Dark Secrets [COMPLETED]

Chapter 16: Midnight, Bloody Midnight

It took over an hour, but eventually I found my way back to Kendrick House on foot. By then, the sun had long set and the sky had turned a dark, inky blue.

I walked up the gravel turn in the road and past the carriage house. I stopped at the iron gates and just stood there, staring through the bars at the foreboding manor beyond. I sighed heavily. I really, really didn't want to go back in, but I was beyond exhausted at this point.

I pushed against the gate door and it opened. Just as I was about to squeeze my way through, something caught my attention. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw an eerie blue light coming from the direction of the woods.

I turned my head, and my heart dropped when I saw Meredith standing by the carriage house. Her milky-white eyes gleamed like glass. I wanted to run, but I couldn't move.

"You tried," she said, her voice echoing in my ears. "Everyone has ignored you, but you tried."

She turned to walk into the woods. She looked back at me, as if telling me to follow her. I did just that, following her into the woods. We went further and further into the trees, past the path that I normally went down. The further we went, the more the colours around me changed. I looked up, noticing with a chill that the moon became large and bloated in the sky, glowing bright red. Still, I kept walking, following the pale blue light as she slipped through the trees.

We ended up in a large clearing, where the sky was visible. Everything was tinted red with the gibbous blood moon that illuminated the entire glade.

Meredith floated on until she arrived at the center of the glade. Then she turned to face me. "It is time for you to see the truth." She closed her blank eyes and faded away, her light expanding and blanketing the entire area.

I squinted at the brightness and covered my eyes with my arm. When it faded, the scene before me had changed.

A dark figure stood in the center of the clearing. As my eyes adjusted, I saw that it was a man in a wine-coloured robe. His hood was up, shrouding his face. In his right hand, he held a sharp blade that glinted in the moonlight.

He turned and moved away, revealing a stone slab behind him. A young woman with long, blonde ringlets, wearing a white gown, was tied down atop of it.

Meredith.

Trails of tears reflected red down her cheeks as she shook herself back and forth, trying to free herself from her bonds. Her captor moved around the slab until he was standing on the other side. His hood fell back, revealing his face illuminated in red. My stomach clenched.

It was William.

He muttered words in what, to me, sounded faintly Spanish. He repeated the words faster until they became a chant, raising his arms to the sky. Meredith's eyes widened as she thrashed and shook against her binds. She screamed over and over, but the gag in her mouth muffled them.

He raised the blade to the sky and she let out one last piercing scream before he brought it down, hard and fast.

I screamed in horror as it cut through her with a sickening crunch.

He dragged the knife, hilt deep, through her chest in a circular shape. Blood poured out of the continuous wound like a river. Poor Meredith was no longer screaming—she only made pathetic sobs and gurgles. Using his hands, he pried open her chest cavity, exposing her still-beating heart.

Knowing what he was about to do, I turned away and covered my eyes. I couldn't watch him—I couldn't! Only when I heard the clang of the knife blade against stone did I dare to look back.

William held her now-still heart in his hand like a meaty, bloody prize. With his other hand, he spread apart the front of his robe. It fell to his elbows, revealing his bare chest. In the center of his breastbone was a dark, vertical scar. He stroked his fingers along it, a look of discomfort on his face. The skin parted like lips, trickling blood down his abdomen.

He pushed Meredith's heart inside. It fit the hole perfectly. He panted audibly as the skin closed over it, leaving a scar once again.

He clenched his hands into fists as he stretched his arms out to the sky once again. The wind started to pick up. The very air around him crackled with energy. His eyes rolled back in his head, and his gleeful laughter echoed through the woods.

The shadows twisted his face into something absolutely demonic, and in the red light of that bloated moon, I knew the truth.

William and Robert Castle, Senior and Junior, were all the same person. I was watching a centuries-old man who had summoned the darkest forces imaginable to sustain his own wretched life.

At this realization, I turned and ran. The woods were unrecognizable under the devil's moon, and I stumbled blindly across the underbrush and through the black-and-red maze of trees.

When I finally broke through the treeline and back to the gates, the colour of the night had returned to the inky blue it was before.

I finally stumbled to a stop once my feet hit the gravel path. I fell to my knees, sides aching, and vomited. When everything had come out of me, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and, shakily, I stood up. I wasn't done yet. There was a reason Meredith guided me to that particular place.

I went into the carriage house and grabbed a shovel from Carlos's tool pile at the back. Then I went back into the forest. Instinct brought me past my path, through the birches and past the remains of a stone well, where the glade was blessedly empty.

Once I'd found the exact spot that the stone slab had been sitting, I began to dig.

I don't know how long I spent digging a hole in the middle of the woods, in the blackness of night, but eventually my shovel hit something hard. I threw the shovel aside and, using my phone flashlight, I shone light into the hole.

Sure enough, I'd unearthed something unusual and white. I pushed the dirt away with my hand, and backed out of the hole in shock.

It was a badly-decomposed head. Stepping back, I saw that it was attached to a body, on top of another body. One was more bone than the other, which still had skin and hair attached. The newer one was on top of the older one, like she'd just been tossed in.

I found not just Meredith's grave, but Virginia's as well.