Withering Starlight

6. A Fractured Thing

                                                 Chapter 6

                                         A Fractured Thing

Cal was the first to hear Eve's scream even before the girl had heard it herself.

All she saw were Sydney's empty white eyes, the two endless, sightless holes where her sky blue beauties had been, and terror took over. Her blood ran cold as Sydney gripped her tight with two hands, her fingernails digging painfully hard into her arms, and she screamed.

Cal was there in a second, the ambulance and police already on their way, and ripped Sydney's hands off Eve, pulling her friend away from the stumbling, crying girl.

Tears poured from her empty eye sockets, running the colour red.

“Where is he?” she wailed. “Why can't I see?”

And then she started to scream. Not out of shock like Eve did. More like the bone shattering, head splitting screaming that didn't end even when the police cruiser arrived. Or the ambulance. Or the men in their white clothes that held her down on the cement as she thrashed and cried until they shoved a needle in her arm and her consciousness faded away, taking her shrieks with her.

Eve and Cal stood huddled against the cold beside the police cruiser. When the officers came over Eve immediately recognized them as Deputy Bierce and Officer Signa.

“Miss. Haring?” Deputy Bierce greeted as a question, obviously surprised to see her. “You're the one who found Sydney?”

Eve nodded. “Calla, too.”

Deputy Bierce turned to the other girl then and Eve zoned out, staring away from the policemen and the alleyway and instead towards the skeletons of the dead treetops in Fleck park that she could just make out in the distance.

Stars. Trees. Bees. A harmless girl.

What did they all have in common?

They were all living things, Eve decided. And they were all dead except for the last one on the list who looked as if she was blind and out-of-her-mind crazy instead.

Eve held a certain sympathy for the girl as she was carried away on a stretcher.

“Miss. Haring?” Deputy Bierce asked, drawing her attention back to the gathering. “Are you okay?”

That wasn't the question he had originally intended to ask but had done so when he saw the expression on her face.

She nodded.

When they finished replying to their questions – which Eve mostly answered with nods or shakes of her head – she and Cal retreated from the alleyway and returned home. Ice-cream-less.

They both crawled into Eve's bed, the room lit by candlelight, and pulled the blankets up around their shivering bodies. Calla fell asleep within the first half an hour.

But Eve...

Eve didn't sleep for a long time.

• • •

Calla left for work at one the next day and Eve walked into the coffee shop called Joe's Mug an hour later. She ordered a Mocha, saying goodbye to her last twenty dollar note to receive a ten and coins in change. Cal usually slid Eve her order without charge while no one else was looking, winking to say I won't tell if you don't. But that day the cafe's owner was working alongside Calla so Eve paid.