Creatures of Hell Book 1: Whispers in the Dark

Chapter 21: Coming To Terms With Life [David]

I stared down at the floor outside what used to be Candice's childhood bedroom. It still remained the same outside, her 'keep out' pink fair sign hung on the door, the scratched paint from the white door showing the purple beneath...It was all just so much of how she used to be.

She used to love sitting inside her room for hours when she was a kid, she'd always be making something for somebody just like the stick drawing of me, my mother and father and her that she drew when she was five. It was still hung of the fridge beside a picture of all of us at the beach...

The fun times were difficult to think of, when I thought of the bad I could almost think of an excuse to stop me from feeling the guilt but the trick was that one didn't exist. There is nothing I can do to excuse not being there, not even knowing that she was gone for a week!

I knew my mother was in there, she just went in there to cry, every single evening. That was what her life was, moping for the past six months.

Just waiting. Everyday the same, just waiting. 

We'd tried leafletting her face, searching the streets and asking people if they'd ever seen her and even when my mother was asleep we searched woodland areas. I dreaded it though but I almost also craved finding the truth. 

Most of the pain was not knowing what's happened to my sister. If Iknew that she'd been killed by her crappy ex or she'd had a falling out with her friends that got out of hand then I'd be able to deal with that grief but I can't deal with grief of not knowing.

I can't mourn for her when there's nothing to mourn. It eats me up when each sun goes down and I watch my mother die a little bit more each day when she tries to cling on to her daughter stepping through that door one day.

She's given up in God as well, I haven't seen her pray at all and the rosary beads she wore around her neck were left crumpled at the bottom of her jewellery box along with everything else that made my mother the woman who she was.

I can't believe that we didn't even know that she was gone for about a week, her friends just thought that she was angry with them and was avoiding everybody. They weren't her real friends, they were only with her for the party.

My sister had that aura about her, she could bring life to anything just with her spirits but she never asked for recognitition and she never got it, they always chose other over her because she simply didn't shout as loud as everybody else.

It's sad to think that I never paid that much attention to my sister, she was my little sister and I suppose it was my job to look after her once our father passed away but she didn't want me to look after her, she wanted to look after everybody else.

I sighed, I'd shed my tears in my privacy, I can't be weak enough know to cry in front of my mother. She was our rock when my father passed, I had to be hers now that Candice was dead.

It would be easy to crawl into a bed and pull the covers over my head, pretend it was all just a nightmare but what would that do? It wouldn't find her.

I have to be strong, my mother needs me know more than ever.

Today was the official day that the police were giving up, her case was going in the unsolved pile soon to become a cold case. She was over the age of being classed as a child so she wasn't treated like one even if we still saw her as one. They were going to write something like 'run off to start a new life' in the polive report even if the police liason officer tried to convince me otherwise.

I knew as much as everybody else that Candice was dead, there was no way that she would have run off and left everybody else to feel like this.

She was dead in a ditch somewhere, probably been killed by some sick pervert. It hurt me physically to imagine her as being alive. It's more then what I could ever wish for, to imagine her as being safe and happy but if I think that she is alive then I'll never get over it. Her being dead is easy, not as much hurt and people will stop looking at me with pity in their eyes.