Crimson Trails

Oddity

I take the two pieces and place them around my neck, my entire body screaming against the act. Maybe the necklaces are already starting to have their power over me.

Nevertheless, I find my way back to the grove, surprised that I could find the right way back.

Did I find the right way back? Because there are no signs of the carnation petals anymore, and no one in the neighbourhood would do the charity of sweeping the bare streets.

But the place is the same, I can bet my life on it. The earth has been gouged out, oddly out of shape.

I don’t remember having done that, though it could have been none but me. I may have done it last night, in a desperate attempt to claw the ground out, almost as if my sister was hiding under it.

Did I dream the whole thing? There are no petals, no sign of the previous night. The forest is silent as ever — listening, as if bidding out the time, waiting to engulf another person, another soul into its depths.

But it isn’t a dream, because Poppy isn’t home.

Thinking about my sister makes me vaguely aware of the gaping hole in me. It is as if there is a hollow where my heart used to be. I never knew I cared so much for Poppy.

She was always my liability, my responsibility. I was more a guardian than a brother or friend. Maybe that’s why she was distancing herself from me. Maybe that’s why I lost her.

I shudder to realize that I had collapsed to the ground, my head in my hands — the perfect posture of a defeated person. I have not even started searching and I am already defeated.

Shame on me.

I get up and drag my unwilling feet back to my house, to the neighbourhood that is just waking up and going about their work.

Nothing has changed for the people around me and it kind of disappointed me.

I don’t know, maybe I had expected the world to end, or even the aliens to take over — an apocalyptic crisis maybe. But the world is oddly still, stagnant.

One missing person in the starving, struggling humanity is no one of consequence. People can forget them as quickly and move on as if nothing has happened.

I am so lost in my thoughts that I don’t notice the tall lank figure in an oversized hoodie, staring at me from the distance.

However just as I lift my gaze, the figure abruptly turns around and is off on a blue bicycle, pedalling off, the baggy clothes fluttering in the wind.

But that one gaze, one moment is enough for me to realise that that person wasn’t a stranger.

There is something oddly familiar about that face — perfectly cut, so perfect that it’s almost an insult to beauty. Those sharp cobalt eyes, distant as the sky, yet burning like gas flames.

Claramay.

The unspoken name escapes from my lips, almost like a gasp.

It’s Claramay.

An odd mixture of blue and pink — that’s what her name used to mean.

The red ruby around my neck is suddenly feeling heavier, knowing that it belonged to that girl, the girl who was my friend, the girl I had given my heart to — the girl who had mended the broken pieces of me after my mother’s death, and the girl who had disappeared, leaving me shattered, even worse than she had found me.

But she seems to have grown up, which is natural after four years. What is unnatural, is her presence in this locality.

Her house has been abandoned, locked away and her family has missing. But if she is really back, I know where to find her.

But why should I bother?

I need to find Poppy. But something tells me that that the girl’s sudden appearance has more to it than it looks. Maybe she is related to all this.

I start walking briskly, turning corners, counting the lampposts. Even after all these years, I remember her home exactly. It is a pretty white cottage just off the road. A cobbled path leading right up to it.

I stand for a long time on the porch. The place isn’t looking like anyone has lived here recently. For a moment I think that it might really have been a hallucination and I had imagined the whole thing.

But the lock is no more and the place is looking less dusty than I expected it to be.

I gather up my courage and knock on the door.

Two sharp knocks.

The sound reverberates through the air, sounding oddly serene.

I hear the scraping of wood on the floor and sound of soft footsteps which stops right at the door.

I hold my breath, not knowing what lay behind that door.

The atmosphere suddenly seems cold and the winds blow chillier than before. It is as if the world around is giving me a cold shoulder. Like nature doesn’t want to witness this moment and is begging the time to freeze.

Suddenly I don’t want to meet the person on the other side.

Something is just not right.

I have the strangest desire to turn back and run, run for my life...