Chasing Memories

[19] Omens

    The road to Maudlinkestle Hospital looked far more welcoming in the daylight. Its flat, narrow brook of asphalt meandered through the shadows of overarching sycamores, progressing without interruption save for the occasional dirt branch that trailed off across the surrounding valleys. Leaving Bosmouth as the sun crested the horizon, Elise leaned back in her seat and basked in the liquid gold that fell from the sky.

    Sometime between the snap of her eye's shutters, the light slipped away. In its place loomed a thick blanket of steel clouds, its black knots unfurling on an icy wind that all but drew blood from Elise's cheeks. She reached down to cling to her seat, yet nothing lay beyond her waist but thin, chilled air. A desperate look to her side made the same point. The car was gone, Cadence was gone, and she was outside alone. "Cade?"

    Walls of wind forced Elise into the hard concrete ground, and she gritted her teeth to bite back against the cold as she pressed forward into the darkness. The flat stone path ahead held no distinguishing features to mark, draining the strength from Elise's legs with its endless stretch into eternity. She could not move, she could not stand, and she could not think.

    Just as the pound of the blood in her ears ground Elise's mind to dust, a solid force crashed into her side. She stumbled backwards and reached out to catch her fall, yet rather than flailing at the emptiness, another hard mass struck her outstretched arm. A dizzy glance discovered a sea of silhouettes around her, their ranks shifting just enough to let her squeeze through. As she stared to make out a face or an article of clothing, a loud shunt shook the world, and a cluster of harsh, focused floodlights blazed into her eyes. Blind and battered by the bodies around her, Elise staggered forward towards the new lights. "Cade! Where are you?"

    She heard the sound first, picking up on the hushed whispers that flew amid the groups of shadowy people. Beneath them all lurked a slow, pained flow of whimpers, almost too soft to register in the chattering, blustering air. As Elise shoved past a stubborn silhouette, the whimpers grew into a haunting wail, gathering greater force and swirling around her despite her claw-like grip around her ears. Then, with a blink and a step, she came across the source of the noise and stopped dead in her tracks.

    Cadence lay right in front of her, stranded, collapsed, and shivering in the centre of the path. Her eyes were wild yet petrified, and her limbs occasionally jerked with enough power to knock a passerby off their feet. The wailing hushed itself away, yet the tormented expression remained on Cadence's saliva-stained face.

    Tripping over her own feet, Elise fell at her friend's side. "Cade! What happened?" she asked, grabbing the girl and staring into her eyes.

    Her chapped lips moved, yet no sound left Cadence's mouth. After a moment of silence, the girl's body suddenly chilled to a bitter cold in Elise's grasp, and her head snapped backwards as if yanked by an invisible string. Elise's heart burst in her chest as she took tighter hold of Cadence's motionless frame. "Come on, Cade. Talk to me!" she cried, scrambling to find a part of her friend's form that escaped the cold's deadly onslaught. Nothing had, and nothing in Cadence's body registered her words. "No!"

    A firm grip took Elise by the shoulder. "Woah, chill out, Ellie," Cadence said, a note of genuine concern tainting her usual calm. "You good?"

    "What?" Elise rubbed her eyes until the sunlight's flare dipped to a gentle glow, then gasped with relief as the features returned to her friend's silhouette. "Cade! You're back!"

    "And you're way too intense right now. You know I never left, right?" Maintaining her hold on Elise, Cadence glanced between the road and her friend's face to search for something unspoken. She had removed her beanie since they had set off, and the fresh roots of her purple-streaked hairs shone like amber in the morning light. "Are you back? I didn't even realise you'd dozed off until you didn't call out that deer we passed."