The Darkness Within

Chapter 6 - I Should Have Talked To Adam

The nightmares came back the day Jackson was back from the hospital. I hadn't realized the dreams had stopped while he was gone, but the night he came back my sleeping mind was filled again with blood and death.

While Jackson was gone none of us hung out. It was like he was the glue that kept our little group together. I missed hanging with the group, but really it was hanging with Chantel I missed the most. I never had any female friends before, and I missed talking to her.

Jackson had joked about Chantel being grounded, but it was true. Her grandmother pulled her from school the day after we showed up at her house. I texted Chantel a few times and even dropped by her house, but there were no answers to my texts, and no amount of banging on the door would make the old lady open up. If Chantel was still in town, I never saw her.

It was three days after Jackson was back that Adam started talking to himself. I would see Adam in the hallway, in a corner, muttering, to no one, to thin air. The boy looked haunted. I'm not sure how else to explain it. The rest of us had bags under our eyes and looked as though we seldom slept. Which made me think I wasn't the only one having nightmares. But with Adam it was different. He started looking sick. He was too pale; his eyes were at times too bright and his voice, when he talked to real people, was too loud.

Every night from the time he came back Jackson would swing around and get us. We would hang out at whatever house was empty of parents or hang out in the desert drinking beer. And when we were together, we would get really drunk and really high, and for a while, all the weirdness would disappear. During those times when we were partying even Adam seemed back to normal.

I wish now I would have talked to Adam. Forced him to tell me what was wrong. I knew he was acting odd, but I never thought he would do something so...

The red flashing lights are what I remember seeing first. We were coming by Adam's place to pick him up. There was a firetruck, an ambulance and police car all parked on the street in front of Adam's house. At first, I figured it was his next-door neighbor, that old dude, who had finally croaked. But then I saw the gurney. There was a body on it, and a blue blanket covered everything except for the shoes. I recognized the vans right away. Adam had loved to draw, and he had drawn all over the side of his vans. I remember looking at those scribbles on the shoes as the gurney went by and feeling nothing. I was numb. I remember Derrick shouting out and cussing and Jackson laughing.

***