In The Sight of These Hills (Dolan Twins)

A Thousand Mornings

Chapter 29: A Thousand Mornings

"It can turn the whole world upside down,
Shake it 'til the sky falls to the ground.
We don't have to reap the fear they sow,
Friends, as long as we hide our love away,
In the good they'll never know.

It can see us through these dark days,
Though they seem to darken as I go.
Our love will see us through these dark, dark days, '
Til it lights the way back home."

-Punch Brothers, "Dark Days"

A/N: Contains more cursing than usual. This is an extremely emotional chapter. All I can say is that stability has left the chat.

~

One step, another step.

Ethan was wandering through the thick, dead New Jersey woods. Each step he took made a crunching noise that broke against the silence of it all. He screamed out to the cold, shill stillness of the forest.

He wandered, and minutes passed. But time was nothing but an idea then, a thought held on an ideal tongue. A minute was an hour. An hour, a minute. What was time in the woods, anyway?

"Grayson!"

He shivered and crossed his arms over his chest, trudging up the sight of one of the hills that led into more woods. A break in the forest, it was. He walked through the dried, dead grass that was the color of wheat.

"Gray!"

There was nothing. His brother didn't appear to him, didn't reach out to him in the darkness, didn't scream out to him in the wind.

Ethan knew why he left. He left because he was dangerous to people.

He was especially dangerous to Ethan.

Tears steamed down his face to fall at his feet, hitting the earth. He moved into more woods, having no idea where he was.

"Grayson!"

What had they done to deserve any of this?

Where was his hair dripping wet? Where were his eyes in the dark grayness of the forest? Where was his hand pulling in reassurance?

Not there.

Ethan felt a sudden sharp pain in his side, his belly, his back. The adrenaline seemed to be wearing off its soft hands from his spine, his throat, his mind. He gasped, feeling something hard in his chest, like an iron blade being thrusted into the main artery of his heart.

There was his hot life's blood rushing out onto his shirt and soaking into the cotton material. Was that the inferior vena cava being severed? That is the largest vein in the human body. Did Grayson know that? He wanted to ask him right then and there. He wanted to tell him that he could trust him, even when he hadn't trusted him. He hadn't told him. Why hadn't he told him?

What had they done?

"Gray!"

In the distance there was the bark of a dog sharp and low pitched. He was out past the curfew, he remembered. Were the cops still looking for the beast? In the night? He thought he heard something to his left, but he wasn't quite sure. He hit one of the hard patches of rough grass.

He fell, and his hands sprayed themselves out onto the leaves. He grabbed a fist full of the rich dark dirt and closed his eyes, knees on the forest floor.

Why couldn't he be strong? Why couldn't he face things dead in the eyes and not shy away from them? Why couldn't he be more like Grayson?

He ran his dirty hand through his hair and got up again, shaking his head back and forth.