A Beautiful Torment

7. The Haunting

7. The Haunting

I stared at the moon shape my newly installed nightlight made on the ceiling. I could feel the exhaustion carving deep, purple grooves under my eyes and the clumsy strain of thoughts that drifted through my head barely made any sense.

She lay on the bed next to me, so, so still and unnervingly silent.

I pretended that she was something my mind had dreamed up; a symptom of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or a fatigue-induced hallucination. There was no other explanation for her presence.

She was dead.

Emma was dead.

"... she hasn't slept in three days, Anthony," I heard my mother murmur outside my bedroom door. "I'm worried about her."

"Deputy Fuller came to the practice, too. She won't talk to him, will she?" my father asked.

"She's not talking to anyone," my mother stressed. "I don't even... I don't even know if that's normal. I mean, she did witness the murder of her friend."

Emma giggled.

I flinched.

"It's not so bad, Dizzy," she whispered in my ear. "Especially since I've got you."

"Go away," I muttered.

"Never."

(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)

They released her body on a Friday. School was cancelled – not that I'd been planning on attending anyway – and almost everybody turned up to the funeral.

Mrs. Bloodsworth was holding her husband's hand so tightly, I thought she might leave puncture marks on his skin. She was inconsolable.

I glanced from her to the woman next to me. My mother stood tall and silent, her arm threaded through my father's, as she listened to the pastor perform the funeral rites. There were no lines of grief etched into her face, no misery clouding her eyes. My heart ached at the thought of watching her breakdown and not being able to comfort her.

I looked at Emma. She was staring at her mother, white-faced, with her hands balled into fists.

She should have been standing in my place. I should have been standing in hers.

"I hate you," she told me.

I burst into tears.

(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)

Deputy Fuller's car was waiting outside when we returned from the funeral. He was leaning against the hood, an unreadable expression on his handsome face. He couldn't have been more than thirty, and I'd heard Mrs. Ashby commenting on his "delicious butt" on more than one occasion.

He was the one who found me in the woods, cradling Emma's head in my lap. He carried her body to the ambulance, talking quietly to me in hushed, soothing tones, and he'd lulled me into a false sense of security with kind words and gentle eyes.

But Deputy Fuller was a snake. He slithered beneath your defences and wormed confessions out of you that weren't yours to divulge.

"Wyatt Blackwell was with you, wasn't he?"

"Who told you that?"

"Your friends were concerned for your safety. As you can see, they weren't worried for nothing..."

"Deputy Fuller," my mom greeted as she climbed out of the car.

"Please, I've told you to call me Aidan, ma'am," he smiled charmingly.