After was something beneath me. I wasn't recently deceased Skye Rhee. I wasn't some pariah to be chased in the streets. I was a bird, uncaged and free. I followed her footsteps, scaling walls and scaffolding and leaping from building to building. I threw myself from the last rooftop. Ahead of me across the divide, Vale waited, still as a statue.

Wind ruffled my hair and clothing. My heart beat in my ears. The other side of the final ravine fast approached. I was halfway across the gap when I realized with a sinking feeling that this jump had been longer than all the rest, and much, much higher.