The Dead Of Night

Do You Believe In Ghosts?

When I came to I was lieing down in a snowy forest and I didn't know how I got there. The muddy, snowy tracks appeaedr to be evidence for that case. I closed my eyes tightly and groaned, trying to remember what had happened. I remembered I was talking to Janson about....something. And the next was just darkness; cold, cold darkness.

I squeezed my eyes tighter and tried to remember. I conjuered the flash of green in my mind and it all made sense. I'd been about to tell Janson why I wanted to finish his business at some point, and then Zack shoved me into the water.

Everything was suddenly lucid as I remembered the cold of the water, the ice scraping my face, my throat and everything inside. I remembered the panic and felt my heartbeat wildly in my chest, remember getting a last glimpse of Zack - he'd been smiling down at me with a cruel look in his eyes - before he came plunging after me into the ravine.

I remembered an icy hand grabbing onto my shirt and being lifted up, but that was it. After that everything just stopped. I whimpered at the thought of what had happened and curled in on myself. My stomach and lungs still felt heavy and I noticed I wasn't wearing my jacket.

I opened my eyes wide in panic. Looking down at myself I saw I was wrapped in two towels and that was it. My clothes were hanging on a tree branch, and below it the snow had a layer of ice sitting atop it. As I stared at it for a minute I realized what it meant. If my undergarments were there too I was completely naked and someone wrapped me up.

Somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind I acknowledged the fact it was best to have my clothes off, and to be wrapped in a towel that was at least dry. I sat and looked around in panic, all my scratches were screaming at me, begging for me to notice their pain but I had to see. There was no one around; who could have taken my clothes off? Where was Janson? What'd happened to Zack?

No longer caring about my nakedness I got up and walked gingerly down the hill, following beside the muddy foot prints. I got to the bottom and it seemed as if time stood still. I couldn't move or think, all I knew was that it was Zack's green tuque that was caught to the ice, and I couldn't see his body anywhere.

As I regained the ability to think I tried to figure out what'd happened, tried to make excuses. Maybe he'd crawled out from the ice and left his hat? May he hadn't even fallen into the water - maybe it was some sort of post traumatic hallucination. But I knew better, Zack was dead. He was gone forever. The fact he'd tried to rape me, tried to kill me, all slipped away and I felt deep remorse. He was a human being, maybe a dispicable one, but he still didn't deserve to be dead. Especially not in such a violent way.

I shivered away the unnatural time of death and looked down at my exposed knees to see they were already shaking. "Mallorie!" I heard at that moment, and I turned to see Sophie coming down the hill, behind her Janson floated and looked relieved to see me awake.

Sophie ran over to me and wrapped her arms around me and I clung to her warmth. "Oh my god, your lips are blue!" She cried and I had nothing else to say. "What happened, why aren't you wearing any clothes?"

I shook my head and tried to speak, but all the internal scratches the water that had ravaged my body had left me incapable and instead a choked noise and a dry cough came out. She looked around panicked and saw my soaking clothes on the tree and looking back she grabbed at my hair and I saw in her hand that the wet strands had frozen.

"It looks like our trip to the hospital is happening a lot sooner." She pulled out her cellphone and called her mom. The car was there in five minutes and Sophie was pushing me up the hill. In panic I sought out Janson's eyes. "Zack?" I asked in a rasp voice.

"He's probably in class." Sophie said trying not to panic me, had she not seen the tuque? Did she not know it was Zack's? Janson gave me such a distanced glance and looked down at him feet. Zack was dead.