The Guardian Angel

Chapter-14: Leah

Talk? Talk about what? This made me really anxious. James made his way towards the hallway, his long legs carrying him to the door within a few strides. I followed him outside.

Stephen's friend had been taken care of  by James. What he had done to him, he hadn't told. He had dragged him off with ease.

He stood there, hands shoved into his pockets, leaning on the wall. He studied me, his eyes travelling across my face.

I raised an eyebrow. "You wanted to talk? About what?" I asked.

"Something is different about you." He said, after a few moments of silence, his eyes clouded with confusion. "I had some doubt. But that became much more established when we kissed."

"What?" I asked, not catching his drift.

"You aren't like any other girl. There is something different. But I can't place my finger on it."

"What is so different about me or was different about me when we kissed?" I asked incredulously. What did he mean by different?

"There is death surrounding you." He answered. The word seemed to echo in the empty hallway unnaturally.

I stood staring at him. When my voice started to work again, I asked, "Death? What do you even mean? And how do you know?"

For some reason, I trusted him. This wasn't some weird joke or something he wanted to tell just to spook me. But it wasn't something I understood either. Death? What did he mean by that? Did I have something floating behind me? A spooky black cloud surrounding me like an aura? Which somehow only he could see since he was dead?

"How I know, I have no idea. But there has been a lot of death surrounding you. I can feel it. Whether it has something attached to my death or not, I haven't the slightest clue." He moved his fingers along his jaw, the small movement catching and drawing my attention. "Another thing just struck me. It could be that I was drawn to you—attracted to you— since before we met. In fact, that may be the reason we met."

Attracted. That word hit me like a truck. I wasn't expecting it. He seemed to sense that. He walked toward me, every step making my heart beat faster and louder. As he got closer, all I could hear was the thudding of my heart in my ears.

He stopped after coming closer. He was close. Extremely so. So close, that I could feel his breath falling softly against me. Hooking his finger under my chin, he lifted it up slowly until my eyes met his.

Slowly, letting me know it was happening. Giving me time to react, he slowly closed in. If I truly wanted to, I could've pulled back. But that was it, wasn't it?

The fact was that I didn't want to. So, instead, I leant in.

He pressed his lips softly against mine and my entire world exploded. One moment I was standing in the hallway, having his lips pressed against mine. And the next, I was standing in the middle of a street I didn't recognize.

It was weirdly familiar. A memory screamed at me to let it out, but I had no clue how to release it. I looked around finding few houses lined along the street. It was a small town, with few shops and few places for its inhabitants to hang out. An old lady watered her plants not paying any attention to a girl who had just materialized out of thin air.

I strolled down the street, finding a battered and rusted sign board. It was so rusted; you couldn't even make out what it said. It was a rather monotonous town with few cars passing by.

Except one thing. A huge building stood towards one side of the town. Moving towards it, I found out it was an enormous house. It was battered and ruined, fallen prey to rain and sunlight. Plants grew along cracks in the wall. Part of the house had caved in, making it look even more dilapidated. At night this could be the source of nightmare for anyone living near it.

The fence lining the yard of the house was broken in several places. The gateway to the house, a big and daunting structure that must have once been beautiful in the past, was now pitiful to look at. I walked on the stone path that would take me to the house. Plants grew wildly on both sides, most of them weeds.

Inside the house was somehow even more pathetic. Most of the floor was ashen, with much of the furniture half burnt. The wind that blew, made an eerie sound inside. Clouds gathered above my head, big and dark, casting a dark gloom over the already black house.

I walked into a room that looked like a living room. I couldn't be sure. The sofas that looked luxurious now had a blackish tinge to them. Some of them were completely burnt.

Further I went, the more run-down things looked. Almost as if the entire building got destroyed from a single point from inside the house. I moved through the empty corridors, until I came across an empty room.

The room was gigantic. It was smaller than a ballroom, but could still entertain many guests at a time. This room was the most ashen. Walls and furniture were burnt to a crisp color of black. Here was where it started. The burn that would slowly consume the house. The burn that would turn a beautiful house, teeming with life, into a dilapidated and scary house. The burn that would forever haunt the small town.

I moved towards the dais, my mind in a stupor. At the dais, I tripped on something, almost crashing to the floor. I picked it up and wiped the soot off it. It was a number. The one you put on cakes. The two was half burnt, the other part had become decolorized from bright pink to a dull sickly color. At once I knew who it was for and when it had been used. The question now wasn't where that little girl was. But it was what happened to her family. She had left crying when the house was full of life. But now that she had returned, where was her family?

My mind spun. How? How had I not noticed it before? The entire house was full of memories of the lost. Full of memory of that night 22 years ago. Now the walls seemed to shout at me, cry to me, asking me to help. As the guests had 22 years ago......