The Dark Between Dreams | ✔️

Chapter 18 🔻 Through the Noose

The two halves of the valley stilled, and the groaning from the bowels of the earth had gone silent.

But my pulse throbbed deafeningly loud as I ran to the crevice and dropped to my knees at the edge, terrified of what I would see.

I let out a gasp.

Far beneath Webb and me, our third scavenger clung to the craggy wall on the opposite side. Her mask had fallen back, exposing her face that she scrunched in effort.

"Vale!" Webb screamed uselessly after her.

There weren't a lot of things that I could feel any more—be it emotionally or physically—but I felt the heat from the river scald my skin. Down in the chasm, ribbons of smoke rose from Vale's body. She let out a cry as she slid some more, losing a few more feet. The famished river lapped at the walls of the chasm, inching closer and closer to her heels that she had dug into the soil. She wouldn't last much longer down there.

I tripped over some other ruined thing, nearly falling into the crevice along with Vale. But I looked from the gnarled tree roots I'd stumbled over up to the knobby trunk of an old rotting tree at the ravine's edge—another relic from civilizations past that had been unburied by the quake. The decrepit thing looked like it was hardly standing. The hangman's noose dangling from one of its skeletal branches swayed invitingly. I threw myself against its trunk. "Webb! Help me with this!"

The other ghost didn't waste a second. With a yell, he barreled his entire body against the dead tree. With a prolonged and anguished crack, the trunk succumbed to us and fell across the river. The end with the bare skeletal branches collided with the ravine's other side with a dry crunch.

Below our haphazard bridge, Vale cried out when she slid some more. The soles of her boots began to melt.

Webb climbed aboard the fallen tree to reach Vale. To both our dismay, the trunk splintered under his weight, and his foot fell through into the tree's hollow core. Webb swore under his breath and retreated to safety.

My whole body shook. I locked eyes with Vale. She mouthed something to me while she choked on fumes. "Go," she was saying. "Just go..."

I shoved Webb out of my way, ignoring the string of profanities spewing from him. I slowly placed my foot atop the log, testing its give. So far, it held me. I balanced on tiptoe to the other side of the rickety bridge. Kneeling amongst the thicket of scratching branches, I stretched out a hand down to her, as far as I could reach.

My heart lurched in my chest. My reach was too short by multiple feet.

The swinging noose below me caught my attention, and I bit my lip. It had held a body before. It would hold me now. But how was I meant to reach it...?

"Skye! Head's up!" I heard Webb shout. A split-second later, my spear impaled the trunk near me—the perfect handhold to swing myself to the underside of the tree where the noose waited. I shot Webb an appreciative glance. He gave me a solemn two-fingered salute from the edge of the crevice.

I took a breath.

I had no fear.

I grabbed the spear with two fists and let myself fall from the trunk. Momentum propelled me forward. Without giving myself even a heartbeat to reconsider what the Hell I was doing, I let go of the spear with one hand and grabbed the noose.

I have no fear, I continued to tell myself.

Yet my heart pounded in full force as I slid down the rope. My feet caught in the noose's loop. I clung onto the rope for dear life. Something cracked. I gasped and looked up to see the trunk splintering under my weight. Time was running out.